Germanic substrate hypothesis
Encyclopedia
The Germanic substrate hypothesis is an attempt to explain the distinctive nature of the Germanic languages
within the context of the Indo-European language family
. It postulates that the elements of the common Germanic vocabulary and syntactical forms that do not seem to have an Indo-European origin show Proto-Germanic
to be a creole language
: a contact language synthesis between Indo-European speakers and a non-Indo-European substrate
language used by the ancestors of the speakers of the Proto-Germanic language
. The theory was first proposed by Sigmund Feist
in 1932, who estimated that roughly a third of Proto-Germanic lexical items came from a non-Indo-European substrate and that the supposed reduction of the Proto-Germanic inflectional system was the result of pidginization with that substrate. The culture and tribes from which the substrate material originated continues to be a subject of academic debate and study. Notable candidates for possible substrate culture(s) are the Ertebølle culture
, Funnelbeaker culture
, Pitted Ware culture
and the Corded Ware culture
.
was a profound sound change that affected all of the stops
inherited from Indo-European. The Germanic languages also share common innovations in grammar
as well as in phonology
, Half of the noun cases featured in what are commonly regarded as the more conservative
languages such as Sanskrit
, Lithuanian
or Slavic languages
are missing from Germanic. (However, other Indo-European languages attested much earlier than the Germanic languages, such as Hittite
, also have a reduced inventory of noun cases. It is not certain whether Germanic and Hittite have lost them, or whether they never shared in their acquisition.) The Germanic verb
has also been extensively remodelled, showing fewer grammatical mood
s, and markedly fewer inflections for the passive voice
.
Germanic has some words which seem to ignore Grimm's law
: *ūp = "up": compare Sanskrit
upa- and (Vedic
) upári; "help" and Vedic kḷp- = "be adapted". Where Proto-Germanic shows a "p" the typical PIE
reflex is "b", however Sanskrit also shows a "p", seemingly indicating that the PIE form also included a "p". However, if this is true, then the Germanic reflex should be ūf instead of *ūp (Note, German auf contains "f" as a result of the much later High German consonant shift
in which High German p became f under certain conditions. Thus, both auf and *ūp go back to a previous form containing p).
between an Indo-European and a non-Indo-European language. Writing an introductory article to the Germanic languages in The Major Languages of Western Europe, Germanicist John A. Hawkins
sets forth the arguments for a Germanic substrate. Hawkins argues that the proto-Germans encountered a non-Indo-European speaking people and borrowed many features from their language. He hypothesizes that the first sound shift of Grimm's Law was the result of non-native speakers attempting to pronounce Indo-European sounds, and that they resorted to the closest sounds in their own language in their attempt to pronounce them. The Battle-axe people is an ancient culture identified by archaeology
who have been proposed as candidates for the people who influenced Germanic with their non-Indo-European speech. Alternatively, in the framework of the Kurgan hypothesis
, the Battle-axe people may be seen as an already "kurganized" culture built on the substrate of the earlier Funnelbeaker culture
.
A number of root words for modern European words seem to limit the geographical origin of these Germanic influences, such as the root word for ash
(the tree) and other environmental references suggest a limited root stream subset which can be localized to northern Europe
Kalevi Wiik
, a phonologist, has put forward a controversial hypothesis that the pre-Germanic substrate was of a non-Indo-European Finnic
origin. Wiik claimed that there are similarities between mistakes in English pronunciation typical of Finnish
speakers and the historical sound changes from Proto-Indo-European to proto-Germanic. Wiik's argument is based on the assumption that only three language groups existed in pre-Indo-European
Europe, namely Uralic
, Indo-European
and Basque
, corresponding to three ice age refugia. Then, Uralic speakers would have been the first to settle most of Europe, and the language of the Indo-European invaders was influenced by the native Uralic population, producing the Germanic protolanguage.
Venemann
made a hypothesis of a Basque substrate and a Semitic Superstrate.
Existing evidence of languages outside the three refugia that he proposes, (e.g. the Tyrrhenian Language Family) create a complication to Wiik's theory, meaning it relies upon an undemonstrated link between each of these languages and one of the three proto-languages he proposes.
is of non-Indo-European origin, and again points to the hypothetical substrate language as the cause. Certain lexical fields are dominated by non-Indo-European words according to Hawkins. Seafaring
terms, agricultural
terms, engineering
terms (construction/architecture), words about war
and weapon
s, animal
and fish
names, and the names of communal and social institutions are centers of non-Indo-European words according to Hawkins. Some English language
examples given by Hawkins include:
zelmis - "skin", Old Prussian
salmis - "helm"). East relates to IE *h2eus-ro-, "dawn". Some of the words may have Indo-European derivations that are simply not well preserved in other Indo-European languages. For example, it has been suggested that wife is related to Tocharian B
kwipe, "pubes; vulva
", from a reconstructed root *gʷíh2bʰo-. Other possible etymologies include:
Similarly, the word "bear" may not be unique to Germanic languages. In Russian, a bear's lair is berloga, sometimes etymologized as "the lair of ber". Others hold that berloga could be derived from a proto-Slavic word for 'swamp' that also influenced the originally West Slavic origin of the city name Berlin as a "town built on swampy grounds". A number of Slavic languages have cognates of medved for "bear", which meant "honey-eater" < *medʰu + *ed- (though was later taken to mean "honey-knower" by folk etymology). This suggests that a possible ancient Slavic word ber may have been replaced by a euphemism (although the older Slavic word predating ber for a bear was "oster" as in the Oster River
in Ukraine). However, supporters of the Germanic substrate hypothesis such as Max Vasmer
explain the obvious relation between berloga and the Germanic word for 'bear' by the fact that early Old Norse
influences on East Slavic languages
cannot be disregarded — see the prevalent Normanist theory
regarding the Varangian
origin of the Rus people
from Scandinavia, from whom also the name of Russia is derived.
Calvert Watkins
's 1969 appendix of Indo-European roots in the American Heritage Dictionary listed several roots that were believed to be unique to Germanic at that time. More recent editions have substantially reduced the number of roots claimed to be uniquely Germanic.
More recent treatments of Proto-Germanic tend to reject or simply omit discussion of the Germanic substrate hypothesis. Joseph B. Voyles's Early Germanic Grammar makes no mention of the hypothesis, nor do most other recent publications on the Germanic language family.
Nonetheless, the hypothesis remains popular in some circles, such as the Leiden school of historical linguistics. The first etymological dictionary of any language to systematically take the hypothesis into its discussions is the new Dutch dictionary influenced by the thinking of the Leiden group, which is currently under production: Marlies Philippa et al. (ed), Etymologisch woordenboek van het Nederlands, Amsterdam University press, in 4 volumes, 2003-2009.
Germanic languages
The Germanic languages constitute a sub-branch of the Indo-European language family. The common ancestor of all of the languages in this branch is called Proto-Germanic , which was spoken in approximately the mid-1st millennium BC in Iron Age northern Europe...
within the context of the Indo-European language family
Indo-European languages
The Indo-European languages are a family of several hundred related languages and dialects, including most major current languages of Europe, the Iranian plateau, and South Asia and also historically predominant in Anatolia...
. It postulates that the elements of the common Germanic vocabulary and syntactical forms that do not seem to have an Indo-European origin show Proto-Germanic
Proto-Germanic language
Proto-Germanic , or Common Germanic, as it is sometimes known, is the unattested, reconstructed proto-language of all the Germanic languages, such as modern English, Frisian, Dutch, Afrikaans, German, Luxembourgish, Danish, Norwegian, Icelandic, Faroese, and Swedish.The Proto-Germanic language is...
to be a creole language
Creole language
A creole language, or simply a creole, is a stable natural language developed from the mixing of parent languages; creoles differ from pidgins in that they have been nativized by children as their primary language, making them have features of natural languages that are normally missing from...
: a contact language synthesis between Indo-European speakers and a non-Indo-European substrate
Substratum
In linguistics, a stratum or strate is a language that influences, or is influenced by another through contact. A substratum is a language which has lower power or prestige than another, while a superstratum is the language that has higher power or prestige. Both substratum and superstratum...
language used by the ancestors of the speakers of the Proto-Germanic language
Proto-Germanic language
Proto-Germanic , or Common Germanic, as it is sometimes known, is the unattested, reconstructed proto-language of all the Germanic languages, such as modern English, Frisian, Dutch, Afrikaans, German, Luxembourgish, Danish, Norwegian, Icelandic, Faroese, and Swedish.The Proto-Germanic language is...
. The theory was first proposed by Sigmund Feist
Sigmund Feist
Sigmund Feist was a German Jewish pedagogue and historical linguist. He was the author of the Germanic substrate hypothesis as well as a number of important works concerning Jewish ethnic and racial identity. Feist served as the director of the Jewish Reichenheim Orphanage in Berlin from 1906 to...
in 1932, who estimated that roughly a third of Proto-Germanic lexical items came from a non-Indo-European substrate and that the supposed reduction of the Proto-Germanic inflectional system was the result of pidginization with that substrate. The culture and tribes from which the substrate material originated continues to be a subject of academic debate and study. Notable candidates for possible substrate culture(s) are the Ertebølle culture
Ertebølle culture
The Ertebølle culture is the name of a hunter-gatherer and fisher, pottery-making culture dating to the end of the Mesolithic period. The culture was concentrated in Southern Scandinavia, but genetically linked to strongly related cultures in Northern Germany and the Northern Netherlands...
, Funnelbeaker culture
Funnelbeaker culture
The Funnelbeaker culture, short TRB from Trichterbecherkultur is the principal north central European megalithic culture of late Neolithic Europe.- Predecessor and successor cultures :...
, Pitted Ware culture
Pitted Ware culture
The Pitted Ware culture was a hunter-gatherer culture in southern Scandinavia, mainly along the coasts of Svealand, Götaland, Åland, north-eastern Denmark and southern Norway. Despite its Mesolithic economy, it is by convention classed as Neolithic, since it falls within the period in which...
and the Corded Ware culture
Corded Ware culture
The Corded Ware culture , alternatively characterized as the Battle Axe culture or Single Grave culture, is an enormous European archaeological horizon that begins in the late Neolithic , flourishes through the Copper Age and culminates in the early Bronze Age.Corded Ware culture is associated with...
.
Distinct language group
Grimm's lawGrimm's law
Grimm's law , named for Jacob Grimm, is a set of statements describing the inherited Proto-Indo-European stops as they developed in Proto-Germanic in the 1st millennium BC...
was a profound sound change that affected all of the stops
Stop consonant
In phonetics, a plosive, also known as an occlusive or an oral stop, is a stop consonant in which the vocal tract is blocked so that all airflow ceases. The occlusion may be done with the tongue , lips , and &...
inherited from Indo-European. The Germanic languages also share common innovations in grammar
Grammar
In linguistics, grammar is the set of structural rules that govern the composition of clauses, phrases, and words in any given natural language. The term refers also to the study of such rules, and this field includes morphology, syntax, and phonology, often complemented by phonetics, semantics,...
as well as in phonology
Phonology
Phonology is, broadly speaking, the subdiscipline of linguistics concerned with the sounds of language. That is, it is the systematic use of sound to encode meaning in any spoken human language, or the field of linguistics studying this use...
, Half of the noun cases featured in what are commonly regarded as the more conservative
Conservative (language)
In linguistics, a conservative form, variety, or modality is one that has changed relatively little over its history, or which is relatively resistant to change...
languages such as Sanskrit
Sanskrit
Sanskrit , is a historical Indo-Aryan language and the primary liturgical language of Hinduism, Jainism and Buddhism.Buddhism: besides Pali, see Buddhist Hybrid Sanskrit Today, it is listed as one of the 22 scheduled languages of India and is an official language of the state of Uttarakhand...
, Lithuanian
Lithuanian language
Lithuanian is the official state language of Lithuania and is recognized as one of the official languages of the European Union. There are about 2.96 million native Lithuanian speakers in Lithuania and about 170,000 abroad. Lithuanian is a Baltic language, closely related to Latvian, although they...
or Slavic languages
Slavic languages
The Slavic languages , a group of closely related languages of the Slavic peoples and a subgroup of Indo-European languages, have speakers in most of Eastern Europe, in much of the Balkans, in parts of Central Europe, and in the northern part of Asia.-Branches:Scholars traditionally divide Slavic...
are missing from Germanic. (However, other Indo-European languages attested much earlier than the Germanic languages, such as Hittite
Hittite language
Hittite is the extinct language once spoken by the Hittites, a people who created an empire centred on Hattusa in north-central Anatolia...
, also have a reduced inventory of noun cases. It is not certain whether Germanic and Hittite have lost them, or whether they never shared in their acquisition.) The Germanic verb
Verb
A verb, from the Latin verbum meaning word, is a word that in syntax conveys an action , or a state of being . In the usual description of English, the basic form, with or without the particle to, is the infinitive...
has also been extensively remodelled, showing fewer grammatical mood
Grammatical mood
In linguistics, grammatical mood is a grammatical feature of verbs, used to signal modality. That is, it is the use of verbal inflections that allow speakers to express their attitude toward what they are saying...
s, and markedly fewer inflections for the passive voice
Passive voice
Passive voice is a grammatical voice common in many of the world's languages. Passive is used in a clause whose subject expresses the theme or patient of the main verb. That is, the subject undergoes an action or has its state changed. A sentence whose theme is marked as grammatical subject is...
.
Hybridisation as conjectured cause
It has been suggested that Proto-Germanic arose as a hybrid of two Indo-European dialects, one each of Centum and Satem types, although they would have been mutually intelligible at the time of hybridisation. This hypothesis may help to explain the difficulty of finding the right place for Germanic within the Indo-European family (though the Germanic languages are commonly classified as Centum languages, because of the sound correspondences exemplified in the words *hund, not !sund ("hundred", ~ centum with a guttural fricative according to Grimm's law) and *hwis, not !his ("who", ~ Latin quis)).Germanic has some words which seem to ignore Grimm's law
Grimm's law
Grimm's law , named for Jacob Grimm, is a set of statements describing the inherited Proto-Indo-European stops as they developed in Proto-Germanic in the 1st millennium BC...
: *ūp = "up": compare Sanskrit
Sanskrit
Sanskrit , is a historical Indo-Aryan language and the primary liturgical language of Hinduism, Jainism and Buddhism.Buddhism: besides Pali, see Buddhist Hybrid Sanskrit Today, it is listed as one of the 22 scheduled languages of India and is an official language of the state of Uttarakhand...
upa- and (Vedic
Vedic Sanskrit
Vedic Sanskrit is an old Indo-Aryan language. It is an archaic form of Sanskrit, an early descendant of Proto-Indo-Iranian. It is closely related to Avestan, the oldest preserved Iranian language...
) upári; "help" and Vedic kḷp- = "be adapted". Where Proto-Germanic shows a "p" the typical PIE
Proto-Indo-European language
The Proto-Indo-European language is the reconstructed common ancestor of the Indo-European languages, spoken by the Proto-Indo-Europeans...
reflex is "b", however Sanskrit also shows a "p", seemingly indicating that the PIE form also included a "p". However, if this is true, then the Germanic reflex should be ūf instead of *ūp (Note, German auf contains "f" as a result of the much later High German consonant shift
High German consonant shift
In historical linguistics, the High German consonant shift or second Germanic consonant shift is a phonological development that took place in the southern parts of the West Germanic dialect continuum in several phases, probably beginning between the 3rd and 5th centuries AD, and was almost...
in which High German p became f under certain conditions. Thus, both auf and *ūp go back to a previous form containing p).
Non-Indo-European influence
The Germanic substrate hypothesis attempts to explain these features as a result of creolizationCreolization
Creolization is a concept that refers to the process in which new African American cultures emerge in the New World. As a result of colonization there was a mixture between people of indigenous, African, and European decent, which became to be understood as Creolization...
between an Indo-European and a non-Indo-European language. Writing an introductory article to the Germanic languages in The Major Languages of Western Europe, Germanicist John A. Hawkins
John A. Hawkins
John A. Hawkins is Professor of English and Applied Linguistics at the Research Centre for English and Applied Linguistics at the University of Cambridge...
sets forth the arguments for a Germanic substrate. Hawkins argues that the proto-Germans encountered a non-Indo-European speaking people and borrowed many features from their language. He hypothesizes that the first sound shift of Grimm's Law was the result of non-native speakers attempting to pronounce Indo-European sounds, and that they resorted to the closest sounds in their own language in their attempt to pronounce them. The Battle-axe people is an ancient culture identified by archaeology
Archaeology
Archaeology, or archeology , is the study of human society, primarily through the recovery and analysis of the material culture and environmental data that they have left behind, which includes artifacts, architecture, biofacts and cultural landscapes...
who have been proposed as candidates for the people who influenced Germanic with their non-Indo-European speech. Alternatively, in the framework of the Kurgan hypothesis
Kurgan hypothesis
The Kurgan hypothesis is one of the proposals about early Indo-European origins, which postulates that the people of an archaeological "Kurgan culture" in the Pontic steppe were the most likely speakers of the Proto-Indo-European language...
, the Battle-axe people may be seen as an already "kurganized" culture built on the substrate of the earlier Funnelbeaker culture
Funnelbeaker culture
The Funnelbeaker culture, short TRB from Trichterbecherkultur is the principal north central European megalithic culture of late Neolithic Europe.- Predecessor and successor cultures :...
.
A number of root words for modern European words seem to limit the geographical origin of these Germanic influences, such as the root word for ash
Ash tree
Fraxinus is a genus flowering plants in the olive and lilac family, Oleaceae. It contains 45-65 species of usually medium to large trees, mostly deciduous though a few subtropical species are evergreen. The tree's common English name, ash, goes back to the Old English æsc, while the generic name...
(the tree) and other environmental references suggest a limited root stream subset which can be localized to northern Europe
Europe
Europe is, by convention, one of the world's seven continents. Comprising the westernmost peninsula of Eurasia, Europe is generally 'divided' from Asia to its east by the watershed divides of the Ural and Caucasus Mountains, the Ural River, the Caspian and Black Seas, and the waterways connecting...
Kalevi Wiik
Kalevi Wiik
Kalevi Wiik is a professor emeritus of phonetics at the University of Turku, Finland. He is best known for his controversial hypotheses about the effect of the Uralic languages on creation of various Indo-European languages in northern Europe, such as Germanic, Slavic, and Baltic languages...
, a phonologist, has put forward a controversial hypothesis that the pre-Germanic substrate was of a non-Indo-European Finnic
Finnic languages
The term Finnic languages often means the Baltic-Finnic languages, an undisputed branch of the Uralic languages. However, it is also commonly used to mean the Finno-Permic languages, a hypothetical intermediate branch that includes Baltic Finnic, or the more disputed Finno-Volgaic languages....
origin. Wiik claimed that there are similarities between mistakes in English pronunciation typical of Finnish
Finnish language
Finnish is the language spoken by the majority of the population in Finland Primarily for use by restaurant menus and by ethnic Finns outside Finland. It is one of the two official languages of Finland and an official minority language in Sweden. In Sweden, both standard Finnish and Meänkieli, a...
speakers and the historical sound changes from Proto-Indo-European to proto-Germanic. Wiik's argument is based on the assumption that only three language groups existed in pre-Indo-European
Neolithic Europe
Neolithic Europe refers to a prehistoric period in which Neolithic technology was present in Europe. This corresponds roughly to a time between 7000 BC and c. 1700 BC...
Europe, namely Uralic
Uralic languages
The Uralic languages constitute a language family of some three dozen languages spoken by approximately 25 million people. The healthiest Uralic languages in terms of the number of native speakers are Hungarian, Finnish, Estonian, Mari and Udmurt...
, Indo-European
Indo-European languages
The Indo-European languages are a family of several hundred related languages and dialects, including most major current languages of Europe, the Iranian plateau, and South Asia and also historically predominant in Anatolia...
and Basque
Basque language
Basque is the ancestral language of the Basque people, who inhabit the Basque Country, a region spanning an area in northeastern Spain and southwestern France. It is spoken by 25.7% of Basques in all territories...
, corresponding to three ice age refugia. Then, Uralic speakers would have been the first to settle most of Europe, and the language of the Indo-European invaders was influenced by the native Uralic population, producing the Germanic protolanguage.
Venemann
Theo Vennemann
Theo Vennemann is a German linguist known best for his work on historical linguistics, especially for his disputed theories of a Vasconic substratum and an Atlantic superstratum of European languages. He also suggests that the High German consonant shift was already completed in the early 1st...
made a hypothesis of a Basque substrate and a Semitic Superstrate.
Existing evidence of languages outside the three refugia that he proposes, (e.g. the Tyrrhenian Language Family) create a complication to Wiik's theory, meaning it relies upon an undemonstrated link between each of these languages and one of the three proto-languages he proposes.
Words derived from non-Indo-European languages
Hawkins moreover asserts that more than one third of the native Germanic lexiconLexicon
In linguistics, the lexicon of a language is its vocabulary, including its words and expressions. A lexicon is also a synonym of the word thesaurus. More formally, it is a language's inventory of lexemes. Coined in English 1603, the word "lexicon" derives from the Greek "λεξικόν" , neut...
is of non-Indo-European origin, and again points to the hypothetical substrate language as the cause. Certain lexical fields are dominated by non-Indo-European words according to Hawkins. Seafaring
Navigation
Navigation is the process of monitoring and controlling the movement of a craft or vehicle from one place to another. It is also the term of art used for the specialized knowledge used by navigators to perform navigation tasks...
terms, agricultural
Agriculture
Agriculture is the cultivation of animals, plants, fungi and other life forms for food, fiber, and other products used to sustain life. Agriculture was the key implement in the rise of sedentary human civilization, whereby farming of domesticated species created food surpluses that nurtured the...
terms, engineering
Engineering
Engineering is the discipline, art, skill and profession of acquiring and applying scientific, mathematical, economic, social, and practical knowledge, in order to design and build structures, machines, devices, systems, materials and processes that safely realize improvements to the lives of...
terms (construction/architecture), words about war
War
War is a state of organized, armed, and often prolonged conflict carried on between states, nations, or other parties typified by extreme aggression, social disruption, and usually high mortality. War should be understood as an actual, intentional and widespread armed conflict between political...
and weapon
Weapon
A weapon, arm, or armament is a tool or instrument used with the aim of causing damage or harm to living beings or artificial structures or systems...
s, animal
Animal
Animals are a major group of multicellular, eukaryotic organisms of the kingdom Animalia or Metazoa. Their body plan eventually becomes fixed as they develop, although some undergo a process of metamorphosis later on in their life. Most animals are motile, meaning they can move spontaneously and...
and fish
Fish
Fish are a paraphyletic group of organisms that consist of all gill-bearing aquatic vertebrate animals that lack limbs with digits. Included in this definition are the living hagfish, lampreys, and cartilaginous and bony fish, as well as various extinct related groups...
names, and the names of communal and social institutions are centers of non-Indo-European words according to Hawkins. Some English language
English language
English is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria...
examples given by Hawkins include:
| Seafaring | ||||||
| English | German | Dutch | Swedish | Latin | Greek | Russian |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| sea | See | zee | sjö | mare | θάλασσα (thalassa) |
море (more) |
| ship | Schiff | schip | skepp | navis | πλοίο (ploio) |
плот (судно, корабль) (plot (sudno, korabl)) |
| strand (beach) | Strand | strand | strand | litus, acta | παραλία (paralia) |
берег (bereg) |
| ebb | Ebbe | eb | ebb | decessus, recessus | άμπωτις (ampotis) |
отлив (otliv) |
| steer | steuern | besturen | styra | guberno | κυβερνώ (kuberno) |
управлять (upravlyat) |
| sail | segeln | zeilen | segla | navigo | πλέω (pleo) |
плавать (plavat) |
| keel | Kiel | kiel | köl | carina | καρίνα (karina) |
киль (kil) |
| north | Norden | noorden | nord | septentriones | βορράς (borras) |
север (sever) |
| south | Süden | zuiden | syd | australis, meridies | νότος (notos) |
юг (yug) |
| east | Osten | oosten | öst | oriens | ανατολή (anatoli) | восток (vostok) |
| west | Westen | westen | väst | occidens | δύση (dysi) |
запад (zapad) |
| Warfare/weapons | ||||||
| English | German | Dutch | Swedish | Latin | Greek | Russian |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| sword | Schwert | zwaard | svärd | gladius | σπαθί (spathi) |
меч (mech) |
| shield | Schild | schild | sköld | scutum | ασπίδα (aspida) |
щит (shchit) |
| helmet | Helm | helm | hjälm | galea | κράνος (kranos) |
шлем (shlem) |
| bow | Bogen | boog | båge | arcus | τόξο (toxo) |
лук (luk) |
| Animal/Fish | ||||||
| English | German | Dutch | Swedish | Latin | Greek | Russian |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| carp | Karpfen | karper | karp | cyprinus | κυπρίνος (kyprinos) |
карп (karp) |
| eel | Aal | aal | ål | anguilla | χέλι (cheli) |
угорь (ugor) |
| calf | Kalb | kalf | kalv | vitulus | μοσχάρι (moschari) |
телёнок (telyonok) |
| lamb | Lamm | lam | lamm | agnus | αμνός (amnos) |
ягнёнок (yagnonok) |
| bear | Bär | beer | björn | ursus | άρκτος (arktos) |
медведь (medved) |
| stork | Storch | ooievaar* | stork | ciconia | πελαργός, λελέκι (pelargos, leleki) |
аист (aist) |
| Communal | ||||||
| English | German | Dutch | Swedish | Latin | Greek | Russian |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| king | König | koning | kung | rex | βασιλεύϛ (basileus) |
король (korol) |
| knight* | Knecht | knecht | knekt | servitus | υπηρέτης (ypiretis) |
слуга (sluga) |
| thing | Ding | ding | ting | res | πράγμα (pragma) |
вещь (veshch) |
| Miscellaneous | ||||||
| English | German | Dutch | Swedish | Latin | Greek | Russian |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| drink | trinken | drinken | dricka | bibo | πίνω (pino) |
пить (pit) |
| leap (run) | laufen | lopen | löpa | curro | τρέχω (trecho) |
бегать (begat) |
| bone | Bein | been | ben | os | οστούν (ostoun) |
кость (kost) |
| wife (woman) | Weib | wijf | viv | uxor | γυνή (gyni) |
жена (zhena) |
| bride | Braut | bruid | brud | nupta | νύφη (nyfi) |
невеста (nevesta) |
| (bride)groom | (Bräuti)gam | (bruide)gom | (brud)gum | maritus | γαμπρός (gampros) |
жених (zhenix) |
Controversy
Many of Hawkins's purported non-etymologies are controversial. One obvious way to refute the Germanic substrate hypothesis is to find Indo-European etymologies for the words on Hawkins's list. This process continues, but several cited as examples by Hawkins can likely be eliminated. For example, it is generally agreed that helmet represents IE *kel-, "a concealing covering" (cf. ThracianThracian language
The Thracian language was the Indo-European language spoken in ancient times in Southeastern Europe by the Thracians, the northern neighbors of the Ancient Greeks. The Thracian language exhibits satemization: it either belonged to the Satem group of Indo-European languages or it was strongly...
zelmis - "skin", Old Prussian
Old Prussian language
Prussian is an extinct Baltic language, once spoken by the inhabitants of the original territory of Prussia in an area of what later became East Prussia and eastern parts of...
salmis - "helm"). East relates to IE *h2eus-ro-, "dawn". Some of the words may have Indo-European derivations that are simply not well preserved in other Indo-European languages. For example, it has been suggested that wife is related to Tocharian B
Tocharian languages
Tocharian or Tokharian is an extinct branch of the Indo-European language family. The name is taken from the people known to the Greeks as the Tocharians . These are sometimes identified with the Yuezhi and the Kushans. The term Tokharistan usually refers to 1st millennium Bactria, which the...
kwipe, "pubes; vulva
Vulva
The vulva consists of the external genital organs of the female mammal. This article deals with the vulva of the human being, although the structures are similar for other mammals....
", from a reconstructed root *gʷíh2bʰo-. Other possible etymologies include:
- ebb: from *h2epo "off, away"
- north: from *nr̥tro- which is in turn from *ner- "under, on the left," north being to one's left when facing the rising sun.
- south: from *sunto- which is in turn from *sun-, a variant of *säwel- "the sun"
- west: from *westo- which is in turn from *wes-, reduced form of *wespero "evening"
- shield: from *skel- "to cut"
- stork: from *str̥go- which is the zero-grade form of *ster- "stiff"
- bear: "the brown one" (a tabooTabooA taboo is a strong social prohibition relating to any area of human activity or social custom that is sacred and or forbidden based on moral judgment, religious beliefs and or scientific consensus. Breaking the taboo is usually considered objectionable or abhorrent by society...
avoidanceAvoidance speechAvoidance speech, or "mother-in-law languages", is a feature of many Australian Aboriginal languages and some North American languages and Bantu languages of Africa whereby in the presence of certain relatives it is taboo to use everyday speech style, and instead a special speech style must be...
term, or taboo deformation) from *bʰer- "bright, brown" - drink: from *dʰreng-, presentive of *dʰreg- "to draw, glide"
- groom: (as in bridegroom) from *(dh)ghm̥on which is the zero-grade suffixed form of *dʰgʰom- "earth". The word bridegroom derives from Middle English bridegome and Old English brȳdguma, a compound of brȳd 'bride' and guma 'man'. The intrusive r in Modern English bridegroom is due to contamination with the word groom (of different meaning), the origin of which is unknown.
- ship: from *skei-, a root originally meaning "to cut", or compare GreekGreek languageGreek is an independent branch of the Indo-European family of languages. Native to the southern Balkans, it has the longest documented history of any Indo-European language, spanning 34 centuries of written records. Its writing system has been the Greek alphabet for the majority of its history;...
σκάπτω = "I digDig-Music:* Dig , an American rock bandAlbums* Dig , or the title song* Dig * Dig * Dig , or the title song* Dig...
", referring to a dugout boatDugout (boat)A dugout or dugout canoe is a boat made from a hollowed tree trunk. Other names for this type of boat are logboat and monoxylon. Monoxylon is Greek -- mono- + ξύλον xylon -- and is mostly used in classic Greek texts. In Germany they are called einbaum )...
. - strand: from *ster-, meaning "wide, flat".
- king: from Old English cyning. The cyn- part is possibly cognate with Modern English "kin" and related to Latin genus, etc.
Similarly, the word "bear" may not be unique to Germanic languages. In Russian, a bear's lair is berloga, sometimes etymologized as "the lair of ber". Others hold that berloga could be derived from a proto-Slavic word for 'swamp' that also influenced the originally West Slavic origin of the city name Berlin as a "town built on swampy grounds". A number of Slavic languages have cognates of medved for "bear", which meant "honey-eater" < *medʰu + *ed- (though was later taken to mean "honey-knower" by folk etymology). This suggests that a possible ancient Slavic word ber may have been replaced by a euphemism (although the older Slavic word predating ber for a bear was "oster" as in the Oster River
Oster River
The Oster River is a river in the northern Ukrainian oblast of Chernihiv. The river is the left branch of the Desna River. It is approximately 199 km long and its basin area is 2,950 km². It is connected by canals and streams with the Trubizh River, which flows southwest from Kiev into...
in Ukraine). However, supporters of the Germanic substrate hypothesis such as Max Vasmer
Max Vasmer
Max Vasmer was a Russian-born German linguist who studied problems of etymology of Indo-European, Finno-Ugric and Turkic languages and worked on history of Slavic, Baltic, Iranian, and Finno-Ugric peoples....
explain the obvious relation between berloga and the Germanic word for 'bear' by the fact that early Old Norse
Old Norse
Old Norse is a North Germanic language that was spoken by inhabitants of Scandinavia and inhabitants of their overseas settlements during the Viking Age, until about 1300....
influences on East Slavic languages
East Slavic languages
The East Slavic languages constitute one of three regional subgroups of Slavic languages, currently spoken in Eastern Europe. It is the group with the largest numbers of speakers, far out-numbering the Western and Southern Slavic groups. Current East Slavic languages are Belarusian, Russian,...
cannot be disregarded — see the prevalent Normanist theory
Rus (name)
Originally, the name Rus referred to the people, the region, and the medieval states of the Rus' Khaganate and Kievan Rus' polities...
regarding the Varangian
Varangians
The Varangians or Varyags , sometimes referred to as Variagians, were people from the Baltic region, most often associated with Vikings, who from the 9th to 11th centuries ventured eastwards and southwards along the rivers of Eastern Europe, through what is now Russia, Belarus and Ukraine.According...
origin of the Rus people
Rus' (people)
The Rus' were a group of Varangians . According to the Primary Chronicle of Rus, compiled in about 1113 AD, the Rus had relocated from the Baltic region , first to Northeastern Europe, creating an early polity which finally came under the leadership of Rurik...
from Scandinavia, from whom also the name of Russia is derived.
Calvert Watkins
Calvert Watkins
Calvert Watkins is a professor Emeritus of linguistics and the classics at Harvard University and professor-in-residence at UCLA.His doctoral dissertation, Indo-European Origins of the Celtic Verb I...
's 1969 appendix of Indo-European roots in the American Heritage Dictionary listed several roots that were believed to be unique to Germanic at that time. More recent editions have substantially reduced the number of roots claimed to be uniquely Germanic.
More recent treatments of Proto-Germanic tend to reject or simply omit discussion of the Germanic substrate hypothesis. Joseph B. Voyles's Early Germanic Grammar makes no mention of the hypothesis, nor do most other recent publications on the Germanic language family.
Nonetheless, the hypothesis remains popular in some circles, such as the Leiden school of historical linguistics. The first etymological dictionary of any language to systematically take the hypothesis into its discussions is the new Dutch dictionary influenced by the thinking of the Leiden group, which is currently under production: Marlies Philippa et al. (ed), Etymologisch woordenboek van het Nederlands, Amsterdam University press, in 4 volumes, 2003-2009.
Notations
- Eduard Prokosch (1939), A Comparative Germanic Grammar (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania, Linguistic Society of America). ISBN 9-991-03485-4
- John A. Hawkins (1990), Germanic Languages, in The Major Languages of Western Europe, Bernard Comrie, ed. (Routledge). ISBN 0-415-04738-2
- Edgar C. Polomé (1990), Types of Linguistic Evidence for Early Contact: Indo-Europeans and Non-Indo-Europeans. In: Markey-Greppin (eds.) When Worlds Collide 267-89.
- Joseph B. Voyles (1992), Early Germanic Grammar (Academic Press). ISBN 0-12-728270-X
- Robert S. P. Beekes (1995), Comparative Indo-European Linguistics: An Introduction (John Benjamins). ISBN 1-55619-505-2
- Calvert Watkins. ed. (1985), The American Heritage Dictionary of Indo-European Roots (Houghton Mifflin) ISBN 0-395-36070-6
- Calvert Watkins, ed. (2000), The American Heritage Dictionary of Indo-European Roots, second edition (Houghton Mifflin). ISBN 0-618-08250-6
- Orrin W. Robinson (1992), Old English and its Closest Relatives: A Study of the Earliest Germanic Languages (Stanford). ISBN 0-8047-2221-8
- Theo VennemannTheo VennemannTheo Vennemann is a German linguist known best for his work on historical linguistics, especially for his disputed theories of a Vasconic substratum and an Atlantic superstratum of European languages. He also suggests that the High German consonant shift was already completed in the early 1st...
(2003), "Languages in prehistoric Europe north of the Alps," Languages in Prehistoric Europe, eds Alfred Bammesberger & Theo Vennemann (Heidelberg: C. Winter), 319-332. - Kalevi Wiik (2002), Eurooppalaisten juuret (in Finnish; "Roots of Europeans".
- Kalevi Wiik (2004), Suomalaisten juuret (in Finnish; "Roots of Finns").
See also
- Pre-Germanic
- Old European hydronymyOld European hydronymyOld European is the term used by Hans Krahe for the language of the oldest reconstructed stratum of European hydronymy in Central and Western Europe...
- Language shiftLanguage shiftLanguage shift, sometimes referred to as language transfer or language replacement or assimilation, is the progressive process whereby a speech community of a language shifts to speaking another language. The rate of assimilation is the percentage of individuals with a given mother tongue who speak...
- Neolithic EuropeNeolithic EuropeNeolithic Europe refers to a prehistoric period in which Neolithic technology was present in Europe. This corresponds roughly to a time between 7000 BC and c. 1700 BC...
- Theo VennemannTheo VennemannTheo Vennemann is a German linguist known best for his work on historical linguistics, especially for his disputed theories of a Vasconic substratum and an Atlantic superstratum of European languages. He also suggests that the High German consonant shift was already completed in the early 1st...