Celtic Germanic relationship

[Christopher Gwinn]

> Since a similar change indeed affected the ancestors of the known insular
> Celtic languages (in Irish, *-s- was "lenited" into -h-, then nothing,
> whereas in Welsh and Breton all *s > *h, with eventual loss in many cases),
> it is reasonable to posit an *-s- > *-h- > nothing for some continental
> Celtic languages as well for the 1st millennium BC. Other Celtic
> dialects/languages would have kept intervocalic -s- (I believe Gaulish did)

Early (attested) Gaulish retains the intervocalic -s-, but later Gaulish
tends to lose it (especially vefore -s-). Note Isarno "iron" as compared to
late Gaulish suior "sister" (from Common Celtic *swesor)

> On *ri:k-, the key to the direction of borrowing is not so much the consonant
> /k/ but the vowel /i:/. If we assume an IE etymology for the word in
> question, we are more likely to find a PIE */e:/ than a PIE */i:/ (evidence:
> Latin rjx, rjgnna; Sanskrit rbj-). Now, PIE */e:/ either remains */e:/ in the
> Germanic languages or opens up to a long low vowel /ae:/ or even /a:/. The
> conditions for these alternative developments go well beyond what we are
> discussing, but the point is that PIE */e:/ never becomes */i:/ in Germanic.
> This is, however, the normal development in the Celtic languages, so that IF
> we posit an IE origin for the Germanic word family *ri:k-, the best
> explanation is again borrowing from Celtic, with the borrowing taking place
> before the Grimm's Law change *g > *k.

I might add that Greek and Latin speaker soften had trouble distinguishing
between the Celtic -g- and -c- (the Gauls themselves often seemed unsure
whether to use a -c- or a -g- when writing their  own language); perhaps the
Germanic tribes suffered from the same problem.

-Chris Gwinn