LL-L "Language varieties" 2005.11.08 (01) [E]

Tue Nov 8 16:41:54 UTC 2005

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08 November 2005 * Volume 01
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From: Paul Finlow-Bates <wolf_thunder51 at yahoo.co.uk>
Subject: LL-L "Language varieties" 2005.11.07 (04) [E]

From: Jacqueline Bungenberg de Jong

"Re Fionnhall: to Paul Finlow-Bates.
It is indeed odd because Germanic Norwegians and Danes are a blond people.
You may expect darker people amongst the Saami of Norway and the Lap Fins of
Finland, since they are Asiatic in origin. Jacqueline "

I think we have to be cautious about assuming that Germanic in a linguistic 
sense, and in a physiological sense, are necessarily related.  There is 
evidence that blond/red hair and blue or other light-pigmented eyes have 
been in the north west of Europe long before any Indo-European language was 
ever spoken there.

Paul

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From: heather rendall <HeatherRendall at compuserve.com>
Subject: LL-L "Language varieties" 2005.11.07 (10) [E]

Message text written by INTERNET:lowlands-l at LOWLANDS-L.NET
>Some Germanic loans in Finnic are extremely old, so
old, in fact, that they predate Germanic writing by centuries and help us
reconstruct or corroborate Ancient Germanic.<

Fascinating!
Can you give us a few examples?

Heather

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From: R. F. Hahn <sassisch at yahoo.com>
Subject: Language varieties

And good day to you,too, dearest Heather!

> Fascinating!
> Can you give us a few examples?

This *is* a tall order to fill this early in the morning before my first 
caffeine injection.  Hmm ... but considering the kind of guy I am, that I 
*am* a sucker for the response "fascinating!", seeing that it comes from our 
favorite Heather and I'm still hoping we'll have an all-Lowlands picnic 
under her fruit trees some day (as well as a gathering at our favorite 
Gabriele's Ulenflucht), I might be able to store up some brownie points by 
scraping together at least a handful of examples.  Others may be able and 
willing to chime in, and I may think of more once heart and brain have been 
properly jump-started this morning after too late a night.

Please bear in mind that Uralic, like Altaic, permits no initial consonant 
clusters and simplifies such in Germanic and Slavonic loans, usually by 
omitting the first segment.  Furthermore, bear in mind that Finnic does not 
have initial voiced stops (b, d, g being reserved for non-initial voicing by 
morphophonological rule).

Fi., Kar., Est. kuningas, Veps kuningaz < *kuningaz 'king' (cf. Russian 
knjaz) < *kuni- 'chief'

Fi. ruhtinas < *druhtinaz 'prince' (cf. OEng dryhten) < *druhtî 'entourage 
chief'

Fi. rengas, Est. rõngas < *hrengaz 'ring' (cf. OEng hring) < *hrenga-

Fi. kattila (Est. katel?) < *katila-(z-) 'kettle'

Fi. patja 'matress' < *badja(z) 'bed' (but later Fi. peti < bed; cf. Goth. 
badi)

Fi. laiva, Est. laev < *flauja (cf. ONorse ley, Greek ploîon)

Fi., Kar.  leipä, Est. leib, Veps leib ~ liib < *hlaiba  'bread' (cf. Goth. 
hlaifs, Eng. loaf, Russian _xleb_ 'bread')

Fi. tytär < *duhter 'daughter'

Fi. sisar < *swester 'sister'

Fi. äiti, Kar. äites < *aiþî 'mother' (cf. Gothic _aiþei_ [_aithei_])

Fi. kaupunki 'city', 'town' (< 'trading post'), Fi. kauppa, Est. kaubandus 
'trade' < *kaup- (kaupjan) 'to trade', 'barte', 'to buy' (cf. Goth. kaup 
'trade')

In Estonian, many of these assumedly went bye-bye because of massive Middle 
and Early Low Saxon loan influx; e.g.,

prince:  prints, aadlik, vürst
kettle: kann (katila)

Oh, lookie here!  Johanna Laakso keeps an open mind also:

<quote>
A few decades ago the family tree of the Finno-Ugrian languages was 
interpreted as a map showing how the FU peoples wandered to their present 
homes. Modern archaeology obviously does not support such wide migrations. 
Also recent loan word research has shown very old Indo-European loanwords 
especially in Finnish and the westernmost (Finnic) branch, which means that 
some pre-form of Finnish must have been spoken relatively close to the 
Baltic Sea already quite early.

On the other hand, Finnish is certainly related to languages spoken in 
Middle Russia and West Siberia. This means either that the area of the 
Finno-Ugrian (Uralic) proto-language has been very wide, reaching perhaps 
from the Baltic Sea to the Urals, or that we must find alternative 
explanatory models to account for the spreading of these languages.
</quote>
http://www.helsinki.fi/~jolaakso/fufaq.html

Riho Grünthal has interesting things to say about the *Sabmi name group, 
also about early place names, ethnonyms and Germanic loans:
http://www.sgr.fi/ct/ct51.html

I hope I'm in even better graces with you now, Heather.

On to the second cup!  :-)

Cheerio!
Reinhard/Ron

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