*p>f Revisited - When was German invented?

[X99Lynx at aol.com]

In a message dated 3/14/99 4:19:24 AM, JoatSimeon at aol.com wrote:

<<msn.com writes:

I do not want to actively enter this discussion but, for whatever it may be
worth, I believe the Germanic sound system was developed in the IE homeland,
in close proximity to Semitic, as the correspondences I have developed
between Germanic and Semitic seem to suggest --- after other IE branches had
struck for the west. >>

--gee, that sure makes them acrobatic travellers -- bouncing all around the
map, getting from somewhere in the Middle East to Jutland, crossing all sorts
of other linguistic territory on the way...>>

Just to be fair: East Gothic pulled off close to the same trick by ending up
in the eastern Ukraine in the 1700's.  Armenian certainly needs to account for
how it got where it ended up, jumping languages by whatever route (except,
come to think of it, if it took the Black Sea line.)  And I understand the
until the 1930's the Amish were essentially unilingual German speakers out
there among those Pennsylvania English.  The Germans have seemed to hopped
before.

In frontier worlds, group migrants don't really have to assimilate every
language they cross.  The 49'ers did not arrive in California speaking Sioux.

And just to give the other POV, Cavalli-Sforza's premise with regard to that
genetic information was partly I think to suggest a migration of Middle
Easteners up through the heart of Europe.   German being "archaic", we hear,
it might have retained the memories of that visit more intact than the more
"innovative cores."

Regards,
Steve Long