26
votes
Accepted
Why is it called proto-Germanic?
Roman authors, at the latest from the time of Caesar, used "Germani" to identify all the "Germanic" tribes on both sides of the Rhine. So this usage has been established for a long ...
- 23.4k
26
votes
Why is it called proto-Germanic?
It's also worth pointing out the term originates in German as Urgermanisch or Protogermanisch, and that the German for German is Deutsch, not Germanisch. It was intended to be more neutral w.r.t. ...
- 2,059
17
votes
Accepted
How different were Proto-Italic and Proto-Germanic?
As you noticed, there is something common between modern Romance and Germanic languages which is not shared by other Indo-European languages. It does not come from their ancestral languages (Latin and ...
- 1,174
13
votes
Why does it seem that all Proto-Germanic words have PIE roots?
It is not the case that pretty much all PGmc words are from PIE. Many well-known linguists have turned their attention to the problem of precisely why PGmc had such a large proportion of non-IE ...
- 717
12
votes
Accepted
Have linguistics found any evidence that Semitic languages influenced Germanic languages or vice versa (in ancient times)?
There are some very controversial theories by the German linguist Theo Vennemann postulating a contact between Phoenician and proto-Germanic in the 6th to 3rd century BCE. The evidence for such ...
- 29.1k
12
votes
Development of Old Norse 2nd and 3rd person sg. (present indicative) forms of "to be"
I am not an expert on Old Norse, but my guess that in Old Norse happened something similar as in the development of the German language: The second person singular acquired a new -t from the start of ...
- 29.1k
12
votes
Development of Old Norse 2nd and 3rd person sg. (present indicative) forms of "to be"
It is certainly puzzling, and not only to you. The problem has frustrated many scholars and is thus described on page 724 of The Nordic Languages: An International Handbook of the History of the North ...
- 906
11
votes
Why is it called proto-Germanic?
The other answers have all touched on different aspects of the question, but I'll try to combine them.
Thousands of years ago, the Romans named much of north-central Europe Germānia, and the people ...
- 60.2k
10
votes
How different were Proto-Italic and Proto-Germanic?
Even if these languages belong to the Indo-European family, there's a huge gap of time and space standing between Pre-Italic and Pre-Germanic languages.
"A probable cladistic tree of the IE family"(a)...
- 1,979
8
votes
Accepted
Are English 'gay' and Norwegian 'gøy' cognates?
According to the Norske Akademis Ordbok, gøy is from English “gay”.
- 4,940
7
votes
West Germanic Th-Stopping
Th-stopping of original Proto-Germanic voiced /d~ð/ to /d/ in all contexts is normal for Old English. It seems to be a common feature of West Germanic languages. The modern-day /ð/ in "father" is due ...
- 17.3k
7
votes
How did Proto-Indo-European *septm evolve into English "seven"?
The excellent German etymological dictionary by Pfeiffer has this:
sieben Num. Ahd. sibun (8. Jh.), mhd. siben (md. siven), asächs.
siҍun, mnd. sēven, sȫven, mnl. sēven, nl. zeven, aengl. seofon, ...
- 23.4k
7
votes
Accepted
Possible extrapolation of old German word "hansa" to protogermanic and possibly common root with Sanskrit "sangha"
Sangha is from Sanskrit *saṃ- (PIE *sem) "together" + *han- (PIE *gʷʰén) "strike, kill", and originally in Sanskrit meant "struck, put together". Hansa (referring to the Hanseatic league) is ...
- 77k
7
votes
Why is it called proto-Germanic?
Names are to a good part conventions. It is historically long established to name the group of languages consisting of the Scandinavian languages (Norwegian, Swedish, Danish, Icelandic; but not ...
- 29.1k
6
votes
Why do phonemes such as /r/ and /ɾ/ evolve into uvular sounds like /ʀ/?
Any answer given here will perforce be speculative, but... There is a well-known speech impediment, rhotacism (or de-rhotacization), whereby speakers cannot pronounce sounds similar to the alveolar ...
- 1,205
6
votes
When was Proto-Germanic spoken?
Roughly, 500 BCE - 200 CE.
There's no firm date at which Proto-Germanic stops being Proto-Indo-European, or becomes other Germanic languages. These are all artificial divisions imposed on a continuous ...
- 60.2k
6
votes
Accepted
Do "wise" and "wissen" share the same root?
These words are indeed cognate! They both stem from the PIE root *weyd-, meaning "to know" or "to perceive", along with less obvious cognates like "guide", "vision", and "eidolon".
In Proto-Indo-...
- 60.2k
6
votes
Accepted
Is English "lake" Derived from Latin, or is it Indo-European?
The word is without doubt Indo-European, the question is whether it is strictly Germanic or did it come via Latin. Pokorny says *laku is the source of Gr. λάκκος, lat. lacus, OIr. loch, and lagu etc. ...
- 77k
6
votes
To what extent are Zero Period loans from Latin into Germanic evidence that the Germanic peoples acquired technologies from the Romans?
“Wine” is a prehistoric wander word occurring not only in Indo-European, but also in Semitic (Arabic wayn, Hebrew yayin etc.) and Kartvelian. It is possible that Germanic had it from Latin, but that ...
- 23.4k
6
votes
Why is /f/ easier to pronounce than /p/?
It is simply false that "ease of pronunciation" is the reason behind sound changes, although this is a common misconception. In fact, nobody has ever devised a method of objectively quantifying the ...
- 77k
6
votes
Umlaut in Gothic
It's the result of lowering of /u/ before the consonants /h~x/, /hʷ~xʷ~ʍ/ and /r/. According to Winfred P. Lehmann in Gothic and the Reconstruction of Proto-Germanic, short /o/ and /u/ (and short /e/ ...
- 17.3k
6
votes
Not affected by Grimm's Law?
The Wiktionary entry for "path" does a terrible job of making this clear, but the reconstructed Germanic form *paþaz is generally thought to be a loanword taken from some other Indo-European ...
- 17.3k
6
votes
How implausible is it for the name "Oslo" to have come from the Semitic root w-ṣ-l instead of from Proto-Norse *ansuz + *lauhō?
The original name of the city was Ánslo, and the decomposition into *ansuz + *lauhō is uncontroversial and completely non-problematic. One can always conjecture that true source was something else, ...
- 77k
6
votes
How implausible is it for the name "Oslo" to have come from the Semitic root w-ṣ-l instead of from Proto-Norse *ansuz + *lauhō?
The existing answer has addressed the plausibility of the Germanic etymology. I will address the plausibility of the Semitic etymology.
First of all, Phoenician, like all other Northwest Semitic ...
- 6,114
5
votes
Feminization suffix "-in" in German: etymology and relatives
German -in is from common Germanic and has been reconstructed as *-injō. In older forms of German it was -in, -inna, -īn, -inne and could still be found with the spelling -inn in recent centuries.
...
- 7,313
5
votes
Accepted
To what extent are Zero Period loans from Latin into Germanic evidence that the Germanic peoples acquired technologies from the Romans?
Linguistic evidence can be combined with other historical and archaeological evidence to form hypotheses, but the existence of loans alone cannot be used to prove this, because:
Loans can exist ...
- 7,313
5
votes
How does PIE *kʷ in **wĺ̥kʷos change to PGmc. *f in *wulfaz?
As Anixx said, a shift from /kʷ/ or /kw/ to /p/ isn't at all unprecedented. To add a few more examples:
The "P-Celtic" languages: Welsh pen ~ Irish ceann < */kʷenn/ "head"
The "P-Italic" languages:...
- 60.2k
5
votes
Could Proto-Germanic *tīhaną be a "ē-grade" of *tungǭ zero-grade?
It is of course right that Gothic has Verner's Law variants -χ- / -ng- (spelled <h> /<gg>, respectively), as seen in your first two examples.
It is also right that tuggo has a zero grade ...
- 253
4
votes
West Germanic Th-Stopping
Spelling with -th- (15c.) reflects widespread phonetic shift in Middle English that turned -der to -ther in many words, perhaps reinforced in this case by Old Norse forms; spelling caught up to ...
- 17.3k
4
votes
Do "wise" and "wissen" share the same root?
Yes, en wise and de wissen share a root, but not as recently as Levenstein distance would suggest.
de weise is more directly cognate with en wise, whereas de wissen is directly cognate with en wit, ...
- 7,313
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