spongetaro
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More words :
acorn
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blond
"blond"? Is it a proof that northern European were already blond before the IE
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More words :
acorn
begin
blond
"blond"? Is it a proof that northern European were already blond before the IE
If there is no related word in IE languages, then probably. But the etymology of blond isn't very clear, except that it comes from Frankish blund. The old English blonden-feax means "grey-haired". Ultimately it might have been used to describe any light hair (blond or grey).
It wouldn't be very surprising that blond hair originated in northern Europe since blond hair is most common in areas with the highest frequency of Y-haplogroup I1. It's possible that I1 was already present in Poland in the Mesolithic (notably I1b and I1-P). I would think that blond hair spread through North European maternal lineages (U4 and U5) from Scandinavia, North Germany and Poland to Eastern Europe, probably before the Corded Ware Culture (U4 and U5 were found all over Europe in Mesolithic samples). The Indo-Europeans (especially the northern R1a branch, originally from the Forest-Steppe around North Ukraine and Belarus) would have spread blond genes with them as far as Mongolia and India.
I definitely am inclined to think that blond hair is more likely to be tied with the original Indo-Europeans than with the aboriginal peoples of northern Europe, and that the modern-day high frequency is a result of a founder effect.
To get back to the linguistic issue, in general the unique feature of the Germanic languages is that in comparison to Proto-Indo-European (and indeed most other IE languages), sounds are shifted in Germanic. This is primarily according to Grimm's Law:
*p > *f (Latin "pater" vs. English "father")
*t > *θ
*k > *h (Latin "centum" vs. English "hundred")
*kw > *hw (Latin "quod" vs. English "what")
*b > *p
*d > *t
*g > *k
*gw > *kw
*bh > *b
*dh > *d
*gh > *g
*gwh > *gw
In addition, there's another law at work (Verner's Law) which regards the sounds *p, *t, *k, *kw ending up voiced (*β, *ð, *ɣ, *ɣw) if they are following an unstressed syllable.
My guess is that the mutation for blondism occured in some subclades of U4 and U5 in Northern Europe, hence its absence in southern european (who also have U4 and U5).
I'm not sure that it is correlated with I1 since the Tarim mummies were blonde but tested R1a.
I definitely am inclined to think that blond hair is more likely to be tied with the original Indo-Europeans than with the aboriginal peoples of northern Europe, and that the modern-day high frequency is a result of a founder effect. The Tocharians are known to have been blond, not only from the Tarim Basin mummies...
Either the male lineages were a blend of (pre-)I1 and R1a, or they were all I1 and R1a came later and replaced I1 in Eastern Europe.
The Tocharians, Central Asians and Indo-Aryans were an offshoot of the Poltavka-Sintashta Culture, which was itself an extension of the Corded Ware Culture, which originated in the Bug-Dniester Culture in northern Ukraine 7000 years ago. As I explained in the above post, the gene for blondism could very well have been absorbed from the Baltic neighbours several millennia before the Poltavka-Sintashta Culture.
I'm totally ignorant in Lingiustic but in what way the Grimm's law does differ from the armenian sounds shift or the other lanuage sounds shifts (P and Q celtic...)?
I have started a list of old Germanic words of non-Indo-European origin. Feel free to comment or suggest new words. I am planning to add the PIE word in the right column when I have time to look them up.
Tocharians are a specific case. Their language is closer to the Anatolian and Italo Celtic branches than to Indo Iranic. It is possible that they moved directly from the PIE homeland and very early.
The position of Tocharian, both geographically and within Indo-European is indeed peculiar. Some people, notably Waktins 1998, placed Tocharian closest with Italo-Celtic. If this is indeed the case, we would expect that the Tocharians indeed migrated very far. Alternatively, we can speculate if Tocharian was merely the first, or one of the first (see Anatolian), branches of Indo-European to diverge.
There's two words in your list here which need to be removed/modified:
"silver" has a cognate in Baltic and Slavic:
- Latvian "sudabra" Lithuanian "sidabras"
- Polish "srebrny", Russian "Serebro"
(it's not uniquely Germanic, but it's not found anywhere else)
"all" is clearly Proto-Indo-European, even if it has a different meaning in Germanic:
- Celtic (Gaulish "allo-" 'the second, the other'), Old Irish "Aile", Welsh "Ail")
- Latin "alius" (the other)
- Greek "allos" (the other)
- Armenian "ayl"
- Sanskrit "aríḥ" (stranger)
- Tocharian "alyak" (other)
Ok for "all", but silver is found only in Germanic and Balto-Slavic. Silver was known before the time of the PIE expansion, so the PIE word should be the same in all branches of IE languages. It is actually the case for Italo-Celtic (Latin argentum, Old Irish argat, Breton arc'hant) Indo-Iranian (Avestan erezata-, Old Persian ardata-, Sanskrit arjuna), Armenian (arcat), and perhaps other extinct languages too. So in this case I would rather postulate for a common non-IE origin for Germanic and Balto-Slavic (perhaps from the indigenous North European I1 people, which wouldn't be surprising considering the high natural occurrence of silver in Sweden and Poland).
Furthermore, some people have speculated if the Basque for silver ("zilar") is related in any ways to the Germanic-Balto-Slavic word. I was quite sceptical of this, but it's possible due to the phenomenon of Haplology. If the words are indeed related, the Pre-Basque form would have been *zilabar.
Silver in Kurdish is "ziv".Ok for "all", but silver is found only in Germanic and Balto-Slavic. Silver was known before the time of the PIE expansion, so the PIE word should be the same in all branches of IE languages. It is actually the case for Italo-Celtic (Latin argentum, Old Irish argat, Breton arc'hant) Indo-Iranian (Avestan erezata-, Old Persian ardata-, Sanskrit arjuna), Armenian (arcat), and perhaps other extinct languages too. So in this case I would rather postulate for a common non-IE origin for Germanic and Balto-Slavic (perhaps from the indigenous North European I1 people, which wouldn't be surprising considering the high natural occurrence of silver in Sweden and Poland).
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