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The term "Eurabia" is in itself a complete misnomer, because it pretends that there is a homogenity that is actually non-existent. There's a large share of Muslims living in Europe, both amongst the immigrant communities (for example, Turks, Kurds and Iranians living in Germany, or Pakistanis in...

Contact with the Celtic languages was extensive (especially common terminology for metallurgy, horsebackriding and warfare), and relatively old (mostly predating Grimm's Law). Wolfram Euler's point about the "Pre-Proto-Germanic language" or "Germanic Parent Language" (i.e. Proto-Germanic before...

The amusing issue is that the earlier authors (Strabo, Ptolemy, Tacitus, Pliny) think of them as two distinct people. For Strabo (book 7, chapter 3), Getai (Γεται) and Dakoi (Δακοι) are synonyms. The same is the case with Pliny (Natural History, book 4, chapter 80). The Getae were a (clearly...

Indo-Iranic languages have a much longer attestation, yes (if we include the loanwords in Mitanni, 1400 BC), but you should not equate that automatically with "older". We're talking about Late IE languages (where the so-called "pharyngeals") vanish with vowel-colouring qualities while in the...

I'm aware of this. I was under the impression that the wheel was invented essentially independently around the same time frame, i.e. the Late(st) Neolithic in Central Europe, the Pontic-Caspian steppe and Mesopotamia. The fact that the Sumerian word for 'wheel' (also borrowed into Akkadian)...

There's more than two words (two words for wheel, at that). You also have words for 'axle' and 'wagon'. Also, bear in mind that words cannot be subjected retroactively to past sound laws (because languages have no memories of past sound laws). When you look at the words for 'wheel' and 'horse'...

Mesopotamia, to my knowledge, didn't have wheels before the Uruk period. I might add that the Sumerian word for 'wheel', ḫu-bu-um, bears no relationship with the Indo-European words for wheel (*kwekwelos and *(H)rotheH)).

I for one think it is a very strong argument, because the words for 'horse' and 'wheel' are shifted according to the respective sound laws. If they were spread later, after (Late) PIE had already split up into the daughter branches, you would expect to see a clear sign of borrowing.

I have to say this: first, the idea that the Anatolian languages were the first branch of PIE to separate (or, conversely, that you have an ancestral split between Proto-Anatolian and a form of "Late" PIE) is a common ground between Kurganists and Anatolianists. I have also mentioned before, I'm...

I disagree. As I said, the letter Beta (Ββ) was indeed pronounced as /v/ in the Middle Ages, but in spelling convention, people would just substitute /b/ as "v" (β). The convention to spell /b/ as 'mp' (μπ) is a modern convention. One example that comes to my mind, even if it is from (very)...

Even if you have the pre-composed opinion that the name Ulfilas/Wulfilas somehow cannot be Germanic and that the etymology is bogus for you, it doesn't change the fact that Biblical Gothic is an authentic Germanic language that could not have been 'forged' by romanticists in the 1600s (which was...

Here, you are assuming that the orthographic conventions of modern Greek would have automatically applied in medieval Greek. Instead, medieval Greek just substituted /b/ with /v/ (spelled with β). Gelandri is a related with English "to yell" and Dutch "gillen" ('to shout'). As regards...

I didn't change the subject. I just made the point that such a general suspicion is pointless. "Little Wolf" is just as much a viable etymology as the Saint Martin "Martinus" (pertaining to Mars - a really strange name for a Christian bishop of Tours, isn't it?). Besides, if not from Germanic...

Is the name "Jesus of Nazareth" attested in then-contemporary sources? I find the idea that Gothic was an invented "romantic" language invented by German nobility in the 1600s, and I'm actually quoting Milan right now, its all pretty ridiculous: If you and Milan are going into the direction of...

Biblical Gothic is not an invented language (just like Old Church Slavic, yeah?), the assertation alone is silly. Nor are the names of East Germanic tribal leaders from the Migration Period (or earlier recorded Germanic names) invented. Again, if you had an understanding of sound laws and how...

I would like to point out that its not exactly overblown. If we were talking about Europe, I might agree with you, but you have to consider the bizarre proportions that the so-called "pro-life versus pro-choice" debate in the United States is taking. Against the backdrop of that, media interest...

Now you're intentionally misquoting me. I don't completely ignore the "problem" of the beech, I pinpointed you to it (it wasn't part of this thread until I mentioned it, you can go back and read the thread from the start): the Slavic word for beech is of Germanic origin. Deal with it. As for...

How can it be "ethnocentrism" if the cognates in Celtic (Old Irish 'gort') and Italic (Latin 'horta') are both with *t? It is impossible to explain as having derived from PIE because the *d is wholly unexpected (it should be regularly with a *t in Slavic, just as in Celtic and Italic). In...

I have to say, I do not get the obsession of Christian fundamentalists (and it is a form of Christian fundamentalism, let there be no doubt about it) with abortion, especially because there is zero basis in scripture. The bigotry involved here becomes also very apparent that the same people who...