Re: another language reconstruction question

>From: Muke Tever <mktvr@...>
>Knowing the language had common roots
>like *sneygwh- or *kwekwlo- or *dyews implies something about the people
>who
>used such words ('snow', 'wheel', and a sky deity)
Isn't it incredible that in *sneygwh you can see both "snow" and "neige"...
reminds me of *gwous becoming both "cow" and "beef".

>  (So the Anatolian branch from people who lived in this
>place, and the Greeks here, and the Indo-Iranians here, and
>Germano-Balto-Slavic
>here, and Italo-Celtic here, and Tocharian here, etc.)
Interesting - do you know of a theory that Germanic was particularly close
to Balto-Slavonic? I thought Germanic was a branch apart, with one theory
making out that it started as a pidgin. In fact, isn't Germanic a centum
branch and Balto-Slavonic a satem branch? I know of the idea that Italic and
Celtic were particularly close.

>  There _are_ words that PIE and its dialects borrowed that
>are generally identified as being loanwords either by their strange forms
>or on
>other evidence:  words like *abel- ("apple", strange for having *b, thought
>to
>be from a European lang) or *septm= ("seven", oddly shaped altogether,
>thought
>to be from Semitic).
In one Guinness Book of Records I had it gave "bin", "dun" and "crag" as
other English words descended from pre-IE languages, besides "apple"

Mat


_________________________________________________________________
Unlimited Internet access for only $21.95/month.  Try MSN!
http://resourcecenter.msn.com/access/plans/2monthsfree.asp