Re: Neanderthal and PIE

Quoting "Mark J. Reed" <markjreed@...>:

> "Neanderthal" is too well-ingrained for me to have a problem with it,
> as I've known the word for over 30 years.  I still automatically
> pronounce it with a /T/ instead of a /t/, though..
Tangentially, the Swedish is _neandertalare_, with a suffix that, among other
functions, forms gentilics, like _stockholmare_ "Stockholmer". As a kid,
however, I misanalyzed it as a compound ending in _talare_ "speaker" (same
ending, here agentive). I don't remember if I had any theory of what a _neander_
might be or how one goes about speaking it, but I certainly took for granted
that neander-speakers must have had a language!

--
Andreas Johansson

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