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Pre-Celtic/Non-IE words in Insular Celtic, Bell-Beaker people, etc.

From:Jörg Rhiemeier <joerg.rhiemeier@...>
Date:Friday, September 8, 2000, 1:50
Me govanen!

Is there a list available on the Net of Insular Celtic words believed to
originate from non-IE languages of pre-Celtic Britain?

What do we know about such languages anyway?  And is there anything at
all known about the language(s) of the Bell Beaker civilization?

I have started musing about the Bell Beaker langs, and the first few
things I came up with look like something quite well known especially
among readers of this list...

First, there are all those "Veneti" or "Venedi" tribes all over western
Europe.
Could they be fragments of the Bell Beaker folk?  If yes, they named
themselves something like *Wenedi or *Wendi, but the word might have
lost an initial velar stop (which could be preserved in "Guanche" - I
know those were Berbers, but taller and of fairer complexion than
regular Berbers, and it has repeatedly speculated about some kind of
ethnic mixing going on there) ;-)

Then, the words "iron", "silver" and "tin" seem to come from a non-IE
western European language, which can hardly be anything else than that
of the B-B people.
The latter two _could_ go back to something like *kjelep- and *tinko-,
and iron < Celt. *isarn- < *el-sarn "star-stone", i.e. "meteorite"???

I somehow envision a time-traveller well aquainted with Tolkien's work
visiting a Bell Beaker village, shell-shocked by the language those
people speak...

OK, this sounds like complete hogwash, and it almost certainly is, but
it's fun to play with, and that's what we're doing all the time here...

Syld,
Jörg.