Paleo-European languages

[Pabappa]

Even if the linguists did coin the word to explain εὐμαρής, that doesnt mean that it didnt exist. More likely, Greek had a more common word for hand that didnt get written down. Or, the word may not have meant hand in the first place. εὐμαρής seems not to have meant "good-handed", but rather "convenient, easy to find", etc, indicating that if the words are cognates, one of the families must have done a significant semantic shift.

anyway, if the linguists were looking to plug holes, they wouldnt have picked a word with an /r/ and matched it to a word with /n/. the size of the Gk corpus is such that we could start drawing connections all over the place .... e.g. Gk μάνης "cup" .... unless it's known somehow that the Latin word did in fact have an /r/ at one point.

[Richard W]

More likely, Greek had a more common word for hand that didnt get written down.

Not sure, though it did have a more common word that did get written down, namely χείρ (whence English chiral).

Or, the word may not have meant hand in the first place. εὐμαρής seems not to have meant "good-handed", but rather "convenient, easy to find", etc, indicating that if the words are cognates, one of the families must have done a significant semantic shift.

So now someone's going to claim a connection with the sense 'beckon', namely that εὐμαρής meant saying, "Cooee, here I am!".

[WeepingElf]

Indeed, some people over-reconstruct. This dictionary, for instance (which seems to be an updated form of Pokorny's), contains so many homonyms and synonyms that one can hardly escape the notion that many of them are probably spurious. Yet, the goal of etymology, as with any science, is to explain the unknown by the known. You try to explain the unknown (words with no etymologies, or with questionable ones) by the even more unknown (lost, unattested languages). Of course, it is often better to be honest and say that the origin of a word is unknown than to undergo mental contortions to find a far-flung counterpart in some remote corner of the IE family that seems to fit at a stretch; but what you are doing is pulling entire lost languages out of your hat which "just happen" to show the sound developments you need. That way, anything - and thereby nothing - can be proved.

The question is whether it's worth investigating on what we can possibly know about these "lost languages" from the (rather scarce) available data, or simply ignore them. I avocate for linguistic archaeology.

Of course such languages are worth investigating! But that needs to be done with proper methods, which I don't see in your posts. Sure, that road is stony, steep and narrow, but the comfy train you are riding instead doesn't take you the right way.

And why are you frightened by your own ideas? You always say that you are "afraid" of something

Here it goes: there's a Romance word *manja with the meaning 'skill, trick; bad habit' found in e.g. Spanish and Catalan, and the derivated verb *ad-manjare 'rig, doctor; fix, compose; contrive; get used to; manage (oneself); join in concubinate' (note: think of French affaire) which IMHO can be linked to *ad-panjare 'gather, collect; take (by force); attire, dress; fix, repair; manage (oneself)'. Although these words can't be directly derived from Latin (there's a homonymous Spanish (slang) apañar 'warp in clothes' which obviously comes from Latin pannus 'cloth, rag'), they have got possible cognates in Basque eman 'put, place; get used to' (possibly also Iberian eban) and more distantly in Uralic *pane 'put, place', Dravidian *paɳ- 'do, work', Austric *ʔPun 'gather, collect', Afrasian *bn- 'build'. So my conclusion is we're dealing with a Wanderwort related to manual work.

Fiddlesticks. This clearly shows the wrong-headedness of your approach. With such flights of fancy around half the planet, you won't convince anyone but the most gullible. I mean, Basque, OK, but Dravidian? Austric?!?! It is not even certain that the latter one is a thing at all! What comes next? Traces of languages of extraterrestrial visitors? The point is, that adding more languages from faraway locations to the consideration weakens your point rather than strengthening it because it increases the likelihood of chance resemblances.

[Talskubilos]

Fiddlesticks. This clearly shows the wrong-headedness of your approach. With such flights of fancy around half the planet, you won't convince anyone but the most gullible. I mean, Basque, OK, but Dravidian? Austric?!?! It is not even certain that the latter one is a thing at all! What comes next? Traces of languages of extraterrestrial visitors? The point is, that adding more languages from faraway locations to the consideration weakens your point rather than strengthening it because it increases the likelihood of chance resemblances.

Surely you'll be suprised to know IE *porḱ-o- 'piglet' is a Wanderwort of ultimate Austronesian origin, because pigs where first domesticated in SE Asia.

I'd also recommend you read Stephen Oppenheimer's Eden in the East. The Drowned Continent of Southeast Asia.

[Travis B.]

[Ares Land]

I'd also recommend you read Stephen Oppenheimer's Eden in the East. The Drowned Continent of Southeast Asia.

I'm sorry, but I find your theory quite incomplete. You haven't mentioned even one Mesoamerican loanword so far, while links are quite clearly demonstrated:



To say nothing of the Antarctican Wanderwörter.

Scholars have recognized since the 1930s that the Antarctican civilization is the most ancient of all:

[Talskubilos]

AFAIK, Oppenheimer is a reputed scholar, not a science fiction writer.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sundaland

[WeepingElf]

AFAIK, Oppenheimer is a reputed scholar, not a science fiction writer.

Which doesn't prevent him from writing fringe stuff outside his specialty. As I haven't read his book, I can only say something about what I have read about it on Wikipedia. This book is apparently less fringy than the one Ares Land posted the cover of in his reply. Sundaland was real. But it seems as if Oppenheimer claims that it was home to the Proto-Civilization from which all ancient civilizations of the Old World descend, and that is highly dubious. At any rate, calling on such a work in a discussion of a European etymology is of no value.

[Richard W]

Surely you'll be suprised to know IE *porḱ-o- 'piglet' is a Wanderwort of ultimate Austronesian origin, because pigs where first domesticated in SE Asia.

It would be another wheel issue if there were any truth in it. SW and East Asian domestications seem to be independent - the latter a matter of historical record. Modern European pigs have a fair bit of European wild boar and Eastern domesticated pig in them. It seems odd that we should have preserved the word for 'piglet' (PAN *beRek) but replaced the word for the adult (*babuy). And, of course, PIE *perḱ has a colour(-pattern) meaning as well as possibly the meaning 'to dig'.

[Talskubilos]

And, of course, PIE *perḱ has a colour(-pattern) meaning as well as possibly the meaning 'to dig'.

I'm afraid this is an agricultural word restricted to some European languages, as the 0-grade noun *prḱ-eh2 'furrow'. But never mind, because it's a well-known fact pigs use their snout to dig the earth, so perhaps farmers used them instead of ploughs.

[Talskubilos]

Which doesn't prevent him from writing fringe stuff outside his specialty. As I haven't read his book, I can only say something about what I have read about it on Wikipedia. This book is apparently less fringy than the one Ares Land posted the cover of in his reply. Sundaland was real. But it seems as if Oppenheimer claims that it was home to the Proto-Civilization from which all ancient civilizations of the Old World descend, and that is highly dubious. At any rate, calling on such a work in a discussion of a European etymology is of no value.

I won't go so far, but IMHO that part of the world could well be the source of some Wanderwörter which reached Europe.

[WeepingElf]

Which doesn't prevent him from writing fringe stuff outside his specialty. As I haven't read his book, I can only say something about what I have read about it on Wikipedia. This book is apparently less fringy than the one Ares Land posted the cover of in his reply. Sundaland was real. But it seems as if Oppenheimer claims that it was home to the Proto-Civilization from which all ancient civilizations of the Old World descend, and that is highly dubious. At any rate, calling on such a work in a discussion of a European etymology is of no value.

I won't go so far, but IMHO that part of the world could well be the source of some Wanderwörter which reached Europe.

Could be, but that would need better evidence. Also, Proto-Austronesian probably was spoken on Taiwan about 4000 BC, at a time when Sundaland was no more, so whatever the people of Sundaland spoke, wasn't Austronesian. Maybe Proto-Austric, if that is a thing at all - most specialists in the languages held to be Austric are AFAIK unconvinced (as usual with such macrofamily proposals) - and not somewhere in what now is the SE Asian mainland or southern China.

[Nortaneous]

And, of course, PIE *perḱ has a colour(-pattern) meaning as well as possibly the meaning 'to dig'.

I'm afraid this is an agricultural word restricted to some European languages, as the 0-grade noun *prḱ-eh2 'furrow'. But never mind, because it's a well-known fact pigs use their snout to dig the earth, so perhaps farmers used them instead of ploughs.

Maybe!

[WeepingElf]

Certainly, *prḱeh₂- and *porḱos are straightforward derivations from a root *perḱ- 'dig, furrow', which looks like an ordinary PIE root, though it appears to be areally skewed (Italic, Celtic, Germanic, Balto-Slavic). This thus may be a loanword from a Neolithic Central European language, but it may just be lost in languages like Greek or Indo-Iranian. That said, *porḱos has found its way into Proto-Uralic as *porćas with a satem development of the palatovelar, probably from a "Volga Corded Ware" language intermediate between Balto-Slavic and Indo-Iranian. Yet, there is, as is well-known, no shortage of words limited to the "Northwestern" group like this, which gives some reason to assume borrowings from a Neolithic substratum.

[Talskubilos]

Certainly, *prḱeh₂- and *porḱos are straightforward derivations from a root *perḱ- 'dig, furrow',

The word 'piglet' as 'digger' could be a folk etymology.

[WeepingElf]

Certainly, *prḱeh₂- and *porḱos are straightforward derivations from a root *perḱ- 'dig, furrow',

The word 'piglet' as 'digger' could be a folk etymology.

Why? What speaks against the mainstream etymology?

[keenir]

There's some evidence (although not very much) that Basque (and for that matter, also Iberian) could descend from some of the languages spoken by the Steppe People (aka Kurgans). On the other hand, the languages spoken by the Neolithic farmers who colonized the Greece-Balkans area from the Near East would be close relatives of Semitic.

I would be very interested to hear what sort of evidence there is, please. (hopefully its not locked beyond a paywall)

[Richard W]

Certainly, *prḱeh₂- and *porḱos are straightforward derivations from a root *perḱ- 'dig, furrow',

The word 'piglet' as 'digger' could be a folk etymology.

Why? What speaks against the mainstream etymology?

Is this the mainstream etymology? There's argued to be a synonym with the meaning 'spotted' or 'speckled', attested in Germanic, Sanskrit, Greek and Celtic, with derivatives meaning various types of fish, e.g. English perch from French from Latin from Greek, and possibly including a possible Thracian fish name.

Piglets can be spotted, though wild boar piglets seem to be more striped than spotted.

I found this remarkable statement in Wikipedia:

Rooting is an instinctual behavior in pigs that is characterized by a pig nudging his or her snout into something. ... However, by means of rooting, pigs have been used to till farmland.

[WeepingElf]

The word 'piglet' as 'digger' could be a folk etymology.

Why? What speaks against the mainstream etymology?

Is this the mainstream etymology? There's argued to be a synonym with the meaning 'spotted' or 'speckled', attested in Germanic, Sanskrit, Greek and Celtic, with derivatives meaning various types of fish, e.g. English perch from French from Latin from Greek, and possibly including a possible Thracian fish name.

Piglets can be spotted, though wild boar piglets seem to be more striped than spotted.

Pokorny's dictionary is so awfully full of homonyms and synonyms that one can hardly escape the impression that it heavily over-reconstructs. This is indeed, besides the outdated phonology, the main criticism against it (even IMHO the more severe one, as the outdated phonology can be remedied by simply rewriting the forms according to the modern phonology). Many items have areally skewed distributions and may be loanwords from non-IE languages; some others have reflexes only in two branches far away from each other and are perhaps chance resemblances. It is possible that *perḱ- 'spotted' is a true PIE item while the homonymous *perḱ- 'dig, furrow' is a loanword from a language of Neolithic Central Europe.

I found this remarkable statement in Wikipedia:

Rooting is an instinctual behavior in pigs that is characterized by a pig nudging his or her snout into something. ... However, by means of rooting, pigs have been used to till farmland.

Which speaks for the etymology I posted.

[Talskubilos]

Why? What speaks against the mainstream etymology?

Firstly, *prḱ-eh₂ 'furrow' is an agricultural term and has a different areal distribution than *porḱ-o-. And secondly, names of domesticated animals are often Wanderwörter, and in this case we've got parallels in Caucasian and Austronesian. The case of *h₁eḱw-o- 'horse' is even more evident.