# Why there are many Latin words in proto-Germanic?



## CyrusSH

The fact is that ancient Romans never conquered Scandinavia and other major Germanic lands but it seems these lands were under strong Roman cultural influence, we see different types of Latin words in proto-Germanic, for example some suffixes, like agent noun ending -ārijaz "-er" or many verbs, like *kukōną "to cook", ... what was the reason?


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## desi4life

The Romans were the premier military and cultural power in Europe for centuries. Roman influence would obviously be felt even in territories beyond their immediate control.


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## fdb

Neither the British nor the Russians ever conquered Persia/Iran (though they did reduce it to a de-facto semi-colony). Still there are lots of English and Russian words in modern Persian.


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## ahvalj

For the perspective, in the late Middle Ages Persia was the only developed country easily accessible for the Russian trade (through Volga), so _words_ and customs entered Russia from Persia. In particular, while dresses in Poland, Hungary and Ukraine of that period mirrored Turkic (Turkish and Crimean) examples (https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/15/Stanislaw_Antoni_Szczuka_(1652_1654-1710).jpg), the Russian nobility followed the Persian style (http://cabinet-auction.com/files/images/gallery/25297_2_CompressedImage.jpeg).


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## CyrusSH

desi4life said:


> The Romans were the premier military and cultural power in Europe for centuries. Roman influence would obviously be felt even in territories beyond their immediate control.



Do you mean there are also many Latin words in proto-Slavic, proto-Baltic, proto-Finnic, ...? I doubt.


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## CyrusSH

fdb said:


> Neither the British nor the Russians ever conquered Persia/Iran (though they did reduce it to a de-facto semi-colony). Still there are lots of English and Russian words in modern Persian.



Other than Arabic and Turkish, almost all other loanwords in Persian are those ones which don't have Persian equivalents, like technology related words.


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## ahvalj

CyrusSH said:


> Do you mean there are also many Latin words in proto-Slavic, proto-Baltic, proto-Finnic, ...? I doubt.


Their speakers didn’t have direct contact with the Roman world. The case with Latin words in Germanic seems to be a standard one: the encounter with a much more prestigious culture. Compare the abundance of Greek words in Latin, or the overuse of French loans in the European languages in the recent centuries.


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## Borin3

If they didn't have direct contact, what indirectly brought those words there? Birds, wind or maybe Latin Gods?
You can't compare Greek and Latin because they had contact, nor you can compare French and other Europeans because they also had contact.


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## CyrusSH

ahvalj said:


> Their speakers didn’t have direct contact with the Roman world. The case with Latin words in Germanic seems to be a standard one: the encounter with a much more prestigious culture. Compare the abundance of Greek words in Latin, or the overuse of French loans in the European languages in the recent centuries.



Scandinavians didn’t have direct contact with the Roman world too, of course there is no problem about the existence of Latin words in English or Frankish but why there also many Latin words in Swedish and Icelandic?


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## Borin3

CyrusSH said:


> Scandinavians didn’t have direct contact with the Roman world too, of course there is no problem about the existence of Latin words in English or Frankish but why there also many Latin words in Swedish and Icelandic?


What do you mean when you say Frankish? French or German?


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## berndf

CyrusSH said:


> Scandinavians didn’t have direct contact with the Roman world too, of course there is no problem about the existence of Latin words in English or Frankish but why there also many Latin words in Swedish and Icelandic?


I am not quite sure why you talk about Scandinavians. At the time of Roman contact the southward Germanic expansion was much more advanced. 

PGm. is a reconstructed language, which means that it reflects the latest common development stage. Although dialectal separation probably started before Romans and Germanic tribes first met, Germanic remained a connected dialect continuum until at least the 1st century AD through which new words could freely travel.


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## CyrusSH

Borin3 said:


> What do you mean when you say Frankish? French or German?



French and German are modern languages, Frankish was a west Germanic language which became extinct in the 9th century.


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## Borin3

Sorry if i was confusing. That wasn't my question, but well..Anyway i now understand what you meant under Frankish.


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## CyrusSH

berndf said:


> I am not quite sure why you talk about Scandinavians. At the time of Roman contact the southward Germanic expansion was much more advanced.
> 
> PGm. is a reconstructed language, which means that it reflects the latest common development stage. Although dialectal separation probably started before Romans and Germanic tribes first met, Germanic remained a connected dialect continuum until at least the 1st century AD through which new words could freely travel.



If my question was about Germanic words in Latin then a southward Germanic expansion could be a good reason but in the 1st century AD Tacitus talks about various Germanic tribes, some of them seem to be actually Celtic, Iranian or Slavic tribes and some other ones seem to be a mixture, like Venedians. About these Germanic people, that you say, migrated to the south, occupied Iranian, Slavic and Dacian lands, it is meaningless to say that they just adopted words from their Roman neighbors but not from languages of native people of those lands.


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## berndf

By "Southward expansion" I meant to the Rheine-Main-Dunube line that later became the _Limes Germanicus_.


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## CyrusSH

berndf said:


> By "Southward expansion" I meant to the Rheine-Main-Dunube line that later became the _Limes Germanicus_.



So you actually mean "Westward expansion", this region was settled by Celtic people but there are also not many Celtic words in proto-Germanic.


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## berndf

CyrusSH said:


> So you actually mean "Westward expansion", this region was settled by Celtic people but there are also not many Celtic words in proto-Germanic.


No, southward. The southern limit of the Germanic settlement by the mid first millennium BC was roughly modern Schleswig-Holstein. By the 1st century BC, when the Romans expansion reached the lower Rhine and the Main rivers under Caesar and Augustus, Germanic tribes had already moved into the area that is today the Netherlands and the northern half of Germany.


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## CyrusSH

berndf said:


> No, southward. The southern limit of the Germanic settlement by the mid first millennium BC was roughly modern Schleswig-Holstein. By the 1st century BC, when the Romans expansion reached the lower Rhine and the Main rivers under Caesar and Augustus, Germanic tribes had already moved into the area that is today the Netherlands and the northern half of Germany.



When you yourself say *Germanic tribes*, it is clear that they were different peoples, in fact when a people migrate to another land, they adopt many things from the people of this land and a new culture is formed, there is no reason that words which enter into this new culture, enter into the original culture too.


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## berndf

See above:





berndf said:


> Although dialectal separation probably started before Romans and Germanic tribes first met, Germanic remained a connected dialect continuum until at least the 1st century AD through which new words could freely travel.


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## CyrusSH

berndf said:


> Although dialectal separation probably started before Romans and Germanic tribes first met, Germanic remained a connected dialect continuum until at least the 1st century AD through which new words could freely travel.:



Even in the modern world with several communication tools new words don't travel in all dialects, for example in some southern Persian dialects, tamatah means "tomato" (clearly a loanword from Spanish) but if you use this word in all other lands where Persian-speaking people live, no one knows what you mean.


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## berndf

CyrusSH said:


> Even in the modern world with several communication tools new words don't travel in all dialects


Not all words but many do.


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## Frank78

CyrusSH said:


> The fact is that ancient Romans never conquered Scandinavia and other major Germanic lands but it seems these lands were under strong Roman cultural influence, we see different types of Latin words in proto-Germanic, for example some suffixes, like agent noun ending -ārijaz "-er" or many verbs, like *kukōną "to cook", ... what was the reason?



What do you mean by "many"? I'd say there are only a few early Latin loans in German (in contrast to the huge amount of Latin words entering German in the Middle Ages and early modern times) - especially due to the fact that there was heavy trading across the limes between Germanic people and the Romanized ones. Mostly things the Germanic people didn't know like:

Fenster - fenetra
Ziegel - tegula
Keller - cellarius
Kaiser - caesar
Mauer - murus
Straße - strata
Tisch - discus

Lots of fruit which were new: Pflaume - prunus, Wein - vinum, Kirsche - cerasium


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## CyrusSH

I wonder what happened 2000 years ago, some Roman soldiers conquered some Celtic lands and at the same time some Germanic tribes migrated to some other Celtic lands and it can be enough reason that we see Latin words in all Germanic languages!


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## berndf

No, they had very intense direct contact, Germans living in the Empire, Roman intrusions into Germanic territory and attempts to conquer them (three entire legions were annihilated in a single battle during the reign of Augustus), Germanic raids on Roman territory, trade contacts.


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## Frank78

CyrusSH said:


> I wonder what happened 2000 years ago, some Roman soldiers conquered some Celtic lands



Some is a bit of an understatement. The Roman crushed an conquered almost every Celtic tribe.



CyrusSH said:


> and at the same time some Germanic tribes migrated to some other Celtic lands and it can be enough reason that we see Latin words in all Germanic languages!



That area is not that huge, between the Danube and the Main (perhaps some miles farther north). Some like the Boii were driven out of the Italian peninsula to settle in nowadays Czech Republic. It isn't quite clear who actually lived between the shores of the North and Baltic Sea and the Main. The Celts definitely didn't go that far north.


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## CyrusSH

If these Latin words entered into proto-Germanic, why we don't see proto-Germanic sound shifts in them, like *_kukōną_ "to cook"? Whereas we see proto-Germanic sound shifts in loanwords from Ancient Greek and Old Persian, like proto-Germanic _*xanapiz_ "hemp" from Ancient Greek _kánnabis_ and proto-Germanic administrative suffix -_fadiz_ from Old Persian _-patiš_.


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## ahvalj

Frank78 said:


> It isn't quite clear who actually lived between the shores of the North and Baltic Sea and the Main. The Celts definitely didn't go that far north.


Perhaps, Beneluxians:
Ancient Belgian language - Wikipedia
Nordwestblock - Wikipedia


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## eamp

Well, that they are date from Proto-Germanic was your claim, wasn't it? I believe the vast majority are in fact a lot younger. 
People on wiktionary just like to invent "Proto-Germanic" forms for words it seems.


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## ahvalj

Your majesty, can you list the Late Common Germanic words you consider Latin loans? I suspect not all of them were spread as far as Scandinavia: let's evaluate word per word.


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## CyrusSH

ahvalj said:


> Perhaps, Beneluxians:
> Ancient Belgian language - Wikipedia
> Nordwestblock - Wikipedia



An unknown IE language which  was influenced by Germanic languages, I think it was nothing but a west Germanic language.


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## berndf

ahvalj said:


> Perhaps, Beneluxians:
> Ancient Belgian language - Wikipedia
> Nordwestblock - Wikipedia


He was talking of East of the Rhine.


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## ahvalj

CyrusSH said:


> An unknown IE language which  was influenced by Germanic languages, I think it was nothing but a west Germanic language.


Yet, northern and central Continental Germanic have a diminutive suffix _-ken/-kin/-chen _(-kin - Wiktionary), whose _-k-_ must have been borrowed from a language that didn't experience a consonantal shift. It seems to be confined to Ingaevonic and Iscaevonic.


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## CyrusSH

eamp said:


> Well, that they are date from Proto-Germanic was your claim, wasn't it? I believe the vast majority are in fact a lot younger.
> People on wiktionary just like to invent "Proto-Germanic" forms for words it seems.



Would you please define "proto-Germanic"? Were there any loanwords in this language? From which languages?


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## ahvalj

"Proto-Germanic" would mean a sum of lexemes found in distant members of Germanic (i. e. including Old Norse and, if available, Gothic) and having experienced the First consonant shift. (As an example: _path_ is not since it is confined to West Germanic and hasn’t passed through the consonant shift).


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## desi4life

CyrusSH said:


> If these Latin words entered into proto-Germanic, why we don't see proto-Germanic sound shifts in them, like *_kukōną_ "to cook"? Whereas we see proto-Germanic sound shifts in loanwords from Ancient Greek and Old Persian, like proto-Germanic _*xanapiz_ "hemp" from Ancient Greek _kánnabis_ and proto-Germanic administrative suffix -_fadiz_ from Old Persian _-patiš_.



Proto-Germanic _*fadiz_ appears to be a cognate of the Iranian word, not a borrowing: Reconstruction:Proto-Indo-European/pótis - Wiktionary


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## CyrusSH

ahvalj said:


> "Proto-Germanic" would mean a sum of lexemes found in distant members of Germanic (i. e. including Old Norse and, if available, Gothic) and having experienced the First consonant shift. (As an example: _path_ is not since it is confined to West Germanic and hasn’t passed through the consonant shift).



Did this language exist 2000 years ago or not? Do you know any Germanic word which has experienced the First consonant shift in the last 2000 years?


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## ahvalj

CyrusSH said:


> Did this language exist 2000 years ago or not? Do you know any Germanic word which has experienced the First consonant shift in the last 2000 years?


Judging by the deviant evolution of East Germanic attested in the texts of the 4th century, probably not. But we're discussing here two different things. Late Common Germanic language in the strict sense (i. e. a single language [at least for our optics] spoken in a compact territory of southern shores of Scandinavia, Zealand, Jutland and northern Germany) most probably split in the last third of the first millennium BC, and it didn't have detectable Latin loans. But a continuum of closely related dialects sharing innovations and transparent for the loans existed perhaps until the Migration period. For example, Langobardians left Scandinavia most probably as speakers of North Germanic, but brought to Italy an Erminonic speech (Langobardian texts are the first attesting the Second consinant shift). The Latin loans you mean belong to this broader Common Germanic.

By the way, will we see the list of these many Latin loans to discuss?


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## CyrusSH

desi4life said:


> Proto-Germanic _*fadiz_ appears to be a cognate of the Iranian word, not a borrowing: Reconstruction:Proto-Indo-European/pótis - Wiktionary



The Iranian word is actually cognate with Lithuanian _pats_ "onself" and Latin _potis_ "able", ... but in the Old Persian this word was used as an administrative suffix in the organization of the Persian army and administration, based on a decimal grouping, for example Old Persian _hazahra-patiš_ "commander of a thousand men" has entered into Gothic as _þusundi-faþs_ with the same meaning, there is almost no doubt that this Germanic suffix with this usage was borrowed from Old Persian.


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## Frank78

CyrusSH said:


> Do you know any Germanic word which has experienced the First consonant shift in the last 2000 years?



The First Germanic Soundshift occured in the middle of the first millenium BC when Rome made the transition from a kingdom to a republic and was as big as the city is today.


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## CyrusSH

ahvalj said:


> Judging by the deviant evolution of East Germanic attested in the texts of the 4th century, probably not. But we're discussing here two different things. Late Common Germanic language in the strict sense (i. e. a single language [at least for our optics] spoken in a compact territory of southern shores of Scandinavia, Zealand, Jutland and northern Germany) most probably split in the last third of the first millennium BC, and it didn't have detectable Latin loans. But a continuum of closely related dialects sharing innovations and transparent for the loans existed perhaps until the Migration period. For example, Langobardians left Scandinavia most probably as speakers of North Germanic, but brought to Italy an Erminonic speech (Langobardian texts are the first attesting the Second consinant shift). The Latin loans you mean belong to this broader Common Germanic.



Is there any reason other than this "Migration" for the  split of the Germanic languages? We can talk about different Germanic dialects in the original land of Germanic people but when they migrate to a new land where the majority have a different language, it can't be said that the new language which is formed is a dialect.


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## berndf

CyrusSH said:


> Is there any reason other than this "Migration" for the  split of the Germanic languages? We can talk about different Germanic dialects in the original land of Germanic people but when they migrate to a new land where the majority have a different language, it can't be said that the new language which is formed is a dialect.


The process of the breakup into the three well known groups North, West and East Germanic remains unclear. But the most plausible theory is that is that the dialects on the European mainland split along waterways, the North Sea shore, Rhine/Weser, Elbe and Baltic Sea shore/Oder river. Northern Central Europe was covered by dense forests and waterways were the main means of travel and transportation. East Germanic split off first because they were the first to migrate. The remaining dialect groups came into closer contact through wider expansion and migration throughout the area. If this is true then there never was such a thing as "Proto West Germanic" but the group of West Germanic languages evolved as a loose federation of related dialects through which lexemes and properties propagated.


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## CyrusSH

For what reason North Germanic is considered as the original Germanic (proto-Germanic)? Please explain linguistically, not myths about ancient migrations.


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## berndf

CyrusSH said:


> For what reason North Germanic is considered as the original Germanic


I don't think anybody does.


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## CyrusSH

So why you insist on "southward Germanic expansion"? An opposite move can explain what I asked in this thread easily.


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## berndf

CyrusSH said:


> So why you insist on "southward Germanic expansion"? An opposite move can explain what I asked in this thread easily.


I don't understand what one has to do with the other. North Germanic is one of the branches of Germanic, that is all.

The fact that a branch of a language group is spoken in the earlier settlement area doesn't make it more archaic or more original than the other branches. In many respects, e.g., American English is more archaic than British English and Icelandic is more archaic than Danish, Swedish or Norwegian.


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## CyrusSH

By original Germanic I meant proto-Germanic, why it is believed that proto-Germanic language originated in the north, not in the south?


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## ahvalj

CyrusSH said:


> By original Germanic I meant proto-Germanic, why it is believed that proto-Germanic language originated in the north, not in the south?





> The Germans themselves I should regard as aboriginal, and not mixed at all with other races through immigration or intercourse […] [W]ho would leave Asia, or Africa, or Italy for Germany, with its wild country, its inclement skies, its sullen manners and aspect, unless indeed it were his home?


Cornelius Tacitus,  Germany and its Tribes, chapter 2


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## berndf

CyrusSH said:


> By original Germanic I meant proto-Germanic, why it is believed that proto-Germanic language originated in the north, not in the south?


What you call "the South", the area South of the _Mittelgebirgsschwelle_, the line that separated the Northern German plains from the Central German low mountains belonged in the pre-Roman Iron Age to the Celtic earlier Hallstatt and later La Tène Cultures. Pre-West-Germanic cultures reached and later replaced the Tène culture as of about 250 B.C.


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## Treaty

CyrusSH said:


> but in the Old Persian this word was used as an administrative suffix in the organization of the Persian army and administration, based on a decimal grouping, for example Old Persian _hazahra-patiš_ "commander of a thousand men" has entered into Gothic as _þusundi-faþs_ with the same meaning, there is almost no doubt that this Germanic suffix with this usage was borrowed from Old Persian.


We know of OP mainly because it is recorded in association with administrative purposes. Therefore, it is not right to assume there was something especial about the administrative use of _patiš_. Anyway, the usage of PIE *_poti-s_ in the compound *_X-poti-s_ (master of X) dates back to PIE itself. There was no need for Germanic to borrow this usage from OP.


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## CyrusSH

ahvalj said:


> Cornelius Tacitus,  Germany and its Tribes, chapter 2



Do you also believe what ancient Greek and Roman historians say about Scythians, Sarmatians and other Iranian tribes in Europe?


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## CyrusSH

berndf said:


> What you call "the South", the area South of the _Mittelgebirgsschwelle_, the line that separated the Northern German plains from the Central German low mountains belonged in the pre-Roman Iron Age to the Celtic earlier Hallstatt and later La Tène Cultures. Pre-West-Germanic cultures reached and later replaced the Tène culture as of about 250 B.C.



How these archaeological cultures can be related to language?! Please explain linguistically.


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## CyrusSH

Treaty said:


> We know of OP mainly because it is recorded in association with administrative purposes. Therefore, it is not right to assume there was something especial about the administrative use of _patiš_. Anyway, the usage of PIE *_poti-s_ in the compound *_X-poti-s_ (master of X) dates back to PIE itself. There was no need for Germanic to borrow this usage from OP.



It is what linguistics say, not me, for example look at it: Language and History in the Early Germanic World


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## berndf

CyrusSH said:


> It is what linguistics say, not me, for example look at it: Language and History in the Early Germanic World


This is about Gothic and not about Common Germanic and off-topic here.


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## berndf

CyrusSH said:


> How these archaeological cultures can be related to language?! Please explain linguistically.


We are not going to reinvent all of history here. That the Hallstatt and La Tène cultures were Celtic cannot seriously be questioned.

There are speculations if one of the Pre-West-Germanic cultures originally used an unknown IE language that was neither Germanic nor Celtic and was Germanicised only at the end of the pre-Roman era. But that doesn't change the general picture.


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## Treaty

CyrusSH said:


> It is what linguistics say, not me, for example look at it: Language and History in the Early Germanic World


No, they don't say that. They say that *Gothic -*_faþs_ (its certain usage) was borrowed from Iranian. However, you claimed (#26) that the PGrm *_fađiz _was used in the sense as it was borrowed from Old Persian. As berndf said, this is irrelevant to the topic.


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## CyrusSH

berndf said:


> We are not going to reinvent all of history here. That the Hallstatt and La Tène cultures were Celtic cannot seriously be questioned.
> 
> There are speculations if one of the Pre-West-Germanic cultures originally used an unknown IE language that was neither Germanic nor Celtic and was Germanicised only at the end of the pre-Roman era. But that doesn't change the general picture.



If you want to talk about history, I have many things to say but it is a linguistics forum, please just mention some linguistic evidences.


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## berndf

CyrusSH said:


> If you want to talk about history, I have many things to say but it is a linguistics forum, please just mention some linguistic evidences.


If this interests you, do a bit of reading about the Hallstatt and La Tène cultures. This is way beyond the scope of this thread.


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## Ihsiin

Why are there Latin loanwords in proto-Germanic? Because there was substantial contact between Romans and Germanic tribes. What else needs to be said on this topic?


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## CyrusSH

Ihsiin said:


> Why are there Latin loanwords in proto-Germanic? Because there was substantial contact between Romans and Germanic tribes. What else needs to be said on this topic?



It was not more substantial than contact between Romans and Persians, do you think all people who lived in the Roman empire spoke Latin? We just know some Romans soldiers fought against German or Persian soldiers, of course Romans occupied some German and Persian lands too and vice versa.


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## Ihsiin

Those who lived in the western empire spoke Latin, those who spoke in the eastern empire spoke Greek.


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## ahvalj

Ihsiin said:


> Why are there Latin loanwords in proto-Germanic? Because there was substantial contact between Romans and Germanic tribes. What else needs to be said on this topic?


As far as I understand, the “many Latin words in proto-Germanic” should substantiate Cyrus’ old idea that ancestral Germanics lived in more southern areas and were in intimate contacts with Scytho-Sarmatians. The Latin loans should be byproducts of this southern location.


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## CyrusSH

Ihsiin said:


> Those who lived in the western empire spoke Latin, those who spoke in the eastern empire spoke Greek.


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## berndf

Everybody can draw nice maps. Of course, there were all kinds of regional languages. Ihsiin's point is that the the lingua franca of Italy and the western provinces was Latin and of the eastern provinces Greek.


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## CyrusSH

berndf said:


> Everybody can draw nice maps. Of course, there were all kinds of regional languages. Ihsiin's point is that the the lingua franca of Italy and the western provinces was Latin and of the eastern provinces Greek.



"lingua franca" can be a reason that some words from this language enter into regional languages, not neighbor languages. Why there are not many Slavic and Baltic words in the Germanic languages? Slavic and Baltic people were neighbors of Germanic people for a much longer time.


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## berndf

CyrusSH said:


> "lingua franca" can be a reason that some words from this language enter into regional languages, not neighbor languages. Why there are not many Slavic and Baltic words in the Germanic languages? Slavic and Baltic people were neighbors of Germanic people for a much longer time.


We have had this discussion so many times. We don't really have to go through all this again.


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## fdb

berndf said:


> Everybody can draw nice maps.



Except that people who spell Libya as "Lybia", or who think that Syriac and Aramaic are two different languages should refrain from making maps like this one.


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## eamp

To the actual question of Latin loanwords in Proto-Germanic, since wiktionary was cited I went through the list at Proto-Germanic_terms_borrowed_from_Latin and checked each term. 

*_ambrijaz _- bucket
Only West Germanic and the attested forms don't support the given reconstruction. There are two main forms (besides some extended forms) to be found: _eimbar_ and _ambar_, the second is thought to be older, with the first arising through folk etymology (_ain_- "one", _bar_- "carry"). 
If this is a loan from Latin (< Greek) amphora it seems to require lenition of _p_ (popular pronunciation of Greek φ) prior to borrowing which would put the date rather late. However at the same time it must have occurred before the fall of final -a in West Germanic in order for the word to have been interpreted as a n./m. a-stem.

*_angilus _- angel
Obviously a late loan spreading with Christianization so the Proto-Germanic form is void.

*-_ārijaz _- agent suffix
I believe there was a thread about this, the situation seems not entirely clear.

*_buterǭ _- butter
Certainly not Proto-Germanic. It's only West Germanic and the forms point to a late loan: ohg. has -t- and the vowel is short _u_ when latin had _būtȳrum _(< Greek _boutȳron_) so from after the loss of phonemic length. The -e- in the reconstruction also seems like a cop-out, for West Germanic one would expect a form _butir_- which causes umlaut or _butar_- > _botar_- but the actually attested forms don't show either.

*_drakô _- dragon
NW Germanic, from Latin (< Greek) _drakō_, I see no reason to date this to Proto-Germanic, could as well be as late as the early Middle Ages.

*_kaisaraz _- emperor
A relatively early loan, but obviously at most as old as the earliest emperors. It could also be several hundred years younger depending on the way it spread, it need not have been taken from Latin directly. Gothic _kaisar _for example may well be from Greek. In any case too late for a unified Proto-Germanic.

*_kāsijaz _- cheese
An early loan into West Germanic but uncertain whether it dates back further. Nordic languages preserve an earlier term, the Gothic term for cheese is unknown.

*_katilaz _- vessel, kettle
A good candidate for a loan into Proto-Germanic, or spread within Common Germanic, as it is attested in all branches. Maybe through early trade contacts. Archeology might be able to answer the timing on this one, is there a type of Roman vessel showing up in Germanic lands that could have carried this term?

*_kaupijaną_, _kaupōną _- buy, trade
Those two verbs and others belong to a base *_kaup_- which seems to have been borrowed rather early from Latin _caupo _and attached verb _cauponari_. An early trade related loan and a good candidate for Proto-Germanic status as it is attested in all branches.

*_kurtaz _- short
Probably a loan from Latin though its relationship with *_skurtaz _is unclear. As an old loan it seems so be restricted to (continental) West Germanic and the reconstructed form is dubious as it should yield forms with -o- not -u- as ohg. _kurz_. Besides, there also exists a (re-borrowed?) variant ohg. _kurt_, without High German Consonant shift. So I don't think this is a valid Proto-Germanic reconstruction.

*_pāwô _- peacock
I find it hard to believe there was a Proto-Germanic term for peacock at all, not many of them could have ever seen one. Rather one of the many words introduced into the West Germanic languages in the late imperial period or thereabouts.

*_prūmǭ _- plum
First of all it is not certain that Latin _prunus _is the source, the -m- seems to place it closer to the Greek _proumnon_. Then, when did the fruit become known to Germanic speakers? Archeologists like to dig in ancient waste so maybe there is a study out there. Linguistically I see no reason to postulate an early loan, but it remains possible (though Norse _plóma _with it's -ó- appears irregular if it was to be an inherited form).

*_pundą _- pound
Attested in all branches and so a good candidate for a Proto-Germanic loan, again related to trade. Said to be from Latin _pondō_, the neuter a-stem being formed by back formation? There also exists a (continental) West Germanic form ohg. _pfant_, os. _pant _(_pand_-) "pledge", which is usually explained as from Latin _pondus_, showing a different outcome of -onC-. Because of the divergent sound substitution and shift in meaning it has been suggested that this locally restricted loan is older and *_pundą _actually a second loan into Germanic that spread more widely because of its use in trading.

*_putjaz _- pit; well
Rather not Proto-Germanic, but loaned into West Germanic relatively early (though there are also High German forms where the initial p- was not shifted) then passed on to North Germanic (on. _pyttr _with West Germanic gemination). Though some suppose that it's partially a native word that got mixed up with the Latin term.

*_tigulǭ _- tile, brick
The Proto-Germanic reconstruction is not valid as it does not account for all attested forms. We are rather dealing with independent borrowings from Latin _tēgula_: Ohg. _ziegala_, os. _tēgala f_. and ohg. _ziegal m_. with preservation of the long vowel and oe. _tiġele f._ and on. _tigl n._ with -i- (from a later form when vulgar Latin had lost distinct vowel length?).

So I think only *_katilaz, *kaup- _and *_pundą_ (also *-_ārijaz?_) qualify for Proto-Germanic status. Though none necessarily need to be. They could also be accounted for by diffusion in what may be called Common Germanic, a stage when dialects had already diverged to a degree and gone through innovations not shared with all others, but inter-comprehensibility between neighbor dialects remained high.
Certainly they seem to be of a later layer than some of the Celtic loans (or words shared with Celtic?), which show the effects of the First Consonant Shift.


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## ahvalj

eamp said:


> To the actual question of Latin loanwords in Proto-Germanic, since wiktionary was cited I went through the list at Proto-Germanic_terms_borrowed_from_Latin and checked each term.


Thank you for this work. Yet, the number of ancient Latin loans is considerably higher than the list somebody cared to enter to the Wiktionary. Let's recall e. g. the continuations of: 

_vīnum_ — Reconstruction:Proto-Germanic/wīną - Wiktionary, 
_uncia_ — uncia - Wiktionary, 
_cuppa_ — cuppa - Wiktionary, 
_mūrus_ — murus - Wiktionary, 
_calx_ — calx - Wiktionary, 
_vallum_ — vallum - Wiktionary, 
_sēcula_ (?) — sickle - Wiktionary, 
_flagellum_ (?) — flail - Wiktionary, 
_cattus_ (?) — Reconstruction:Proto-Germanic/kattuz - Wiktionary, 
_asellus_ — Reconstruction:Proto-Germanic/asiluz - Wiktionary, 
_pirum_ — pirum - Wiktionary, 
_strāta_ — strata - Wiktionary, 
_molīnum_ — mulin - Wiktionary & mylen - Wiktionary, 
_coquīna_ — Reconstruction:Proto-Germanic/kukinǭ - Wiktionary, 
_carcer_ — carcer - Wiktionary,
_piper_ — piper - Wiktionary
_rādīx_ — radish - Wiktionary
_oleum_ — oleum - Wiktionary
_scrībere_ — Reconstruction:Proto-Germanic/skrībaną - Wiktionary
_pix_ — pitch - Wiktionary
_corbis_ (?) — Reconstruction:Proto-Germanic/kurbaz - Wiktionary
_mustum_ — mustum - Wiktionary


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## fdb

eamp said:


> *_kaisaraz _- emperor
> A relatively early loan, but obviously at most as old as the earliest emperors. It could also be several hundred years younger depending on the way it spread, it need not have been taken from Latin directly. Gothic _kaisar _for example may well be from Greek. In any case too late for a unified Proto-Germanic.



Perhaps of interest: German Kaiser, Russian tsar, Arabic qayṣar


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## fdb

ahvalj said:


> Thank you for this work. Yet, the number of ancient Latin loans is considerably higher than the list somebody cared to enter to the Wiktionary. Let's recall e. g. the continuations of:
> 
> _vīnum_ — Reconstruction:Proto-Germanic/wīną - Wiktionary,


Wine


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