Abstract

This article challenges the theory that the Indo-European languages originated in northern Europe and instead argues that the present linguistic distribution in northern and northeastern Europe is the result of secondary historical processes. Drawing on linguistic, historical, archaeological, and toponymic evidence, the author maintains that Germanic, Baltic, and Slavic languages arrived relatively late in their current territories. The study emphasizes the role of the Veneti–Illyrians as intermediaries in the Indo-Europeanisation of northern Europe, proposing that they transmitted both language and writing to pre-Germanic populations through trade networks extending from the Adriatic to the Baltic. Evidence includes place names, ancient literary sources, material culture, lexical correspondences, and similarities between Venetic inscriptions and Germanic forms. The article further suggests that key phonological developments in Germanic, including consonant mutation, may have occurred outside the original Germanic territory. Overall, the work presents a diffusion-based model of linguistic change rooted in long-distance contact and colonisation rather than mass migration from a northern homeland.

The Origin of the Germanic languages and the Indo-Europeanising of North Europe

As the title shows, the author of this article does not hold with the theory that the spread of the Indo-European languages had its origin in northern Europe. At present we have no means of defining with certainty the starting point, the original ‘home’ of the Indo-Europeans. Their early appearance in Asia Minor, which the decipherment of Hit-tite has revealed, is at least no support for the theory of a northern origin; for migrations so swift and so far-reaching have little probability in the first half of the second millenium before our era.

Of the proofs advanced for the theory, the alleged racial similarity between Indo-Euro-peans and Germans is above all scientifically worthless. For here two phenomena of human existence, one physical and hard to define (race), the other psychic (language), tho not necessarily connected, are arbi-trarily brought into a causal relationship. Besides, it is urged that the Lithuanians, because of the very archaic type of their language, must have remained closest to the original home.

The present distribu-tion, however, of languages south of the Baltic is not an early inherit-ance. Today there meet here two entirely distinct branches of the Indo-European family; in the west the Germanic which belongs to the centum group; in the east the Slavic and the Baltic which belong to the satom group.

We know that Germanic was established here only during the late Middle Ages by colonisation of territory that had previously been Slavic or Prussian. Before the birth of Christ-a period still prehistoric for this part of the world-there lay south of the Baltic East Germanic languages (those of the Goths, Gepidae, Heruli, etc.) which vanished from this region after the migration to the Black Sea of the Goths and the tribes that went with them. Eastern neighbors of the Goths were (on the testimony of Ptolemy the geographer) the Galindae and the ‘Sudauer’, that is Prussian peoples.

This district remained Prussian until the 17th century when this member of the Bal-tic branch was absorbed by the Germans on one side, by the Lithuanians on the other. Consequently Lithuanian is not original in East Prussia, nor even in modern Lithuania which the Lithuanians began to reach only c. 600 A.D., driven by the Slavs who were beginning to spread up the Dnieper from beyond the Pripet.

The original abodes of the Lithuanians lay much further to the east than their present territory. Before them the Letts and the Zemgalians and northwest of these the Selians and Cours were settled on the Baltic. From the days of Tacitus and Pliny down to the 6th century there dwelt in modern Lithuania Finnic tribes (forefathers of the Finns, Esthonians, and Livonians) which were pushed north by the advance of the Baltic peoples.

If we keep these facts in mind, it follows that the present distribution of Indo-Europeans in northeast Europe is secondary. So our problem is essentially to follow as far as our lack of information and of linguistic documents permits the development of the Germanic group of lan-guages, whose presence in northern Europe is attested at the beginning of our era.

Like the Lithuanians the Slavs are only latecomers in the territory which they occupy at present. Where their ‘home’ was, is a disputed question. Generally it is sought in present-day Poland and Volhynia, that is between the Vistula, the Carpathians, and the Dnieper. At the time of Tacitus and of Ptolemy the neighbors of the Goths and Finns to the east (or south) were the Veneti whose name cannot have been applied as yet to the Slavs (Wends).

The great expansion of the Slavs cannot have begun before 500 A.D.; for at that time they were in the lower valley of the Danube, and not yet to be found in the Balkans. In the first half of the 6th century historians mention them in the Balkan peninsula, and in the second half of the same century they have already pressed westward across the Saale and as far as the Unstrut. About 600 A.D. they may have advanced into Austria, Styria, and Carinthia.

From this picture of the distribution of these tribes before the begin-ning of the great Slavic migration it follows that the Slavo-Baltic spread towards the north cannot have started before the centuries that follow the birth of Christ. Some Baltic tribes may, no doubt, have reached the plains on the coast of the Baltic earlier; but the great mass, and especially the Lithuanians, did not arrive until much later.

When the Goths and the neighboring tribes related to them vanish from the Baltic they make room for Slavs, who, divided into various tribes, occupied all of East Germany ever since the middle of the first century after Christ. Consequently the present situation-the close contact of Ger-mans, Lithuanians, and Slavs-is entirely secondary; for the prehistoric period we must reckon with totally different linguistic conditions in North Europe.

The course which the Balto-Slavs took has now been sketched: it led from the interior of Russia towards the Northwest. Since, except for Germanic, we do not know of any other Indo-European languages in North Europe (Schachmatow’s Celtic theory we may regard as rejected) the problem is to hunt out the road which the Germanic languages once took.

Historical data are almost non-existent: some hints in Herodotus, names of places and of tribes in Tacitus and in Ptolemy, a few linguistic comparisons, and isolated facts about material civilisation are all the material at our disposal.

First the names. Above all the name Veneti (already mentioned) is noteworthy. It appears in two other places in Europe and in one in Asia Minor: the Veneti are known at the north end of the Adriatic, and in Gaul on the coast of the Atlantic, and finally the ‘Everol (the corre-sponding form in Greek) in Paphlagonia.

The Greek form Eneti (with loss of w-) is found occasionally in Latin writers: as when Livy speaks of the Eneti in the opening chapters of his history, or Pliny says (Nat. Hist. 37. 35) quos Enetos Graeci vocaverunt. The Greek form shows that this people must have been known to the Greeks from early times; and in fact Herodotus mentions them (1.196) as a subdivision of the Illyrians, and (5.9) as inhabitants of the mountainous regions near the Adriatic.

We must suppose that the Veneti spread early-perhaps by the be-ginning of the first millenium before Christ-towards the North. Their name is mentioned by Tacitus (Germ. 46) as that of a people living near the Suebi (i.e. the eastern Germans). They are said to have been in a lower stage of civilisation than these, tho not as much so as the Finns.

That Veneti-Illyrii dwelt in the Tirol and in Pannonia is established, partly by names, partly by the historical tradition. For the extension of the Veneti further North, the place names reported by Ptolemy give valuable support: in Bohemia or Silesia with the same suffix-isto- which is found in Tergeste (Trieste), Humiste (Imst in the Tirol), in Sonista (Pannonia), in Remista, in Praeneste, etc.

West of Leukariston lay according to Ptolemy, the place Stragona with the same Illyrian ending as Sidrona, Salona; and to the South Νομιστήριον that sounds like the Iapygian Numistro in Lucania. Perhaps the name for the Baltic Οὐενεδικός κόλπος (also in Ptolemy) confirms the idea that the Illyrian-Venetic domain once reached as far as the original abodes of those who afterward became Germans.

The Slavicist Max Vasmer (Zeitschr, f. slav. Phil. 5. 360 [1929]; 6.145 248 [1929]) has compared a number of modern place names with those in Venetia and Dalmatia: Schrim (Polish Šrem) (in Posen) with Sirmione; Rogasen with Ragusa (now Dubrovnik); Tharandt in Saxony with Taren-tum in lower Italy; etc. Another place name in East Germany can be ascribed with certainty to the Veneti-Illyrii: Σετονία ‘a city in the land of the Quadi’ (Ptol. 2. 11. 29). Its agreement with the Illyrian city Σετονία in Dalmatia mentioned by Appian (Illyr. 27) has often been noticed. ᾿Αρσόνιον a city in Germany (Ptol. 2. 11. 13) can be compared with Illyrian names, e.g. the river Arsia in Istria, etc.

Students of prehistory (e.g. Kossina) have also long recognized that the Illyrian-Hallstätt influence ran across Hungary, Bohemia, and East Germany to the Baltic. Very probably the socalled ‘Lausitz’ civilisa-tion with its peculiar pottery is to be traced to southern influence. Finds, especially gold finds, of the Hallstätt type are scattered profusely over the territory indicated; for instance the great gold find (1913) at Eberswald now preserved in the Berlin Museum für Vorgeschichte.

Taken together all of these facts show a pre-Celtic push of the Veneti-Illyrii from their abodes at the head of the Adriatic northwards. The motives for this push cannot be doubted: trade interests drove the dwellers on the Adriatic towards North Europe, as later they drove the commercial lords of Venice. Herodotus has saved (4.33) for us an obscure report of trade relations between the Adriatic and the Baltic, the story told by the Delians:

That certain offerings packed in wheaten straw, were brought from the country of the Hyperboreans into Scythia, and that the Scythians received them and passed them on to their neighbors upon the west, who continued to pass them on until at last they reached the Adriatic. From hence they were sent southward, and when they came to Greece, were received first of all by the Dodonæans.

Thence they descended to the Maliac gulf, from which they were carried across into Eubea, where the people handed them on from city to city, till they came at length to Carystus. The Carystians took them over to Tenos, without stopping at Andros; and the Tenians brought them finally to Delos. (Rawlinson) Tacitus (Germ. 43) can report the amber trade of the Aestii on the Baltic; Pliny (Nat. Hist. 37. 35) that of the Guiones, a Germanic tribe who sold amber to the Teutones from whom it passed via Pannonia to the Veneti. Pliny must have drawn on a Greek source for this, as he adds that the Greeks call the Veneti Eneti.

Only, Pliny puts in the place of Herodotus’ Scythians the Germans, after this name had arisen in the first century B.C. for the rather unsettled tribes on the right bank of the Rhine and had by degrees become the designation for all peoples between the Rhine and the Vistula. The ‘Scythians’ mentioned above are of course not the inhabitants of South Russia, but the un-settled peoples of the North whom Herodotus calls also Κελτοσκύθαι.

In keeping with primitive trade methods, the wares, and among them the gifts for the Delian Apollo, were passed from tribe to tribe. Pre-sumably Delos has taken the place of some temple of Apollo on the mainland (Delphi?) and the legend of the Hyperboreans has also been transferred from it to Delos.

Be that as it may, there was an ancient trade between North and South Europe which ran across the head of the Adriatic. We know, too, the wares which came by this route: amber, prized even in the Early Bronze Age and which was collected on the coasts of Jutland and Samland, furs, salt, slaves no doubt, etc. The middlemen of this trade were the Veneti who built the places in East Germany mentioned above as trading stations, perhaps also as military posts.

Just as at a later period the Roman colonies in Spain, Gaul, Dacia, etc., were centers for the romanising of these lands, so were, in my opin-ion, in the prehistoric (i.e. for North Europe prehistoric) period, the Illyrian-Venetic colonies the cause for the Indo-Europeanising of the Pre-Germans, who had previously spoken a different language.

The close relationship of Venetic (known, to be sure, only from imperfectly interpreted inscriptions) to Germanic struck C. Pauli, the first to work systematically at the Venetic inscriptions. He compared Venetic exo, μεχο with Germ. *ek(a), *mik. F. Sommer, IF 42. 90 (1924), added: Venet. ahsu [a-su-] ‘herm’ Germ. *ansuz ‘god’; sselboisselboi (inscr. of Canevoi) OHG selbselbo ‘selfsame’. The IE aspirated voiced stops became in Venetic 4, z, x just as in Germanic they became voiced spirants.2

Finally I myself have pointed out (Beitr. z. Gesch. d. deutsch. Spr. u. Lit. 53. 397 [1929]) an agreement between Illyrian and Germanic. More than 30 years ago there was found in a grave of the Roman period at Scutari a ring with the inscription ANA / ΟΗΘΗ / HCER. Some years ago H. Krahe, IF 46. 183 (1928), interpreted the first and last words as ‘goddess’ and ‘sacred’.

Only OΗΘΗ was still obscure. If a late Northwest Greek H may be taken as [i], the word agrees with Gothic aipei ‘mother’ which was hitherto without an etymon. Tacitus reports (Germania 9) an Isis cult of the Suebi (East Germans) of foreign origin in which a liburna (Illyrian fast-sailing vessel) was a symbol of the goddess. Since in Roman imperial times the Isis cult had blended with that of the Dea Mater (coming originally from Asia Minor) it follows that Goth. aipei is a borrowed name for the Dea Mater which was finally used for ‘mother’ in general.

This borrowing, too, indicates close contacts between the Veneti and the Germans, since the former are the only possible intermediaries between the latter and the Illyrians. Another Gothic word, that has not as yet been satisfactorily explained, may find its etymology with the help of the Venetic theory. It is Goth. alew ‘oil’.

In Germanic it is absolutely isolated; for OHG oli < Vul. Lat. olio and OHG olei < Vulg. Lat. olejo obviously came with the thing to the West Germans. But who first made the East Germans ac-quainted with this product of the South? Scholars have thought in various ways of the Celts (cf. the literature in my Etym. got. Wtb., s.v.), but the phonology is against this solution.

The word is not an ancient inheritance either in Latin (oliva, olea ‘olive tree’; olivum, oleum ‘oil’) nor in Greek (ἐλαίfa ‘olivetree’, ἔλαιον ‘oil’), but borrowed from some Mediterranean language. The Illyro-Veneti too must have got it from the same source. Its original sound is unknown; I conjecture *olē(i)vom.

Now according to Strabo 5.100 (214) the Illyrian-Venetic tribes on the Danube were the middlemen for the wine and oil trade with the North. It is therefore natural to derive the Gothic word from the Venetic; the change o> a as in aipei < Illyr. ОНӨН [oibi].

Finally the Veneti presumably brought to the Germans the knowledge of writing. As is known, the Germans had an alphabet of their own, the Runic alphabet, which in its earliest form comprised 24 symbols. Whence came this alphabet to the North of Europe? The theories of a Latin (advocated chiefly by L. Wimmer, recently also by Holger Peder-sen) or Greco-Latin (O. von Friesen) origin are not tenable; they leave too many obscurities and difficulties unexplained.

The hypothesis of Celtic intermediaries (C. Marstrander) offers more riddles than it solves. Consequently A. Hammerstein (in Åbo, Finnland) and S. Feist (in Berlin) independently returned to an earlier idea to seek the origin of Runic writing in the (certainly not uniform) Venetic alphabets. Any one who has ever seen Venetic inscriptions must be struck by the similarity both of single letters and of the ductus as a whole to the Runic characters. Various Runes which have no prototype in Greek or Latin writing can be explained from the Venetic alphabet.

To be sure the oldest Runic inscriptions (in Norway and in Denmark) date at the earliest c. 200 A.D.; but it is obvious that inscriptions on the less permanent materials (wood, bone, iron) must often perish in the ground; stone does not seem to have been used for Runes at so early a time.

Furthermore the oldest Runic writing (no doubt, from right to left) was in the course of time influenced by Celtic and Latin models-just as the Germanic language borrowed many words from both these sources. Accordingly the immediate model for the Runic alphabet-if there ever was a single one is hardly open to discovery.

If it should prove true that the oldest ‘Germanic’ inscription is that on a helmet from Negau (Styria) now in the Kunst-historisches Museum at Vienna, then we may register two forward steps in the question of the origin of the Runes: (1) chronological, for the helmet dates archaeologi-cally c. 150-100 B.C., and the inscription cannot be much later; (2) geographical, for it was found not far from the Venetic territory.

The inscription is written in an archaic north Etruscan alphabet which goes back to the same source as the prototype of the Germanic Runic alpha-bet. Closer still is the inscription (as yet uninterpretable) on the bone awl from Mariasaalerberg (near Klagenfurt); it too dates from the second century B.C. For a full explanation of the spread of the Venetic alphabet towards the North we must await further discoveries.

If the theory here advocated that to the Pre-Germans of northern Europe speech as well as writing was brought by the Veneti-Illyrii-is correct, there remains a difficult question to solve. How does it happen that the phonetic system of Germanic differs so fundamentally from that assumed (not proven) for Indo-European?

In other words: Where did the Germanic mutation of consonants take place? Among the Pre-Germans or among some intermediate people, unknown to us both linguistically and historically, e.g., the repeatedly mentioned Veneti of East Germany?

Years ago C. Nörrenberg maintained that the Pre-Germans possessed a phonetic system like that of their neighbors the Finns, and that in taking over Indo-European they had remodelled it accordingly, just as the Finn changed, e.g., Germ. *gernaz ‘gern’ into kernas. But there is an objection: in Proto-Germanic territory there seems to have been no

According to ‘Verner’s Law’ Indo-European unvoiced stops, when medial, became Proto-Germanic voiced spirants, provided the Indo-European accent did not fall on the immediately preceding syl-lable, cf. πατήρ, ΟΕ fæder, NE father [fadr.]

Consequently the author, a quarter of a century ago, expressed the idea that the mutation of consonants did not take place on Germanic territory, but that Indo-European was passed on to the Pre-Germans with its consonants already ‘mutated’; just as the Modern German written language came to the present Low Germans with its conso-nants already ‘mutated’ the second time, but is pronounced by them with their customary sounds. For a man from Hanover or the Mar-graviate of Brandenburg does not speak like the native of Upper Saxony, who created, or at least passed on to his northern neighbors, the modern literary language.

Whether the Veneti mentioned by Tacitus in East Germany were the intermediaries for this ‘mutated’ Indo-European dialect, cannot be determined in the absence of linguistic documents. In itself there are no theoretic objections to such a hypothesis; for the Veneti of East Germany must have stood in much the same relation to the Veneti on the Adriatic (who bear the same name and are no doubt related) as that in which the natives of Upper Saxony stand at present to those of Lower Saxony.

If we keep in mind the complicated lines of development of the literary Modern High German, which, altho they lie in historical times, are far from clear in all details, we cannot expect an illumination-prompt and secure against all attack of the problem of the spread of a language over a territory which lies in the deep shadows of the prehis-toric period. For what migrations took place in Central Europe before the expansion of the Celts, c. 500 B.C., can at the best be only tenta-tively conjectured; historically the period lies altogether in darkness.

Finds of bronze and of gold in the North naturally presuppose importa-tion from the south; for there is neither tin nor gold in north Germany or Scandinavia. The men engaged in this trade can be divined only for the millenium that precedes our era; for the reasons given I believe they were the Veneti-Illyrii.

Their colonial sphere must have extended from south to north thru Central Europe up to the Baltic the ‘Venetic Gulf’ of Ptolemy. Perhaps all the graves of ‘kings’ and ‘princes’ that are frequently found in North Germany are mausoleums of rich Venetic traders or high officials; for the native population of this region must have lived, as at present, in poverty.

This Illyro-Venetic colonial domain was cut thru by the west-to-east expansion of the Celts. Altho this event lies on the threshold of the historical period, we can grasp only the last phases of the movement when the Celts come in contact with the classic peoples-capture of Rome, plundering of Delphi, erection of the kingdom of the Galatians in Asia Minor.

What precedes is seen only dimly thru the legendary tra-dition of classic writers-e.g., Timagenes. Even the point of radiation for the Celtic movement is unknown. Both the valley of the Danube (J. Reinach) and the district between the Rhine, Main, and Danube (Arbois de Jubainville) have been assumed; possible but not proven.

Only one thing can be regarded as certain: the ‘home’ of the Celts must be sought to the right of the Rhine. For, according to the classic writers, the most primitive Celtic tribes dwelt here, while the Celts who had penetrated into Gaul were quickly civilised. We are told, however, of a perpetual movement backwards and forwards of tribes and individuals.

By the establishment of Celtic supremacy the Veneti settled in East Germany were cut off from their mother country, and dwindled away, so that their civilisation sank and in this respect they fell below the Germans, tho not below the Sarmatians by whom their mode of life was greatly affected. Possibly the infiltration of the Slavs had begun even in the first centuries of our era.

Their coming finally brought about the complete absorption of the Veneti, so that nothing but their name remained as a designation for the new neighbors of the Germans. Furthermore it is not improbable that many Slavic words said to be ‘borrowed from Germanic’ go back in reality to Venetic (which I take to be the mother of Germanic); and this may also be the source of the ‘pre-Germanic’ borrowings of the Finns.

The cutting off of the North from southern imports in the ‘Pre-Roman Iron Period’ (600-100 B.C.) struck long ago the students of prehistory; only there was no agreement about the cause of the phenomenon. O. Montelius thought of the shifting of the amber trade from Jutland to

The Osi of Tacitus Germanic or Illyrian?

[…] all degrees of sharpness, sometimes imperceptibly, sometimes very clearly. Isoglosses (i.e. boundaries of linguistic phenomena) are usually to be traced in bundles near to political or racial boundaries, but by no means invariably; and they coincide exactly neither with one another nor with political boundaries. Editors of ancient authors should know these facts. The Osi, of Pannonian language and customs, belonged to a German state, they were (in Furneaux’s phrase) ‘reckoned as Germans,’ and the offending words are really inoffensive and should stand.

The circumstance, however, that the Pannonian Osi were ‘reckoned as Germans’ is full of interest to the student of language as well as to the historian or to the editor of Tacitus. The historical events which led up to this particular circumstance are probably not to be revealed to us; linguistically the circumstance is both interesting and easily explained.

Within this decade there has been brought together a body of evidence which connects the Germanic dialects, otherwise markedly distinguished by the great Germanic sound shifts, with dialects to the south, and especially with Illyrian. This evidence I commend to the reader of Tacitus who balks at Germanorum natione and rejects my suggested interpretation of those words.

It is not impossible that the Osi were natura or genere Germans despite the Pan-nonian flavour of their speech; no linguist would reject two such facts as inconsistent in the case of a tribe living practically on the Germanic frontier. In the val d’Aosta there are over 70,000 Italians who are described as ‘franco-phone’ or French speaking.

Now Hirt has called attention to certain similarities between Ger-manic and Italic (see Gesch. d. deutsch. Sprache, ed. 2, 1925, p. 269, cf. id., Idg. Gram. i, 1927, p. 56). The little that we know of Illyrian suggests comparisons of it also with Germanic.

So far as the Osi are concerned we may note at once that the study of local names¹ has con-firmed the ancient notice which makes certain Illyrian tribes, the Pirustae, Daesitiates, Maezeii, Pannonian (Strabo 7. 314), see Krahe, Die alten Balkanillyr. geograph. Namen, 1925, p. 110, with the references to Kretschmer (Einl., p. 252) and Hirt (Indogerm. i. 156, ii. 610; cf. Forbiger, Hdb., ed. 2, iii. 468, n. 33).

The contiguity of Italic, Illyrian, and Germanic tribes in ancient times is well known, e.g. Strabo 7. 313: we say that the Illyrians first, united with Istrian and the “Alpes, which lie between Italy and Germany, starting from the lake of the Indus and the Aetolians and the Toini. The presence of the Illyrian formants -st- and -ōn- in Pannonian names (Segesta, Ionista, Lepauista; ‘Ημῶνα) and the recurrence of tribal and local names in both territories (Amantini, Breuci [-ni], Altinum and others, see Hirt, Krahe ll. cc.) are striking.

Even more striking are the close relations between Illyrian and Germanic which have already been noted, the evidence for which this paper is meant to supplement.

The following are among the previous discussions of the same topic which I have noticed: R. Much in Hoops’ Reallexikon d. germ. Altertumsk. iv, 1918-9, p. 508 sq., who observed similarities between Germanic and Venetic (i.e. Illyrian) names and formants, an observation which gained great weight when Sommer called attention to the correspondence between Venetic exo ‘I,’ mexo ‘me’ and Gothic ik, mik, and particularly of Venetic sselboisselboi ‘for himself’ to O. H. G. selb selbo (I. F., 42, 1924, pp. 129 sqq.), especially since the Germanic forms are otherwise unparalleled.

A Venetic in-scription from Pieve di Cadore (Prae-Italic Dialects, i, no. 162) con-tains a dedication to a goddess lo-u-zera ‘Libera’ who must be identical with the Pannonian Libera, one of the divine pair (Liber and Libera) ‘ausserordentlich häufig auf Weihinschriften von Dacien, Dalmatien, und Pannonien, wo offenbar zwei engverbundene einheimische Gott-heiten sich dieser Namen bemächtigt haben’ (Wissowa, Rel. u. Kultus d. Römer, ed. 2, 1912, p. 303; cf. Conway, Studi Etruschi, iv, 1930, p. 289). Since Sommer’s there have appeared two articles by Vasmer (Zeitschr. f. slav. Philol. v, 1929, pp. 360 sqq., and vi, 1929, pp. 145 sqq.) in which certain North-European names, not obviously Germanic or Slavonic, are explained as Illyrian; and two articles by Krahe, I. F. 47, 1929, pp. 321 sqq., in which other names of the same kind are similarly dealt with, and three important comparisons of more certain character that is to say, not proper names – are added (Messap. βύριον ‘building’ cf. O. E., O. H. G. bür ‘dwelling,’ βρένδος ‘stag,’ cf. Swed. dial. brind ‘deer,’ σίπτα ‘be silent,’ cf. O. H. G. gi-swiftōn ‘con-ticescere’); and I. F. 48, 1930, p. 236, a criticism of Vasmer’s second article. Jokl’s paper on ‘Balkangermanisches’ in Festschr. d. 57 … […]

Footnotes

1. The objections of H. Krahe, IF 47. 321 ff. prove to rest at the most on quanti-tative, not fundamental, differences. (Greatly condensed. G. M. B.)
2. Since Illyrian is related to Messapic, it is permissible to refer to agreements between the latter and Germanic, ef. A. Fick, BB 29. 235; H. Krahe, 1. c., Germ. *bür ‘dwelling, house’: βυρίον-οἴκημα cited by Hesychius without ethnikon but probably Messapic, cf. βαυρία· κατὰ Μεσσαπίους σεμένα τὴν οἰκίαν, Etym. Magn. 389. 24; also σιπτα·σιώπα Μεσσάπιοι (Hesych.): OHG gi-swifton ‘verstummen’, MHG swifte ‘schweigend’; etc., etc.
3. Cf. P. Kretschmer, Zeitschr. f. deutsches Altert. 66. 1 (1929); based on a lecture before the First International Congress of Linguists (Hague, 1928) tendency against voiced sounds, such as there was in the colonially Germanic districts of Upper Germany. On the contrary, Indo-Euro-pean voiceless sounds are frequently voiced in Low German: for in-stance *s->z-, cf. Dutch zon ‘sun’, where the change is indicated in the writing.
4. On the interruption of trade between North Germany and Italy in the period 600-100 B. C., cf. E. Sprockhoff, Zur Handelsgesch. d. germ. Bronzezeit 148 ff.
5. A survey of the very divergent opinions is given by L. Weisberger, 20th Report of the Roman-German Comm. 1930. 169.
6. 1 Cf. also Lœwenthal in Zeitschr. f. Ortsnamen-forschung, iv, 1928, pp. 62 ff.

Sources

The Origin of the Germanic languages and the Indo-Europeanising of North Europe. pp. 145-252. Sigmund Feist. “Origin of the Germanic language”.

Joshua Whatmough, “The Osi of Tacitus Germanic or Illyrian?”