We have hypothesised in Germanic words of non-IE origin that Proto-Germanic borrowed a few common words from indigenous pre-IE Scandinavians. I believe that there may be a much bigger proportion of Latin and Greek words (including those inherited in modern Romance languages) that are not Indo-European at all, but came from Near Eastern languages. This wouldn't be surprising considering the very substantial percentage of Near-Eastern DNA in Italy and Greece. I am often perplexed to see how linguists assume that if words in Germanic or Slavic languages are similar to those in Latin and Greek then they must be of IE origin. This shouldn't necessarily be the case, as I will explain.
For a start, I am inclined to think that the fusion between two populations speaking different languages will result either in :
1) the thorough hybridisation (creolisation) of the two languages, as was the case with Middle English and Norman French (fusing to become modern English), or with Jomon Japanese and Yayoi Sino-Korean (merging into one another to make modern Japanese). I think this is what happened with Greek and Latin, probably hybridising PIE with a West Asian language (possibly associated with Bronze Age J2 people).
2) one language becomes dominant but absorbs some vocabulary from the other language. The dominant language can be the one of the newcomer (e.g. English almost completed erased Gaelic in Scotland, but Scottish English has kept plenty of loanwords from Gaelic) or the indigenous one (e.g. the Franks eventually adopted Latin, but modern French has hundreds if not thousands of words of Frankish origin). I think that this is what happened with Proto-Celtic and Proto-Germanic (dominant IE with indigenous loanwords).
The third option would be that one language (presumably the one of the newcomers) completely wipes all traces of the other languages. But I do not think that this is possible unless one population (presumably the indigenous) is totally exterminated. But has it ever happened ? Europeans can close in the North America and Australia, but despite the huge disparity in technological advancement American and Australian English borrowed hundreds of words from Amerindians and dozens from aboriginal Australian.
Surely, if the ancestry of the ancient Greeks and Romans is over 50% non-Indo-European, as now transpires from the insight provided by population genetics, a very sizeable part of their language must also be of non-IE origin.
I also believe that the way linguists have reconstructed Proto-Indo-European language is faulty because they assumed that languages fit only in one family. So much is obvious when so many linguists stubbornly refuse to classify English as both Germanic and Romance, and insist it is only Germanic when 70% of its vocabulary is Romance (including Greek loanwords in Latin and French) and its grammar is now closer to Romance than Germanic languages.
I also believe that there wasn't one PIE language, but two. There were clearly two separate ethnic groups that spoke and diffused Indo-European languages: one originated in Anatolia and around the Black Sea under the dominant male lineage R1b, and one originating in the forest-steppe of Ukraine, Belarus and Russia led by R1a men. The two groups converged into one political and/or cultural entity, probably during the Yamna period, but did not mix much genetically. There must have been an exchange of ideas, technology, religion and vocabulary, but the two groups remained distinct and evolved separately, each migrating to different regions (at first, Southeast, Central and Western Europe for R1b, and Northern Europe, Central and South Asia for R1a).
As the two groups did not share a common ancestor since about 25,000 years ago, they could not have spoken the same language, nor anything remotely similar. They first "met" each others when R1b people moved from Anatolia to the Pontic Steppes, perhaps 6000 years ago. Since only a small minority of of R1b people joined the ranks of R1a population, and even less (if any) R1a moved with the R1b population in the Pontic Steppes during the Yamna period, logic dictates that the two groups spoke different languages, although probably with a significant amount of loan mutual words (probably with a bias towards more R1b words assimilated into the R1a language).
Linguists have classified IE languages well before the recent discoveries of population genetics. Yet, the branches associated with haplogroup R1a, Baltic, Slavic, Indo-Aryan and Iranian, were all classified together under the Satem branch. This is not a coincidence. Satem languages really are quite different from Centum languages, not just because of a shift of pronunciation, but also because a lot of words common to Satem languages have no cognate in Centum languages (and vice versa). If it hasn't been done, it would be interesting to calculate the percentage of words that are undeniably (and I insist on that) related to each others within Satem, within Centum, and across Satem and Centum. Those that are only vaguely similar should be eliminated. I am confident that this will create a proper rift between the two groups.
Obviously some intermediary languages like Greek and Armenian should be listed separately because they are 1) genetically mixed R1a-R1b, 2) too close to both R1a and R1b homelands, and 3) strongly influenced by other West Asian languages. Germanic languages will also show similarities between both Satem and Centum groups, and indeed may be seen as the perfect link between the two groups based on haplogroup distribution. Proto-Celtic should be seen as the epitome of the R1b-Centum branch, while Latin should be approached cautiously as a hybrid language whose vocabulary may be unrepresentative of IE languages.
There is also the possibility of vocabulary surviving from Neolithic Near-Eastern languages. If Basque is a direct descendant of a Neolithic (or even Mesolthic/Paleolithic) language, then there is no reason why plenty of Neolithic loanwords shouldn't have survived all over Europe. These can be easily misinterpreted for Indo-European words due to their pan-European distribution. We nearly don't know anything about Neolithic languages (as writing didn't exist), but they shouldn't be discarded too easily. After all, Indo-European languages spread before the time of writing too.
In the Oxford Introduction to Proto-Indo-European and the Proto-Indo-European World by J.P. Mallory and D.Q. Adams I was shocked to see how many common words have many completely different PIE roots listed. For example, the PIE words for goat are *bhugos, *diks, *heli, *h(a)egos, *h(a)egs, *kapros, *(s)kegos, *ghaidos and *kogheh. For grain we find linguistic abominations like *drh(x)weh(a)-, *dhoh(x)neh(a)-, *grh(a)nom, h2/3(e)lg(h)-, *meig(h)-, *proksom, *ses
o-, *yew(e)s, *pitus, *h2ed-, *melh2-. And I can't encode all the accents and circles that come with that !
What we should ask ourselves is why would a rather primitive Bronze Age society have ten words to designate something as simple as a goat or grain ? The best explanation is that these words come from various Neolithic languages assimilated by the Indo-Europeans. I noticed that words that have the most roots listed are typically those associated with the Neolithic lifestyle (furrow, rain, dry, wet, grain, fruit, pot, milk, goat, animal skin) and very basic verbs (burn, cut, move, jump, run, turn, pull, push, shake, speak, cry). Besides many of these reconstruction are unpronounceable because they try to find a common root for words for certainly don't have one.
There three PIE words for cow listed in the above-mentioned book : *g(w)ous (Lat bos, NE cow, Grk bous, Skt gau), h1egh- (Skt ahi) and *wokeh(a)- (Lat vacca, Skt vasa). I am almost sure that the last one is not Indo-European, but rather related to the Mesopotamian language spoken the Neolithic or Bronze Age people associated with Y-haplogroup J2. It cognates with the Biblical Hebrew baqar and the modern Arabic baqara. I suggested earlier that the J2 people were associated with the diffusion of cattle and bull worship. J2 expanded from West Asia all the way from Italy to India, so it is far more likely that the Latin vacca and the Sanskrit vasa derive from this West Asian language of the J2 folk. The Sanskrit ahi is probably a native term, completely unrelated to PIE.
I know that it is a lot of unconventional (some will say heretic) ideas in one time. But I really want to test this hypothesis because nobody has reviewed the Indo-European language tree since we know about the genetic R1a-R1b division.
I will start a thread about Latin & Greek words of non-Indo-European origin where I invite you to add your suggestions.
For a start, I am inclined to think that the fusion between two populations speaking different languages will result either in :
1) the thorough hybridisation (creolisation) of the two languages, as was the case with Middle English and Norman French (fusing to become modern English), or with Jomon Japanese and Yayoi Sino-Korean (merging into one another to make modern Japanese). I think this is what happened with Greek and Latin, probably hybridising PIE with a West Asian language (possibly associated with Bronze Age J2 people).
2) one language becomes dominant but absorbs some vocabulary from the other language. The dominant language can be the one of the newcomer (e.g. English almost completed erased Gaelic in Scotland, but Scottish English has kept plenty of loanwords from Gaelic) or the indigenous one (e.g. the Franks eventually adopted Latin, but modern French has hundreds if not thousands of words of Frankish origin). I think that this is what happened with Proto-Celtic and Proto-Germanic (dominant IE with indigenous loanwords).
The third option would be that one language (presumably the one of the newcomers) completely wipes all traces of the other languages. But I do not think that this is possible unless one population (presumably the indigenous) is totally exterminated. But has it ever happened ? Europeans can close in the North America and Australia, but despite the huge disparity in technological advancement American and Australian English borrowed hundreds of words from Amerindians and dozens from aboriginal Australian.
Surely, if the ancestry of the ancient Greeks and Romans is over 50% non-Indo-European, as now transpires from the insight provided by population genetics, a very sizeable part of their language must also be of non-IE origin.
I also believe that the way linguists have reconstructed Proto-Indo-European language is faulty because they assumed that languages fit only in one family. So much is obvious when so many linguists stubbornly refuse to classify English as both Germanic and Romance, and insist it is only Germanic when 70% of its vocabulary is Romance (including Greek loanwords in Latin and French) and its grammar is now closer to Romance than Germanic languages.
I also believe that there wasn't one PIE language, but two. There were clearly two separate ethnic groups that spoke and diffused Indo-European languages: one originated in Anatolia and around the Black Sea under the dominant male lineage R1b, and one originating in the forest-steppe of Ukraine, Belarus and Russia led by R1a men. The two groups converged into one political and/or cultural entity, probably during the Yamna period, but did not mix much genetically. There must have been an exchange of ideas, technology, religion and vocabulary, but the two groups remained distinct and evolved separately, each migrating to different regions (at first, Southeast, Central and Western Europe for R1b, and Northern Europe, Central and South Asia for R1a).
As the two groups did not share a common ancestor since about 25,000 years ago, they could not have spoken the same language, nor anything remotely similar. They first "met" each others when R1b people moved from Anatolia to the Pontic Steppes, perhaps 6000 years ago. Since only a small minority of of R1b people joined the ranks of R1a population, and even less (if any) R1a moved with the R1b population in the Pontic Steppes during the Yamna period, logic dictates that the two groups spoke different languages, although probably with a significant amount of loan mutual words (probably with a bias towards more R1b words assimilated into the R1a language).
Linguists have classified IE languages well before the recent discoveries of population genetics. Yet, the branches associated with haplogroup R1a, Baltic, Slavic, Indo-Aryan and Iranian, were all classified together under the Satem branch. This is not a coincidence. Satem languages really are quite different from Centum languages, not just because of a shift of pronunciation, but also because a lot of words common to Satem languages have no cognate in Centum languages (and vice versa). If it hasn't been done, it would be interesting to calculate the percentage of words that are undeniably (and I insist on that) related to each others within Satem, within Centum, and across Satem and Centum. Those that are only vaguely similar should be eliminated. I am confident that this will create a proper rift between the two groups.
Obviously some intermediary languages like Greek and Armenian should be listed separately because they are 1) genetically mixed R1a-R1b, 2) too close to both R1a and R1b homelands, and 3) strongly influenced by other West Asian languages. Germanic languages will also show similarities between both Satem and Centum groups, and indeed may be seen as the perfect link between the two groups based on haplogroup distribution. Proto-Celtic should be seen as the epitome of the R1b-Centum branch, while Latin should be approached cautiously as a hybrid language whose vocabulary may be unrepresentative of IE languages.
There is also the possibility of vocabulary surviving from Neolithic Near-Eastern languages. If Basque is a direct descendant of a Neolithic (or even Mesolthic/Paleolithic) language, then there is no reason why plenty of Neolithic loanwords shouldn't have survived all over Europe. These can be easily misinterpreted for Indo-European words due to their pan-European distribution. We nearly don't know anything about Neolithic languages (as writing didn't exist), but they shouldn't be discarded too easily. After all, Indo-European languages spread before the time of writing too.
In the Oxford Introduction to Proto-Indo-European and the Proto-Indo-European World by J.P. Mallory and D.Q. Adams I was shocked to see how many common words have many completely different PIE roots listed. For example, the PIE words for goat are *bhugos, *diks, *heli, *h(a)egos, *h(a)egs, *kapros, *(s)kegos, *ghaidos and *kogheh. For grain we find linguistic abominations like *drh(x)weh(a)-, *dhoh(x)neh(a)-, *grh(a)nom, h2/3(e)lg(h)-, *meig(h)-, *proksom, *ses
o-, *yew(e)s, *pitus, *h2ed-, *melh2-. And I can't encode all the accents and circles that come with that ! What we should ask ourselves is why would a rather primitive Bronze Age society have ten words to designate something as simple as a goat or grain ? The best explanation is that these words come from various Neolithic languages assimilated by the Indo-Europeans. I noticed that words that have the most roots listed are typically those associated with the Neolithic lifestyle (furrow, rain, dry, wet, grain, fruit, pot, milk, goat, animal skin) and very basic verbs (burn, cut, move, jump, run, turn, pull, push, shake, speak, cry). Besides many of these reconstruction are unpronounceable because they try to find a common root for words for certainly don't have one.
There three PIE words for cow listed in the above-mentioned book : *g(w)ous (Lat bos, NE cow, Grk bous, Skt gau), h1egh- (Skt ahi) and *wokeh(a)- (Lat vacca, Skt vasa). I am almost sure that the last one is not Indo-European, but rather related to the Mesopotamian language spoken the Neolithic or Bronze Age people associated with Y-haplogroup J2. It cognates with the Biblical Hebrew baqar and the modern Arabic baqara. I suggested earlier that the J2 people were associated with the diffusion of cattle and bull worship. J2 expanded from West Asia all the way from Italy to India, so it is far more likely that the Latin vacca and the Sanskrit vasa derive from this West Asian language of the J2 folk. The Sanskrit ahi is probably a native term, completely unrelated to PIE.
I know that it is a lot of unconventional (some will say heretic) ideas in one time. But I really want to test this hypothesis because nobody has reviewed the Indo-European language tree since we know about the genetic R1a-R1b division.
I will start a thread about Latin & Greek words of non-Indo-European origin where I invite you to add your suggestions.
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