Oreka Bailoak
03-31-2011, 06:16 PM
This has been bugging me for some time.
I'll admit that I have little linguistic background, but I've studied a few languages; German(Germanic), Spanish(Latin), Russian(Slavic), Basque(non-IE) and Irish(Celtic)- usually just enough studying to get a feel for each language. But when studying Irish something seemed different than all the rest to me; about 5 minutes into studying Irish I thought to myself- "In Irish the articulation of words is extremely light unlike anything I've studied before from German, Spanish, Russian and even Basque. And Irish words sound very airy- in fact Irish actually sounds a lot like a Semitic language".
I did a quick search on the internet for a connection between the two language families and found that a few linguistics believe that the Proto-Celtic language was created by Semitic speakers learning an Indo-European Language (in other words a Semitic language is a substrata of Celtic).
The following is from the linguist Theo Vennemann.
The answer was given exactly 105 years ago by a famous Celtic language historian, and proved several times over since then, most recently — and most cogently, I believe — by myself: That substratum was Semitic. And indeed, all ancient Semitic languages lack external possessors.
Needless to say in my published work I give examples from Celtic and Semitic to show this, but in the present context I simply have to ask you to believe me when I say that in all of the Hebrew Bible, and in all the Koran, and in all of the Welsh and Irish translations of the Bible there is not a single example of an external possessor, even though in the German Einheitsübersetzung of the Old Testament there are plenty.
The following picture shows the distribution of external possessor languages in and around Europe:
Click here to see the picture on page 21...
http://www.rotary-muenchen.de/2005-2006/theo-vennemann.pdf
As one can see, it is precisely the Celtic Isles and the Semitic world (and then Asian languages such as Turkish that are of no interest in this context) that go together with regard to this feature. And the same, as linguists have shown during the last 105 years, holds true for
numerous other specific grammatical features as well.
^He also wrote a book about the Semitic Substrata in Celtic Languages but it's too expensive for me to purchase (And I don't have anymore time to study into further detail).
Can anybody comment on this theory?
I'll admit that I have little linguistic background, but I've studied a few languages; German(Germanic), Spanish(Latin), Russian(Slavic), Basque(non-IE) and Irish(Celtic)- usually just enough studying to get a feel for each language. But when studying Irish something seemed different than all the rest to me; about 5 minutes into studying Irish I thought to myself- "In Irish the articulation of words is extremely light unlike anything I've studied before from German, Spanish, Russian and even Basque. And Irish words sound very airy- in fact Irish actually sounds a lot like a Semitic language".
I did a quick search on the internet for a connection between the two language families and found that a few linguistics believe that the Proto-Celtic language was created by Semitic speakers learning an Indo-European Language (in other words a Semitic language is a substrata of Celtic).
The following is from the linguist Theo Vennemann.
The answer was given exactly 105 years ago by a famous Celtic language historian, and proved several times over since then, most recently — and most cogently, I believe — by myself: That substratum was Semitic. And indeed, all ancient Semitic languages lack external possessors.
Needless to say in my published work I give examples from Celtic and Semitic to show this, but in the present context I simply have to ask you to believe me when I say that in all of the Hebrew Bible, and in all the Koran, and in all of the Welsh and Irish translations of the Bible there is not a single example of an external possessor, even though in the German Einheitsübersetzung of the Old Testament there are plenty.
The following picture shows the distribution of external possessor languages in and around Europe:
Click here to see the picture on page 21...
http://www.rotary-muenchen.de/2005-2006/theo-vennemann.pdf
As one can see, it is precisely the Celtic Isles and the Semitic world (and then Asian languages such as Turkish that are of no interest in this context) that go together with regard to this feature. And the same, as linguists have shown during the last 105 years, holds true for
numerous other specific grammatical features as well.
^He also wrote a book about the Semitic Substrata in Celtic Languages but it's too expensive for me to purchase (And I don't have anymore time to study into further detail).
Can anybody comment on this theory?