Talk:Germanic substrate hypothesis/Archive 2

Archive 1

Archive 2

Is "Germanic substrate hypothesis" the right name?

Shouldn't this article be renamed to "Pre-Germanic substrate hypothesis" or "Non-Indo-European substrate hypothesis? After all, the whole point of the hypothesis is that the Germanic languages allegedly developed on a non-Germanic substrate. 109.130.162.203 (talk) 16:12, 17 July 2010 (UTC)

A fair question. I assume the logic here is the same as that behind Goidelic substrate hypothesis. If a change is to be undertaken, I would suggest "Pre-Germanic substrate" (either with of without "hypothesis") analogous to Pre-Greek substrate. It seems to get more hits on GoogleBooks, at least. --Aryaman (talk) 18:54, 17 July 2010 (UTC)

It's a substrate to germanic, that is, something that an indo-germanic language absorbed to become germanic. So it is a germanic substrate.--Wendy.krieger (talk) 10:35, 26 July 2010 (UTC)

Twelfty and Germanic

PIE has a decimal system, with words for ten and hundred. However, some of the descendent groups seemed to have adopted other counting systems. These may have come from the substrate, but with IE names. For example, celtic 20, and welsh 20-by-fives (with eg, three-fifteen = 18) etc. Another number system that makes its way into IE is sixty (cf 'shock = 60' from persian 'sixty'.

We see in germanic, in eg Norse, gothoc and Western, a use of a number system of the order of six scores, or 120 in number, eg E.V. Gordon "old norse" § 107 gives hundrað as 120, and 200 as hundrað ok átta tigir. OE has words like hundteontig (100), and hundendleoftig (110= elefty), and hundtwelftig (120), but nimbers past this are in hundreds. Gothic also has a word 'teentywise' for describing hundreds of five score.

Putting reckoning by six-scores as particularly germanic, then the source is evidently not Indo-European but somewhere else, eg a substrate.--Wendy.krieger (talk) 12:35, 20 July 2010 (UTC)

On the other hand one can argue that a system based around 12 is more practical than one based around 10, as groups of twelve can be easily divided into 2 halves, 4 thirds, 3 quarters, whereas base 10 only divides into 5 halves and 2 fifths. 60 is even better, as it allows for fifths as well. It is entirely possible the counting system was innovated without a substrate. Ekwos (talk) 19:44, 19 December 2010 (UTC)

Greek forms in table

Not sure why predominantly modern Greek forms are used, instead of ancient Greek... AnonMoos (talk) 20:29, 20 August 2012 (UTC)

Good point. I would even be inclined to use "u" rather than "y" to Romanise υ in order to make the etymological connection clearer. Instead we have "i" for η, which is pointless. We should really have a Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Greek to clarify such cases.—Greg Pandatshang (talk) 23:50, 28 August 2012 (UTC)