Talk:Vasconic substrate hypothesis

Expand please

This theory is really good as far as I know. Sadly I know no German and can't browse the linked pages and add more material but I would be glad to help whoever can access that information to improve the article, for instance making maps or whatever. --Sugaar 00:06, 17 November 2006 (UTC)

How is a nonsense, unsupported and unscientific theory really good?! 86.162.150.59 (talk) 10:47, 8 July 2014 (UTC)

No, the map wrongly doesn't show V's vasconic subtrat, but his semitidic superstat area. The vasconic area includes all of Germany and the countries around - actually from the pays basque to the Ural mountains. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 130.216.13.55 (talk) 03:46, 11 February 2014 (UTC)

and its not Vennemanns theory. He has overtaken two existing theories (i) that one of a semitic/semitidic origin of the megalithic culture, together with an influence on the much later celtic languages in Britain and Ireland and (ii) of a *vasconic substrat in all over Europe (excluding Italy), together with an influence onto the Germanic languages. He has made both a theory in the sense that he added many examples and in addition made them compatible with existing theories of languages. Both parts go back to before 1900, and it is way of original research to find out those who were the original authors. There even has been an attempt to relate pre-Greek Pelasgian to such a *vasconic substrat. This ought to be mentioned in the article, which should not be written either pro or contra this theory.

Some suggestions

This is interesting stuff. Maybe we could mention the Basque "ur" (water) and its similarity to the British river names Ure, Urie, Ayr, Aire, Wyre, Yare, Ore, Orwell, Irwell etc. Also the Basque "erreka" (stream, valley) and Arrochar, Errogie, Urquhart, Orchy, Irk, (Aber)erch, and Lochs Errochty, Ericht and Arkaig. In addition, the Basque "bide" (road, way) might just be related to Pitlochry etc, although there are other theories for "Pit-". ML 19.11.06.

I wouldn't include anything that is not based directly on Vennemann's writings. -- j. 'mach' wust ☞ ☏ 17:21, 19 November 2006 (UTC)

Me neither. Any edits should be verifiable. Finding a site or book on Venneman's theory in English would be nice.

Nevertheless, an older proponent of a simmilar theory was Federico Krutwig, in his work Garaldea. And maybe that could be mentioned, more as historical reference than anything else, as his work may be pionering but is somewhat osolete from the scientifical viewpoint.

Just for enriching the discussion and with no proposing intent, some of thos terms do seem very Basque (Arrochar, Errogie, Uruqhart and Errochty particularly), though they may derive from arro (river basin) and erro (root). In my few travels through Europe (and also looking in maps) I have found many many places and even currently used words of other languages that are virtually identical to Basque: from Galicia to the Balearic islands, from Northern Italy to Britain, and even in Serbo-Croatian you have gora (mountain) and gore (up) (gora is up, upwards in Basque - and clearly native) (reka maybe too). Apparent Vasconic links seem to appear everywhere, even in the Latin particle bi- (like in bilingual) that doesn't seem IE at all (though of course there are always those that say it might be a deformation from nonexistent di-, which would come from duos).

Archaeology and even genetics seem to support the idea of Basque Country/People being the last odd survival of a once Vasconic Europe. That's why I am so interested that asked for an expansion. --Sugaar 04:52, 20 November 2006 (UTC)

No, no – bi- is from dvi-. That's entirely regular (and makes sense once you remember that v was pronounced [w] up to the 2nd century or so). Bonus is also attested as dvonus, for example.

But gora in Basque, that's really interesting… David Marjanović (talk) 19:43, 5 October 2008 (UTC)

Still, be careful when looking for assonances. Don't underestimate time-depth and language change. Looking at maps is good, but looking at the earliest attested forms of toponyms is much better. Trigaranus (talk) 23:41, 14 February 2009 (UTC)

Ouch, where to start... Ok, dump all the Scottish place names, going via the anglicised forms is abortive in itself (Arrochar < An t-Arar, Orchy < Urchaidh, Urquhart < Urchadain (from Pictish "woodside"), Arkaig < Arceig, Ericht < Eireachd, Pitlochry < Peit Chloichrigh (veriafiably "stony pett (a pictish land measure))...

gora is goi + -ra; bi from older biga...

I think I'll leave it there. A hint - when doing such work, *never* work off the modern forms. You must work off the oldest attested or reconstructed forms. Never look for random similarities, or you'll fall prey to the Bongo Bongo Effect, you must work to establish general rules for how word*s* get borrowed and also *why*. And above all, you must never include a recognisible loanword or neologism into your theories... bake (< Lat. pacem) in the crazy Basque-Iberian proposals is just one of them. Akerbeltz (talk) 13:30, 1 March 2009 (UTC)\

Sorry, Steinbauer critics of V is wrong, if it uses the Etruscians. These are not included in V's theories at all. So if they are related to some anatolian peoples, this does not touch V's superstrat-substrat theory. Please do not mess up these theories with wrong facts.

merge

The material currently in the article might be merged to Vennemann, but the term Vasconic has wider usage than that. It is also used for the generally accepted suggestion that Aquitanian is related to Basque. Although A. might have merely been a Basque dialect, that is not certain, and therefore they are often placed in a Vasconic family. kwami (talk) 23:00, 28 November 2007 (UTC)

Don't merge. This article is about a hypotetical linguistic substrate of a large part of Europe, a term that is used now and then in its own merit. If anything, it should be merged with Pre-Indoeuropean and the like. We are talking linguistics here, not linguists (authors).

Also similar proposals existed before Venneman. I have already mentioned Krutwig before, for instance. --Sugaar (talk) 08:33, 29 November 2007 (UTC)

I agree - don't merge. The only justification for merging would be if Vennemann is alone in the entire academic world in supporting this thesis. - Paul S 17:33 2 April 2008 —Preceding unsigned comment added by Paul S (talk • contribs) 16:33, 2 April 2008 (UTC)

I'd also like this to be separate from Vennemann. I believe it will be expanded upon separately as new information emerges from different sources.--92.4.58.173 (talk) 07:50, 10 June 2008 (UTC)

Yes, keep it separate from Vennemann. Summer Song (talk) 18:16, 14 June 2008 (UTC)

How long before we can take the merge tag off? It's been sitting there a while. Akerbeltz (talk) 12:40, 30 June 2009 (UTC)

Link the Vasconic to Basque

Here is the prove that Vasconic can be linked with Baskonic ie Basque. Basque(land) is in most Finno Ugrian languages Baskimaa (Euskal Herria). But when soft B did not appear in old Finno Ugrian languages it become as pronounced Paskiland. But old Finno Ugrian habit was to name the places of some connection in name and source location it can be linked to Vaskiland, what is in fact Silverland in old Finnish language, presumably named after the minerals including silver. More modern version for vaski / silver is hopea in different dialectic forms as hopia /hobie (Karelian / Vepsä). Here you see straight connection of Vennemann´s theory and practice which still exist even today.

Baskin kieli (Euskara) is even today (2008) pronounced in daily use Paskin / Vaskin kieli by half of the Finns and Estonians. Please remember that things like this are noted on grass root level, not in the scholars isolated ivory towers. Vennemann seems to have been after all right when combining Vasconic with Marija Gimbutas to Old Prussian language, which in turn was largerly spoked with Lithuanian and Latvian languages in the south east corner of Baltic Sea. Which are combined in Baltic language sub group (with lot of influence of non indo european Finno Ugrian )in indo european language group. In fact, Lithuanian language is the eldest indo european language spoked in Europe. This language mixed with Finno Ugrian languages influenced also Alte Deutsch. Also compare with Piktri. Baski language is older than any of the indo european languages, belonging to the same age group with Finno Ugrian languages which means it is at least 7.000 years in age.

Iber language has also some common place names with Saame languages. Just mentioning Montsa / Montse.

When following this path Basque can be linked through Uirala theory to Uirali, Uitruski, etc even to Eskimo and Ainu. With Finno Ugrians one can link Finno and Ugri branches to Harappa (Indus Culture and its sub Kulli culture) with languages Tamili, Teluge, Kannada, and Malajalami, in addition to Brahui language which is still been spoked in Indus area by c 750.000 people. All these Dravinian languages are pre indo european languages. There is a direct link from Malayalam to Finno Ugrian. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 88.112.81.220 (talk) 05:01, 31 July 2008 (UTC)

No offence, but that was the worst "proof" ever presented here on Wikipedia. Please note that Wikipedia is all about verifiable findings, not about different users home-spun theories. Original research of this kind is explicitly forbidden from articles, as per WP:OR. JdeJ (talk) 19:01, 31 July 2008 (UTC)

Don't merge that would be like merging Indo-European languages with Thomas Stephens —Preceding unsigned comment added by SOPHIAN (talk • contribs) 00:50, 11 July 2009 (UTC)

moved

I moved the article, as it is not about Vasconic languages, which are simply Basque and its relatives (Aquitanian), or even Basque itself when considered more than a single language. I intend to create a stub at Vasconic languages that isn't so one-sided. kwami (talk) 23:04, 27 February 2009 (UTC)

Theory

The Vasconic Idea is a theory sources: http://www.cls.psu.edu/pubs/pubs/LINGUA1158.pdf http://www.linguistlist.org/issues/15/15-1878.html http://www.lrz-muenchen.de/~mailhammer/htdocs/pdf/PrEu_rd.PDF please tell me if you have any sources (not from Wikipedia) that prove that the Vasconic idea is a HypothesisThe Count of Monte Cristo (talk) 23:25, 10 July 2009 (UTC)

I agree that it is a theory. It is not nearly formalized or testable enough to be a hypothesis. Also the first source seems to show that other linguists think of it as a theory more than a hypothesis. The second source you present I can not access. I do however think that the "substrate" element is pretty necessary to make it explicit that this is a linguistic theory about a subststrate and I think the page should be moved to Vasconic substrate theory. (or merged into Theo venneman's own article)·Maunus·ƛ· 23:22, 10 July 2009 (UTC)

Fellow wikipedians you have 3 days to prove that the statement However, most linguists consider the hydronyms to be Indo-European. is not OR or else I will if possible delete it.

That does seem an odd statement, as far as I remember, the hydronyms and a lot of old toponyms are opaque both from an IE and a Vasconic angle. Trask also sums up the hydro and toponymy of old Europe as most likely stemming from various unrecorded pre-IE languages. He also points out that the hydronomy of the Basque County itself doesn't even look Basque. Akerbeltz (talk) 17:46, 19 July 2009 (UTC)

"It is not nearly formalized or testable enough to be a hypothesis"—if it is not formalized or testable enough to be a hypothesis, then it cannot be a theory. A "theory" is a hypothesis that has been tested and supported by those tests. If it is not a hypothesis, and not a theory, what do we call it? kwami (talk) 20:04, 19 July 2009 (UTC)

Q:Why isn't there a criticisms/controversies section? A: Because a section dedicated to criticisms and controversies is no more appropriate than a section dedicated solely to praises and is an indication of a poorly written article. Criticisms/controversies/praises should be worked into the existing prose of the article, per WP:CRIT. The Count of Monte Cristo (talk) 18:55, 23 July 2009 (UTC)

If it is not a hypothesis, and not a theory, what do we call it?

Easy: Speculation. Although I can think of even less polite descriptions of Vennemann's work – yes, all of it, even the parts that are frequently cited, for example those regarding phonetic or morphological theory. There are countless holes and methodic shortcomings in his work, and frequently enough he is only cited because those who cite him are no better informed in the respective areas than he himself is. Just ask a phonetician about the empirical evidence for the existence of something like Silbenschnitt.

As for the European hydronomy, I wouldn't place any bets on it. If they are really so old at all, those names went through far too many languages and deformations to be recognisable as anything, even if we knew the source language (which we most certainly have no clue about). If you exclude the suffix -antia and the root kamb-, which look like Celtic via Latin, and drav-, which certainly looks like some sort of I-E, the residue is so generic in terms of phonology, phonotactics and supposed morphology that it could be anything. In fact, it barely looks like a language, even if we grant it may be a very simple one (Neanderthal?). It's a mere artifact. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 21:45, 19 February 2011 (UTC)

Florian, this is a pure defamation of V's theory. He has made up a theory if he finds at least 10 etymologies of words which are named in Kluge/Seebold as unknown. And there are, and there even are many more beyond V if you consider names of mountains, locations, rivers, germanic gods and giants, even peoples. By the way, it is not appropriate to cite scientists, which nobody knows, you call them phoneticians for Silbenschnitt-theories, what ever that means. Please deliver one etymology of V which fails. Please name just one methodical shortcoming of V. If there is, there would be an easy way out: Just list up all those etymologies in a list and try to understand them like above the bi-two example (by the way - Trask's etymology of Biarritz is pure non-sense compared to V's one). Doing this, there is no way of any methodical shortcoming since there is only one mathematical concept involved, a set. Does your comment mean, that Basque is not a language? Well - I have been there and found people to communicate in Basque - it works. A Neandertal argument is easy to wrong, since Neandertalers and Denosovians now easily can be identified - from genetics. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 130.216.13.55 (talk) 04:57, 11 February 2014 (UTC)

What? You don't know what you are talking about. No historical linguist I know takes Vasconic, or Vennemann's etymologies, seriously (except for his own students). If there were any, there would be citations. Trask was an expert on the history of Basque! (Akerbeltz knows this subject very well, too.) He's a far better source on the topic than Vennemann, let alone you. Whether a patently poorly informed layman finds an expert's etymology "pure non-sense compared to" an alternative explanation is completely irrelevant for the scholarly debate and for Wikipedia. My mention of Neanderthal was obviously satirical. Genetics doesn't have the first thing to do with hydronyms. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 20:06, 4 October 2014 (UTC)

Please Florian Blaschke stop thinking in a medivial way, in German "mittelalterlich staendestaatlich". Its of no importance what one is or what one has studied. Its only of importance how one argues, that is how good one's arguments are. Those of Trask and Seinbauer shouln't be mentioned - they are Virchow-like. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 171.100.79.6 (talk) 08:37, 4 December 2014 (UTC)

Trask - well - he should be named "the Master of folk etymologies". What he writes on the etymology of Biarritz is really odd! Did he never travel there? And his remarks on Vennemanns etymology of "Muenchen" even is worse. Page 72 of his article "Origin and Relatives of Basque" in "Toward a History of the Basque Language" he writes "... Munich doesn't have any hills". From my four years biking experience in Munich I know there are and - Munich is full of place names containing -berg- : Traveling there he could have a beer on the Nockerberg, living in a hotel in Berg am Laim, avoiding Hasenbergl. In addition there never has been a report on monks or a monastery in Munich.

You clearly know very little about the history of Munich. Unfortunately for you, I grew up there. So... the areas you mention are *way* outside what is considered the historic center of Munich. They may be boroughs today but back when Munich was a backwater village, they were half a days travel from the center. It would be like naming London after Hampstead Heath. Sadly, riding a bike does not make you a geohistorian. As for the rest of your rant, I'm not going to bother. Bring reliable sources, then we can talk. Akerbeltz (talk) 19:25, 13 December 2014 (UTC)

Too shy to be to the Pupplinger Au? There are hills and moving the Isar upstream towards Gruenwald they become steeper. According to the history of Munic, you seem to know something which nobody else knows. There were no monks in Munic - never, like there were no bishops in those many German places of the type Bischofs-... . So Vennemanns idea to back trace these to basque bide (way) is a nice one, actually part of a diagram, and makes one to look for a better etymology of Munic. Go for instance to Bischofshofen south of Salzburg, a classical example of a bide. By the way - I'm an expert in the history of early Brandenburg. There are a lot of monastaries there, all of them well reported - because monks did paper work. Please note that Germans usually built their settlements besides the already existing ones of the Romans, the Walchen, in Brandenburg of the Slawonics. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 130.216.13.52 (talk) 00:48, 17 December 2014 (UTC)

You can read, right? There are hills and mountains all over the place of course but there is a limit to the distance people will go to name a place.

Vennemann does not trace it back to bide or rather, if he does, he's changed his tune because he used to derive it from muino despite agreement there was no m in proto-Basque.

And lastly, there were monks all over the place but eleven centuries is a long time for a small monastic settlement to come and go but with the placename sticking. There are plenty of places like that. Bring sources, until then, I won't waste any more time on this futile debate. Akerbeltz (talk) 01:08, 17 December 2014 (UTC)

Missing monks, missing bishops, missing sources are the ingrediences of a folk etymology in the bad sense. Mr. Akerb., you are b(i)ased too much in the Hofbraeuhaus. A few steps from there (200 m? difficult to measure from here in NZ!) there is a place name "im Tal", starting at the Marienplatz, going down to the Isartor. Since there are no hills in the center, Trask would have concluded, that there was a monk, presumely in the 14th century and a fat one, named "im Tal". Note that "Tal" means "¬hills". And - west of Muenchen there is "Schwabmuenchen", which according to the Wikipedia first was called "Mantahinga". Surely "Schwab" was added later to distinguish it from Muenchen, when this became more important. There were no monks there either but hills right on the western side of the river Wertach, like in Muenchen on the eastern banks of the Isar. Another place to compare with is aquintanian Mende with a phantastic view from the new toll bridge in the west, which proves everything. It never has been celtic, their expansion to the west ended in Le Puys en Velais! — Preceding unsigned comment added by 203.176.188.51 (talk) 07:14, 7 January 2015 (UTC)

Your fringe OR speculations are not appropriate for this talk page; Wikipedia is not a soapbox. In any case, you are engaging in a false dichotomy fallacy – even if the accepted monk etymology for München were the result of a medieval folk etymology (which is impossible to prove and in any case not likely – the monks are not actually missing, despite your and Vennemann's protestations, they just were not necessarily a big community, and may have been no more than a couple of hermits), that would not mean that there is any connection to Basque. Even if the mainstream were wrong, Vennemann wouldn't automatically be right, despite his love of this fallacy.

Moreover, your insistence that the presence of Celtic or other Indo-European placenames in Aquitania is absolutely impossible is just ridiculously question-begging. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 11:26, 4 June 2015 (UTC)

Ok, F.B. you seem to know everything. But, this is preaching, i.e. religion ex cathedra and not science. Remember how it all started: with comparisons. So compare Muenchen with the etymology of Moenchen-Gladbach. There, and about the same time, we know the name of the monk, the time and the monastery he came from. So there is no way out: We have to believe that it is no folk etymology. In Muenchen and Schwabmuenchen we have nothing like that and therefore your ,non-likely' is wronged from the beginning. More general, it is a bad idea, to name a place after something which is everywhere, like Muenchen after monks, Ebersberg after bores, Pritzwalk after wolves, the Karawanken after Gemsen, Perleberg after clay. For inventing names, you have to find something which is attached to the place and is not typical for the neighbourhood. In topology (mathematically constructed over logic) they call it isolated. Otherwise communication becomes tedious. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 119.76.65.52 (talk) 03:15, 7 December 2015 (UTC)

R1b

I find it strange to not find the word "R1b" in the article, nor even on the talk page... twitter.com/YOMALSIDOROFF (talk) 12:56, 10 January 2014 (UTC)

Dubious map

As pointed out above under #Expand please, the map File:Proposed area of Vasconic languages.png is clearly and obviously wrong, given that one of Vennemann's hobbies is finding "Vasconic" etymologies for placenames all over Germany, and the "Old European" river names (with the "roots" they are supposedly based on) he talks about can be found throughout Europe (see Old European hydronymy). (I agree that the map probably shows the area claimed for "Semitidic", although I thought it included at least Denmark and perhaps Northern Germany too, or at least parts of those regions, in view of the claimed "Semitidic" influence on Germanic, even if it was a more superstratum-like influence, which still requires some migration in prehistoric times.) In fact, Vennemann's "Vasconic" essentially covers all of Europe, which is why his "theory" is so outrageous – had he limited himself to the claim that Basque-related languages were once spoken all over Western Europe as in the map, his idea wouldn't have been considered nearly as implausible. But a language family that covered all of Mesolithic/Neolithic Europe?! That just beggars belief! If you don't see why, check North America. Don Ringe has already explained this in more detail. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 11:57, 4 June 2015 (UTC)

Sorry, but again you are at odds with logic. The same label ,outrageous' (I think even more so, but this POV) has to be attached to the theory that there has been a proto-indoeuropean unique language in this huge area, which introduced the ,old-European' hydronomy, like Krahe believed and Vennemann rejected. And exactly that is the problem: Which of both alternatives is more likely and hopefully can be proved. A proof (necessity) would consist in giving a list of arguments for one or the other. The first entry would run as follows: After studying Basque for some years, I have the impression, that it is more conservative than the indoeuropean language group, which looks like the most rapidly changing language group of the world. A second point would be to count the number of semantically founded etymologies of place names, singling out all folk etymologies. A third point would be to deal with those Germanic words, which have no indoeuropean etymology a la Pokorny, Kluge/Seebold and that new Danish contribution. Probably the sufficient part of the proof never can be given. So perhaps the language component remains unsolved. But there are three other components, which have to fill in the gaps: Anthropology to which today DNA-analysys has tremendous contributions (MIT, Stanford, Dresden), archeology and mythology. Again, Vennemann discusses all of that, Krahe & al. not. Also: That map is wrong, but a map has to be included.