Semitic language may actually have been a northern tongue

[Aithin Tusa Fein]

To quote Laura from her book:

Knight-Jadczyk, Laura (2012-08-08). The Secret History of the World and How to Get Out Alive (Kindle Location 12535). Red Pill Press. Kindle Edition.

But more than this, the clues seem to indicate that what we call the “Semitic language” may actually have been a northern tongue, an Aryan language, adopted by peoples we think of as ethnically “Semitic” in modern terms but who, in ancient terms, were not Semitic at all.

I came across an essay/presentation by Theo Vennemann, Ph.D., in which he claims that there is evidence that the English language is based on a Celtic substratum, which in Britain is based on a Semitic substratum. The essay/presentation is not very large, only 23 pages, but well written and easy to understand by laypersons.

For all who are interested, the essay/presentation can be read/downloaded in pdf from here:

_http://www.rotary-muenchen.de/2005-2006/theo-vennemann.pdf

The answer was suggested eighty years ago by an Indo-Europeanist and recently proved by myself; and everyone may by now be able to guess what it might be: Celtic does not have external possessors, and when the Celts shifted to Anglo-Saxon they simply failed to learn the construction. Not having external possessors is a substratum feature of English, it is a remnant of the language of the English from the time when most of them were still Celts, and Celtic speaking.

Now comes a final question, and a final answer, perhaps the only real surprise for some tonight: Why does Celtic not have external possessors? Or, more generally: How did Celtic acquire all those un-European, un-Indo-European features that it then passed on to English? After all, the Celts too are Indo-European speaking, and they came from the Continent only a thousand years earlier than the Anglo-Saxon, and thus Celtic should be much like Anglo- Saxon and thus unable to influence it structurally to any large extent.

From a scientific point of view, the best answer would undoubtedly be the same as in the case of English: Not having external possessors should be a substratum feature of Celtic, too. Right! But what was that substratum?

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.

Not being a linguist myself, however, I think that this essay/presentation supports Laura's hypothesis in her book.

 

[Laura]

Very interesting find. I'm looking forward to reading it. Clues everywhere if you just keep looking!

 

[Aithin Tusa Fein]

Also, Theo Vennemann references an essay by John Morris Jones (1900) titled, "Pre-Aryan syntax in Insular Celtic", which can be found in Appendix B of J. Rhys and D. Brynmor-Jones book, The Welsh People, which can be read/downloaded here for free:

_http://archive.org/details/welshpeoplechapt00rhys

Its amazing that this essay has been around since 1900 and its theories are not widely known today. For those who want to read it, it is lengthy and technical. Here are a few interesting excerpts from that essay in Appendix B:

THE syntax of Welsh and Irish differs in some important respects from that of the languages belonging to the other branches of the Aryan family. Professor Rhys suggested many years ago that these peculiarities are due to the influence of a pre-Aryan language; this suggestion led me to make the comparisons summarised in this paper. The substance of that part of the paper which deals with Egyptian was communicated to Professor Rhys in April, 1891; the other comparisons were made later; but hitherto they have all remained unpublished. I now gladly avail myself of the opportunity kindly offered to publish them in the pages of "The Welsh People."

When one language is supplanted by another, the speakers find it comparatively easy to adopt the new vocabulary, but not so easy to abandon the old modes of expression ; and thus, whilst the old language dies, its idiom survives in the new. The neo- Celtic languages, then, which are Aryan in vocabulary, and largely non-Aryan in idiom, appear to be the acquired Aryan speech of a population originally speaking a non-Aryan language. This view does not necessarily imply that the ancestors of the Welsh and Irish belonged almost exclusively to the conquered pre-Celtic race: we may suppose that the invading armies of Celts destroyed a large part of the aboriginal male population, and took possession of their wives, thus producing an amalgamated race, who, however, learnt their speech from their non-Celtic mothers.

These non-Celtic inhabitants of Britain are believed by anthropologists to be of the same race as the ancient Iberians, and to have migrated through France and Spain from North Africa,' where the race is represented by the Berbers and the ancient Egyptians. "The skulls of the pure Iberian race, such as those found in the long barrows of Britain, or the Caverne de l'Homme Mort, are of the same type as those of the Berbersand the Guanches, and bear a considerable resemblance to the skulls of the ancient Egyptians." Again, on the linguistic side, M. de Rochemonteix has shown in his " Rapports grammaticaux entre l'egyptien et le berbere," that a relation exists between the Berber languages and ancient Egyptian, which are now usually included in one family, called the Hamitic. If the Iberians of Britain are related to the speakers of these languages, it is natural to expect that their language also belonged to the Hamitic family-in other words, that the pre-Aryan idioms which still live in Welsh and Irish were derived from a language allied to Egyptian and the Berber tongues. And if there is evidence that this is so-if we find, on comparison, that neo-Celtic syntax agrees with Hamitic on almost every point where it differs from Aryan, we have the linguistic complement of the anthropological evidence, and the strongest corroboration of the theory of the kinship of the early inhabitants of Britain to the North African white race.

The idea of comparing neo-Celtic with Hamitic was suggested to me by the view just mentioned as to the origin of the Iberians. If they are the same people as those who speak Hamitic languages, then the explanation of neo-Celtic syntax which Basque had failed to supply was to be sought for, it seemed to me, in Hamitic. The appositeness of this comparison of idioms may be illustrated by supposing a parallel case. If Irish, like Iberian, had been irretrievably lost, and we were led by anthropological or other reasons to infer a relationship between this lost language and Welsh, a comparison of Irish-English with Welsh would suggest the derivation of the phrase, he is after coming, from the Irish equivalent of mae if wedi dyfod. Now, as Irish is fortunately not lost, we know this to be actually the case. Further, the persistence of idiom as compared with vocabulary is shown by the fact that, although each word in this phrase agrees in meaning in Welsh and Irish, not even the word for "after" is etymologically related (Welsh, wedi; Irish, iar n-); and this goes some way to show that they are both translations of a pre-Celtic word. These two languages have diverged considerably in the matter of phonetics; is it likely that they would have independently evolved syntactical forms identical in the two languages, but differing from anything previously existing? The answer must be that these forms are not independently evolved, and do not differ from anything previously existing. The prevalence in Welsh and Irish of the very same analytical expressions shows that analysis, which is usually regarded as a modem development, goes back in these languages to the primitive period. It is the characteristic of the language of the people, and has been supposed to be modern only because it is not so apparent in the earlier literary language, which, besides being largely artificial, was based upon the dialect of a more or less Aryan aristocracy.

 

[Michael B-C]

Interesting indeed but there is a level of confusion here caused by the erroneous belief that the inhabitants of the British and Irish isles were at any time 'Celts'. DNA testing has for sometime disproved this misnomer, as recently highlighted on SOTT.

http://www.sott.net/article/263587-DNA-shows-Irish-people-have-more-complex-origins-than-previously-thought

 

[Tyomodachi]

There is a video that covers this topic a bit. (and many comments confirming this similarity)

 

[Chu]

Very interesting, thanks for sharing Artem T.! I could see some structures that could be said to be similar in other languages like Russian too. But not all.

And that, connected to the Iberian/Hamitic link made by John Morris Jones in the article two posts above... Phew, lots to think about.