Stolarek et al: Genetic history of East-Central Europe...

[ambron]

Bukva

In modern linguistics, floristic arguments have no significance. Today we know that 3,000 years ago, the vegetation of Europe created a different landscape than today.

Amber does not belong to the topic, because this decorative material did not occur in Galicia. Nevertheless, the Slavs have two native names for amber - "jantar" (Old Polish "jętar") and "głaz". "Głaz" has an undoubted Proto-Slavic etymology, while "jantar" as an alleged borrowing from the Phoenician language is not confirmed in the sources. Jantar is rather juxtaposes by modern linguists (Śmietanowska) with the Proto-Slavic "jętriti" - "to kindle, to burn".

[ambron]

ph2ter

Kortlandt, Pronk and Pronk-Tiethoff refer to Udolph because their results of examining the Temematic and Neolithic substrate give similar indications regarding the location of the Slavic homeland.

Babik, however, researched toponymy himself, independently of Udolph, and, like Udolph, he excluded Polesie as a Slavic homeland.

[FR9CZ6]

Bukva

In modern linguistics, floristic arguments have no significance. Today we know that 3,000 years ago, the vegetation of Europe created a different landscape than today.

Amber does not belong to the topic, because this decorative material did not occur in Galicia. Nevertheless, the Slavs have two native names for amber - "jantar" (Old Polish "jętar") and "głaz". "Głaz" has an undoubted Proto-Slavic etymology, while "jantar" as an alleged borrowing from the Phoenician language is not confirmed in the sources. Jantar is rather juxtaposes by modern linguists (Śmietanowska) with the Proto-Slavic "jętriti" - "to kindle, to burn".

Very interesting. In Hungarian a cognate is used. In modern hungarian 'gyanta' means resin, but in old and middle hungarian the word 'gyantár' was used for amber. All the etymological dictionaries I checked say that it's a wanderwort which derives from a baltic language. Apparently the available sources in english say the same.

[ambron]

FR9CZ6

Śmietanowska reconstructs the Proto-Slavic *jǫtar as the starting point for Baltic and Uralic forms - gintaras, gentars, gyanta, jamdar.

I just don't know if the author has already published her work in any peer-reviewed linguistic journal? You can read the preprint in Polish here:

https://rudaweb.pl/index.php/2018/03/16/...go-nalotu/

[FR9CZ6]

FR9CZ6

Śmietanowska reconstructs the Proto-Slavic *jǫtar as the starting point for Baltic and Uralic forms - gintaras, gentars, gyanta, jamdar.

I just don't know if the author has already published her work in any peer-reviewed linguistic journal? You can read the preprint in Polish here:

https://rudaweb.pl/index.php/2018/03/16/...go-nalotu/

I'm not a linguist so I can't really tell whether this etymology is correct or not, but to me it doesn't really seem like any of these words for amber has an "undoubted Proto-Slavic etymology."

[ph2ter]

FR9CZ6

Śmietanowska reconstructs the Proto-Slavic *jǫtar as the starting point for Baltic and Uralic forms - gintaras, gentars, gyanta, jamdar.

I just don't know if the author has already published her work in any peer-reviewed linguistic journal? You can read the preprint in Polish here:

https://rudaweb.pl/index.php/2018/03/16/...go-nalotu/

Tacitus wrote that the Aesti were "the only people who collect amber, glaesum is their own word for it, in the shallows or even on the beach".
Glaesum, an apparently Latinised word for amber, is the only surviving example of the Aestian language.
But glaesum is the word quoted of being of Germanic origin, given its similarity to the Gothic word glas which is possibly found as a Germanic loanword *glazU - 'ball' in Proto-Slavic.
PSl. *glazu 'glass' (old rus. glazky 'glass balls', pol. glaz) < germ. *glesan 'amber' (old germ. glas, old. eng. glaes).

So Proto-Slavs didn't have their own word for amber.

[Moeca]

This lost all credibility the moment I saw "Germano-Albanian"

Similarity in Germanic and Albanian may come from the fact that both were strongly influenced by Italo-Celtic and Slavic languages. Albanian is a very young language, recorded in the XV century, so everything is possible with such languages. Anyway, Anthony and Ringe are mainstream now. You have no credibility to question them.

You don't really know what you're talking about in terms of Albanian language, and certainly not about its genetics. Albanian has and still does occupy an independent branch of the indo European language tree. It's closest potential connection is Greco-Armenian. At least early in the Bronze Age. It's not connected to Germans. Germanic Y-DNA doesn't even have any correlations outside a small percentage likely of Gothic or Norman origin. 

It's not young by any stretch. It's evolved sure. Every language does.

agree with you on the Greco-Armenian ............it is part of the findings that Armenian, Greek and Albanian are the only 3 that did not come out of corded ware group while all the other southern and western indo-european groups did

[Antoni123]

Target: PL_Masovia1 The left side of the Vistula
Distance: 1.9711% / 0.01971100
88.2 MoedlingAdGS_AvarPeriod
8.0 MoedlingLeireninnen_lateAntique
3.8 Leobersdorf_AvarPeriod


Target: Early_Medieval_Wielkopolska_3 Right side of the Vistula River
Distance: 0.6326% / 0.00632575 { !!!!!! }
95.6 MoedlingAdGS_AvarPeriod
3.8 Leobersdorf_AvarPeriod
0.6 MoedlingAdGS_AvarPeriod_contam



https://drive.google.com/file/d/12wMC6OI...p=drivesdk

[ambron]

ph2ter

Pronk-Tiethoff (glaza - amber):

“The semantic connection between the Germanic and Slavic forms is not straightforward. The reflexes of the word in Slavic vary greatly in meaning and give the impression of being a relic rather than a relatively recent loanword: if the word was borrowed in slavic denoting a concrete item like glass or amber, we would expect the meaning to have been retained at least in some of the slavic form. The word has nowadays largely been regarded as an inherited word, although the etymology is not entirely clear.”

https://books.google.pl/books?id=0iWLAgA...nk&f=false

[Parastais]

Best research on янтарь/ gintaras I had found was some Russian article of 60ies/70ies. It featured dating its appearance in various written sources and in which form.
Main finding of the author were following:
1) there were 3 original forms for the word - Lithuanian gintar(as), Curonian dzintar(s) and Old Prussian gentar(s) - all regular Baltic sister dialect forms from same word.
2) after Prussian conquest by Teutons in Medieval Latin texts appear Gentorum. Term for amber.
3) later from gentorum we get Hungarian forms (directly) and Russian forms (mediated by Prussian German/ Gotland traders, in their languages g>j, compare modern spelling of Gotland > Jotland).
4) after Russian sources forms with jentar/jantar appear in other Slavic languages
5) curiously word back migrated to Grand Duchy of Lithuania itself, attested in some modern Lithuanian dialects as jentaras. GDL was cut off the sea and Amber for centuries.

[ph2ter]

Best research on янтарь/ gintaras I had found was some Russian article of 60ies/70ies. It featured dating its appearance in various written sources and in which form.
Main finding of the author were following:
1) there were 3 original forms for the word - Lithuanian gintar(as), Curonian dzintar(s) and Old Prussian gentar(s) - all regular Baltic sister dialect forms from same word.
2) after Prussian conquest by Teutons in Medieval Latin texts appear Gentorum. Term for amber.
3) later from gentorum we get Hungarian forms (directly) and Russian forms (mediated by Prussian German/ Gotland traders, in their languages g>j, compare modern spelling of Gotland > Jotland).
4) after Russian sources forms with jentar/jantar appear in other Slavic languages
5) curiously word back migrated to Grand Duchy of Lithuania itself, attested in some modern Lithuanian dialects as jentaras. GDL was cut off the sea and Amber for centuries.

Again all this confirm that Proto-Slavs didn't have their own word for amber.
It means that they were very far from the amber routes which were going from Vistula to the Adriatic Sea and Danube.

[ph2ter]

The beech case:
Proto-Slavs didn't have the word for beech because Proto-Slavic *bùky f. is of Germanic origin, with two proposed sources of borrowing:

For meaning beech: From Proto-West Germanic *bōku (“beech”),formally equivalent to *bukъ (“beech”) +‎ *-y.
For meaning books, writs: From Gothic pl (bōkōs, “books”) (per Vasmer, Trubachev).

[Vinitharya]

It would have to be the latter.  Unless the proto-Slavic homeland was in what is now eastern Germany, they would have not come into contact with proto-West Germanic people.  But then again, as a native English speaker, I use many times every day Latinate words that have replaced the Anglo-Saxon terms the language started out with.  Like the very word language.  A thousand years ago, the word my maternal male-line ancestors would have used for it was getheode, which is unknown in modern English.  While it is unlikely, there is always the possibility the native Slavic word for beech has been lost forever as that language was not written down (unlike Old English) because the early Slavs prestige borrowed a Gothic word, much like the medieval English borrowed language from the Normans and replaced getheode.

[ph2ter]

It would have to be the latter.  Unless the proto-Slavic homeland was in what is now eastern Germany, they would have not come into contact with proto-West Germanic people.  But then again, as a native English speaker, I use many times every day Latinate words that have replaced the Anglo-Saxon terms the language started out with.  Like the very word language.  A thousand years ago, the word my maternal male-line ancestors would have used for it was getheode, which is unknown in modern English.  While it is unlikely, there is always the possibility the native Slavic word for beech has been lost forever as that language was not written down (unlike Old English) because the early Slavs prestige borrowed a Gothic word, much like the medieval English borrowed language from the Normans and replaced getheode.

Things doesn't go that way in case of words for such widespread trees. And at least one branch of Slavic would preserve the native word.