Theo Vennemann genannt Nierfeld (; born 27 May 1937 in

Oberhausen Oberhausen (, ) is a city on the river Emscher in the Ruhr Area, Germany, located between Duisburg and Essen ( ). The city hosts the International Short Film Festival Oberhausen and its Gasometer Oberhausen is an anchor point of the European ...

-Sterkrade) is a German historical linguist known for his controversial theories of a "

Vasconic The Vasconic languages (from Latin 'Basque') are a putative family of languages that includes Basque and the extinct Aquitanian language. The extinct Iberian language is sometimes putatively included. The concept of the Vasconic languages is ...

" and an "

Atlantic The Atlantic Ocean is the second-largest of the world's five oceans, with an area of about . It covers approximately 20% of Earth's surface and about 29% of its water surface area. It is known to separate the "Old World" of Africa, Europe an ...

stratum In geology and related fields, a stratum ( : strata) is a layer of rock or sediment characterized by certain lithologic properties or attributes that distinguish it from adjacent layers from which it is separated by visible surfaces known as e ...

European languages Most languages of Europe belong to the Indo-European language family. Out of a total European population of 744 million as of 2018, some 94% are native speakers of an Indo-European language. Within Indo-European, the three largest phyla are Ro ...

, published since the 1990s. He was professor of Germanic and theoretical linguistics at

Ludwig Maximilian University The Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich (simply University of Munich or LMU; german: link=no, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München) is a public research university in Munich, Bavaria, Germany. Originally established as the University of ...

Munich Munich ( ; german: München ; bar, Minga ) is the capital and most populous city of the German state of Bavaria. With a population of 1,558,395 inhabitants as of 31 July 2020, it is the third-largest city in Germany, after Berlin and Ha ...

from 1974 (retired 2005).

Theories

Vennemann's book ''Europa Vasconica – Europa Semitica'' (2003) was reviewed in '' Lingua'' by linguists Philip Baldi and B. Richard Page, who made reasoned dismissals of a number of his proposals. The reviewers still applauded Vennemann's "efforts to reassess the role and extent of language contact in the development of Indo-European languages in Europe". Vennemann's controversial claims about the prehistory of European languages include the following: * Vasconic substratum theory: A "Vasconic" language family ancestral to

Basque Basque may refer to: * Basques, an ethnic group of Spain and France * Basque language, their language Places * Basque Country (greater region), the homeland of the Basque people with parts in both Spain and France * Basque Country (autonomous c ...

is a

substratum In linguistics, a stratum (Latin for "layer") or strate is a language that influences or is influenced by another through contact. A substratum or substrate is a language that has lower power or prestige than another, while a superstratum or su ...

of European languages, especially Germanic, Celtic, and Italic. Vennemann claims this could be evidenced by various loan words, toponyms, and structural features such as word-initial accent. The linguistic origin of Old European hydronymy, traditionally considered as

Indo-European The Indo-European languages are a language family native to the overwhelming majority of Europe, the Iranian plateau, and the northern Indian subcontinent. Some European languages of this family, English, French, Portuguese, Russian, ...

, is classified as Vasconic by Vennemann. Numerous toponyms that are traditionally considered as Indo-European by virtue of their Indo-European head words are instead names that have been adapted to Indo-European languages through the addition of a suffix. * Semitic is a substratum of the

Celtic languages The Celtic languages (usually , but sometimes ) are a group of related languages descended from Proto-Celtic. They form a branch of the Indo-European language family. The term "Celtic" was first used to describe this language group by Edwar ...

, as shown by certain structural features of Celtic, especially their lack of external possessors.English – a German dialect? Prof. em. Theo Vennemann, Ph.D. Rotary Club Munich International. 7 November 2005. *

Punic The Punic people, or western Phoenicians, were a Semitic people in the Western Mediterranean who migrated from Tyre, Phoenicia to North Africa during the Early Iron Age. In modern scholarship, the term ''Punic'' – the Latin equivalent of the ...

, the

Semitic Semitic most commonly refers to the Semitic languages, a name used since the 1770s to refer to the language family currently present in West Asia, North and East Africa, and Malta. Semitic may also refer to: Religions * Abrahamic religions ** ...

language spoken in classical

Carthage Carthage was the capital city of Ancient Carthage, on the eastern side of the Lake of Tunis in what is now Tunisia. Carthage was one of the most important trading hubs of the Ancient Mediterranean and one of the most affluent cities of the clas ...

, is a superstratum of the Germanic languages. According to Vennemann, Carthaginians colonized the

North Sea The North Sea lies between Great Britain, Norway, Denmark, Germany, the Netherlands and Belgium. An epeiric sea on the European continental shelf, it connects to the Atlantic Ocean through the English Channel in the south and the Norwegian S ...

region between the 6th and 3rd centuries BC; this, he claims, is evidenced by proposed Semitic loanwords in the Germanic languages as well as structural features such as strong verbs and similarities between

Norse religion Old Norse religion, also known as Norse paganism, is the most common name for a branch of Germanic religion which developed during the Proto-Norse period, when the North Germanic peoples separated into a distinct branch of the Germanic peop ...

and Semitic religion. The theory replaces his older theory of an unknown Semitic substrate language that he called "Atlantidic" or "Semitidic". The

Runic alphabet Runes are the letters in a set of related alphabets known as runic alphabets native to the Germanic peoples. Runes were used to write various Germanic languages (with some exceptions) before they adopted the Latin alphabet, and for specialised ...

is derived directly from the

Phoenician alphabet The Phoenician alphabet is an alphabet (more specifically, an abjad) known in modern times from the Canaanite and Aramaic inscriptions found across the Mediterranean region. The name comes from the Phoenician civilization. The Phoenician a ...

used by the Carthaginians but without intervention by the

Greek alphabet The Greek alphabet has been used to write the Greek language since the late 9th or early 8th century BCE. It is derived from the earlier Phoenician alphabet, and was the earliest known alphabetic script to have distinct letters for vowels as ...

. The

Germanic sound shift Grimm's law (also known as the First Germanic Sound Shift) is a set of sound laws describing the Proto-Indo-European (PIE) stop consonants as they developed in Proto-Germanic in the 1st millennium BC. First systematically put forward by Jacob Gri ...

is dated to the 6th to 3rd centuries BC, as evidenced by the fact that only some presumed Punic loanwords participated in it.

References

External links

Private site

Academic site
{{DEFAULTSORT:Vennemann, Theo 1937 births Living people Linguists from Germany Paleolinguists Sterkrade