Protoeurooplaste keelepärandist
Proto-European linguistic heritage in the Balto-Finnic languages

Summary/Abstract: The article discusses problems of the hypothetical substrate language during the past half century, taking into account the existing vocabulary and results of etymological studies. While in the 1950s it was ascertained that Finno­Ugrians have lived in our region for at least 5000 years, later a hypothesis was elaborated that people of the Kunda culture (6th millennium BC) most probably did not speak any Finno­Ugric languages. According to Paul Ariste they were among the early inhabitants of Europe, i.e. Proto­Europeans. As there are numerous words that are common to the Balto­Finnic languages but not known in other Finno­Ugric languages, we can assume that at least part of them belong to the substrate vocabulary and derive from Proto­European. Ariste assumed that traces of such substrate can be found particularly in ancient Estonian place names (e.g. Peipsi), Estonian words for landscape features (e.g. allikas ‘fountain’, neem ‘cape’), fish names (e.g. ahven ‘perch’, haug ‘pike’, rääbis ‘vendace’, siig ‘lavaret’), and somatic vocabulary (e.g. higi ‘sweat’, huul ‘lip’). The substrate hypothesis has been put forward by other Balto­Finnic ethnogenesis and vocabulary researchers, such as Huno Rätsep, Kalevi Wiik, Kaisa Häkkinen, Tapani Lehtinen, Janne Saarikivi, Petri Kallio, and Jaakko Häkkinen. Over the last few decades, much research has been done on the contacts of the western Uralic languages with the Indo­Iranian and Baltic languages, in the course of which many words of hitherto unknown origin have been defined as loanwords, e.g. haug ‘pike’, hõlm ‘hem’, kiitma ‘praise’, koha ‘pike perch’, kube ‘groin’, lõug ‘chin’, mets ‘forest’, nahk ‘skin’, Ruhnu, siig ‘lavaret’, teib ‘dace’, vimb ‘vimba bream’. But there are still a number of Balto­ Finnic words which have no equivalents in distant cognate languages and are not etymologically identified as loanwords. We can still assume that the words eile ‘yesterday’, helmes ‘bead’, jänes ‘hare’, liha ‘meat’, must ‘black’, saar ‘island’ and soo ‘marsh’, as well as the place names Peipsi, Pärnu and Võrtsjärv, are probable Proto­European substrate words.

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