Indo-Germanic

[John Peterson]

I don't have either the German or English books (Kulke/Rothermund) at hand,
but I assume what you're referring to is simply a 'Germanism' which has
crept into the English translation. In German, Indo-European is referred to
as 'indogermanisch', literarlly, as you can easily see, 'Indo-Germanic'.
This has nothing to do with any kind of nationalism or whatever, but is
simply due to the fact that, to name the huge linguistic family, in the
German (and, btw, Scandinavian) speaking countries Indo-Germanic was chosen
as it identifies the family as extending from the Indic branch in the East
to the Germanic (Icelandic) in the West. I guess it's just basically a
matter of preference nowadays, but Indo-Germanic is also occasionally found
in English-language texts, especially older ones.

John
At 23:42 21.02.1997 GMT, you wrote:
>Dear members of the Indology list,
>
>Now that Schlingloff's list has caused somewhat of a stir, I would like to
>ask our German (or German speaking) colleagues their opinion concerning the
>use of the term Indo-Germanic, as opposed to Indo-European.
>
>I am puzzled by the fact that the English translation of Hermann Kulke's and
>Dietmar Rothermund's book on Indian history (A History of India, Routledge,
>1995) uses the term Indo-Germanic instead of Indo-European, which is the
>usual term in English.  The translation, by the way, was made by Rothermund
>(if I am reading the preface correctly).
>I would appreciate any comments.
>
>Luis Gonzalez-Reimann
>University of California, Berkeley
>
>
>
>
______________________________________________________________
John Peterson

Institute for Oriental Studies
Department of Indology
Christian-Albrechts-Universität zu Kiel
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Germany

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