Re: Bronze age British languages
| From: | Jörg Rhiemeier <joerg_rhiemeier@...> |
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| Date: | Friday, April 28, 2006, 20:12 |
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Hallo!
On Thu, 27 Apr 2006 16:00:30 +0100, Peter Bleackley wrote:
> staving Jörg Rhiemeier:
>
> [...]
>
> >Theo Vennemann proposed that the languages of Bronze Age Britain were
> >Afro-Asiatic, based on typological similarities which chiefly revolved
> >around VSO word order. But VSO word order isn't all that rare, and many
> >of the similarities between Insular Celtic and Afro-Asiatic (which, BTW,
> >is not VSO in its entirety, only the northern group consisting of Semitic,
> >Egyptian and Berber) seem to be general typological correlates of VSO order
> >found in VSO languages all around the world.
>
> Presumably this Afro-Asiatic language was Trojan, spoken by Brutus and his
> followers when they arrived in Britain after the fall of Troy, and defeated
> the giants Gog and Magog.
:)
I know that tale, but weren't it the ancestors of the *Britons* that came
from Troy according to that legend? But frankly, this is just a tall tale,
probably inspired by the myth that Rome was founded by descendants of
Trojan refugees, without a grain of truth in it.
And what regards the language of Troy: we don't know, but many scholars
assume that it was an Anatolian IE language closely related to Hittite.
Thre are other suggestions, though (such as that their language was
related to Etruscan).
... brought to you by the Weeping Elf
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