Re: Bronze age British languages

staving Jörg Rhiemeier:
>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.


> > 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.
Indeed, and I was implying that the idea that Bronze Age British languages
were Afro-Asiatic was equally likely.
;-)

>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).
Isn't there an inscription on a mountain pass somewhere, commemorating an
allince between Troy and some other power? What language is that in?
(Presumably the language of the ally, rather than Troy itself).

Pete