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Etruscana (was: some Proto-Quendic grammar)

From:Ray Brown <ray.brown@...>
Date:Monday, November 17, 2003, 6:39
On Sunday, November 16, 2003, at 11:43 AM, Andreas Johansson wrote:

[snip]
> Etruscan's relatives? Are there any languages known be related to > Etruscan?
The language on the stele found on Lemnos bears strong structural resemblances to Etruscans and is considered by many to be related. (Must add a page on this to my website.) Apart from that - no, there are no obvious links. In 1925 Paul Kretschmer put forward a theory linking Etruscan to IE or, as he called then, 'Indogermanisch'. According to him, the IE were descended from 'Urindogermanisch' (i.e. what we now call PIE), which had a sister language, 'Urrätotyrrhenisch' (Proto-Raet-Tyrrhenic) from which were derived Raetian, Etruscan, and Pelasgic (the pre-Greek language of Greece) inter alia. Both Urindogermanisch & Urrätotyrrhenisch were, he said, descended from a common ancestor 'Protindogermanisch' - _not_ our PIE, but one generation back, i.e. the Nostratic that some now theorize about. I don't think anyone now adheres to Kretschmer's actual theory - but I'm fairly certain there are still similar ideas about that link Etruscan with with the IE of Anatolia (Hittite, Luwian etc) and/or with Nostratic. Of course, inevitably, some have linked it with Basque' IIRC others hsve suggested links to the Dravidian langs; and I dare say someone, somewhere, somewhen has suggest a link with most of earth's different language families. This seems to be the common fate of language isolates. Ray =============================================== http://home.freeuk.com/ray.brown ray.brown@freeuk.com (home) raymond.brown@kingston-college.ac.uk (work) ===============================================

Replies

Andreas Johansson <andjo@...>
Costentin Cornomorus <elemtilas@...>
Tristan McLeay <zsau@...>
Roger Mills <romilly@...>