Dan Sulani wrote:
>> It turns out that it was the Etruscans who gave the alphabet
>> letters their modern European names, breaking with the
>> Greek < Phoenician names alpha < alef, beta < bet, etc.
>
> Interesting. But I'm a bit puzzled. How do we know this?
> I thought that not much was known about the Etruscan lang.
One clue is the word *elementum* 'letter of the alphabet' (among
other things) which lacks a plausible IE etymology, but
can be understood as 'L-M-N-tum'.
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