Thracian, Phrygian etc. (was Re: Bronze age British languages)

Hallo!

On Fri, 28 Apr 2006 22:32:08 +0200, Andreas Johansson wrote:

> Quoting Jörg Rhiemeier <joerg_rhiemeier@...>:
>
>
> > 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).
>
> This prompted me to look up the (very short) articles on various ancient
> languages of Asia Minor in the National Encyclopedia, where I learnt the
> following astonishing "facts":
>
> 1) Phrygian is closely related to Macedonian and Greek.
> 2) Thracian is closely related to Phrygian.
> 3) Thracian is not closely related to Macedonian and Greek.
:)

> Can anyone with a knowledge of these matter tell me what's actually known or
> plausibly surmised about this?
We know enough about Thracian, Phrygian and Macedonian to say that they are
definitely Indo-European, but not enough to know where exactly to put them
in the Indo-European family tree (except Macedonian, which is quite widely
accepted to be closely related to Greek).  There is, however, a popular
(though controversial) theory that Greek, Macedonian, Thracian, Phrygian
and Armenian form a common branch of IE.  What DOESN'T belong there are the
Anatolian languages (Hittite, Luvian, Palaic, Lycian, Lydian and a few
others), which form a very distinct branch that is assumed by many to have
diverged from the rest of IE several centuries before the rest of IE broke up.

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