Pre-Greek languages

[Sean Crist]

On Thu, 30 Sep 1999, Eduard Selleslagh wrote:

> I like the comparison (BTW, is Kirisuto such a transcription of Crist?).

My login is kurisuto, which is the katakana-ized version of my family
name Crist.  "Kirisuto" is the katakana-ization of "Christ".

If I understand your post correctly, you're speculating (and I appreciate
the cautious terms in which you do so!) that there could be a connection
between Iberian and Linear A.  I can't rule this out, but of course such a
connection hasn't been shown, as you acknowledge.

I think this is probably a good place to make the following observation.
It is probably the case that during most of the long period of human
existence, the norm has been extreme linguistic diversity.  The phenomenon
of a language being spoken over a wide area is probably a fairly recent
one; I don't know that it ever happens except as the product of
empire-building.  When we go into places where there hasn't been a long
history of empires (e.g. New Guinea), what we find is that every little
village has its own language.  It wouldn't be surprising if every local
clan in prehistoric Europe similarly had its own language.

When the Indo-Europeans, Semites, etc. spread over a wide area, they
probably erased an enormous number of local languages in the process.  At
the beginning of the historical period, we can still catch glimpses of the
earlier diversity: Hattic, Hurrian, Etruscan, etc. don't appear to be
related to each other or to any other language we know.  Basque probably
represents the sole outcropping remaining from the earlier old European
diversity.

When we find these tantalizing bits of older languages just barely peeking
into the historical record, it's tempting to try to connect them with each
other. If we can actually establish a connection, that's great (and in the
Mediterranean basin, such connections might be somewhat more likely, since
transportation has always been relatively easier).  It's certainly not
wrong to make the attempt.  We should bear in mind, tho, that we should
expect to find cases of languages which can't be connected with anything.

  \/ __ __    _\_     --Sean Crist  (kurisuto at unagi.cis.upenn.edu)
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