Elamite

[X99Lynx at aol.com]

In a message dated 11/2/2000 7:23:22 PM, rmccalli at sunmuw1.MUW.Edu writes:

<< I saw somewhere, maybe on the web? (and possibly unreliable)
that Elamite was spoken in SW Iran until the 10th c. AD or so>>

Apparently a characteristic of "Elamite" is that the texts that are readable
(e.g., the Behistun inscription) are "like Ottoman Turkish, made up of many
borrowed words, particularly Persian and Semitic."  Early "Elamite" texts
have not been deciphered.

Two problems are reflected here.  One is that it is difficult for a language
that has done a lot of borrowing to create an identifiable substrate (or
adstrate) in the language it has heavily borrowed from.  The other is that
Elamite seems to be a language of uncertain identity, so that one might not
recognize it in a substrate if one saw one.

Regards,
S. Long