Mycenaean (Standardization)

[JoatSimeon at aol.com]

>X99Lynx at aol.com writes:

>Although I've been told that language can change wildly or not change at
>all, for no reason at all, I find this notable if true.

-- it's simple.  Linear B, the syllabic script used for Mycenaean after about
1450 BCE (no earlier, possibly later), ceased to be used at all after around
1200 BCE, because Greece lapsed into preliterate status.  When the Greeks
aquired writing again, about 500 years later, they used a modified form of
the alphabetic script developed in the Levant.

>If Mycenaean truly shows no sign of change during the centuries from the time
>it was first written, that would seem unusual.

-- Myceanaean was "written" exclusively for accounting purposes, in a script
very badly suited to the sounds of the Greek language; it was adapted from
Linear A, which was used to write whatever it was the Minoans spoke. (Which
was certainly not Greek, and probably not an Indo-European language at all.)

Linear B is a syllabic script (with some logograms) in which all sounds
expressed end in vowels.  The closest you can come to writing a typical Greek
word like "anthropos" is something like a-to-ro-po-se.

The multiple meanings of the signs make any but the shortest statement
extremely ambiguous, which is probably why the script wasn't used for
anything but accounting lists.

>Otherwise we would expect "dialectic gradients,"  wouldn't we?

>[ Moderator's query:  In accounting ledgers??? --rma ]

-- precisely.