Greek question & the pre-history of *nekwt

[Sheila Watts]

>No doubt someone will prove me wrong, but I believe Hittite was deciphered
>at first by German speakers - so z was used as in German, which is a great
>pain.   It = /ts/.

I am frankly appalled by this level of ethnocentricity. What's the idea, we
shouldn't allow non-English speakers to decipher ancient languages because
we can only handle orthography that reads like English?

If anyone is working in linguistics who finds it a problem when an
orthographical symbol has different phonetic value in different languages,
he or she should get out fast and try maths instead.

Sheila Watts
_______________________________________________________
Dr Sheila Watts
Newnham College
Cambridge CB3 9DF
United Kingdom

phone +44 1223 335816