Pre-Greek languages

[Larry Trask]

On Mon, 27 Sep 1999 JoatSimeon at aol.com wrote:

>> sarant at village.uunet.lu writes:

>> But if we assume Linear B is Greek (and I believe this is considered
>> proven), it becomes rather self-evident that Linear A is also Greek. As I
>> say, this is unscientific, and a mere gut feeling. >>

> -- I'm afraid not.  Linear B is a terrible script in which to write Greek.
> Clumsy, ambiguous, and so limited that it would be practically impossible to
> use it for anything but short sentences and lists.

> The general consensus that the language written in Linear A script is not
> Greek is based, not least, on the fact that the related Linear B is so
> hopelessly inefficient as a medium for Greek, or any language much like
> Greek.

> What can one say about a script in which the closest you can get to
> "anthropos" is a-to-ro-po-se?  Cuneiform would be better.

I agree with these points, but I think they tend rather to support the
idea that Linear A was used to write a language quite different from
Greek, and that Linear A was merely cobled so as to produce something in
which it was possible to write Greek.  A system invented from square one
for writing Greek would surely have done a better job.

Larry Trask
COGS
University of Sussex
Brighton BN1 9QH
UK

larryt at cogs.susx.ac.uk