Minoan is an IE language?

[JoatSimeon at aol.com]

In a message dated 2/23/01 9:04:22 PM Mountain Standard Time,
sarima at friesen.net writes:

> From at least two places I have recently heard it suggested that the
> Minoan language (as written in Linear A) is an IE language, perhaps even
> related to the Anatolian branch (especially Luwian).

-- I find this unlikely.  The Linear B script, developed from Linear A, is
not only unsuited to writing Greek, it's grossly unsuited to writing any
early IE language -- all the sounds end in a vowel, for instance.  This is
what makes Linear B so clumsy and ambiguous a writing system for an inflected
language.  If the closest you can get to "anthropos" is "at-o-ro-po-se", how
would it be any better for Luwian?

> Against it is the fact that it has not yet been deciphered per se.  Is it
> really possible for Linear A to have recorded an IE language and still
> resisted decipherment this long - especially an Anatolian language?

-- I wouldn't think so, given the common elements in Linear A and Linear B,
that Linear B is now well understood, and the amount of study that's gone
into the Anatolian languages in the last 75-odd years.  Plus, of course,
people have been trying to decipher the Linear A texts since the Linear B
tablets were shown to be in Greek.