Newsgroups: sci.lang
Path: cantaloupe.srv.cs.cmu.edu!das-news2.harvard.edu!news2.near.net!bloom-beacon.mit.edu!usc!cs.utexas.edu!swrinde!pipex!uunet!EU.net!sun4nl!mcv
From: mcv@inter.NL.net (Miguel Carrasquer)
Subject: Re: basque/guanche/pictish/ligurian etc.
Message-ID: <D02zBI.LqG@inter.NL.net>
Keywords: basque,guanche,pictish,ligurian
Organization: NLnet
References: <3bhj13$id@kcl.fi>
Date: Wed, 30 Nov 1994 12:42:53 GMT
Lines: 61

In article <3bhj13$id@kcl.fi>, Tero . Tommila <sepe@rankki.kcl.fi> wrote:
>In <3b5rvl$s6s@bambi.zdv.Uni-Mainz.DE> knappen@kph.Uni-Mainz.DE (Joerg 
>Knappen) writes:
>>By the way, what is known about Guanche? If I remember right it is 
>>classified as Afro-Asiatic belonging to the hamitic (Berber) branch.
> 
>As I have understood, almost nothing is known about the Guanche language,
>except some place names which don't look to me very Semitic (or Afro-Asiatic
>where some tend to put the Guanche). Instead they seem somewhat similar to
>Basque and even to the non-IE Pictish stuff on those Ogham inscriptions.
>I remember the Guanche to have been "racially" quite different from present-
>day Berber and other Afro-Asiatic peoples.
>Could somebody inform us more about the Guanche ? I'm not an expert of the
>Afro-Asiatic phylum...
> 
>I'm wondering what connections did the Iberians have as their language seems
>unrelated to Basque ? 

I don't know anything about Guanche (or Berber).  Iberian is indeed,
as far as we know, unrelated to Basque.  There are similarities in
phonology and syllable structure (they "sound" similar), but the
Iberian vocabulary, as far as it is known, has not yielded any
etymologies in common with Basque.  About all that can be said is 
that Iberian is probably the language that spread from the
early Neolithic Almeri'a culture northward along the Mediterranean 
coast and then inland along the Ebro river.  Traditionally, the
roots of the Almeri'a culture have been sought in North Africa,
but I don't think there's any hard evidence.

>And where do the Tartessians belong (between the 
>Iberians and Lusitanians) ? 

The Tartessian script differs from the Iberian, and has not
been completely deciphered (due to the lack of sufficient
material).  It's anybody's guess.  It may be another dialect
of Iberian, or it may be related to the languages originating
from the other early Neolithic nucleus in the Iberian peninsula,
the region of modern Lisbon (Tejo estuary).  Classical writers
mention the "Cinetes" in the Algarve as a distinct non-Iberian
tribe.  Then again, others have claimed Etruscan affinities
for Tartessian...

>Lusitanians seem to have had connections to the British
>Isles.

Lusitanian is Indo-European, related to Celtic, but different
(for instance, one inscriptions reads: PORKOM "pig" (acc.),
showing that Lusitanian maintains IE *p, which disappears
in Celtic).

>Then there is the non-IE Ligurian "substratum". Where does it fit ?

It's not clear whether Ligurian is IE or not.  The term is best
reserved for the language spoken roughly along the Mediterranean 
coast of the French and Italian "Riviera's" (possibly extending 
into Northen Catalonia).  

-- 
Miguel Carrasquer         ____________________  ~~~
Amsterdam                [                  ||]~  
mcv@inter.NL.net         ce .sig n'est pas une .cig 
