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From: alderson@netcom16.netcom.com (Richard M. Alderson III)
Subject: Re: Etruscan
In-Reply-To: Peter k Chong's message of 15 Aug 1996 06:37:09 GMT
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Date: Thu, 15 Aug 1996 17:39:01 GMT
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In article <4uugil$9u0@news.inforamp.net> Peter k Chong <peterk@inforamp.net>
writes:

>I have read that Etruscan is probably related to the ancient Lydian tongues of
>Asia Minor. Unfortunately, my source (Encyl. Britannia) didn't back it up with
>any correspondaces and I stress the book said there is only good reason to
>believe in a relationship.

The problem with the Lydian connection for the Etruscans is that Lydian, like
Lycian and a number of other minor langauges of Asia Minor, is demonstrably
Indo-European, and in fact demonstrably Anatolian (that is, closely related to
Hittite, Luwian and Palaic of 1000 years earlier).

Etruscan is demonstrably *not* Indo-European.

>Other authors have postulated that Etruscan might be an offshoot of Sumerian
>or a related Turanian language like Magyar, Turkish or Khalkha Mongolian.

Magyar is a Finno-Ugric language (in fact, the "Ugric" in the term is derived
from the Russian word for "Hungarian"), shown to be related to Finnish in a
1752 monograph which predates the clear demonstration of the Indo-European
family by 34 years.  The Finno-Ugric family is in turn a subfamily of the
Uralic languages.

The Turkic languages such as Osmanli Turkish, the Mongolic languages such as
Khalkha, and the Tungusic languages such as Manchu, make up the central core of
the Altaic family, with pretty good evidence for the inclusion of Japanese and
Korean as well.

It was at one time thought, without proof, that the Uralic and Altaic families
were closely related; that they are not has become clear as more research on
the question has been pursued.

Sumerian has no relation to *any* of the above.
-- 
Rich Alderson   You know the sort of thing that you can find in any dictionary
                of a strange language, and which so excites the amateur philo-
                logists, itching to derive one tongue from another that they
                know better: a word that is nearly the same in form and meaning
                as the corresponding word in English, or Latin, or Hebrew, or
                what not.
                                                --J. R. R. Tolkien,
alderson@netcom.com                               _The Notion Club Papers_
