Trojan language

Source: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
Trojan language
RegionTroy
Erac. 1300 BCE
Language codes
ISO 639-3–

The Trojan language was the language spoken in

Late Bronze Age
. The identity of the language is unknown, and it is not certain that there was one single language used in the city at the time.

Hypotheses

Luwian

One candidate language is

Mira, Luwian was spoken alongside both pre-Indo-European languages and later arrivals such as Greek. Finally, the Luwian seal is by no means sufficient to establish that it was spoken by the city's residents, particularly since it is an isolated example found on an easily transportable artifact.[1][2][3]

Lemnian-Etruscan

Proponents of an east to west migration hypothesis on the origin of the

Etruscans:[11]

Etruscan origins lie in the distant past. Despite the claim by Herodotus, who wrote that Etruscans migrated to Italy from Lydia in the eastern Mediterranean, there is no material or linguistic evidence to support this. Etruscan material culture developed in an unbroken chain from Bronze Age antecedents. As for linguistic relationships, Lydian is an Indo-European language. Lemnian, which is attested by a few inscriptions discovered near Kamania on the island of Lemnos, was a dialect of Etruscan introduced to the island by commercial adventurers. Linguistic similarities connecting Etruscan with Raetic, a language spoken in the sub-Alpine regions of northeastern Italy, further militate against the idea of eastern origins.

Moreover, a 2021 archeogenetic analysis of Etruscan individuals concluded that the Etruscans were autochthonous and genetically similar to the Early Iron Age

Paleo-Sardinian and Minoan) "developed on the continent in the course of the Neolithic Revolution".[13] The lack of recent Anatolian-related admixture and Iranian-related ancestry among the Etruscans, who genetically joined firmly to the European cluster, might also suggest that the presence of a handful of inscriptions found at Lemnos, in a language related to Etruscan and Raetic, "could represent population movements departing from the Italian peninsula".[12]

Greek

Another proposed language is Greek.[14][15] Archaeologist James Mellaart in the American Journal of Archaeology summarized some of the arguments in favor of this hypothesis:[15]

When one remembers that Luwian names in -ss and -nd- are rare in the Northwestern corner of Anatolia, Anatolian hieroglyphs absent, and that archaeology suggests that a branch of the Greeks remained behind in this region, where

Ahhiyawa should be located, this may just add one more argument to the hypothesis that the "Trojans" called themselves "Akhaiwoi
" and spoke some form of Greek.

However the site of Troy is devoid of Greek writings from the relevant historical period, and the current evidence points away from a Greek origin.[14]

In ancient Greek Epics

In

Arab characters as Spanish speakers and that the Song of Roland similarly portrays Arabs as speaking French.[1][2][3] Some scholars have suggested that Greek-origin names for Trojan characters in the Iliad motivate a more serious argument for the Trojans having been Greek speakers. Putative etymologies for legendary names have also been used to argue that the Trojans spoke other languages such as Thracian or Lydian. These arguments have been countered on the basis that these languages would have been familiar to classical-era bards and could therefore be later inventions.[1][2][3]

See also

References

  1. ^
    ISBN 978-0-415-34959-8
    .
  2. ^ a b c Watkins, Calvert (1986). "The language of the Trojans". In Mellink, Machteld (ed.). Troy and the Trojan War: a Symposium Held at Bryn Mawr College. Bryn Mawr Commentaries.
  3. ^ a b c Yakubovich, Ilya (2008). "3.6" (PDF). Sociolinguistics of the Luvian language (PhD Thesis). University of Chicago.
  4. ^ Beekes, Robert S. P."The Origin of the Etruscans"Archived 2012-01-17 at the Wayback Machine. In: Biblioteca Orientalis 59 (2002), 206–242.
  5. ISBN 9780191016752
    . Briquel's convincing demonstration that the famous story of an exodus, led by Tyrrhenus from Lydia to Italy, was a deliberate political fabrication created in the Hellenized milieu of the court at Sardis in the early 6th cent. BCE.
  6. ISBN 978-0-631-22038-1
    .
  7. ISBN 978-1-61451-520-3
    .
  8. ISBN 9781444337341
    .
  9. ISBN 9781780238623
    .
  10. ISBN 978-960-9559-03-4
    .
  11. ISBN 9780195170726
    . Etruscan origins lie in the distant past. Despite the claim by Herodotus, who wrote that Etruscans migrated to Italy from Lydia in the eastern Mediterranean, there is no material or linguistic evidence to support this. Etruscan material culture developed in an unbroken chain from Bronze Age antecedents. As for linguistic relationships, Lydian is an Indo-European language. Lemnian, which is attested by a few inscriptions discovered near Kaminia on the island of Lemnos, was a dialect of Etruscan introduced to the island by commercial adventurers. Linguistic similarities connecting Etruscan with Raetic, a language spoken in the sub-Alpine regions of northeastern Italy, further militate against the idea of eastern origins.
  12. ^
    PMID 34559560
    .
  13. ISBN 9780593229422
    . It's likely that Basque, Paleo-Sardinian, Minoan, and Etruscan developed on the continent in the course of the Neolithic Revolution. Sadly, the true diversity of the languages that once existed in Europe will never be known.
  14. ^
    S2CID 240494784
    .
  15. ^
    S2CID 193089026
    .
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