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Is Thracian that hard to decipher? | ||
Tags: Dead Languages | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Philological Room |  | |
| a3 Triglot Senior Member Bulgaria Joined 5065 days ago 273 posts - 370 votes  Speaks: Bulgarian*, English, Russian Studies: Portuguese, German, Italian, Spanish, Norwegian, Finnish | Message 1 of 3 10 April 2011 at 9:05pm | IP Logged |
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I'm suprised that so many Thracian words are known and yet the inscriptions in Thracian - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thracian_language#Inscriptions - have not been deciphered.
Let's take for example the inscription from Ezerovo: ΡΟΛΙΣΤΕΝΕΑΣΝ / ΕΡΕΝΕΑΤΙΛ / ΤΕΑΝΗΣΚΟΑ / ΡΑΖΕΑΔΟΜ / ΕΑΝΤΙΛΕΖΥ / ΠΤΑΜΙΗΕ / ΡΑΖ / ΗΛΤΑ rolis Teneasnerenea Til Teanēskoarazeado Mean Tilezupta Miēerazēl Ta The words for me, my, mine in most Indoeuropean languages begin with M(as is the case in English), so me/mea/mean and mi/miē/miēe can easily cary this meaning. 'You' in reconstructed PIE is 'tu' and we can see some potential words begining with t - ta, ti, te. What's more interesting, 'til' occurs twice and also there is 'tean', which is quite similiar to 'mean' - they could mean to you and to me or yours and mine for example. 'Raze' also appears twice. To my suprise, there are some potential words that sound familiar to me: 'koa' (коя - who), 'do'(до - next to), 'az';'as'(аз - I), but it's most probably a coincidence. Can you find a longer string of letters that sounds similiar or equal to a word you already know - back then Indoeuropean languages were much more closer than today so it musnt be that difficult. Also the insciption is in Greek, which doesnt have letters for v, sh, j, zh and other sounds that Thracian possibly had; 'rolis' could have been pronounced 'rolish' and 'raze' could have been pronounced 'rashe' or 'razhe'. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Gorgoll2 Senior Member Brazil veritassword.blogspo Joined 4955 days ago 159 posts - 192 votes Speaks: Portuguese* | Message 2 of 3 11 April 2011 at 2:36am | IP Logged |
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It looks to be Semitic. But, it remembers roots common to Native Brazilian languages.
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| William Camden Hexaglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 6081 days ago 1936 posts - 2333 votes Speaks: English*, German, Spanish, Russian, Turkish, French | Message 3 of 3 13 April 2011 at 8:09pm | IP Logged |
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Considering that it is usually thought to be an Indo-European language, not much more of Thracian has been deciphered than Etruscan, usually thought to be a non-Indo-European language and a language isolate.
Deciphering depends on looking for cognates in related languages. But this has not helped much with Thracian. Perhaps it is not after all Indo-European. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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