Tyrsenian languages
A close relationship of the
Etruscan language and the
Raetic language, together with the
Lemnian language has been proposed by
Helmut Rix (1998), who classifies them as
Tyrsenian (
Tyrsenisch, also
Tyrrhenian), after the
Tyrrhenoi. Rix assumes a date for Proto-Tyrsenian of roughly 1000 BC.
A larger
Aegean family including the
Eteocretan (
Minoan language) and
Eteocypriot has been proposed. If these languages could be shown to be related to Etruscan and Rhaetic, they would constitute a
pre-Indo-European or "
Pelasgian" phylum stretching from the
Aegean islands and
Crete across mainland
Greece and the
Italian peninsula to the
Alps. It should be noted, however, that this is by no means a common view; there are just as serious attempts of linking Eteocretan and Eteocypriot with
Semitic, and mainstream scholarship remains agnostic.
A relation with the
Anatolian languages within
Indo-European has been proposed (Steinbauer 1999; Palmer 1965), but is not generally accepted (although Palmer did show that some Linear A inscriptions were sensible as a variant of
Luwian). If these languages are an early Indo-European stratum rather than pre-Indo-European, they would be associated with Krahe's
Old European hydronymy and would date back to a "
Kurganization" during the early
Bronze Age.
The language group would have died out around the
3rd century BC in the Aegean (by assimilation of the speakers to
Greek), and around the
1st century AD in Italy (by assimilation to
Latin).
* Dieter H. Steinbauer,
Neues Handbuch des Etruskischen, St. Katrharinen 1999
* Helmut Rix,
Rätisch und Etruskisch, Innsbruck 1998
* L R Palmer,
Mycenaeans and Minoans, Second ed. New York: Alfred A. Knopf. 1965.
*
Tyrrhenoi*
Etruscan civilization*
Minoan civilization
