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This is somewhat offtopic, but I'd like to bring a very important point across here: you're basically using the phonology (and spelling conventions) of modern Greek onto ancient Greek, which is just plain wrong. The letter Gamma (Γγ) would have been pronounced still as /g/ (as in English...

Why would it be Iranian? The only Iranian-(Scythian)- speaking peoples that actually lived at the Danube in Antiquity were the Iazyges (in eastern Hungary). In contrast, Celtic-speaking peoples lived at the entirety of the Danube, in particular its source area (probably part of the Celtic...

Dravidians in Slovakia? Good luck with that one... :laughing: Also the statement that "tamil is the oldest language in the world" is a very dubious one. What is it with this repetitive behaviour of making a similar post over and over, are you some kind of shill? As a moderator, I'm hereby...

This is absolutely correct. *w was (largely) lost in Greek by the archaic period (except for some dialects, written with the letter digamma), but it was definitely present in earlier Mycenaean Greek. - English "work" versus Greek εργον (earlier *ϝεργον). - αναξ 'king' (earlier *ϝαναξ, spelled...

First, I would like to say that I wrote that post back in 2011. That makes a big difference to me. Second, I would like to say that the assumption that R1a is somehow associated with Germanic peoples was reasonable then, and it is reasonable now. As you are aware, R1a was present in Central...

The word 'Celt' was the name of the Gauls for themselves (the Gauls of 'Celtic' Gaul, as opposed to Belgic Gaul). The word (as part of a name, such as "Celtillus" ('little Celt' - also the name of Vercingetorix' own father) also shows up in dozens of inscriptions from Gaul.

Sorry, but what little evidence we have of their language shows that the Vandals were Germanic. Their personal names are overtly Germanic: Geiseric ('spear chieftain' - see English 'gar', and surnames such as "Friedrich" or "Dietrich") and Hilderic ('battle chieftain' - see Brunnhilde from the...

The university of Washington has uploaded a complete English translation of the Chapter of the Later Han Histories that regards the "Western Regions". You might also want to check out the so-called Wei chronicle, a similar document that is slightly younger (Wei was one of the states that emerged...

If you ask me, the premise is completely nonsensical. Yugoslavia - Socialist Yugoslavia post World War 2 that is, was a state was based around one simple factor - the personality of Tito himself. When Tito died, so did Yugoslavia. I really don't see how the breakup was not inevitable. Beyond...

These are bilingual Phoenician-Luwian inscriptions from southern Anatolia. Is there any evidence of Luwian ever being spoken in Carthage, or anywhere else in the Mediterranean (hint: we have Punic inscriptions from much of the western Mediterranean)? The answer to that is no. Sorry, but...

I disagree: Indo-European did not grow 'by oral transmission'. I can think of a number of cases where migration - in historic times - clearly spread a certain language family: - Hungarian (an Uralic language) in the Pannonian basin. Hungarian is an Uralic language, but its most closely...

You have been misunderstanding me then. ;-) Here is how the sentence gets clearer: 'As I have said before, the Proto-Indo-Europeans were iliterate people, because it would have been impossible to keep a language homogenous over such a large area for iliterate people.' Which is precisely what we...

- Eteocretan and Eteocypriot are both scarcely attested languages (though Eteocretan may be a descendant of Minoan, that is the language of Linear A). Lemnian and Etruscan were for sure related, but any relation beyond that is highly speculative. - What do you specifically mean by 'Western...

You are misunderstanding me here: I do not think that PIE was "shaped in one day", but I'm saying that the parameters (in particular the invention of the wheel) put a constraint on when and where common PIE could have spoken before the language broke up into sub-branches. As for why that...

From a linguistic perspective, all of these claims are absurd. For sure, even though they are Satem languages, neither Dacian nor Thracian was the ancestor of the modern Slavic languages. The Illyrian languages were likewise distinct from the Celtic languages. On the other hand, Dacian (or some...

You are assuming that languages could spread just as easily in a time before there was any literacy. Also, where is your archaeological evidence for such far-flung, continent-spanning trade networks in the Copper Age? I would say that I agree with LeBrok: when you have a new item for which...

Any of their colonies? Do you think people in Carthage - Hannibal Barca included - were mute (hint: they spoke Punic, the evolved form of Phoenician)? Sorry but the Phoenicians spoke a Semitic language, more accurately a Cana'anite language.

There are five (relatively) unconventional sub-branches of Afroasiatic: Berber, Chadic, Egyptian, Kushitic and Semitic. Of these only one branch (Semitic) is found in Asia, and only two branches (Egyptian and Semitic) have ancient attestations. Minoan for sure was not an Afroasiatic language...

The question that I have to you is: do you doubt the methodology of linguistics as a whole, because I get that impression. Especially your doubt about the validity of cognates between distant branches of Indo-European (e.g. English versus Sanskrit). But you have to consider this: the concepts of...

I think as long as Britain keeps hanging 'in limbo', and the situation is unresolved one way or another, this economic damage (for both sides) is permanent. This is one of the key reasons why the EU has been so decisive about starting exit negotiations as quickly as possible. If and when Brexit...