"What Etruscan sounded like and how we know"

[Johane Derite]

 

[Ygorcs]

I know probably many professional linguists would want to kill me, and the dead ones would turn in their graves, but have any of you also speculated about the relationship between Hurro-Urartian and Etruscan/Tyrrhenian languages? Their set of cardinal numerals strike me as vaguely similar, and something that reinforces my curiosity to search this further is exactly that they don't look similar, there aren't nearly identical correspondences - what almost certainly indicates sheer coincidence -, but only vague similarities and correspondent sounds between them.

Besides, there is the fact that we see Tyrrhenian tongues spread in parts of Europe that received a good ammount of CHG after the Neolithic, and that apparently the Etruscans themselves stiill had an oral memory of an ancient migration originating in Asia Minor (we shouldn't dismiss all such legendary accounts, there is often some hint of the truth in them, like, for example, how the Mexica glorified their Aztlán ancestral lands, which really probably meant their northern roots in Southwestern United States, around Arizona or New Mexico).

HURRIAN/ETRUSCAN

1 - shukko / thu
2 - shini / zal
3 - kike / ki
4 - tumni / huth
5 - nariya / makh
6 - sheshe / sha
7 - shinti / semph
8 - kiri / kezp
9 - tamri / nurph
10 - eemani / halkh

 

[Angela]

The Etruscans never opined about their origins. It was the Greeks and the Romans.

I'm an agnostic about the "origin" of the Etruscans. I'll let the ancient dna clarify it.

Although it's true that even the Scots claimed descent from the Trojans, and so any such claims made by the Romans, for example, should be taken with a large grain of salt (like Julius' claim of descent from Venus), I'd be quite happy to find that it's true that the elite, at least, of the Etruscans came from Troy. Hector is the man! I'm not a fan of Aeneas, though. He was far too much of a player: poor Queen Dido!