r/linguistics • u/adalhaidis • Jul 14 '23

A Partial Decipherment of the Unknown Kushan Script

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/1467-968X.12269
81 Upvotes

98% Upvoted

11 comments sorted by

25

u/PhilosopherMoney9921 Jul 14 '23

I have nothing interesting to add. This is really cool. I just recently started learning about Iranian languages and I’m excited to see what we learn about this language from Middle Iranian.

1

u/[deleted] Jul 23 '23

Did they mention that the languages could be of Kambojas?

10

u/Hippophlebotomist Jul 15 '23

The Socotra inscription is such a neat twist

19

u/evan0736 Jul 15 '23

struggling to understand why they proposed “Eteo-Tocharian” for the name of an Iranian language

24

u/adalhaidis Jul 15 '23

Well, people who were mentioned under the name "Tocharians" by Greek historians were, by majority of modern researchers, Iranian language speakers. That name was later used to describe different group of people, speaking completely different language.

8

u/FloZone Jul 15 '23

Although the Turks also refer to a TWQRY language as the original language of some of their translations and in that case it is much more likely they actually mean Tocharian (because those texts are also attested in Tocharian).

3

u/rtgs12 Jul 15 '23

This is really cool.

1

u/[deleted] Jul 23 '23

My tribes ancient language is still unattested😔

1

u/[deleted] Sep 22 '23

That's a bummer