At 12:56:43 PM on Saturday, March 1, 2008, fournet.arnaud
wrote:
[...]
> Now, I tend to think that the Etruscan alphabet *cannot*
> be inherited *thru* Greek
> A major reason is Etruscan has a extra letter between n
> and p as in Hebrew (ts?) that Greek does not have
The Etruscan alphabet is derived from a Western Greek
alphabet, that of the Euboeans. It had a letter shaped
like a cross, <+>, representing /ks/, between <n> and <o>,
and it used a letter shaped like a trident, clearly
corresponding graphically to standard Greek psi, for /kH/.
The Marsiliana d'Albegna Etruscan alphabet (mid 7th c. BCE)
encloses the <+> in a square and uses the resulting letter
for a sibilant, and it uses the trident shape for <ch>.
Brian