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minoan language wikipedia jump to content main menu main menu move to sidebar hide navigation main page contents current events random article about wikipedia contact us contribute help learn to edit community portal recent changes upload file special pages search search appearance donate create account log in personal tools donate create account log in contents move to sidebar hide top 1 classification 2 phonology 3 morphosyntax 4 vocabulary 5 suggested link of keftiu texts to minoan language 6 footnotes 7 external links toggle the table of contents minoan language 19 languages azərbaycanca català čeština deutsch ελληνικά español فارسی suomi français עברית bahasa indonesia italiano 日本語 latina lingua franca nova polski русский türkçe українська edit links article talk english read edit view history tools tools move to sidebar hide actions read edit view history general what links here related changes upload file permanent link page information cite this page get shortened url switch to legacy parser print export download as pdf printable version in other projects wikidata item appearance move to sidebar hide from wikipedia the free encyclopedia language of ancient minoans written in cretan hieroglyphs and linear a syllabary not to be confused with the minaean language this article includes a list of general references but lacks sufficient corresponding inline citations please help improve this article by introducing more precise citations march 2017 learn how and when to remove this message minoan undeciphered linear a tablet region crete era about 2100 1450 bc language family unclassified writing system cretan hieroglyphs linear a language codes iso 639 3 either omn minoan lab linear a glottolog mino1236 minoan the minoan language is the language or languages of the ancient minoan civilization of crete written in the cretan hieroglyphs and later in the linear a syllabary as the cretan hieroglyphs are undeciphered and linear a only partly deciphered the minoan language is unknown and unclassified with the existing evidence it is even impossible to be certain that the two scripts record the same language the eteocretan language attested in a few alphabetic inscriptions from crete 1 000 years later is possibly a descendant of minoan but is also unclassified 1 minoan is mainly known from the inscriptions in linear a which are fairly legible on the assumption that many characters carried over into linear b the cretan hieroglyphs are dated from the first half of the 2nd millennium bc the linear a texts mostly written in clay tablets are spread all over crete with more than 40 localities on the island classification edit the minoan language does not appear to be a close relative of any known language and it is not entirely certain that all linear a texts are in the same language 2 3 some scholars have explored potential parallels with anatolian languages such as luwian and lycian as well as with semitic languages such as phoenician and ugaritic however even if these connections are not coincidental it would be unclear whether minoan is related to one of these languages or if the parallels arose through language contact 2 4 phonology edit linear a incised on a jug also found in akrotiri although an approximate phoneme inventory for minoan can be inferred from the linear a sign inventory the phonology of the language has been subject to debate and one scholar refers to its reconstruction as the thirteenth labour of herakles 5 in older work minoan was often regarded as having a three vowel system since linear a shares linear b s i u and a series but not all of the o and e signs and thus it does occur much less frequently however more recent work has questioned this assumption noting that linear a sound values involving o and e are supported by comparative evidence from cypriot and also from their occurrence in shared placenames such as pa i to and se to i ja 6 7 similarly in older work minoan was assumed to have a predominantly open syllable structure and few consonant clusters reflecting the inventory of syllables available in linear a this view was based on the assumption that linear a would have been developed in order to closely match minoan phonology and that the defectiveness of linear b would have resulted from the process of adapting the script to write greek however more recent work has questioned this assumption based on precedents from other defective scripts as well as potential evidence of partial or plene spelling in linear a itself such as the placename 𐘂𐘚𐘄 pa i to which would likely have contained an unwritten s sound as in its later pronunciation as phaistos 8 9 morphosyntax edit by identifying systematic patterns of similarities and variations across inscriptions scholars have been able to make inferences about the syntax and morphology of the minoan language comparison of formulaic inscriptions on libation vessels suggests that the language had verb subject object word order 10 11 minoan appears to have been an agglutinative language making copious use of prefixes and suffixes among these the suffixes ru and re appear to be case markers while j is a prefix meaning something like from or of and ja appears to be a derivational suffix used to form adjectives 12 vocabulary edit internal analysis of texts has been used to identify approximate meanings of certain words 13 among these the most secure is the word 𐙂𐘘 ku ro meaning total the meaning of this word was inferred much as 𐀵𐀰 𐀵𐀭 to so to sa was for linear b from the fact that it regularly occurs at the ends of tallied lists preceding a numeral representing the sum of the tallies in the list 14 15 16 similarly the word stem 𐘚𐝥 i 301 is believed to mean to give or to dedicate based on its use across variants of the libation formula 17 18 in some cases additional inferences can be made based on parallels between internal evidence from linear a and loanwords in later greek for instance the linear a logogram for wool 𐛢 is a composite of the syllabic signs 𐙁 ma and 𐘘 ru a fact which on its own would suggest maru or malu as a potential minoan word for wool this inference is regarded as more secure because this term seems to appear as a loanword in greek as μαλλός mallos moreover the same sign appears in linear b though it is sometimes written as a composite of 𐀔 ma and 𐀫 ro instead seemingly reflecting an adaptation of the word to greek phonology 19 20 suggested link of keftiu texts to minoan language edit from the eighteenth dynasty of egypt come four texts containing names and spells in the language of keftiu they are as usual in non egyptian texts written in egyptian hieroglyphs which has allowed the pronunciation of those names and spells to be reconstructed magic papyrus harris latin papyrus magicus harris xii 1 5 beg 18th dynasty a spell in the keftiu language 21 writing board b m 5647 early 18th dynasty school blackboard with keftiu names 22 london medical papyrus b m 10059 end of the 18th dynasty two spells against disease 32 33 aegean placard list de some cretan place names analysis of these texts has suggested that the keftiu language had object verb subject ovs word order 23 the phonetic system of the keftiu language has also been reconstructed as having the following consonants 23 consonant phonemes labial dental alveolar palatal velar uvular glottal nasal m n stop p b t d ts k q fricative f s ʃ h trill r approximant j w footnotes edit yves duhoux l étéocrétois les textes la langue j c gieben amsterdam 1982 1 2 salgarella ester 2022 linear a in hornblower simon spawforth antony eidinow esther eds oxford classical dictionary oxford university press doi 10 1093 acrefore 9780199381135 013 8927 inactive 1 july 2025 isbn 978 0 19 938113 5 cite encyclopedia cs1 maint doi inactive as of july 2025 link chadwick j introduction to the problems of minoan linear a jras 2 pp 143 147 1975 salgarella ester 2025 writing in bronze age crete minoan linear a cambridge university press p 53 54 isbn 9781009520027 salgarella ester 2025 writing in bronze age crete minoan linear a cambridge university press p 50 isbn 9781009520027 steele philippa 2024 exploring writing systems and practices in the bronze age aegean pdf oxbow books pp 16 17 isbn 978 1 78925 902 5 salgarella ester 2025 writing in bronze age crete minoan linear a cambridge university press p 50 isbn 9781009520027 steele philippa 2024 exploring writing systems and practices in the bronze age aegean pdf oxbow books pp 17 20 isbn 978 1 78925 902 5 salgarella ester 2025 writing in bronze age crete minoan linear a cambridge university press p 50 isbn 9781009520027 davis brent 1 december 2013 syntax in linear a the word order of the libation formula kadmos 52 1 35 52 doi 10 1515 kadmos 2013 0003 issn 0022 7498 s2cid 163948869 salgarella ester 2025 writing in bronze age crete minoan linear a cambridge university press p 44 46 53 isbn 9781009520027 salgarella ester 2025 writing in bronze age crete minoan linear a cambridge university press p 51 54 isbn 9781009520027 salgarella ester 2025 writing in bronze age crete minoan linear a cambridge university press p 49 51 52 isbn 9781009520027 chadwick john 1958 the decipherment of linear b cambridge cambridge university press p 154 155 isbn 978 0 521 39830 5 cite book isbn date incompatibility help salgarella ester 2025 writing in bronze age crete minoan linear a cambridge university press p 49 51 52 isbn 9781009520027 steele philippa 2024 exploring writing systems and practices in the bronze age aegean pdf oxbow books pp 56 57 isbn 978 1 78925 902 5 davis brent 1 december 2013 syntax in linear a the word order of the libation formula kadmos 52 1 35 52 doi 10 1515 kadmos 2013 0003 issn 0022 7498 s2cid 163948869 salgarella ester 2025 writing in bronze age crete minoan linear a cambridge university press p 44 46 53 isbn 9781009520027 salgarella ester 2025 writing in bronze age crete minoan linear a cambridge university press p 51 isbn 9781009520027 steele philippa 2024 exploring writing systems and practices in the bronze age aegean pdf oxbow books p 49 isbn 978 1 78925 902 5 h lange der magische papyrus harris kopenhagen 1927 t e peet the egyptian writing board b m 5647 bearing keftiu names oxford 1927 1 2 kyriakidis e 2004 indications on the nature of the language of the keftiw from egyptian sources egypt and the levant in german 1 xii 211 220 doi 10 1553 aeundl12s211 issn 1015 5104 external links edit languages portal linguistics portal duhoux yves pre hellenic languages of crete v t e language families of eurasia widespread indo european mongolic turkic europe uralic afroasiatic basque iberian tartessian paleo corsican paleo sardinian camunic ligurian north picene rutulian sicanian tyrsenian eteocretan eteocypriot minoan west asia afroasiatic elamite gutian hattic hurro urartian kaskian kassite sumerian central asia mongolic turkic sino tibetan caucasus kartvelian northeast caucasian northwest caucasian south asia dravidian sino tibetan austroasiatic burushaski nihali kusunda harappan east asia sino tibetan austroasiatic austronesian hmong mien kra dai turkic mongolic japonic koreanic tungusic gaya han puyŏ indian ocean rim ongan sentinelese great andamanese kenaboi north asia paleo siberian areal chukotko kamchatkan nivkh yeniseian yukaghir ainu other uralic tungusic eskaleut rouran xiongnu proposed groupings alarodian altaic borean nostratic dené caucasian eurasiatic dené yeniseian dravido korean elamo dravidian ibero caucasian indo hittite indo pacific indo semitic indo uralic karasuk north caucasian serbi mongolic pontic ural altaic uralic yukaghir eskimo uralic arunachal greater siangic siangic digaro mijiic miju hrusish kho bwa east and southeast asia andamanese austric austro tai austronesian ongan east asian sino austronesian substrata atlantic paleo laplandic pre celtic pre finno ugric pre germanic pre goidelic pre greek pre sumerian pre vedic vasconic families in italics have no living members families with more than 30 languages are in bold authority control databases gnd retrieved from https en wikipedia org w index php title minoan_language oldid 1371457666 categories minoan civilization unclassified languages of europe extinct languages of europe languages extinct in the 2nd millennium bc pre indo european languages hidden categories articles with short description short description is different from wikidata articles lacking in text citations from march 2017 all articles lacking in text citations language articles with unreferenced extinction date cs1 maint doi inactive as of july 2025 pages with plain ipa articles containing minoan language text articles containing mycenaean greek language text articles containing ancient greek to 1453 language text cs1 errors isbn date articles containing latin language text cs1 german language sources de this page was last edited on 26 august 2026 at 15 26 utc page was rendered with parsoid text is available under the creative 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