Phrygian - A Partially Attested Indo-European Language
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- čas přidán 17. 12. 2023
- 🔍 Curious about the Phrygian language, a partially attested Indo-European language? Look no further than today's Learn Hittite video! 🎓
Following the collapse of the Hittite empire, documented in the archaeological record at places like their administrative capital Ḫattuša, who came next? By the Iron Age, the Anatolian-speaking Indo-Europeans had given way to a different group - the Phrygians, whose influence in Anatolia lasted over 800 years until the Hellenistic period.
Unlike some lesser-attested Indo-European languages like Illyrian or Elymian, we have a functional understanding of Phrygian and can, with limited confidence and a lot of discussion, translate (most) texts. 📚 We still have unanswered questions regarding the sonic value of certain characters in the Old Phrygian alphabet, we have gaps in our knowledge concerning the case + verb system and debate is also ongoing regarding where to place Phrygian on the Indo-European tree. Some scholars see it as closer to Greek, while others lean towards Armenian. 🌳 The situation is complicated by the fact that there appears to have been 'intense' contact between Greek and Armenian, with some researchers considering Greek and Armenian to form their own branch from the Proto-Indo-European family of languages. In short, the exact position of Phrygian is still very much open to discussion. 🤔 It's also worthwhile to mention that unfortunately, many new Phrygian inscriptions have been lost, meaning we are reliant on the work of early copyists. 🏛️
Join me in this video for a brief introduction to the Phrygians, their language, and alphabet. We'll cover the absolute basics of Phrygian grammar before casting our eyes onto two fascinating Phrygian inscriptions.
I hope you enjoy this video and find it informative! 📽️
Next up, we'll be exploring Hurrian and then Thracian! 🗺️
#PhrygianLanguage #LearnHittite #IndoEuropeanLanguages #Archaeology #LanguageHistory #protoindoeuropean #Phrygian #gordion
Selected Reading List
1. Barnett, R. D. (1975). Phrygia and the Peoples of Anatolia in the Iron Age. In Cambridge Ancient History, Volume 2.2. New York.
⭐️2. Berndt-Ersöz, S. (01 Nov. 2006). Phrygian Rock-Cut Shrines. Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill. doi.org/10.1163/9789047410225
3. DeVries, K., Kromer, B., Kuniholm, P. I., Liebhart, R. F., Manning, S. W., Newton, M. W., Sams, G. K., & Voigt, M. M. (2011). The New Chronology of Iron Age Gordion (C. B. Rose & G. Darbyshire, Eds.). University of Pennsylvania Press. www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt3fhpv4
4. Hämmig, A. E. (2017, October 2-5). What if Phrygian were the closest attested cognate of Armenian? Paper presented at the XI International Conference on Armenian Linguistics dedicated to John A. C. Greppin (1937-2016), Russian Academy of Sciences, Institute of Linguistics.
5. Kim, R. (2018). Greco-Armenian: The persistence of a myth. Indogermanische Forschungen, 123(1), 247-272. doi.org/10.1515/if-2018-0009
⭐️6. Ligorio, O. & Lubotsky, A. (2018). 101. Phrygian. In J. Klein, B. Joseph & M. Fritz (Ed.), Volume 3 Handbook of Comparative and Historical Indo-European Linguistics (pp. 1816-1831). Berlin, Boston: De Gruyter Mouton. doi.org/10.1515/9783110542431...
7. Obrador-Cursach, B. (2019). On the place of Phrygian among the Indo-European languages. Journal of Language Relationship, 17(3-4), 233-245. doi.org/10.31826/jlr-2019-173...
⭐️8. Obrador-Cursach, B. (10 Jan. 2022). The Phrygian Language. Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill. doi.org/10.1163/9789004419995
9. Oreshko, R. (2022). The Rare Letters of the Phrygian Alphabet Revisited. In Writing Around the Ancient Mediterranean: Practices and Adaptations. Oxbow Books.
10. Šorgo, A. (2021, September 18). The Origin and the Development of Phrygian si-formations. Presented at the International Workshop on Phrygian, Barcelona.
11. Woodhouse, R. (2009). An Overview of Research on Phrygian from the Nineteenth Century to the Present Day. Studia Linguistica Universitatis Iagellonicae Cracoviensis, 126.
I remember a lecture of my Latin teacher in the early eighties. This is how I recall it. An ancient king wondered what was the oldest language in the world. He had an infant put in a barn with sheep. Noone was to have verbal contact with the child. After some years the child was heard uttering the word "bekos", Phrygian for bread, so Phrygian had to be the oldest language.
Yep, that's in Herodotus. I love that story... a nice little scientific experiment in an age when researchers didn't have to worry about ethics committees and approvals 😂
bummer for the kid though.
I'm Greek, and from my language point of view, βεκος looks like nominative, accusative would be βεκον maybe, so I understand that the final phrase could be "bread not be given to him". Great video, κυδος!
Very interesting to have the perspective of a Greek speaker! Thanks for the positive feedback
Well, seeing it again, my first comment applies to masculine nouns (eg. Nom. ο βεκος - Acc. τον βεκον). If it's neutral (το βεκος), accusative form is the same as nominative, so βεκος in this case is in the accusative! By the way, the endings are strikingly similar to Greek (dative in -i, -μενος = passive past participle etc,)
@@ignisfatuus07Yo greek can u provide me last text in Latin transliteration?
@@nebitno5054 Well, seeing it again, my first comment applies to masculine nouns (eg. Nom. 'o bekos' - Acc. 'ton bekon'). If it's neutral (to bekos), accusative form is the same as nominative, so 'bekos' in this case is in the accusative! By the way, the endings are strikingly similar to Greek (dative in -i, -menos = passive past participle etc,)
@@ignisfatuus07 but can u last text write me on Latin alphabet cause I don t read greek just letter by later transliteration 😔 whole of last text in video
0:48 ... and very close word to "Briges" in Kurdish is "Ber" which means stone, mountain. And from that root we have word "Berg" which means tower.
Berg means mountain in Swedish
@@adrianwhyatt594in old greenlandic norse is bjarg
A much more similar word is Celtic brig = bridge (probably), a very characteristic Celtic element in town names and such and also in some tribal names like Brigantes.
However it must be said that it is Bryges and relatedly Prhyges, with "y" and this choice of letter is not accidental and systematically represents an older /u/ sound, for example: Assur > Assyria > Syria, Lukka > Lycia, Luwian > ... > Lydian, etc. Thus it's likely that in these cases also it was originally *Bruges and *Phruges, although unattested. This strongly suggests some other etymology.
Interesting to see the word for "and" is ke, which sounds exactly like Greek και.
In modern Greek we use the word ανάκτορα, meaning palace.
Good presentation!
Glad you enjoyed it and great observation!
Don’t forget the Greek μη meaning not (pronounced mē in a correct classic pronunciation). Also the word ἀνακτόρον derives from ἄναξ meaning king (which is unfortunately no longer used in medieval or modern Greek). It originated from the Mycenaean Ϝαναξ (wanax)
That's a very interesting observation. In ancient Iberian the word for "and" was also "ke" (probably "ka" in proto-Basque) and we also have the weird -que form in Latin for the same grammatical purpose (one of three possibilities for "and", the most common being "et" however). I do wonder if this might be Vasconic substrate, also present in other stuff.
Phrygians were a cousin nation of the Greeks! 🇬🇷 Their language belonged to the Graeco-Phrygian language family and most Phrygian and Greek words were mutually intelligible!
However, between the 19th and the first half of the 20th century Phrygian was mostly considered a satəm language, and thus closer to Armenian and Thracian, while today it is commonly considered to be a centum language and thus closer to Greek.[20]
CITATION
[20] Obrador-Cursach, Bartomeu (2018). Lexicon of the Phrygian Inscriptions
Phrygians spoke the Phrygian language, a member of the Indo-European linguistic family. Modern consensus regards Greek as its closest relative.[10][11]
CITATION
[10] Woodhouse, Robert (2009). "An overview of research on Phrygian from the nineteenth century to the present day". Studia Linguistica Universitatis Iagellonicae Cracoviensis. "This question is of course only just separable from the question of which languages within Indo-European are most closely related to Phrygian, which has also been hotly debated. A turning point in this debate was Kortlandt's (1988) demonstration on the basis of shared sound changes that Thraco-Armenian had separated from Phrygian and other originally Balkan languages at an early stage. The consensus has now returned to regarding Greek as the closest relative."
CITATION
[11] Brixhe, Claude (2008). Woodard, Roger D. (ed.). The Ancient Languages of Asia Minor. Cambridge University Press. p. 72. ISBN 978-0-521-68496-5. "Unquestionably, however, Phrygian is most closely linked with Greek."
14:39 in modern Albanian bread is "bukë" probably derived from the same root as bekos
I wonder if the bake their buke in an oven?
That's from Latin bucca meaning mouthful. But the original root probably
Kurdish - Frigian
Da: Deiti (give)
Ew: Oi (She/He)
Ne/Na: Ne (Not)
Kû/Kê: Ke (conjunction “because”)
They're both indo european
obviously, you can do this with any Indo-European language.
for example
Kurdish - Polish
Da: Dać
Ew: On
Ne: Nie
They're both Indoeuropean languages, that's for sure.
However Kurdish belongs to the Indo-Iranian branch and Greco-Phrygio-Armenian is rather (distantly but very likely) related to Western Indoeuropean instead. Incidentally Greek has a weird yes/not vocabulary, where, unlike in all other Indoeuropean languages, "ne" means "yes" ("okhi" means "not"), this I suspect Vasconic substrate influence (bai/ez in Basque).
Excellent and informative, as usual.
Glad you enjoyed it
In my opinion considering that Phrygians might have migrated in the very past from the area of the southern Balkans, they obviously have a more common language to the Greek....as once part of the myriad of thr similar dialects existing there and later formed the language of thr greeks, thracians etc... When moving to Anatolia they must have taken local loanwords from the other people of Anatolia.
Thank you so much. This was excellent.
Informative and interesting once again!
Cheers!
interesting and informative, I like the references. Just found your channel, subscribed
Thanks for your support!
I want to learn this unique language due to my interest in Phyrygia but i cant find any useful resource, it breaks my heart. If you know a way to learn it, still do share it with me :(
Once again a very interesting video! I guess the existence of Phrygian is what causes some scholars to join Greek and Armenian into an Indo-European subbranch. It's unfortunate that we need such a huge amount of inscriptions in order to get a more or less complete view of a language, particularly if that language is grammatically complex like the IE daughter languages.
On an unrelated note, is there any mention of how those subscript dots on certain letters in the NP inscription probably modify the underlying sounds? Or are they some artefact of the scholarly notation in which they were recorded?
Thanks for the positive feedback!
My personal intuition is that the Paleo-Balkanic branch is probably accurate - so Greek, Phrygian, Illyrian and Albanian were all on one branch - Hyllested and Joseph wrote a bit about it in "The Indo-European Language Family" (Cambridge, 2022), if you want to check that out.
Dots under letters usually represent uncertain signs - either they are damaged, weathered or can't be read accurately from a copy.
PH later became B as in Bridgette or F as in Friga or Freeda.
Bri as in Brian or Ryan means strong leader in the Celtic world.
Gor or ghor means mountain or highlander often associated with K(H)urders who would take the sheep up the mountain in the summer.
I have a very Celtic name that means Highlander Baalfire.
The Baal-fire was lit on May day to celebrate the summer season.
The Armenian word for cherry is բալ , pronounced bal is IMHO the origin of the weather God Baal.
Cherries were not only a culinary delight but an important source of Vitamin C for folks in Anatolia. The cherry crop is very finicky requiring a length of chill in the winter to set the bloom & then of course favorable conditions for the bloom & growth of fruit. It was no doubt a mystery why some years provided a bounty & others a dearth of sweet cherries so a wee bit of prayer was in order.
You may find some echoes of this celebration in Iran.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beltane
Baal as spelled in English isn't PIE, it's from the Semitic side of the world. English gets it via Christianity from Hebrew's Ba3al, the 3 = /ʕ/, and it meant owner in 900 BC Hebrew.
Phrygian is a sister language to Greek.
They share a lot of lexicon and grammar.Declensions and conjugations are strikingly similar to ancient Greek.
Examples
Phrygian Agkyra anchor
Greek Agkyra anchor (modern day Ankara in Turkey)
Phrygian aglawoy shining
Greek aglaos shining
Phrygian agorani buy
Greek agora market agorazo buy
Phrygian agtaei leader
Phrygian arg rule
Greek arkho rule
Greek arkhon leader
Greek egetes leader
Phrygian autos he avton him
Greek autos he auton him
Phrygian dadon I gave
Greek edosa I gave, dedoka I have given
Phrygian ios who
Greek os who
Phrygian kun dog
Greek kyon dog
Phrygian eti and
Greek eti more
Phrygian kiklen wheel
Greek Kyklos cycle,round
Phrygian thri three
Greek tria three
Phrygian gdan earth
Greek gaia earth
Phrygian gegreimeno written
Ancient Greek gegrammeno written
Modern Greek grammeno written
Phrygian germe warm
Greek therme warm, hot baths
Phrygian knaika woman
Greek gynaika woman jin jineka in Kurdish zenata in Bulgarian
Phrygian dekmoutais tenth
Greek dekatos tenth
Phrygian deos god
Greek theos god
Phrygian dike justice
Greek dike trial,justice
Greek dikeos just
Phrygian aulos flute
Greek aulos flute
Phrygian eilikrine pure
Greek eilikrinis pure frank
Phrygian ekey or ekei there
Greek ekei there
Phrygian elegos poem of lament
Greek elegos poem of lament
Phrygian sira hand
Greek cheira hand
Phrygian zos live
Ancient Greek zein live
Modern Greek zo live (persian zinda)
Phrygian thalameide chamber
Greek thalamos chamber
Phrygian innou are
Greek ine are
Phrygian kakon bad evil
Greek kakon bad evil
Phrygian karpus fruit ,outcome
Greek Karpos fruit,outcome
Phrygian ke and
Greek ke and
Phrygian kenos generation
Greek genos generation
Phrygian lafagt leader of people
Greek lafagetis leader of people
Phrygian latomeion quarry
Greek latomeion quarry
Phrygian mago magician
Greek magos magician (from persian magush)
Phrygian Mazeus Zeus
Greek Zeus pater Jupiter (Sky father)
Phrygian maimarean marble
Greek marmaron marble
Phrygian makran long
Greek makros long
Phrygian matar mother
Greek meter mother
Phrygian meyon less
Greek meion less
Phrygian mekas big
Greek megas big
Phrygian beret carry
Greek phero carry
Phrygian adrotos powerful
Greek atrotos powerful
Phrygian ksenones men;s rooms
Greek xenones guests rooms
Phrygian kseun host stranger
Greek xenos host,stranger
Phrygian oinis wine
Greek oinos wine
Phrygian onoman name
Greek onoma name
Phrygian onomaniais mentioned
Greek onomastheis mentioned
Phrygian otuwoi eight
Greek octo eight
Phrygian wanaktan lord king
Greek anax lord ,king , anaktoron palace
Phrygian panta all
Greek panta all
Phrygian pantakenanou everything is empty
Greek pantakenon everything is empty
Phrygian pateres fathers
Greek pateres fathers
Phrygian pater father
Greek pater father
Phrygian patrizi to the fathers
Greek patroisi to the fathers
Phrygian penthero father in law
Greek pentheros father in law
Phrygian pinke five
Greek pente five
Phrygian podas feet
Ancien Greek podes feet
Modern greek podia feet
Phrygian Saggarios name of a river in Asia minor
Greek Saggarios name of modern day Sakkarya river
Phrygian skeledrias skeleton
Greek skeletos skeleton
Phrygian soro corpse
Greek soros corpse tomb coffin
Phrygian spereta seed
Greek sporos seed
Phrygian tapes carpet
Greek tapes carpet
Phrygian udor water
Greek ydor water
Phrygian uke nor
Greek ute nor
Phrygian upsos height upsodan on top
Greek ypsos height
Phrygian Kreistianoi Christians
Greek Khristianoi Christians
Phrigian wana king
Greek anax king
Phrygian wetej year
Greek etos year
Modern consensus regards Greek as the closest relative of Phrygian, a position that is supported by Brixhe, Neumann, Matzinger, Woodhouse, Ligorio, Lubotsky, and Obrador-Cursach. Furthermore, 34 out of the 36 Phrygian isoglosses that are recorded are shared with Greek, with 22 being exclusive between them. The last 50 years of Phrygian scholarship developed a hypothesis that proposes a proto-Graeco-Phrygian stage out of which Greek and Phrygian originated, and if Phrygian was more sufficiently attested, that stage could perhaps be reconstructed
For more information and bibliography on the Phrygian language and the Phrygians
visit the sites:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phrygian_language
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phrygians
👍👍
And I thought Cultist Simulator made it up...
Ayyyy, I found another one. Phrygian is the only advanced language that isn't made up. Deep Mandaic and Fucine are however made up (there IS a Mandaic language, but not Deep Mandaic)
In my understanding, not at all based on linguistics but rather on archaeology, both the Greek and Phrygio-Armenian branches derive from Vucedol culture (Middle Danube and Dinaric area, late Chalcolithic and into earliest Bronze), this culture we know now (largely from archaeogenetic data) that was a spinoff of the more important West Indoeuropean culture of Corded Ware (north and west of Vucedol area, slightly older and surely ancestral to Balto-Slavic, Celto-Italic and Germanic). In my opinion the proto-Greeks derive form the (coastal Montenegro) Mala Gruda facies and reached Greece (south and center primarily) by sea, not by land, being the first seagoing Indoeuropeans ever (what explains much about ancient Greeks, even in the Bronze Age already, being so "Viking-like"), while the Phrygio-Armenians (which probably are also ancestral to ancient Macedonians, allegedly related to the West Balcanic Bryges) surely arrived by land only in the late Bronze Age. This, plus differential substrate influences, surely explains why Greek and Armenian quite consistently appear as distant relatives in most Indoeuropean phylogenies.
Giuseppe Catapano: "Atlantida which disappeared 12,000 years ago, was the land of the Pelasgians (ancestors of Albanians), who escaped the flood of Atlantis and began new civilizations on all continents, especially in Europe, Africa and small Asia". THOTH spoke Albanian! Thot means "to say" in Albanian Language. Pelasgian means "the Caveman" (Shpellazg).
Zeus was a Pelasgian, not a Helen! After Illyad, the Language of Gods was Gheg.(Herodotus)
A study recently published in Science Magazine 2023 proves the antiquity of the Albanian language, which is much earlier than the Greek and Armenian languages > 8000 years old.
Sanskrit, old Greek, and Latin languages are already dead. The Albanian Language "GHEG Dialect" is still alive! It is the Indo-European language, a proto Indo-European language, indeed. It deciphers the symbols and other languages.
References: Bopp, Johan Georg von Hahn, Holger Pedersen, Benloew, Joseph Ritter von Xylander, Stier, Schneider, Rozny, Georgiev, Majami, Robert Elsie, Lambert, Haarmann, Petro Zheji.
Greek is not dead.
A language with more than 3000 years of history is natural to change. But it is still the same language. I can read and easily understand Greek of 2000+ years ago.
@@AthanasiosJapanModern Greek is a technical language invented by the Bavarian Academy of Sciences.
@@arianl5903
Modern Greek is based on Koine Greek which 2000 years old. It is the same language with some changes that are expected to happen in any living language.
Neither Latin nor Sanskrit are dead in that sense either: both have descendants. The difference with Albanian is that it never spread over wide enough an area to have its dialects become mutually unintelligible or to sprout different polities with their own literary standards.
So no, there's nothing especially ancient about Albanian Vs any other Indo-European language. They all form an uninterrupted chain of speakers back to their common origin.
Not really. Pelasgo-Tyrsenians expanded (archaeologically well documented, also some interesting genetics like Y-DNA J2 are surely originally Tyrsenian, although in West Europe redistributed by the Romans) c. 5000 BCE from a core in Upper Mesopotamia (Halafian culture) mostly into Asia Minor and much of the Balcans (notably the Dimini culture of Thessaly and the Vinca culture of Serbia). They surely didn't spread out of the Balcans until the earliest Iron Age, when Etruscans reached Italy (Vilanova culture) c. 900 BCE, surely as part of the last strikes of the "sea peoples" (Teresh = Tyrsenians = proto-Etruscans).
Atlantis could not exist 12,000 years ago. The date is the worst inconsistency of Plato's narrative, most of the rest fits the data however with a civilization (VNSP) that existed in Portugal (plausibly of Vasconic language back then) c. 3000-1000 BCE and that was extremely influential especially in the Bell Beaker period but also into the Bronze Age (when dolmenic megalithism spread to West Asia, incl. one instance of "ídolo oculado" from this civilization).
Zeus wasn't Pelasgian but Hades (Aita in Etruscan) was without doubt. There are many other Pelasgian/Tyrsenian influences in Greek but they're not the only ones, for example Gaia can be today read in Basque as "the matter" (in both senses of "substance" and "theme") but also as "the capability" or "the potential" (gai izan = to be able, ezkon-gai = fiance(e), bride, groom, where ezkon-du = to marry).