Talk:maru

RFD discussion: January–October 2020

The following information has failed Wiktionary's deletion process (permalink).

It should not be re-entered without careful consideration.

---

maru

puko

taja

The script w:Linear A, which the w:Minoan language was written in, is undeciphered as of now and the language itself is considered to be unknown. Because of this, it does not truly stand to reason to add entries in Minoan. HeliosX (talk) 22:55, 11 January 2020 (UTC)

I think a case might be made for these as reconstructions, but any transliteration is an educated guess, at best. Look at the Cherokee syllabary for why one shouldn't assume that shared glyphs mean shared sounds. Chuck Entz (talk) 23:37, 11 January 2020 (UTC)

@HeliosX, Chuck Entz: It's possible to have script-only entries (in Linear A text), without any phonetic transcription, isn't it? It's not ideal, but having some info on Minoan is surely preferable to having none. Since the script has been at least codified, there's no need for a Reconstruction:Minoan/…–type entry. And, if at some point in the future we do feel that including reconstructed Minoan pronunciations is worthwhile, we can add it then. If you think that's still too risky, then an appendix is the next-best choice. I believe Wiktionarians shouldn't fear being bold in areas like this. — 69.120.64.15 01:18, 1 October 2020 (UTC)

See Category:Phaistos Disc symbols. Note that they don't contain transliterations or any semantic information. It might be permissible to have a "See also" link to the allegedly equivalent Linear B character Chuck Entz (talk) 04:04, 1 October 2020 (UTC)

The supposed words are written syllabically except for maru, which is not only syllabically preserved, with the result that, since word division or interpunctuation was not often, they might have to be reconstructed even though single syllable signs or characters of Linear A could be allowed. The current sense of maru has to be altered urgently if it proves to be able to persist because "wool" was assigned to it. Such meanings like the one currently written might not even have been used broadly in Bronze Age or later antiquity.

The purported terms are largely insecure and, still quite importantly, Linear A remains undeciphered according to general scholarly conception. The Classics author and philologist John Younger from Kansas University freely attempts understandings or partial decipherments of Linear A on his own website, maintained however by the university. Even though it was stated there that it does not change much about the decipherment issue, it still provides some or even more insight. According to his findings, considering also other literature on the webpage, puko and taja are only attested once, exascerbating the attribution of senses, which he questioned each time and did not write down the sense for the former in the words list on a separate page. At least for those both it does not seem secure enough for me to include them on Wiktionary if the state of script and language comprehension was not a sufficient reason by itself. But maru appears more often, attested apparently phonetically and logographically, and the meaning is perhaps further explained by μαλλός (mallós) with the same meaning of "wool" in case that it was loaned firstly into Mycenaean Greek, which was another presumption. The etymology of the Ancient Greek term is not confined inasmuch as it would prevent it particularly but, as it has to be conceded, sometimes etymologies are missing in the given language and for those other substrate languages could be the original source as well. HeliosX (talk) 23:39, 2 October 2020 (UTC)

RFD-deleted — surjection ⟨??⟩ 08:18, 3 October 2020 (UTC)