Posted by Mel Copeland on August 23, 1998 at 21:57:15:
In Reply to: Re: Say " Ecce ", Please posted by D. G. Wilson on January 24, 1998 at 12:17:22:
: : : ::
: : : If Vance invented the word for the continent on Cadwal, your guess is as good as any.
: : AS specifically states that the three continents of Cadwal
: : were named after the first three numbers in Ancient Etrurian...
: : the language of the mysterious Etruscans. They ruled northern
: : Italy from the 7th to 5th Century BCE (the first few
centuries
: : AUC, i.e., after the founding of Rome), but the Roman
Republic
: : eventually destroyed them so completely that few examples of
: : their language remain, and those are largely untranslated
: : in our day.
: : Unfortunately, I don't know whether "one", "two" and "three" in
: : Ancient Etrurian (aka Etruscan) have been puzzled out by today's
: : linguists, or whether Vance was postulating that they _had_ done
: : so in the future, and made them up anyway! He's erudite enough
: : to have done the former, and puckish enough to have done the
: : latter :-)
: Vance's numbers sound like they're from an Indo-European language, which Etruscan apparently wasn't. Etruscan is not fully known but I would suppose that 1, 2, 3 would be well established. The 'Etruscan Home Page' web site gives something like 'thu', 'zal', 'ci' for 1, 2, 3 respectively in Etruscan.
Etruscan is very closely related to Latin.