The extinct Etruscan language of Italy has been a mystery for a long time, and even today only it's surface has only been scratched, with many coarse and rough translations of words and text. It is often said that Etruscan language is an isolate language, which means that there were no others like it. Let us rock that boat a little to see how true that assertion is. The following article is not a claim of any sort of close relatedness, it is simply an illustration of shared characteristics, regardless of how that is interpreted.

Those who try new solutions to solving the Etruscan puzzle are often criticized and marginalized, so the progress in deciphering the language has been painfully slow. Only about 250 words are believed to be understood, and I think even those are roughly understood. Critics of the newest attempts make statements like this: "There are numerous crank theories which relate the Etruscan language with Hungarian, Turkic, Basque, Israeli and Akkadian." Yet if we read the classical Greek references and study the comments of experts, we get a different perspective of early Etruscan times. In early Greece, Pelazgian is stated to be related to Etruscan. Similarly it is found in Anatolia and on the island of Lemnos. Misian in nearby Anatolia or Raetic in the Alps is believed to have ties to the Etruscan language. So obviously its not completely an isolate in its time, unless you invent a new definition for the word. It should not be assumed that any of these languages are exactly like Etruscan, just as Icelandic is not the same as English, even if they both have a Germanic background. Geographical or ethnic identity is not the meaning of a language family but the sharing of many characteristics and basic vocabulary. The implication that these are all "crank theories" is really just a crafty way of avoiding new ideas and ignoring new evidence proposed by professional historical linguists that claim and show links to even the surviving languages. The theories that don't stand up to the test somehow are used as proof that all other hypotheses must also be the work of amateurish cranks. My criticism is not about ignoring the work of amateurs who can range from dilettantes to masters, but about ignoring trained professionals. My purpose for writing this article is not to make any claims other than to show evidence of some correspondences. How that will be interpreted is not my concern.

As a start, to compare languages, we must look at the most basic typology, syntax, morphology and phonetical characteristics of Etruscan, and see if it is common with the ones that the critic lists. Naturally this list of characteristics is incomplete, however I don't want to go into details that aren't known yet. If the results are consistently positive, then work our way down to the finer details. Eventually we should finally come to various differences, that may be explainable as unique features of an individual language. Next, I would first provide a systemic description of the Etruscan, clearly discriminating positively known and presumed/speculative properties.

1. agglutinative language: Hungarian, Turkic, Finno-Ugric, Altaic, Hurrian, Sumerian
2. there are no voiced stops b, d, g : Finnic, early Sumerian, proto Hungarian
3. emphasis on the front of the word: Hungarian, F.U. and Sumerian,
4. vowel harmony : Hungarian, F.U., Turkic, Altaic, early Sumerian
5. early Etruscan avoided consonant clustering: Sumerian, Hungarian, Turkic, UA
6. If enumerated the plural suffix is dropped, just like: Hungarian, Turkic, Sumerian.
7. Some shared grammatical elements: prefixes, suffixes, formatives in U.A, Sumerian.
8. Some shared vocabulary: with Hungarian, Turkic, Finno-Ugrian, Sumerian, Latin, Greek, Phoneician, Hurrian etc.
9.There are unique shared terms for family members: Hungarian, Finno-Ugrian, Turkic
10.Shared numeric terms and institutional titles. Hungarian, Turkic and one in Hurrian.

Due to their trade with Semitic Phoenicians, there are naturally some Semitic loan words in Etruscan, just as there were many Indo-European loan words due to their neighbors. Latin borrowed many Etruscan words and visa versa.

In a systematic lexical analysis, initially one should look for all the words that are recognizably similar sounding and similar in meaning. Then, only if these are of statistically sufficient quantity, find sound change relationships. Usually, phonetic reconstruction of the known language family, represents a more archaic form which is a good form for comparison. After this, further comparisons can be used applying the noticeable sound shift tendencies, to see if more words also match. Detection of various repeating morpheme elements (suffixes, prefixes, etc) and their association to word types and relations that can help build a set of grammatical elements that can be compared. There is much that is yet to be found but lets start with what we already know.

Family Relationships

Etruscans generally lived in monogamous marriages. Even though they are considered to be partly patriarchal, there were also many examples of matriarchal indications. Women were not forced into a "woman's place" but besides being a wife and mother could be anything from a merchant to a warrior. A married woman could indicate her family name as the daughter of her father. Since mama and papa are such widely used terms, they are only usable when more unique relational examples can be shown along with them.

Numbers

There are two favorite versions of the Etruscan number system that are claimed currently to be true. The following one is the one that I believe to be correct. The decoding was based on a six sided Etruscan dice, which had numeric names rather than dots. Normally the numbers on the dice are arranged so that the numbers on one side plus the opposite side add up to 7, however in the past there were some variations of this. Because the meaning of the number names is based upon this dice the accuracy is equally "dicey". Possibly some names could have been abbreviated to fit the available space. The following comparisons are not meant to be definitely valid, but are possibilities. Some are quite close while others are not. The indicated sound changes are well established for the living languages.

The -p/-mp ending is used on the second hand (7 through 9), which may indicate a form of the archaic 6 based numeral system, that slightly modified the phonetics for 2 to 5, to obtain 7 through 9, (z >s, c/χ > c, m>n) and then added the suffix "p, mp" to add five. This however doesn't work with four, which has no known equivalents. As shown above it may be incorrect. Ancient Hungarian, archaic Sumerian, Dravidian and Egyptian also used a hex-based counting systems, instead of ten! This fact is illustrated by the combinatorial characteristic of the names of some numbers in the range of 6 to 9.

A few known grammatical morpheme elements

There is much to learn in this category, but there are some morpheme elements in the grammar that are already known and verified. The reference is shown bracketed [ ]

"-ni" the "accusative" suffix marks the object of the transitive sentence. This form is similar to Sumerian "-ni" Turkic -i,and F.U. "-m" accusatives. (?Hungarian -t)

"-as" [mcv] is the "allative" case marker which represents "to, toward" as a suffix.
In FU and Sumerian it is also -as. Hungarian -hoz added an h;.

"-al" [gm97,pa] is the "dative-genetive" case marker [mcv,mp68], which represents the dative "for" as well as the genetive "of" as a suffix, Turkic -e/-a.
"-ai" [b/k32] Locative-genetive for of, from a place. Hungarian "-i, -ai",

"-na>-l"[b/k32] The archaic "genetive" n, which represents "of" and is common with UA and Sumerian. Perhaps because "n" can alternate with "l", it changed to an "l" in later Etruscan. This n~l change is a common tendency in Hungarian and Sumerian. For example "ate-na" means of the father, clan.

"-v" is the "perfective" suffix, that represents completion, like the Hungarian "be- prefix. The *p>b>v sound shift is seen here.

"-n,-ti" These are "locative" markers that can be used for both time and space. These are also found in Hungarian, FU, Turkic, Dravidian and Sumerian.
For example: "thes-an" means at dawn and "hup-ni" is a sepulchral place.

"-pi" or "ep-li" [g/lb83] are locatives that are indicative of inner space and definite & nearness. With a "p>v" change it is also the perfective (definite).
This is like Sumerian "ba-" and Hungarian "ba-, be-". In Etruscan
it signifies "in, (in)to, up to.

"-s" Adjectival suffix, converts a noun into an adjective like Hungarian "-s"

"-al(s)" is the "ablaitive" case marker [mcv, mp68] that represents movement away from someone or something. For example "uni-ale" means away from Uni.

In Hungarian it is also el- and is an ablaitive prefix used with verbs.

"-ur" is the "commitative" case marker, which represents "with" like Hurrian "-ra"
Variations of the commitative often use derivations of locatives.
"-ana" is an "elative" case marker representing movement "out of".
For example: "eleiv-ana" which means "out of oil" in Etruscan.

"-ce,-χ" is a "terminative" case marker indicating going as far as a place or thing.
For example: "avil-x-al" is from/up till the end of the year. (year+end+from)
This is similar to the Hungarian "-ig" terminative suffix.

"-χva" is a "plural" suffix for things, which is similar to Sumerian "khu" which was used only for non humans. It was borrowed and used later by the
Akkadians as a plural for persons and things, which was similar to the Hungarian and Basque plural suffix "-k".
"-r" The "plural" suffix for persons in Etruscan, is similar to late Turkic "-ler".

Old Turkic and FU however had the same plural "-t".
"-l" is a "verbative" suffix to convert to a verb, as is Hungarian -l, -el, -ol etc. For example the Etruscan "shup-l-u" , the one who whips which is Hungarian
"shup-ál-ó". This can also be translated to be "the one who plays the flute" or
Hungarian "ship-ol-ó" using the same word and morphemes.
"-u" Is used as a "participle", just like English "-er" in a word like "write-er". It is found in several Etruscan words. Its Hungarian equivalent is "-ó,-ö" and was illustrated in the previous example.

"-as" [mp68] ?Past participle

"-ac" In Etruscan "-ac" is a nominalizing suffix as in Hungarian "-ás,-és", that converts whole verbal phrases or a simple verbs into nouns. This word also represents the verb make, which in Hungarian, Sumerian, Dravidian, FU is also a verbative suffix that converts nouns to verbs.

"-ce, -xe" [az96, mcv] past tense suffix. (past perfect?)
"-t, -th, -r, -χi" are "deverbal" suffixes, which converts verbs into a nouns.
Similar to Hungarian "-t, -d, -l, -r, -m, .." nominalizers.

"-lum" [ma] as found in mex-lum, that means something like Etruscan people as a collective. So this creates conceptual, collective nouns. The ancient Ugrian form of this was *na+*me where *n became l in Etruscan and Hungarian but stayed as is in Sumerian nam-, Hungarian -lom.
"-vene" [ma] noun formative of generalities. Hungarian "-váñ, -véñ" as in "nö-véñ" a plant, "tör-véñ" a law. In Etruscan "mulu-vene" offering, "tiur-uni-as" law.
"-thur" collective or membership in a group; "thuras" family? Hungarian törzs=tribe.

This list is still incomplete, since there are a lot of unsolved aspects to Etruscan grammar and vocabulary. The format or syntax of the agglutination of these morpheme elements varies in different languages. One other problem is the variations found in different inscriptions, that may reflect dialects as well as the chronological evolution of Etruscan dialects.

Vowel fluidity is much more common in some agglutinative languages. Strictness with the vowel changes, may work for I.E. somewhat but may not always work for UA, because there are often multiple vowels that can be used for the a single word, within a single dialect. These variations don't have other shades of meaning. Agglutinative languages emphasize the consonants and the vowel variations are more lax and often don't add any meaning.

Mario Alinei's theory

The most recent linguistic origin theory, has been proposed by the senior Italian linguist Mario Alinei, professor emeritus at the University of Utrecht, where he taught from 1959 to 1987 (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mario_Alinei). His detailed theory is much more encompassing than just linguistics and relates the Etruscan language to proto Hungarian (Ugrian) with some western Turkic terms. (see: Etrusco: Una Forma Archaica di Ungarese, Bologna 2003).

One of the earliest pioneers that recognized the linguistic similarity to Etruscan was the British Dr Isaac Taylor in his "Etruscan Researches" (London 1874). He claimed that Etruscan is a Ugro-Turkic (ie proto Hungarian-Turkic) type of language, but apparently in his day the amount of proof was not deemed sufficient, or was undesired due to nationalism. Coming closer to the present time, besides Mario Alinei, linguists such as the French J. Martha of the Paris University simply claimed it to be related to Finno-Ugrian. Felix Pongrácz Nagy of Hungary, whose presentation to the Hungarian Academy of Science on Etruscan claimed that both Etruscan and Hungarian languages are related to Sumerian. Many Etruscan words and morphemes do have similar forms in Hungarian, Turkic and Sumerian, which implies a very early link or lingua franca. Perhaps this was in Anatolia.

At the 1973 International Congress of Orientalists in Paris, Madame G. Enderlin also presented a paper on the ties of Etruscan runes to Hungarian runic writing, including translations tying it to Hungarian. (Coloques – Le De Chiffrement des Ecritures et des Languages”). It is interesting to note that German runes are believed to also originate from Etruscans but they are not nearly as similar to it as the Hungarian runes. Refer to the table of runic letters which were included in my article called Etruscan Culture. Even the Hungarian name of runic writing is very similar. Etruscan "rapa" is Hungarian "rová(s)" showing the common Hungarian *-p > v sound change.

The senior Italian linguist Mario Alinei has done extensive comparisons of all European languages in general, he has studied the language of the Etruscans and has come to the conclusion that Etruscan was a very archaic form of Hungarian, an early extinct branch of it, and its predecessors the Ugrians. He had studied this link for over 10 years before first publishing it in Italian. His theory of origin was that the ancestors of the Hungarians were living in Hungary by the end of the 3^rd millennium BC, long before they supposedly arrived from the Ukraine in 896AD, when the last Magyar-lead confederacy moved into Pannonia and founded the political entity of Hungary. Even the well known Hungarian archeologist Gyula László (1910-1988) has stated that the Hungarian language place-names existed in the Carpathian Basin before the Magyars came in. The locals were a lot more numerous than those incoming Magyars, who generally left the locals stay in place, while they themselves settled on poorer uninhabited grazing lands. However, they gave their name and rulers to Hungary, but they couldn't have been the source of the Hungarian language even if they spoke a common language. Many place-names in the Carpathian Basin have been modified, following the subdivision after the WWI of historic Hungary to Slovakia, western Rumania, Croatia, Slovenia, Serbia, and a small part of Austria as the "peace" dictates of the Treaty of Trianon. These names however are found in minute detail throughout the Carpathian Basin on historical maps.

A totally independent American researcher Grover Kranz (1931-2002) of Washington State University had also claimed that the whole Finno-Ugrian language family had originally come from the Carpathian Basin and its surroundings. (Grover Krantz, "Geographical Development of European Languages", New York,1988) This is geographically not so distant from the currently accepted Uralic Continuity theory claimed by FU researchers, where the Ukraine was the ice age refuge of the proto FU people and language. He also claimed that the Turkic people were also near to south-eastern Europe. Naturally this FU territory originally did not include the Samoyedic element or Lapps, who migrated later, roughly around 2000BC, from Siberia. The major difference is that Kranz claimed that Hungarians have never left the basin, while Alinei thought that they came back from east of the Urals during the bronze age with the early Kurgan invasions, along with some Turkic influences. There is plenty of evidence to show that Hungarians also settled in several eastern areas, as far as the Aral Sea, but also south into northern Mesopotamia, as claimed by an early Hungarian prince and recorded by the Byzantine Emperor Phorphyrogenitus. Much later some of these groups came back in separate times, just as the Hungarian Chronicles of the early Middle Ages have claimed. These early documents usually indicate the Magyars to come much earlier than the official 896AD. So, apparently many also went east and formed alliances with Turkic people who were usually their neighbors.

Grover Kranz wasn't totally wrong in his claims either, because according to recent genetic research in Hungary that claims that the TAT-C Y chromosome, common to the Finno-Ugrian group, during the Stone Age was once present in the Carpathian Basin. However, it had totally disappeared long ago, and it is not a part of the Hungarian gene pool of today, perhaps it never was. The missing chromosome may have been severely diluted many millenniums ago, or more likely it just implies an early linguistic influence, whose carriers and their tracks left when they strayed toward the north-east to follow the animal herds. The linguistic links between Hungarian and Finno-Ugrian does indeed exist, but what is relevant is that the FU group has very different phonetics and grammar, and roughly half of its small vocabulary that is shared with Hungarian, is also shared with other language families as far as Central Asia and the ancient Near East and the Indian subcontinent. However, that is never mentioned and strictly avoided. Those who cross that line are severely ostracized.

In the table of words and phonetic correspondences at the end of the article, I indicated the other language families that have similar sounding words with the same meaning, to help correct this misguided but prevalent belief. My aim was not to limit my comparisons to Hungarian only, even though I did not individually list the words of other languages.

Criticism of Mario Alinei's work

It has already been reported that the official Hungarian Finno-Ugrianists snubbed Allinei's theory on proto Hungarian being related linguistically to Etruscan. However, they generally snub everything new, their views have become fossilized. According to them "nothing new can be found". The criticism of Alinei's theory was published to the Hungarian public in the periodical “Szemle” that included the article “Magyar lenne a mai etruszk” (Could Etruscan be Hungarian?). Right off the bat, this is not what is claimed. Modern Hungarian is not the source of Etruscan. After reading this I didn’t find any earthshaking errors claimed in the criticisms, but plenty of unproven “facts” and assumptions about what the Hungarian language in the Bronze Age was supposedly like, with many unconvincing arguments and trivial errors. Blanket statements that this couldn’t have been this way in old Hungarian often had no basis or profs. The criticism that words like “tezen” should be written as "tegyen" in modern Hungarian show that the criticism was on a level of a modern grammar teacher that expects identity in phonetics rather than that of a historical linguist, who knows what to expect and looks for systemic sound shifts, which were covered in the book. Apparently the critic never even read the book! Critics also don't appreciate the orthographic variations of the old alphabets. Etruscan used the 'z' to indicate similar sounds depicted in modern Hungarian as 'ch', which often changes to 'gy'. It is unknown if Hungarian even had the unique ‘gy’ phoneme at this early time. The phoneme ‘gy’ can and does evolve from “ch” , "j" and "ng" as Turkic and FU examples prove. That is indicated by linguistic comparisons between FU languages and Turkic. It is also utterly naive to think that all early Hungarian dialects must have evolved in an identical way as the surviving Hungarian, even after a very long period of total isolation. It is also wrong to claim that all Hungarian dialects had to call themselves Magyar, since even in the 9^th century A.D. their western tribes were divided into at least 7 major tribes, plus their Sicul relations, known as Székely, living in eastern Hungary. These tribes were only the ones that migrated to central Europe, they did not include thosethat remained in the Caucasus, the Cuban area and on the fringes of Eastern Europe and Western Asia. At that early period, there was no contiguous territory that encompassed all Hungarians, because they lived spread out as independent tribes as the historic evidence shows.

At the same time I find fault with many of Alinei’s critics, who criticize trivial linguistic differences, which could very well have existed in another closely related sister language or the ancient form of Hungarian. Saying things like, Etruscan “maru” can’t be linked to modern Hungarian “mérö”, since it uses back vowels rather than front vowels. However other Finno-Ugrian languages like Komi also use back vowels (Komi “muru-tu”). This can simply imply a different, but archaic related dialect. In my opinion, the Hungarian "é" (pronounced like the letter "a") and "ö" are indeed back vowels anyway! The most underhanded criticisms by some critics has been putting words into Alinei's mouth that he never said nor implied, and then ridicule him for that. This has been a frequently used gimmick that they have utilized in the past. However, tying too close of a link to modern Hungarian is obviously ridiculous, since all languages change over time. That is the reason why Alinei claimed an archaic form of Hungarian, not the modern one. A looser association can become a valuable asset in understanding Etruscan, even if there are many differences as well, because to date no other language other than Hungarian has come even partially this close to Etruscan. After all, Prof Mario Alinei has used these similarities to translate various sentences that often agree with what we already knew, or it is tied to an Etruscan pictorial depiction with an Etruscan written description. It was not plucked out of thin air.

A few illustrations of the Etruscan z vs Hungarian cs (ch) and gy (dj) is actually a better proof than some identical words are, since they illustrate a systemic sound change for this letter. Normally, at the start of the word, the z acts as ch or ts, which in Hungarian later became gy, while the χ shows a similar change internal to the word rather than at the start or the end of it.

It is also a very curious coincidence that one of the forms of the Etruscan letter Z just happens to be the Hungarian runic symbol for GY, which looks like a vertical line with 2 parallel horizontal lines intersecting the vertical one. The Etruscan symbol for the Greek χ is represented with the same symbol as the Hungarian runic symbol for the phoneme ZS, that is a palatalized Z. This looks like a 3 forked fork standing vertically on its handle. So the palatized-fricatives Ch and palatized-fricative Zh today have merged in some cases to become both GY (DY) in equivalent Hungarian words. That is really a huge coincidence! See the table of Runic letters. Note that the English notations are approximations.

Vocabulary and Sound change examples of Etruscan

In the following table a very preliminary analysis of the phonetic changes of Etruscan are shown based on shared FU reconstructed proto-words that prof Alinei based his theory on. This should illustrate the possible sounds of the early form of the words. I have also listed other language families which have similar words, with similar meaning; such as:

UA is both Finno-Ugrian plus Samoyedic and Altaic.
FU is Finno-Ugrian of north Eastern Europe,
Ug represents Ugor, whose chief member is Hungarian. That is the source of the name.
When "Ug" is used instead of "FU", it means that only Ugrian has the word and it is not derived from FU.
Sm is for Sumerian of southern Mesopotamia,
Hurri is Hurrian of northern Mesopotamia.

Dr means Dravidian languages of pre Arian India, which are now located mainly in southern India. Our Dravidian comparisons were based mainly on the Tamil language.
A is for Altaic, which includes Turkic, Mongol and Tungusic, but if the word is only known to be in Turkic to my knowledge, then "Trk" was listed instead of "A".

As it stands, the Türkic-Mongolic-Tungusic Altaic group as well as Uralic is a Sprachbund, a result of convergence through intensive borrowing and long contact among speakers of languages that are not closely related. They don’t originate from a common source.

Essentially, in the extreme case, the Türkic languages are the sole member of the Altaic group. In case when the Macro-Tungusic group is called Altaic, the Türkic languages lose even that last moniker. Perhaps the reason for this is the obviously different origins of Mongols and Tunguz from Turkic, who greatly influenced their languages but came from the west. Since then, they have absorbed other racial elements and spread their influence due to their nomadic existence and large territorial range.

I have often passed up the Indo-European (IE) languages, because that subject has been studied in detail by others while ignoring everything else. I think they did a more thorough job then I could.

The FU language family consists of a mixture of genetically very different people, some came from Asia (Samoyeds, Lapps, Ob area Ugrians) and some from Europe (Finns, Estonians and Hungarians), all of which intermingled racially or simply shared a regional common language (Sprachbund) in certain border areas. My opinion about the FU language family concept is that according to several linguists it has some major flaws. Hungarian in general is a very fringe member with some common basic vocabulary, but its phonetics and grammar are very different. Hungarians are anthropologically unrelated to others in the FU group. Therefore as a natural consequence, I completely reject the proto-history created by the FU scholars of Hungary, since there are no grounds to believe that Hungarians and FUpeople ever intermarried. I also reject the claimed cultural relationship, because the idea was based entirely on later groups that came from Asia. Quite a large body of the FU vocabulary is also found in languages other than FU, as is indicated in my language group notations. A major contributor to the Hungarian language, traditions, culture and anthropology is Turkic and Sumerian. Yet the language is independent of Turkic grammatically and phonetically.

The proto form reconstructions are based on FU reconstructions, because that is what Prof. Alinei based his work on and they represent a more usable protoforms than any single modern language can, since it is only a later derivation. Whether the proto-forms are a result of a language family ties or an areal borrowing should not affect the phonetic tendencies of the individual languages.

In this list, Etruscan is in a separate column with its equivalent words and associated references shown in brackets, followed by a column with Hungarian equivalents.

The following table is by no means a complete list of known Etruscan words. Its not a dictionary but an illustration of phonetic changes that I noticed. To make it easier to read, I have changed most of the native Hungarian digraphs (dual letters) to their English equivalents. Most references were taken from the following sources.

http://etruscans1.tripod.com/Language/ This was the source of the following references.

dep: Damien ErwanPerrotin's Etruscan Etymological Dictionary.
pcr: Patrick C Ryan's Etruscan Glossary.
pa: Paolo Agostino's Etruscan Glossary.
dhs: Dieter H. Steinbauer's Etruscan Vocabulary.
az96: Adolfo Zavaroni I documenti etruschi, Sherpa, Padova, 1996

Other independent sources
b-b: Giuliano Bonfante, Larissa Bonfante, The Etruscan Language, 2002:214
ma: Mario Alinei "Etrusco: Una forma arcaica di Ungherese ", 2003 

Key: FU =Finno-Ugrian , Ug=ugor only, A=Altaic, Trk=Turkic, Dr=Dravidian, Sm=Sumerian. Others are individual languages that are not abbreviated into a family group.

Many words will be repeated to show different phonemes changes of the same word.

Greek loanwords with "d" often became "l" in Etruscan such as
Odyseus becoming Ulyses, dythera (skin "parchment") becoming litera
(>literature/books). This *dh/th > ld > l is found in several proto-words and is common in Hungarian sound changes.

A few examples of whole Etruscan sentences are illustrated in a short summary of Prof Mario Alinei's book at the following link:
http://www.continuitas.org/texts/alinei_etruscan.pdf For sentences scroll to the section with pictures that include captions. One of the examples from Mario Alinei includes:

 The complete English equivalent is shown on the bottom of the table.

Conclusion

Of the living languages compared to Etruscan, proto Hungarian and early Turkic currently show the most affinity. Some other theories have shown ties, such as Hurrian, Semitic Phoenician, and naturally Latin and Greek, which are mainly loanwords into Etruscan. Once more is known about the phonetic changes of Etruscan, more words can be deciphered. Perhaps comparisons to other languages will also provide more precise definitions, rather than rough generalities. Although the Etruscan alphabet is well known, some of the conventions of its use aren't certain. Were there dual vowel or dual consonant representations i.e. "digraph" used? What is the proper reading of the 5th century BC introduction of vowel deletions? Were they abbreviations? Not all of the morphemes and syntax is known yet, and only 250 Etruscan words are believed to be known, some of which are only through the context they are used in, so that the precise meaning may actually be slightly different. While Etruscan has been mainly compared to old dead languages and Indo-European in the past, the previous list of related terms may become a stepping stone to newer discoveries. My main concern is that this illustration of Mario Alinei's work, with additional links that I added, will be ignored because of nationalistic feelings, academic jealousy or the lack of an English version. The word list is from many Etruscologists who don't allways agree on the translations. In conclusion, these examples should indicate that Mario Alinei's proposal is worth taking much more seriously, because it is usually not in conflict with most of our current word interpretations and it has created many meaningful readings of Etruscan texts.

Fred Hamori

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References:
Bonfante-Bonfante; "The Etruscan Language", Manchester 1988

Lakó György, Rédei Károly; "A magyar szókészlet finno-ugor elemei", Budapest 1978
Lakó György, "Proto Finno-Ugor Sources of the Hungarian phonetic stock", Budapest 1968
Mario Alinei "Etrusco: Una forma arcaica di Ungherese ", 2003
Mario Alinei "Ösi Kapocs", 2005

R.S.P Beekes, "The Origin of the Etruscans", Amsterdam, 2003

Silvia McAlister -Castillo, Mississippi U, 1999; http://etruscans1.tripod.com/Language