Minoan language Linear A linked to Linear B in new research

I guess I’m skeptical as to what is being claimed here. There have been various attempts to use the Greek phonetic values and logograms of Linear B to reconstruct Linear A equivalents. The only known sentences partially deciphered are votive formulations. Knowing the sound values doesn’t really help you anyway as we have virtually no information on Linear A at all. It’s pretty hard to understand sign equivalencies if you can’t even understand how a sign is being used.<p>The article is pretty vague; I’m not sure what these sign equivalences are supposed to be.

Is there a better source for this? Under all the breathless hype (&quot;astonishingly, the internet itself may be the key that unlocks the link between the languages&quot;) it sounds like all that&#x27;s being claimed -- not even proven -- is stronger evidence that Linear A and Linear B are related.

The author of the book -- Ester Salgarella -- has also put together an online searchable corpus of Linear A:<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;sigla.phis.me" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;sigla.phis.me</a><p>It&#x27;s very neatly annotated, e.g: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;sigla.phis.me&#x2F;document&#x2F;ARKH%201a&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;sigla.phis.me&#x2F;document&#x2F;ARKH%201a&#x2F;</a><p>and a good starting point to anyone wishing to try their hand on extracting patterns out of the corpus

This story seems a little bit puffed up.<p>There has been exciting recent progress in the decipherment of another early writing system, Linear Elamite.[0] In fact, French archæologist&#x2F;philologist François Desset announced last year that he has deciphered all known Linear Elamite inscriptions.[1] (Someone posted this to HN at the time, but it got no traction.[2])<p>[0]: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Linear_Elamite" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Linear_Elamite</a><p>[1]: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.archaeoreporter.com&#x2F;en&#x2F;2020&#x2F;11&#x2F;27&#x2F;deciphering-linear-elamite-the-worlds-oldest-phonetic-writing-system-watch-a-sneak-preview-of-how-to-translate-these-inscriptions&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.archaeoreporter.com&#x2F;en&#x2F;2020&#x2F;11&#x2F;27&#x2F;deciphering-li...</a><p>[2]: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=25345680" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=25345680</a>

I you are at all interested in this sort of thing then I recommend this book:<p>John Chadwick - The Decipherment of Linear B<p>It is written for the lay person and describes the process of cracking linear B and some of the human story as well as info about the ancient civilization.

See also <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;lineara.xyz&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;lineara.xyz&#x2F;</a> and <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;linearb.xyz&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;linearb.xyz&#x2F;</a>

Might be more helpful: <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.sci-news.com&#x2F;archaeology&#x2F;minoan-linear-a-script-09329.html" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.sci-news.com&#x2F;archaeology&#x2F;minoan-linear-a-script-0...</a>

Wow, what a terrible piece! Same ideas repeated paragraph after a paragraph. Was the author paid by word count?

Tl;dr- they haven’t translated anything but they made a big leap with identifying some analogous symbols in Linear B

That was disappointing; the fact that Linear B is descended from Linear A and has inherited many of its signs with more or less variation is not exactly news.

I always dreamed of being the one to decipher linear a. I almost hope this won’t stick.

Would we call this language Minoan to be more accurate? Just like we separate Latin from Italian.

I was wondering, has anyone used the zipf law to help deciphering? E.g one would expect the to be one or the top 3 most used word