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Above undated message substituted from Template:Dashboard.wikiedu.org assignment by PrimeBOT ( talk) 02:37, 17 January 2022 (UTC)
i had tried to add a new link, that is considerable important for this article and the Mycanaean greek article, but, a stupid bot, deleted it several times. i give you the link for your consideration, that i think, and many of us i suppost, is extremely relevant:
Glossary of Linear B —Preceding unsigned comment added by Hans soplopuco ( talk • contribs) 19:54, 29 January 2008 (UTC)
I would admit that I don't know Linear B. But if it is as described as "poor compliance with the phonemic principle" and is partly syllabic, with additional logographic signs that are "determinative", or "designational" (yielding "classes", and "types"), it is more like Chinese than Japanese.
The Japanese kana is pure syllabic and forms complete words while kanji (literally, Chinese word) is imported complete word. The interleaving of kana and kanji serves as word delimiter since Japanese does not have "space" as modern European languages.
A significant numbers of Chinese words are phonemic with determinative, though most of them are poorly compliant with phonemic principle.
To claim that Linear B is like Japanese is to say that Linear B consists of phonemic symbols interleaving with foreign words such as Egyptian hieroglyphs.
I can't read any of the signs on this page. I think we'd need images for all the signs, since most people viewing this page will not have the appropriate fonts installed. Pfalstad 05:44, 20 Feb 2005 (UTC)
The conclusion drawn by User:Spryom, "that all early civilizations in the eastern mediterannean areas (mainland Greece, Aegean, Cyprus, Crete and Ionian coast) were actually Greek.", is unwarranted. I adjusted accordingly. Mycenaean-age settlements that show material culture of Mycenaeans suggest Greek-speaking cultures in specific Aegean sites, but I thought that was getting offtopic. -- Wetman 16:46, 15 July 2005 (UTC)
This article needs a lot of work - it should address both issues just raised - and include the link above.
And foremost, it should give dates for Linear B - not just "Late Bronze age" in the date space in the right column. I know I've seen citations several times regarding these dates.
I personally think Linear B conforms to the statistical requirements of a phonetic alphabet, and I'm certainly not alone in that idea. LK (UTC)
The important role of the Cypriot syllabary in the decoding should be described. (See Chadwick, John (1958). The Decipherment of Linear B).
I started to try to clean up this section, but then I wondered if it should be included at all, as it appears there may be some original research here with verifiability problems:
First of all, the syntax needs to be cleaned up, as I can't possibly believe that all of those commas are grammatically correct. Secondly, the second paragraph uses the word "I", which both violates our encyclopedic style and makes me wonder if someone has added their own personal theories here. Any thoughts, because this isn't anywhere near my area of expertise. Func( t, c, @, ) 00:41, 15 September 2005 (UTC)
Regarding the opening, which states that Linear B was derived from Linear A, this is not the consensus currently, rather that they developed simultaneously or at least on similar time scales. For example, some of the signs in Linear B are more primative than their counterparts in linear A. (unsigned comment by User:Dr_Eng1ish 2006-02-19 20:25:22)
Emmett L. Bennett, Jr., had a lot to do with the grid which led to Ventris's solutions. In the books about the decipherment, in the index Bennett is mentioned more times than Kober. I'm not a scholar, so cannot provide an article. I do have a personal bias here, as Emmett is my oldest brother. But I think the bias is worth paying attention to.
Myron Bennett-- 72.49.92.221 20:04, 9 June 2006 (UTC)
and the "q" series is used for indo-eurpoean /kʷ/, /gʷ/, /kʷʰ/ and /gʷʰ/: Isn't the above sentence inaccurate? Also is /Tegway/ correct? Should it be Tēgwai?
The article fails to reflect that Ventris's alleged decipherment was controversial and is considered by some experts to be incomplete. --Nate Levin
This isn't really about the article as such--it's about how to read the article. I can't see the Linear B glyphs, possibly because I don't have the right font. I get a weird symbol, the same one for all the glyphs. So I'm curious which font I should obtain. I also notice that the glyphs aren't templated, and it seems like there ought to be a template similar to {{ polytonic}} or {{ Script/Cuneiform}} for Linear B script. --Akhilleus ( talk) 03:03, 19 April 2007 (UTC) Hm, I'm actually seeing two glyphs--one which looks like an ax, and another one that looks like a tripod. All the syllabic signs look like an ax, and the ideograms alternate between tripods and axes. Weird. --Akhilleus ( talk) 03:08, 19 April 2007 (UTC)
Same problem here, I have downloaded and installed these fonts, but still what I see is just boxes... Kapnisma ? 18:12, 3 August 2007 (UTC)
I'm afraid I see exactly the same problem: on Safari 2.0.4 (pretty current) none of the glyphs render. Somebody's going to have to redo the tables as images, I think. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 62.3.233.233 ( talk) 08:38, 18 September 2007 (UTC)
For me, the glyphs are displaying all as the same character -- Unicode 10000 -- in the first two tables, and as a different one -- probably Unicode 10080 -- in the third one. (FF 2.0.0.15, OSX 10.5.3) I did a little research, and found another page with the exact same problem. What happens in both places is, the browser sees the first Unicode character, renders it properly, and then renders all succeeding Unicode characters on the page (or table) using the exact same one. If you view other pages on that site, you'll see the same thing happening. So, my guess is that Firefox has a bug. (I tried Safari. It doesn't even get as far as that. It just displays empty boxes for the Unicode.) So my conclusion right now is that Wikipedia is not at fault. It's a browser problem. (That also means: installing more fonts will probably not help.) OTOH there's Akhilleus's statement just above that says he was able to get it to work. More experimentation is in order :-) thundt ( talk) 16:49, 7 July 2008 (UTC)
where is a reference to Cyrus Gordon's work showing that Linear B is Semitic? - 4.249.198.63
Updated: Nema Fakei ( talk) 11:06, 18 December 2007 (UTC)
Ah, forgot about JAC and HAS being two different things. The latter is Unicode D8, 𐃘. Thanks for picking that up. On *233=PUG, the minutes and resolutions of CIPEM in (I think) 1972, which I was working from, it being the last full signary published, has *233=PUG, 234 (the single bladed version) unnamed - do you know when it was changed?
As to the ideogram going at the end of the line, I am afraid I can't think of a single example off the top of my head of an ideogram that does not precede a numeral, with the exception of tablet breaks, so I don't follow your edit to that sentence at all. -- Nema Fakei ( talk) 00:31, 28 March 2008 (UTC)
The last sentence in the paragraph headed "Decipherment" doesn't quite make sense:-
"...and presented Greek in writing some 600 years earlier than what was thought at the time."
I don't really know what the writer means, or I would amend the ending myself... —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.14.66.122 ( talk) 13:03, 23 April 2008 (UTC)
see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_languages_by_first_written_accounts. CuteHappyBrute ( talk) 18:44, 9 October 2008 (UTC)
Under "Arthur J. Evans' classification of scripts", a sentence near the end says, "His life was finished in 1941..." What does this mean? He died? Or should it read "His life work was finished"? Mcswell ( talk) 16:55, 6 June 2013 (UTC)
The tablets are not enciphered. Translating them should be called translation, not decipherment. A.times.B,equals ( talk) 01:54, 30 May 2008 (UTC)
- When oh when will wikipedia editors learn that simply finding a word in a certain usage via a google search does not mean that it is the correct usage - many words are more commonly used incorrectly than correctly (thus, the "ask google tactic" is futile). This is one of wikipedia's greatest failings. —Preceding
unsigned comment added by
86.150.35.114 (
talk)
20:51, 8 July 2008 (UTC)
Grumach and Beattie denied that Ventris's work was correct. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 92.12.146.16 ( talk) 11:56, 4 August 2008 (UTC)
I am checking back after many months and am sad to see that the font in the table still does not display correctly, despite having Linear B font installed. I am just writing to let you all know this, because I see all the haggling below, but regardless of it all the font DOES NOT DISPLAY. I'm using the most up-to-date version of Firefox and, as I said, Linear B font is installed. I hope you guys will figure out a way to fix it or else remove it because it looks bad. F. Pacifica 08:52, 14 February 2016 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Fpacifica ( talk • contribs)
I seem to be back cleaning this up. The unicode section is totally unnecessary. How many times shall we repeat those signs? The lead-in box links to pdf's stating the codes and the unicode section has the same links. Now, it seems, we are to repeat them in the article? This is a waste of time and space. If no one objects I am going to take out that section as redundant. The signs once in the article is enough and if they want the unicode equivalences they can click on the pdf links in the box.
Dave (
talk)
00:47, 6 January 2009 (UTC)
Not an expert on this topic but two things: I have known the work of Evertype for years - his pedigree in the world of linguistics and related computing stuff is spotless. He's not a commercial agent. For all it's worth. Secondly, I disagree with the "Linear B people didn't have computers". Scores of Wiki articles are about things that happened long before the advent of computing, including scripts ancient and/or long dead. Ogham uses a text font, Chu nom does... Encyclopedia are used by many people and many linguists, including myself, often use Wiki as a quick copy and paste source for characters that otherwise you'd have to trawl for in the Unicode chart book or get fuzzy eyes trying to locate in on screen in a character table. It is SO useful when writing a paper or handout. So please, by all means, leave them in! Akerbeltz ( talk) 13:10, 9 January 2009 (UTC)
I got about halfway through this discussion and gave it up as pointless. Wikipedia is a computerized encyclopedia, and Unicode is the standard for computerized fonts (at least in the West), so this article needs to be Unicodified. For obscure scripts most people do not have the appropriate fonts, and it's unreasonable to ask the casual browser to install a different font for each obscure script article they come across, so we need images as well, but they are secondary. That's pretty standard. If the day ever comes when Windows or IE comes with LinB installed, we can drop the latter, but Unicode needs to be the spine of the text. As for Greek vs. Roman transcription, we need the Roman, while teh Greek is optional—though it does help somewhat with coordinating the article with the refs. kwami ( talk) 18:01, 12 January 2009 (UTC)
Top-notch idea! YES is my vote. This is one of those extended topics Wikipedia handles very well by its lists. It WILL get longer, much longer. 12.4.26.248 ( talk) 16:12, 8 January 2009 (UTC)
The "sign" in the title does not fit as the syllabic signs are signs but are not included. I suggest for clarity the conventional "ideograms" rather than "logograms" as everyone in the field will know immediately what is meant. Dave ( talk) 12:45, 10 January 2009 (UTC)
I object to your summary removal of Greek text and replacement of it by transliteration. Please restore the Greek text. Thank you. -- Evertype· ✆ 08:43, 12 January 2009 (UTC)
also, ideally the unicode Linb characters should be marked with the {{ script}} template, e.g. {{script|Linb|𐀀}}: 𐀀. -- dab (𒁳) 09:27, 12 January 2009 (UTC)
I cleaned up this section based on what it already said. We should call these what they are. If they are logograms that are called ideograms within the LinB community for historical reasons, then we should say that (as I just did). However, Emmett Bennett (what a name!) says they actually are ideograms: they were not used as logograms in texts, but rather in inventories, and did not have phonetic values. We have something similar with Egyptian, a logographic script that uses ideograms rather than logograms for numerals. I don't know myself, but if Bennett is correct and these are ideograms, then we should not use the word logogram at all, except perhaps in a clarifying footnote. kwami ( talk) 18:20, 12 January 2009 (UTC)
I am aware some people make big deal of the distinction logogram vs. ideogram, and I happen to think it is an artificial distinction that cannot be made consistently. There are cases where the context makes it desirable to make the distinction, yes, but then the splitters came and tried to pretend they were objective categories rather than terms used to express which aspect of a sign you want to focus on at the moment. -- dab (𒁳) 09:34, 28 February 2009 (UTC)
I thought this section needed to be enhanced because in summarizing the decipherment process in one paragraph or less, Internet editors, who all copy wach other, in copying would guess at facts not stated by the original author and over time the accumulation of guesses amounted to a total myth. At this point I can see that to present the milestones in the process giving due and accurate credit to the major players is really the subject of another article, so that is what I am suggesting, another article. I wanted to call it Decipherment of Linear B but there is a book by Chadwick of that name and this is not about Chadwick's book so I thought of the one I suggested. Now I have to leave it alone for a while so that you can react. Dave ( talk) 13:33, 7 February 2009 (UTC)
Does anyone know in what direction the script is meant to be read? I read on a website#REDIRECT [[ [6]]]that it was Boustrephedon, but I have not been able to verify this.
Hacksaw45501 ( talk) 06:38, 17 May 2009 (UTC)
It's usually ltr. Maybe there are some boustrephedon examples, but I am not aware of any. Maybe the page you link to is simply mistaken, seeing that the main entry on Linear B at omniglot makes no mention of this. -- dab (𒁳) 15:36, 17 May 2009 (UTC)
Thanks Dbachmann. I was able to find this#REDIRECT [ [7]] which says ltr. as you say. Hacksaw45501 ( talk) 18:39, 17 May 2009 (UTC)
User Firefox, and install the "Aegean" font from here: [ [8]] The glyphs should appear correctly.
Hello, everybody.
I've started the article about Aegean numerals. Because most of you are expert in this subject, i request you if you can cooperate expanding it.
Thanks in advance.
Crazymadlover. —Preceding undated comment added 13:24, 26 March 2010 (UTC).
Hello, everybody.
I've started the article about Aegean numerals. Because most of you are expert in this subject, i request you if you can cooperate expanding it.
Thanks in advance.
Crazymadlover. —Preceding undated comment added 13:25, 26 March 2010 (UTC).
I worked on this article some time ago. I think it is time for a revisit. I can;t say precisely when - soon. Some preliminaries have to be done on other articles. What I notice about this is, the issues are not the same as before. Before, I was involved in controversies about what characters and codes to use in representing the script. The ones another editor wanted to use did not work except on some software, and it looked as though he was trying to sell stuff that was not the best. WP and browsers have gone on since then. Now everything seems to work, so there is no need to go back there. I switched to Firefox myself. I do notice that the article is getting out of control. I agree with the outline. There is a serious question of what goes under the topics. The two most objectionable sections are the one on Arthur Evans, which is heavily referenced, and the controversy one, which is way underreferenced. They both say a lot of things that are not relevant to the article, and don't say it very well. I recognize some of my writing in there, but it did not end up as intended. What have they done to my song, ma! And finally, the references are quite a hodge-podge of formats, most not really acceptable. What I plan to to then is start standardizing the cites. At least hslf the Evans material should be under the biography of Evans; for example, we don't care here what he did in the Balkans. I just happen to have a book or two on the controversy. Best not to make too many controversies. Frankly the language part of it I think is looking good for such a short article. The boxes - too many, not a good design. We need a good design. So, when you see me coming, calm down. I won't make any changes I do not explain. No need to erase my work as I type at 5 in the morning, as happened last time. Basically I will be interested in relevance, style and formatting. I expect to condense. Dave ( talk) 02:39, 13 April 2012 (UTC)
The problem with with Evans as decipherer is that he did not decipher. He did classify. But, he did not do any of that in Bosnia and Herzegovina; in fact, he never even saw the script until he bought some sealstones just before his wife died. He sort of lived two contiguous lives, one before her death and one after. Some see in it the hand of Providence, but I refuse to say that Providence took away his wife. Anyway the article on Evans now contains most of the personal material on Evans and will contain more, as well as citations to Scripta Minoa, his opus magnum on the script. I do not think the personal material belongs in an article on Linear B, especially as it takes up so much space, while the true decipherers get a few sentences. I realize this will involve removing the refs on the life of Evans, but they don't belong there anyway. Furthermore, those refs are now in the article on Evans. So, these are my reasons for making such large cuts. That material manifestly belongs elsewhere, where it now is. This material is mainly duplication. I think I will just copy over the citations to Scripta Minoa for the Bibliography Dave ( talk) 20:38, 29 April 2012 (UTC)
Is not Linear B. Hittite currently has the record. Here's the statement removed:
"and this is properly the oldest Indo-European writings." [1]
You are not to blame, editor. Please don't take it to heart. The source is wrong. I got no doubt it meant to say the oldest Greek. It generally is better not not to use these hoaky web sites as encyclopedic articles, but then, it put itself forward as a "news" article. I don't want to sound cynical but all the other newspapers are hoak city as well. The biggest hoax of all is their claim to be bringing the truth to the public. If you want to see what they really are doing, cast a critical eye on the morning TV "anchor." Anchor? To what? How much of that sells and how much really relates anything purported to be telling us fact? Morning TV is pure commercials, beginning to end, even the so-called "news." How do you protect yourself from an outright lie? I wish I knew. Look at what they make. People do not get that money for telling the truth. The only thing you get for that is shot. No, they get that money for their entertainment, just like WP. If you can shock, Jock, you're in the dock. That is what the removed article is trying to do. Dave ( talk) 01:09, 30 April 2012 (UTC)
References
It seemed best to me to keep all the chronology together, so we don't have to go hunting thru the article for it. Also, "Cretan scripts" does not quite describe it. On the table of "Cretan scripts", no need to make that sortable. There's nothing to sort, the table having only three lines. There are some other format questions on that table, but I defer that. Dave ( talk) 13:32, 30 April 2012 (UTC)
Could someone with knowledge of the subject please add some more information about the dating of the various tablets? As in, what methods have been used to date them? How reliable are they? Maitreya ( talk) 09:43, 8 March 2013 (UTC)
The section discussing Alice Kober appears to be copied directly from her obituary in the New York Times. 66.57.57.61 ( talk) 23:15, 22 May 2013 (UTC)
An article from 1999 describes Linear B as having been deciphered. Your article closes out with a 1935 conferences. That's a lot of missing history and very important history too. The article I found is: Bennet, John, and Jan Driessen, A-na-qo-ta. Salamanca: University Press, 1998-1999. https://www.academia.edu/653834/Kretes_and_Iawones._Observations_on_Ethnic_Identity_of_Bronze_Age_Cretans 71.163.117.143 ( talk) 17:10, 4 June 2014 (UTC)
Scripta Minoa by Sir Arthur Evans is on Internet Archive. 71.163.117.143 ( talk) 13:09, 24 July 2014 (UTC)
Hi, please forgive this intrusion by an ignoramus. After the first grid in this page comes a section entitled Special and unknown signs saying "...the first edition of Documents...". I realise this refers to what all you subject experts know is the seminal Ventris/Chadwick work Documents in Mycenaean Greek which I understand first appeared in 1956, and the Sources section refers repeatedly to a later edition of this (1973) which is cited in the Bibliography. But I think this bald reference Documents is the very first on this (Linear B) Wiki page, and to the less informed reader like me, it seems unexplained. Possibly this is just the accidental result of earlier text editing. May I suggest that readability might be improved if this text is expanded slightly or if earlier mention is made (perhaps in the opening paragraph The Script) of the work with its full title, the date of its first publication and its significance. AconUK ( talk) 09:31, 15 August 2014 (UTC)
Use your search engine with "linear b" and "Pasiphae". Since 2010 a number of PDFs have been posted free online about use of Linear B at Thebes, Pylos, and Sparta. They are very enlightening and the fact that it was used at places besides Knossus for several centuries makes it a real language of a widespread culture, not just a curiosity from a limited location. 108.18.136.147 ( talk) 15:37, 3 September 2015 (UTC)
Possibly to improve this article, the mention of its predecessor Linear A could be brought up a bit more. I thought it did a good job describing the basic structure of the script and how it worked. There were many outside sources that provided more history to the script and they were readily accessible. I do think that everything in the article pertained to the subject, but I think that there was information that could have been left out. For example, the section on Alice Kober's triplets was not very necessary. Also, everything seemed to have a neutral opinion, which is good. Raeitesfazghi ( talk) 17:54, 17 September 2017 (UTC) Raei Tesfazghi
Another improvement would be a short paragraph on what we have actually learned about the people and culture that we didn't know prior to decipherment. Have we found a Gilgamesh yet, or just a bunch of trivial commercial records? 104.158.54.27 ( talk) 03:25, 22 October 2017 (UTC)Decoding is an interesting puzzle and task in its own right -- obviously -- but the ultimate purpose is to learn what was being communicated.
Can I ask why the following statement was added to this Wikipedia page with a citation?
"Butthurt jew and human wannabe, Saul Levin of the State University of New York considered that Linear B was partly Greek but with an earlier substrate, in his 1964 book The Linear B controversy reexamined."
I do not understand how something like this can be added to a page. Sgtandrew1799 ( talk) 22:06, 9 November 2023 (UTC)
Ventris considered Sumerian before considering Etruscan. See https://www.umass.edu/wsp/method/philology/gallery/ventris.html 2A00:23C7:9985:1701:D552:5C9D:9E78:8F76 ( talk) 16:37, 8 December 2023 (UTC)
This is the
talk page for discussing improvements to the
Linear B article. This is not a forum for general discussion of the article's subject. |
Article policies
|
Find sources: Google ( books · news · scholar · free images · WP refs) · FENS · JSTOR · TWL |
![]() | A fact from this article was featured on Wikipedia's Main Page in the On this day section on April 5, 2013. |
![]() | This ![]() It is of interest to the following WikiProjects: | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
This article is or was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment. Further details are available
on the course page. Peer reviewers:
Raeitesfazghi.
Above undated message substituted from Template:Dashboard.wikiedu.org assignment by PrimeBOT ( talk) 02:37, 17 January 2022 (UTC)
i had tried to add a new link, that is considerable important for this article and the Mycanaean greek article, but, a stupid bot, deleted it several times. i give you the link for your consideration, that i think, and many of us i suppost, is extremely relevant:
Glossary of Linear B —Preceding unsigned comment added by Hans soplopuco ( talk • contribs) 19:54, 29 January 2008 (UTC)
I would admit that I don't know Linear B. But if it is as described as "poor compliance with the phonemic principle" and is partly syllabic, with additional logographic signs that are "determinative", or "designational" (yielding "classes", and "types"), it is more like Chinese than Japanese.
The Japanese kana is pure syllabic and forms complete words while kanji (literally, Chinese word) is imported complete word. The interleaving of kana and kanji serves as word delimiter since Japanese does not have "space" as modern European languages.
A significant numbers of Chinese words are phonemic with determinative, though most of them are poorly compliant with phonemic principle.
To claim that Linear B is like Japanese is to say that Linear B consists of phonemic symbols interleaving with foreign words such as Egyptian hieroglyphs.
I can't read any of the signs on this page. I think we'd need images for all the signs, since most people viewing this page will not have the appropriate fonts installed. Pfalstad 05:44, 20 Feb 2005 (UTC)
The conclusion drawn by User:Spryom, "that all early civilizations in the eastern mediterannean areas (mainland Greece, Aegean, Cyprus, Crete and Ionian coast) were actually Greek.", is unwarranted. I adjusted accordingly. Mycenaean-age settlements that show material culture of Mycenaeans suggest Greek-speaking cultures in specific Aegean sites, but I thought that was getting offtopic. -- Wetman 16:46, 15 July 2005 (UTC)
This article needs a lot of work - it should address both issues just raised - and include the link above.
And foremost, it should give dates for Linear B - not just "Late Bronze age" in the date space in the right column. I know I've seen citations several times regarding these dates.
I personally think Linear B conforms to the statistical requirements of a phonetic alphabet, and I'm certainly not alone in that idea. LK (UTC)
The important role of the Cypriot syllabary in the decoding should be described. (See Chadwick, John (1958). The Decipherment of Linear B).
I started to try to clean up this section, but then I wondered if it should be included at all, as it appears there may be some original research here with verifiability problems:
First of all, the syntax needs to be cleaned up, as I can't possibly believe that all of those commas are grammatically correct. Secondly, the second paragraph uses the word "I", which both violates our encyclopedic style and makes me wonder if someone has added their own personal theories here. Any thoughts, because this isn't anywhere near my area of expertise. Func( t, c, @, ) 00:41, 15 September 2005 (UTC)
Regarding the opening, which states that Linear B was derived from Linear A, this is not the consensus currently, rather that they developed simultaneously or at least on similar time scales. For example, some of the signs in Linear B are more primative than their counterparts in linear A. (unsigned comment by User:Dr_Eng1ish 2006-02-19 20:25:22)
Emmett L. Bennett, Jr., had a lot to do with the grid which led to Ventris's solutions. In the books about the decipherment, in the index Bennett is mentioned more times than Kober. I'm not a scholar, so cannot provide an article. I do have a personal bias here, as Emmett is my oldest brother. But I think the bias is worth paying attention to.
Myron Bennett-- 72.49.92.221 20:04, 9 June 2006 (UTC)
and the "q" series is used for indo-eurpoean /kʷ/, /gʷ/, /kʷʰ/ and /gʷʰ/: Isn't the above sentence inaccurate? Also is /Tegway/ correct? Should it be Tēgwai?
The article fails to reflect that Ventris's alleged decipherment was controversial and is considered by some experts to be incomplete. --Nate Levin
This isn't really about the article as such--it's about how to read the article. I can't see the Linear B glyphs, possibly because I don't have the right font. I get a weird symbol, the same one for all the glyphs. So I'm curious which font I should obtain. I also notice that the glyphs aren't templated, and it seems like there ought to be a template similar to {{ polytonic}} or {{ Script/Cuneiform}} for Linear B script. --Akhilleus ( talk) 03:03, 19 April 2007 (UTC) Hm, I'm actually seeing two glyphs--one which looks like an ax, and another one that looks like a tripod. All the syllabic signs look like an ax, and the ideograms alternate between tripods and axes. Weird. --Akhilleus ( talk) 03:08, 19 April 2007 (UTC)
Same problem here, I have downloaded and installed these fonts, but still what I see is just boxes... Kapnisma ? 18:12, 3 August 2007 (UTC)
I'm afraid I see exactly the same problem: on Safari 2.0.4 (pretty current) none of the glyphs render. Somebody's going to have to redo the tables as images, I think. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 62.3.233.233 ( talk) 08:38, 18 September 2007 (UTC)
For me, the glyphs are displaying all as the same character -- Unicode 10000 -- in the first two tables, and as a different one -- probably Unicode 10080 -- in the third one. (FF 2.0.0.15, OSX 10.5.3) I did a little research, and found another page with the exact same problem. What happens in both places is, the browser sees the first Unicode character, renders it properly, and then renders all succeeding Unicode characters on the page (or table) using the exact same one. If you view other pages on that site, you'll see the same thing happening. So, my guess is that Firefox has a bug. (I tried Safari. It doesn't even get as far as that. It just displays empty boxes for the Unicode.) So my conclusion right now is that Wikipedia is not at fault. It's a browser problem. (That also means: installing more fonts will probably not help.) OTOH there's Akhilleus's statement just above that says he was able to get it to work. More experimentation is in order :-) thundt ( talk) 16:49, 7 July 2008 (UTC)
where is a reference to Cyrus Gordon's work showing that Linear B is Semitic? - 4.249.198.63
Updated: Nema Fakei ( talk) 11:06, 18 December 2007 (UTC)
Ah, forgot about JAC and HAS being two different things. The latter is Unicode D8, 𐃘. Thanks for picking that up. On *233=PUG, the minutes and resolutions of CIPEM in (I think) 1972, which I was working from, it being the last full signary published, has *233=PUG, 234 (the single bladed version) unnamed - do you know when it was changed?
As to the ideogram going at the end of the line, I am afraid I can't think of a single example off the top of my head of an ideogram that does not precede a numeral, with the exception of tablet breaks, so I don't follow your edit to that sentence at all. -- Nema Fakei ( talk) 00:31, 28 March 2008 (UTC)
The last sentence in the paragraph headed "Decipherment" doesn't quite make sense:-
"...and presented Greek in writing some 600 years earlier than what was thought at the time."
I don't really know what the writer means, or I would amend the ending myself... —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.14.66.122 ( talk) 13:03, 23 April 2008 (UTC)
see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_languages_by_first_written_accounts. CuteHappyBrute ( talk) 18:44, 9 October 2008 (UTC)
Under "Arthur J. Evans' classification of scripts", a sentence near the end says, "His life was finished in 1941..." What does this mean? He died? Or should it read "His life work was finished"? Mcswell ( talk) 16:55, 6 June 2013 (UTC)
The tablets are not enciphered. Translating them should be called translation, not decipherment. A.times.B,equals ( talk) 01:54, 30 May 2008 (UTC)
- When oh when will wikipedia editors learn that simply finding a word in a certain usage via a google search does not mean that it is the correct usage - many words are more commonly used incorrectly than correctly (thus, the "ask google tactic" is futile). This is one of wikipedia's greatest failings. —Preceding
unsigned comment added by
86.150.35.114 (
talk)
20:51, 8 July 2008 (UTC)
Grumach and Beattie denied that Ventris's work was correct. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 92.12.146.16 ( talk) 11:56, 4 August 2008 (UTC)
I am checking back after many months and am sad to see that the font in the table still does not display correctly, despite having Linear B font installed. I am just writing to let you all know this, because I see all the haggling below, but regardless of it all the font DOES NOT DISPLAY. I'm using the most up-to-date version of Firefox and, as I said, Linear B font is installed. I hope you guys will figure out a way to fix it or else remove it because it looks bad. F. Pacifica 08:52, 14 February 2016 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Fpacifica ( talk • contribs)
I seem to be back cleaning this up. The unicode section is totally unnecessary. How many times shall we repeat those signs? The lead-in box links to pdf's stating the codes and the unicode section has the same links. Now, it seems, we are to repeat them in the article? This is a waste of time and space. If no one objects I am going to take out that section as redundant. The signs once in the article is enough and if they want the unicode equivalences they can click on the pdf links in the box.
Dave (
talk)
00:47, 6 January 2009 (UTC)
Not an expert on this topic but two things: I have known the work of Evertype for years - his pedigree in the world of linguistics and related computing stuff is spotless. He's not a commercial agent. For all it's worth. Secondly, I disagree with the "Linear B people didn't have computers". Scores of Wiki articles are about things that happened long before the advent of computing, including scripts ancient and/or long dead. Ogham uses a text font, Chu nom does... Encyclopedia are used by many people and many linguists, including myself, often use Wiki as a quick copy and paste source for characters that otherwise you'd have to trawl for in the Unicode chart book or get fuzzy eyes trying to locate in on screen in a character table. It is SO useful when writing a paper or handout. So please, by all means, leave them in! Akerbeltz ( talk) 13:10, 9 January 2009 (UTC)
I got about halfway through this discussion and gave it up as pointless. Wikipedia is a computerized encyclopedia, and Unicode is the standard for computerized fonts (at least in the West), so this article needs to be Unicodified. For obscure scripts most people do not have the appropriate fonts, and it's unreasonable to ask the casual browser to install a different font for each obscure script article they come across, so we need images as well, but they are secondary. That's pretty standard. If the day ever comes when Windows or IE comes with LinB installed, we can drop the latter, but Unicode needs to be the spine of the text. As for Greek vs. Roman transcription, we need the Roman, while teh Greek is optional—though it does help somewhat with coordinating the article with the refs. kwami ( talk) 18:01, 12 January 2009 (UTC)
Top-notch idea! YES is my vote. This is one of those extended topics Wikipedia handles very well by its lists. It WILL get longer, much longer. 12.4.26.248 ( talk) 16:12, 8 January 2009 (UTC)
The "sign" in the title does not fit as the syllabic signs are signs but are not included. I suggest for clarity the conventional "ideograms" rather than "logograms" as everyone in the field will know immediately what is meant. Dave ( talk) 12:45, 10 January 2009 (UTC)
I object to your summary removal of Greek text and replacement of it by transliteration. Please restore the Greek text. Thank you. -- Evertype· ✆ 08:43, 12 January 2009 (UTC)
also, ideally the unicode Linb characters should be marked with the {{ script}} template, e.g. {{script|Linb|𐀀}}: 𐀀. -- dab (𒁳) 09:27, 12 January 2009 (UTC)
I cleaned up this section based on what it already said. We should call these what they are. If they are logograms that are called ideograms within the LinB community for historical reasons, then we should say that (as I just did). However, Emmett Bennett (what a name!) says they actually are ideograms: they were not used as logograms in texts, but rather in inventories, and did not have phonetic values. We have something similar with Egyptian, a logographic script that uses ideograms rather than logograms for numerals. I don't know myself, but if Bennett is correct and these are ideograms, then we should not use the word logogram at all, except perhaps in a clarifying footnote. kwami ( talk) 18:20, 12 January 2009 (UTC)
I am aware some people make big deal of the distinction logogram vs. ideogram, and I happen to think it is an artificial distinction that cannot be made consistently. There are cases where the context makes it desirable to make the distinction, yes, but then the splitters came and tried to pretend they were objective categories rather than terms used to express which aspect of a sign you want to focus on at the moment. -- dab (𒁳) 09:34, 28 February 2009 (UTC)
I thought this section needed to be enhanced because in summarizing the decipherment process in one paragraph or less, Internet editors, who all copy wach other, in copying would guess at facts not stated by the original author and over time the accumulation of guesses amounted to a total myth. At this point I can see that to present the milestones in the process giving due and accurate credit to the major players is really the subject of another article, so that is what I am suggesting, another article. I wanted to call it Decipherment of Linear B but there is a book by Chadwick of that name and this is not about Chadwick's book so I thought of the one I suggested. Now I have to leave it alone for a while so that you can react. Dave ( talk) 13:33, 7 February 2009 (UTC)
Does anyone know in what direction the script is meant to be read? I read on a website#REDIRECT [[ [6]]]that it was Boustrephedon, but I have not been able to verify this.
Hacksaw45501 ( talk) 06:38, 17 May 2009 (UTC)
It's usually ltr. Maybe there are some boustrephedon examples, but I am not aware of any. Maybe the page you link to is simply mistaken, seeing that the main entry on Linear B at omniglot makes no mention of this. -- dab (𒁳) 15:36, 17 May 2009 (UTC)
Thanks Dbachmann. I was able to find this#REDIRECT [ [7]] which says ltr. as you say. Hacksaw45501 ( talk) 18:39, 17 May 2009 (UTC)
User Firefox, and install the "Aegean" font from here: [ [8]] The glyphs should appear correctly.
Hello, everybody.
I've started the article about Aegean numerals. Because most of you are expert in this subject, i request you if you can cooperate expanding it.
Thanks in advance.
Crazymadlover. —Preceding undated comment added 13:24, 26 March 2010 (UTC).
Hello, everybody.
I've started the article about Aegean numerals. Because most of you are expert in this subject, i request you if you can cooperate expanding it.
Thanks in advance.
Crazymadlover. —Preceding undated comment added 13:25, 26 March 2010 (UTC).
I worked on this article some time ago. I think it is time for a revisit. I can;t say precisely when - soon. Some preliminaries have to be done on other articles. What I notice about this is, the issues are not the same as before. Before, I was involved in controversies about what characters and codes to use in representing the script. The ones another editor wanted to use did not work except on some software, and it looked as though he was trying to sell stuff that was not the best. WP and browsers have gone on since then. Now everything seems to work, so there is no need to go back there. I switched to Firefox myself. I do notice that the article is getting out of control. I agree with the outline. There is a serious question of what goes under the topics. The two most objectionable sections are the one on Arthur Evans, which is heavily referenced, and the controversy one, which is way underreferenced. They both say a lot of things that are not relevant to the article, and don't say it very well. I recognize some of my writing in there, but it did not end up as intended. What have they done to my song, ma! And finally, the references are quite a hodge-podge of formats, most not really acceptable. What I plan to to then is start standardizing the cites. At least hslf the Evans material should be under the biography of Evans; for example, we don't care here what he did in the Balkans. I just happen to have a book or two on the controversy. Best not to make too many controversies. Frankly the language part of it I think is looking good for such a short article. The boxes - too many, not a good design. We need a good design. So, when you see me coming, calm down. I won't make any changes I do not explain. No need to erase my work as I type at 5 in the morning, as happened last time. Basically I will be interested in relevance, style and formatting. I expect to condense. Dave ( talk) 02:39, 13 April 2012 (UTC)
The problem with with Evans as decipherer is that he did not decipher. He did classify. But, he did not do any of that in Bosnia and Herzegovina; in fact, he never even saw the script until he bought some sealstones just before his wife died. He sort of lived two contiguous lives, one before her death and one after. Some see in it the hand of Providence, but I refuse to say that Providence took away his wife. Anyway the article on Evans now contains most of the personal material on Evans and will contain more, as well as citations to Scripta Minoa, his opus magnum on the script. I do not think the personal material belongs in an article on Linear B, especially as it takes up so much space, while the true decipherers get a few sentences. I realize this will involve removing the refs on the life of Evans, but they don't belong there anyway. Furthermore, those refs are now in the article on Evans. So, these are my reasons for making such large cuts. That material manifestly belongs elsewhere, where it now is. This material is mainly duplication. I think I will just copy over the citations to Scripta Minoa for the Bibliography Dave ( talk) 20:38, 29 April 2012 (UTC)
Is not Linear B. Hittite currently has the record. Here's the statement removed:
"and this is properly the oldest Indo-European writings." [1]
You are not to blame, editor. Please don't take it to heart. The source is wrong. I got no doubt it meant to say the oldest Greek. It generally is better not not to use these hoaky web sites as encyclopedic articles, but then, it put itself forward as a "news" article. I don't want to sound cynical but all the other newspapers are hoak city as well. The biggest hoax of all is their claim to be bringing the truth to the public. If you want to see what they really are doing, cast a critical eye on the morning TV "anchor." Anchor? To what? How much of that sells and how much really relates anything purported to be telling us fact? Morning TV is pure commercials, beginning to end, even the so-called "news." How do you protect yourself from an outright lie? I wish I knew. Look at what they make. People do not get that money for telling the truth. The only thing you get for that is shot. No, they get that money for their entertainment, just like WP. If you can shock, Jock, you're in the dock. That is what the removed article is trying to do. Dave ( talk) 01:09, 30 April 2012 (UTC)
References
It seemed best to me to keep all the chronology together, so we don't have to go hunting thru the article for it. Also, "Cretan scripts" does not quite describe it. On the table of "Cretan scripts", no need to make that sortable. There's nothing to sort, the table having only three lines. There are some other format questions on that table, but I defer that. Dave ( talk) 13:32, 30 April 2012 (UTC)
Could someone with knowledge of the subject please add some more information about the dating of the various tablets? As in, what methods have been used to date them? How reliable are they? Maitreya ( talk) 09:43, 8 March 2013 (UTC)
The section discussing Alice Kober appears to be copied directly from her obituary in the New York Times. 66.57.57.61 ( talk) 23:15, 22 May 2013 (UTC)
An article from 1999 describes Linear B as having been deciphered. Your article closes out with a 1935 conferences. That's a lot of missing history and very important history too. The article I found is: Bennet, John, and Jan Driessen, A-na-qo-ta. Salamanca: University Press, 1998-1999. https://www.academia.edu/653834/Kretes_and_Iawones._Observations_on_Ethnic_Identity_of_Bronze_Age_Cretans 71.163.117.143 ( talk) 17:10, 4 June 2014 (UTC)
Scripta Minoa by Sir Arthur Evans is on Internet Archive. 71.163.117.143 ( talk) 13:09, 24 July 2014 (UTC)
Hi, please forgive this intrusion by an ignoramus. After the first grid in this page comes a section entitled Special and unknown signs saying "...the first edition of Documents...". I realise this refers to what all you subject experts know is the seminal Ventris/Chadwick work Documents in Mycenaean Greek which I understand first appeared in 1956, and the Sources section refers repeatedly to a later edition of this (1973) which is cited in the Bibliography. But I think this bald reference Documents is the very first on this (Linear B) Wiki page, and to the less informed reader like me, it seems unexplained. Possibly this is just the accidental result of earlier text editing. May I suggest that readability might be improved if this text is expanded slightly or if earlier mention is made (perhaps in the opening paragraph The Script) of the work with its full title, the date of its first publication and its significance. AconUK ( talk) 09:31, 15 August 2014 (UTC)
Use your search engine with "linear b" and "Pasiphae". Since 2010 a number of PDFs have been posted free online about use of Linear B at Thebes, Pylos, and Sparta. They are very enlightening and the fact that it was used at places besides Knossus for several centuries makes it a real language of a widespread culture, not just a curiosity from a limited location. 108.18.136.147 ( talk) 15:37, 3 September 2015 (UTC)
Possibly to improve this article, the mention of its predecessor Linear A could be brought up a bit more. I thought it did a good job describing the basic structure of the script and how it worked. There were many outside sources that provided more history to the script and they were readily accessible. I do think that everything in the article pertained to the subject, but I think that there was information that could have been left out. For example, the section on Alice Kober's triplets was not very necessary. Also, everything seemed to have a neutral opinion, which is good. Raeitesfazghi ( talk) 17:54, 17 September 2017 (UTC) Raei Tesfazghi
Another improvement would be a short paragraph on what we have actually learned about the people and culture that we didn't know prior to decipherment. Have we found a Gilgamesh yet, or just a bunch of trivial commercial records? 104.158.54.27 ( talk) 03:25, 22 October 2017 (UTC)Decoding is an interesting puzzle and task in its own right -- obviously -- but the ultimate purpose is to learn what was being communicated.
Can I ask why the following statement was added to this Wikipedia page with a citation?
"Butthurt jew and human wannabe, Saul Levin of the State University of New York considered that Linear B was partly Greek but with an earlier substrate, in his 1964 book The Linear B controversy reexamined."
I do not understand how something like this can be added to a page. Sgtandrew1799 ( talk) 22:06, 9 November 2023 (UTC)
Ventris considered Sumerian before considering Etruscan. See https://www.umass.edu/wsp/method/philology/gallery/ventris.html 2A00:23C7:9985:1701:D552:5C9D:9E78:8F76 ( talk) 16:37, 8 December 2023 (UTC)