[Renfield]

Map of Burushaski speaking areas (llmap.org)

[Renfield]

Ping

[mikrofon]

Wasn’t he an old-time 1st-baseman for the Sox — Lenny Burushaski?

[Verginius Rufus]

Very interesting. Phrygian itself is odd because it was spoken in western Asia Minor but it is not part of the Anatolian branch of Indo-European (Hittite, Luwian, Palaic, Lydian, etc.), but was brought in from the Balkans.

Herodotus has a story (2.2) about the Egyptian king Psammetichus wanting to know which was the oldest language, so he had two babies raised by a shepherd who was told not to utter any words in their presence but to take note of the first word they said. One day the children came to him and said "bekos" (accent on the "o"). Psammetichus investigated and discovered that bekos was the Phrygian word for "bread," and so he concluded that Phrygian was the oldest human language.

If it's in Herodotus, it has to be true.

The question is how a relative of Phrygian would wind up in Pakistan. The Persians used to transplant populations--conceivably they could have transplanted some Phrygians to that area. But that only works if the language is a descendant of Phrygian--it may be more like a cousin.

[Cronos]

[Verginius Rufus]

This theory doesn't seem to be getting much traction. If you look at the English-language Wikipedia article on Burushaski, they list Casule's writings in the bibliography, but treat the language as an "isolate" (no proven connections to any other language). One theory even has it related to some North American Indian languages (Athabaskan family). It could be related to a language spoken by 100 people in Siberia. The German-language version of the Wikipedia article is more definite: "attempt to make it an Indo-European language is not convincing."

The grammar and forms don't resemble any of the Indo-European languages I have studied. I think if it were descended from Phrygian the Indo-European features would be a lot more obvious.