Linear A

Though the two scripts share many of the same symbols, using the syllables associated with Linear B in Linear A writings produces words that are unrelated to any known language.

Theories of decipherment

As the Minoan language is lost to the modern day, it is hard to be certain whether or not a given decipherment is the correct decipherment, or merely gibberish being generated by an incorrect mapping of symbols to sounds. However, the simplest approach to decipherment may to be to simply presume that the values of Linear A match more or less the values given to the fully translated Linear B script, used for Mycenean Greek. A site maintained by John Younger has a comprehensive list of known texts written in Linear A at .

In 2001, the journal Ugarit-Forschungen, Band 32 published the article "The First Inscription in Punic—Vowel Differences in Linear A and B" by Jan Best, claiming to demonstrate how and why Linear A notates an archaic form of Phoenician.

The only word deciphered so far, with certainty, the summarizing term KU-RO, can illustrate the depths of problems arising with the decipherment attempts. Tsikritsis, a Greek computer scientist and a text analysis specialist used a statistical and machine comparison of Linear A and Linear B symbols to conclude that Linear A was an early aeolic dialect of Greek, and essentially a form of Linear B with a variety of archaisms. Critics of this theory state that Linear A shows no detectable signs of the prototypical features recognizable from the Indo-European language group to which Greek belongs, let alone features resembling Greek itself.

Usually, it is a more or less accepted viewpoint to group the 'Minoan' language of the linear A inscriptions together with Eteocretan (its likely descendant), and Eteocypriot, into the group of Aegean languages, but without any precise knowledge about the underlying languages, their relationships, or grammatical structure.

'Religious' texts

A stone ladle from Troullos (given the Linear B values) reads:

This 'word' also appears in another form, as a-ta-i-dju-wa-e.

The first word is most likely to be a name of a person or place. The -ja ending also occurs in Linear B, meaning "women of", so me-li-ja 4 may mean "4 women of Meli". Meli once the i from the declension has been removed, if similar to Linear B, would read melu or melo, which may be the name of the Aegean island of Melos where Linear A tablets have been unearthed.

The 'Haghia Triada tablet 13' may read:

ka-u-de-ta [wine ideogram]. This is followed by an ideogram almost identical to one in Linear B meaning 'wine'.

These words are followed by a list of seven names each followed by a numeral. One name ku-do-ni, as mentioned below, may be the name of the Minoan town of Kydonia. The following word (likely another place-name) can be (highly tentatively) transliterated as da-si-dja(or maybe da-si-θa?) ?= Lasithia? Another name, te-ki may, though less likely than the above, be the name of the settement of Tegea on Crete. Occurs in Linear B as well. The same name is common on Linear B documents. KU-DO-NI : if the reading is correct, a place name, Kydonia, the same as modern Chania KU-NI-SU : appears to be a place name, perhaps Knossos, though it differs from Linear B KO-NO-SO. the same commodity occurs in Linear B. PA-DE : divine name of an unknown god, appearing on Linear B tablets as well.

Sites yielding Linear A inscriptions