An introduction to the Tocharian languages, an extinct Indo-European language family (Tocharian A and B) discovered in manuscripts along the Silk Road in Chinese Turkestan. Covers the geographic sites where texts were found (Turfan, Kučā, Tumšuq), the nature of the surviving Buddhist and secular documents, the historical mystery behind the name 'Tocharian', and the language's unusual centum classification that upended earlier theories about the geographic split between centum and satem Indo-European branches.
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Todd B. Krause and Jonathan Slocum66 Impressions