I happen to have taken an Ugaritic class in college, and after a semester could read the texts without too much trouble. I am a native speaker of Hebrew, so the roots are similar, which made it not very hard.
It used a novel alphabet (likely the first ever) that was a phonetic abjad (no vowels) derived from Akkadian cuneiform (in turn derived from Sumerian cuneiform).
As far as "few tablets" goes, I happen to have used VERY thick books full of transcriptions of Ugaritic tablets. One of the advantages of knowledge about Ugarit (the city) being lost is that until the recent rediscovery of its ruins it lay mostly undisturbed.
So, if we discover another language with close genetic ties to a known tongue and an alphabet that's different but similar, we'll have just the thing :) Of course, this is better than what we had before, my jest doesn't mean to detract!
I happen to have taken an Ugaritic class in college, and after a semester could read the texts without too much trouble. I am a native speaker of Hebrew, so the roots are similar, which made it not very hard.
It used a novel alphabet (likely the first ever) that was a phonetic abjad (no vowels) derived from Akkadian cuneiform (in turn derived from Sumerian cuneiform).
As far as "few tablets" goes, I happen to have used VERY thick books full of transcriptions of Ugaritic tablets. One of the advantages of knowledge about Ugarit (the city) being lost is that until the recent rediscovery of its ruins it lay mostly undisturbed.
So, if we discover another language with close genetic ties to a known tongue and an alphabet that's different but similar, we'll have just the thing :) Of course, this is better than what we had before, my jest doesn't mean to detract!
Onwards with Linear A :>