A relationship between Lemnian, Raetic and Etruscan, as a Tyrsenian language family, has been proposed by German linguist Helmut Rix due to close connections in vocabulary and grammar.

[4] For example, Rix's Tyrsenian family is supported by a number of linguists such as Stefan Schumacher,[7][8] Carlo De Simone,[3] Norbert Oettinger,[9] Simona Marchesini,[6] or Rex E.

On the other hand, few lexical correspondences are documented, at least partly due to the scanty number of Raetic and Lemnian texts and possibly to the early date at which the languages split.

[12] According to Dutch historian Luuk De Ligt, the Lemnian language could have arrived in the Aegean Sea during the Late Bronze Age, when Mycenaean rulers recruited groups of mercenaries from Sicily, Sardinia and various parts of the Italian peninsula.

[13] Scholars such as Norbert Oettinger, Michel Gras and Carlo De Simone think that Lemnian is the testimony of an Etruscan commercial settlement on the island that took place before 700 BC, not related to the Sea Peoples.

Other languages in the neighbourhood of the Lemnian area, namely Hittite and Akkadian, had similar four-vowel systems, suggesting early areal influence.

Comprehensible is the phrase sivai avis šialχvis ('lived forty' years, B.3), reminiscent of Etruscan maχs śealχis-c ('and forty-five years'), seeming to refer to the person to whom this funerary monument was dedicated, holaiesi φokiašiale ('to Holaie Phokiaš' B.1), who appeared to have been an official called maras at some point marasm avis aomai ('and was a maras one year'B3), compare Etruscan -m "and" (postposition), and maru.