Etruscan language
Etruscan (/ɪˈtrʌskən/ ih-TRUSK-ən)[3] was the language of the Etruscan civilization in the ancient region of Etruria,[a] in Etruria Padana[b] and Etruria Campana[c] in what is now Italy. Etruscan influenced Latin but was eventually completely superseded by it. The Etruscans left around 13,000 inscriptions that have been found so far, only a small minority of which are of significant length; some bilingual inscriptions with texts also in Latin, Greek, or Phoenician; and a few dozen purported loanwords. Attested from 700 BC to AD 50, the relation of Etruscan to other languages has been a source of long-running speculation and study, with it mostly being referred to as one of the Tyrsenian languages, at times as an isolate and a number of other less well-known theories.
The consensus among linguists and Etruscologists is that Etruscan was a Pre-Indo-European[4][5][6] and Paleo-European language,[7][8] closely related to the Raetic language that was spoken in the Alps,[9][10][11][12][13] and to the Lemnian language, attested in a few inscriptions on Lemnos.[14][15]
The Etruscan alphabet is similar to the Greek one. Therefore, linguists have been able to read the inscriptions in the sense of knowing roughly how they would have been pronounced, but have not yet understood their meaning.[16] A comparison between the Etruscan and Greek alphabets reveals how accurately the Etruscans preserved the Greek alphabet. The Etruscan alphabet contains letters that have since been dropped from the Greek alphabet, such as the digamma, sampi and qoppa.[17]
Grammatically, the language is agglutinating, with nouns and verbs showing suffixed inflectional endings and some gradation of vowels. Nouns show five cases, singular and plural numbers, with a gender distinction between animate and inanimate in pronouns.
Etruscan appears to have had a cross-linguistically common phonological system, with four phonemic vowels and an apparent contrast between aspirated and unaspirated stops. The records of the language suggest that phonetic change took place over time, with the loss and then re-establishment of word-internal vowels, possibly due to the effect of Etruscan's word-initial stress.
Etruscan religion was influenced by that of the Greeks, and many of the few surviving Etruscan-language artifacts are of votive or religious significance.[18] Etruscan was written in an alphabet derived from the Greek alphabet; this alphabet was the source of the Latin alphabet, as well as other alphabets in Italy and probably beyond. The Etruscan language is also believed to be the source of certain important cultural words of Western Europe such as military and person, which do not have obvious Indo-European roots.
Geographic distribution[edit]
Inscriptions have been found in northwest and west-central Italy, in the region that even now bears the name of the Etruscan civilization, Tuscany (from Latin tuscī 'Etruscans'), as well as in modern Latium north of Rome, in today's Umbria west of the Tiber, in the Po Valley to the north of Etruria, and in Campania. This range may indicate a maximum Italian homeland where the language was at one time spoken.
Outside Italy, inscriptions have been found in Corsica, Gallia Narbonensis, Greece, the Balkans.[28] But by far the greatest concentration is in Italy.
Vocabulary[edit]
Borrowings from and to Etruscan[edit]
Only a few hundred words of the Etruscan vocabulary are understood with some certainty. The exact count depends on whether the different forms and the expressions are included. Below is a table of some of the words grouped by topic.[121]
Some words with corresponding Latin or other Indo-European forms are likely loanwords to or from Etruscan. For example, neftś 'nephew', is probably from Latin (Latin nepōs, nepōtis; this is a cognate of German Neffe, Old Norse nefi). A number of words and names for which Etruscan origin has been proposed survive in Latin.
At least one Etruscan word has an apparent Semitic/Aramaic origin: talitha 'girl', that could have been transmitted by Phoenicians or by the Greeks (Greek: ταλιθα). The word pera 'house' is a false cognate to the Coptic per 'house'.[122]
In addition to words believed to have been borrowed into Etruscan from Indo-European or elsewhere, there is a corpus of words such as familia which seem to have been borrowed into Latin from the older Etruscan civilization as a superstrate influence.[123] Some of these words still have widespread currency in English and Latin-influenced languages. Other words believed to have a possible Etruscan origin include: