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Etruscan language



 
 
The Etruscan language
Language

A language is a form of symbol communication in which elements are combined to represents something other than themselves. Language can also refer to the use of such systems as a general phenomenon....
 was spoken and written by the Etruscan civilization
Etruscan civilization

Etruscan civilization is the modern English name given to the culture and way of life of a people of ancient Italy and Corsica whom the ancient Romans called Etrusci or Tusci....
 in the ancient region of Etruria
Etruria

Etruria — usually referred to in Greek language and Latin language source texts as Tyrrhenia — was a region of Central Italy, an area that covered part of what now are Tuscany, Latium, Emilia-Romagna and Umbria....
 (modern Tuscany
Tuscany

Tuscany is a region in Italy. It has an area of and a population of about 3.6 million inhabitants. The regional capital is Florence.Tuscany is known for its landscapes and its artistic legacy....
 plus western Umbria
Umbria

Umbria is a Regions of Italy of central Italy. Its capital is Perugia. It has an area of 8,456 km? and about 900,000 inhabitants....
 and northern Latium
Latium

Lazio, called Latium in English language, is a Regions of Italy of central Italy, bordered by Tuscany, Umbria, and Marche to the north, Abruzzo to the east, Campania to the south, and the Tyrrhenian Sea to the west....
) and in parts of Lombardy
Lombardy

Lombardy is one of the 20 regions of Italy. The capital is Milan. One-sixth of Italy's population lives in Lombardy and about one fifth of Italy's GDP is produced in this region....
, Veneto
Veneto

Veneto or Venetia , is one of the 20 Regions of Italy of Italy. Its population is about 4.8 million, and its capital is Venice. Once the cradle of the renowned Republic of Venice, then a land of mass emigration, Veneto is today among the wealthiest and most industrialized regions of Italy....
, and Emilia-Romagna
Emilia-Romagna

Emilia-Romagna is an administrative Regions of Italy of Northern Italy comprising the two historic regions of Emilia and Romagna. The capital is Bologna; it has an area of 20,124 km? and about 4.3 million inhabitants....
 (where the Etruscans were displaced by Gaul
Gaul

Gaul is the name used for the region of Western Europe comprising part of present day northern Italy, France, Belgium, western Switzerland and the parts of the Netherlands and Germany on the west bank of the River Rhine....
s), in Italy
Italy

Italy , officially the Italian Republic , is a country located on the Italian Peninsula in Southern Europe and on the two largest islands in the Mediterranean Sea, Sicily and Sardinia....
. However, Latin
Latin

Latin is an Italic language, historically spoken in Latium and Ancient Rome. Through the Military history of the Roman Empire, Latin spread throughout the Mediterranean and a large part of Europe....
 superseded Etruscan completely, leaving only a few documents and a few loanword
Loanword

A loanword is a word directly taken into one language from another with little or no translation. By contrast, a calque or loan translation is a related concept whereby it is the Meaning or idiom that is borrowed rather than the lexical item itself....
s in Latin
Latin

Latin is an Italic language, historically spoken in Latium and Ancient Rome. Through the Military history of the Roman Empire, Latin spread throughout the Mediterranean and a large part of Europe....
 (e.g., persona from Etruscan ersu), and some place-names, such as Roma
Rome

Rome is the capital city of Italy and Lazio, and is Italy's largest and most populous city, with 2,724,347 residents in an urban area of some ....
.

scan literacy was widespread over the Mediterranean shores, as can be seen by about 13,000 inscriptions (dedications, epitaph
Epitaph

An epitaph is a short text honoring a deceased person, strictly speaking that inscribed on their tombstone or plaque, but also used figuratively....
s etc), most fairly short, but some of some length.






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The Etruscan language
Language

A language is a form of symbol communication in which elements are combined to represents something other than themselves. Language can also refer to the use of such systems as a general phenomenon....
 was spoken and written by the Etruscan civilization
Etruscan civilization

Etruscan civilization is the modern English name given to the culture and way of life of a people of ancient Italy and Corsica whom the ancient Romans called Etrusci or Tusci....
 in the ancient region of Etruria
Etruria

Etruria — usually referred to in Greek language and Latin language source texts as Tyrrhenia — was a region of Central Italy, an area that covered part of what now are Tuscany, Latium, Emilia-Romagna and Umbria....
 (modern Tuscany
Tuscany

Tuscany is a region in Italy. It has an area of and a population of about 3.6 million inhabitants. The regional capital is Florence.Tuscany is known for its landscapes and its artistic legacy....
 plus western Umbria
Umbria

Umbria is a Regions of Italy of central Italy. Its capital is Perugia. It has an area of 8,456 km? and about 900,000 inhabitants....
 and northern Latium
Latium

Lazio, called Latium in English language, is a Regions of Italy of central Italy, bordered by Tuscany, Umbria, and Marche to the north, Abruzzo to the east, Campania to the south, and the Tyrrhenian Sea to the west....
) and in parts of Lombardy
Lombardy

Lombardy is one of the 20 regions of Italy. The capital is Milan. One-sixth of Italy's population lives in Lombardy and about one fifth of Italy's GDP is produced in this region....
, Veneto
Veneto

Veneto or Venetia , is one of the 20 Regions of Italy of Italy. Its population is about 4.8 million, and its capital is Venice. Once the cradle of the renowned Republic of Venice, then a land of mass emigration, Veneto is today among the wealthiest and most industrialized regions of Italy....
, and Emilia-Romagna
Emilia-Romagna

Emilia-Romagna is an administrative Regions of Italy of Northern Italy comprising the two historic regions of Emilia and Romagna. The capital is Bologna; it has an area of 20,124 km? and about 4.3 million inhabitants....
 (where the Etruscans were displaced by Gaul
Gaul

Gaul is the name used for the region of Western Europe comprising part of present day northern Italy, France, Belgium, western Switzerland and the parts of the Netherlands and Germany on the west bank of the River Rhine....
s), in Italy
Italy

Italy , officially the Italian Republic , is a country located on the Italian Peninsula in Southern Europe and on the two largest islands in the Mediterranean Sea, Sicily and Sardinia....
. However, Latin
Latin

Latin is an Italic language, historically spoken in Latium and Ancient Rome. Through the Military history of the Roman Empire, Latin spread throughout the Mediterranean and a large part of Europe....
 superseded Etruscan completely, leaving only a few documents and a few loanword
Loanword

A loanword is a word directly taken into one language from another with little or no translation. By contrast, a calque or loan translation is a related concept whereby it is the Meaning or idiom that is borrowed rather than the lexical item itself....
s in Latin
Latin

Latin is an Italic language, historically spoken in Latium and Ancient Rome. Through the Military history of the Roman Empire, Latin spread throughout the Mediterranean and a large part of Europe....
 (e.g., persona from Etruscan ersu), and some place-names, such as Roma
Rome

Rome is the capital city of Italy and Lazio, and is Italy's largest and most populous city, with 2,724,347 residents in an urban area of some ....
.

History of Etruscan literacy

Haruspex
Etruscan literacy was widespread over the Mediterranean shores, as can be seen by about 13,000 inscriptions (dedications, epitaph
Epitaph

An epitaph is a short text honoring a deceased person, strictly speaking that inscribed on their tombstone or plaque, but also used figuratively....
s etc), most fairly short, but some of some length. They date from about 700 BC.

The Etruscans had a rich literature, as noted by Latin authors. Unfortunately only one book (now unreadable) has survived, although there is always some possibility that more will turn up. By AD 100
100

Year 100 was a leap year starting on Wednesday of the Julian calendar....
, Etruscan had been replaced by Latin.

Only a few educated Romans with antiquarian interests, such as Varro
Marcus Terentius Varro

Marcus Terentius Varro , also known as Varro Reatinus to distinguish him from his younger contemporary Varro Atacinus, was a Ancient Rome scholar and writer....
, could read Etruscan. The last person known to have been able to read it was the Roman emperor
Roman Emperor

The Roman Emperor was the ruler of the Roman Empire during the imperial period . The Romans had no single term for the office: Latin language titles such as imperator , Augustus , Caesar and princeps were all associated with it....
 Claudius
Claudius

Tiberius Claudius Caesar Augustus Germanicus or Claudius I was the fourth Roman Emperor, a member of the Julio-Claudian dynasty, ruling from January 24, AD 41 to his death in AD 54....
 (10 BC – AD 54
54

Year 54 was a common year starting on Tuesday of the Julian calendar....
), who — in the context of his work in twenty books about the Etruscans, Tyrrenikà (now lost) — compiled a dictionary (also lost) by interviewing the last few elderly rustics who still spoke the language. Urgulanilla
Plautia Urgulanilla

Plautia Urgulanilla was the first wife of the future Roman Emperor Claudius. They married sometime around the year 9 Common Era, when Claudius was 18 years old....
, his first wife, was Etruscan.

Livy
Livy

Titus Livius , known as Livy in English language, was a Ancient Rome historian who wrote a monumental history of Rome, Ab Urbe Condita, from its founding through the reign of Augustus in Livy's own time....
 and Cicero
Cicero

Marcus Tullius Cicero was a Ancient Rome philosopher, statesman, lawyer, political theorist, and Constitution of the Roman Republic. Cicero is widely considered one of Rome's greatest rhetoric and prose stylists....
 were both aware that highly specialized Etruscan religious rites were codified in several sets of books written in Etruscan under the generic Latin title Etrusca Disciplina. The Libri Haruspicini dealt with divination
Divination

Divination is the attempt to gain insight into a question or situation by way of a standardized process or ritual. Diviners ascertain their interpretations of how a querent should proceed by reading signs, events, or omens, or through alleged contact with a supernatural agency....
 from the entrails of the sacrificed animal, the Libri Fulgurales expounded the art of divination by observing lightning. A third set, the Libri Rituales, would have provided us with the key to Etruscan civilization: its wider scope embraced Etruscan standards of social and political life as well as ritual practices. According to the 4th century Latin writer Servius, a fourth set of Etruscan books existed, dealing with animal gods, but it is probably unlikely that any contemporary scholar could have read Etruscan at such a late date. Christian authorities collected such works of paganism and destroyed them during the 5th century; the single surviving Etruscan book, Liber Linteus
Liber Linteus

The Liber Linteus Zagrabiensis is the longest Etruscan language text and the only extant linen book. It remains mostly untranslated because of the lack of knowledge about the Etruscan language, though the few words which can be understood indicate that the text is most likely a ritual calendar....
, being written on linen, survived only by being used as mummy wrappings.

Etruscan had some influence over Latin. A few dozen words were borrowed by the Romans and some of them can be found in modern languages.

Geographic distribution

Iron Age Italy
Inscriptions have been found in north-west and west-central Italy
Italy

Italy , officially the Italian Republic , is a country located on the Italian Peninsula in Southern Europe and on the two largest islands in the Mediterranean Sea, Sicily and Sardinia....
, in the region that even now bears the name of the Etruscans
Etruscan civilization

Etruscan civilization is the modern English name given to the culture and way of life of a people of ancient Italy and Corsica whom the ancient Romans called Etrusci or Tusci....
, Tuscany
Tuscany

Tuscany is a region in Italy. It has an area of and a population of about 3.6 million inhabitants. The regional capital is Florence.Tuscany is known for its landscapes and its artistic legacy....
 (from Latin tusc "Etruscans"), as well as in today's Latium
Latium

Lazio, called Latium in English language, is a Regions of Italy of central Italy, bordered by Tuscany, Umbria, and Marche to the north, Abruzzo to the east, Campania to the south, and the Tyrrhenian Sea to the west....
 north of Rome, in today's Umbria
Umbria

Umbria is a Regions of Italy of central Italy. Its capital is Perugia. It has an area of 8,456 km? and about 900,000 inhabitants....
 west of the Tiber
Tiber

The Tiber is the third-longest river in Italy, rising in the Apennine mountains in Emilia-Romagna and flowing 406 kilometres through Umbria and Lazio to the Tyrrhenian Sea....
, around Capua
Capua

Capua is a city in the province of Caserta, Campania, southern Italy, situated 25 km north of Naples, on the northeastern edge of the Campanian plain....
 in Campania
Campania

Campania is a Regions of Italy of southern Italy in Europe. The region has a population of around 5.8 million people, making it the second-most-populous region of Italy, its total area of 13,595 km? makes it the most densely populated region in the country....
 and in the Po
Po River

The Po is a river that flows 652 km eastward across northern Italy, from Monviso to the Adriatic Sea near Venice. It has a drainage area of 71,000 km? and is the longest river in Italy....
 valley to the north of Etruria. Presumably this range is a maximum Italian homeland where the language was at one time spoken.

Outside of Italy inscriptions have been found in Africa
Africa

Africa is the world's second-largest and second most-populous continent, after Asia. At about 30.2 million km? including adjacent islands, it covers 6% of the Earth's total surface area and 20.4% of the total land area....
, Corsica
Corsica

Corsica is the Mediterranean islands#By area in the Mediterranean Sea . It is located west of Italy, southeast of the France mainland, and north of the island of Sardinia....
, Elba
Elba

Elba is an island in Tuscany, Italy, from the coastal town of Piombino. It is the largest island of the Tuscan Archipelago, and the third largest List of islands of Italy after Sicily and Sardinia....
, Gallia Narbonensis
Gallia Narbonensis

Gallia Narbonensis was a Roman province located in what is now Languedoc and Provence, in southern France. Narbonese Gaul "lay between the Alps, the Mediterranean Sea, and the C?vennes Mountains....
, Greece
Greece

Greece , officially the Hellenic Republic , is a country in southeastern Europe, situated on the southern end of the Balkans. It has borders with Albania, Bulgaria and the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia to the north, and Turkey to the east....
, the Balkans
Balkans

The Balkans is the historical name of a geographic subregion of southeastern Europe. The region takes its name from the Balkan Mountains, which run through the centre of Bulgaria into eastern Serbia....
 and the Black Sea
Black Sea

The Black Sea is an inland sea sea bounded by southeastern Europe, the Caucasus and the Anatolia and is ultimately connected to the Atlantic Ocean via the Mediterranean Sea and Aegean Seas and various straits....
. By far the greatest concentration is in Italy.

An inscription found on Lemnos in 1886, is in an alphabet practically identical to that of Etruscan.

Classification

The majority consensus is that Etruscan is related only to other members of what is called the Tyrsenian language family
Tyrsenian languages

Tyrsenian , after the Tyrrhenoi, is a proposed classification by Helmut Rix , who argues for a close relationship of the Etruscan language and the Raetic language, together with the Lemnian language....
 which in itself is an isolate family
Language isolate

A language isolate, in the absolute sense, is a natural language with no demonstrable genealogical relationship with other living languages; that is, one that has not been demonstrated to descend from an ancestor common to any other language....
, that is, unrelated to other language groups by any known relationship. Since Rix (1998) it is widely accepted that Tyrsenian is composed of Rhaetic
Raetic language

Raetic is an extinct language spoken in the ancient region of Raetia in the Eastern Alps in pre-Roman and Roman times. It is documented by a limited number of short inscriptions in a variant of the Etruscan alphabet....
 and Lemnian
Lemnian language

The Lemnian language is a language of the 6th century BC spoken on the island of Lemnos. It is mainly attested by an inscription found on a funerary stele, termed the Lemnos stele, discovered in 1885 near Kaminia....
 together with Etruscan.

In the 1st century BC the Greek historian Dionysius of Halicarnassus
Dionysius of Halicarnassus

Dionysius of Halicarnassus was a Greeks historian and teacher of rhetoric, who flourished during the reign of Caesar Augustus....
 stated that the Etruscan language was unlike any other. He agrees with the prevalent modern view that Etruscan, or more recently Tyrsenian, is an isolate. Bonfante, a leading scholar in the field, says "... it resembles no other language in Europe or elsewhere ...."

Speculation on phylogenetic relation

The Etruscan language has been difficult to analyze, which is attributable to its being an isolate. The phonology
Phonology

Phonology is the systematic use of sound to encode meaning in any spoken human language, or the field of linguistics studying this use. Just as a language has syntax and vocabulary, it also has a phonology in the sense of a sound system....
 is known through the alternation of Greek and Etruscan letters in some inscriptions (for example, the Iguvine Tables
Iguvine Tables

The Iguvine Tables were a series of seven bronze tablets discovered at Iguvium, contemporary Gubbio, in Italy in the year 1444. They are also known as Eugubian tablets....
), and many individual words are known through loans into or from Greek
Ancient Greek

Ancient Greek is the historical stage in the development of the Greek language spanning across the Archaic Greece , Classical Greece , and Hellenistic civilization periods of ancient Greece and the classical antiquity....
 and Latin
Latin

Latin is an Italic language, historically spoken in Latium and Ancient Rome. Through the Military history of the Roman Empire, Latin spread throughout the Mediterranean and a large part of Europe....
, as well as explanations of Etruscan words by ancient authors. A few concepts of word formation have been formulated (see below). Knowledge of the language is incomplete.

Speculators nevertheless continue to compare known languages to Etruscan searching for a pattern match. Speculative decipherments utilize partial pattern matches. The key follows the formula: "Etruscan is really a form of X" where X is the known language or language group. None of these have found general academic credibility.

Semitic
The interest in Etruscan antiquities and the mysterious Etruscan language found its modern origin in a book by a Dominican friar, Annio da Viterbo
Annio da Viterbo

Annio da Viterbo or Annius of Viterbo , or Joannes Annius Viterbensis, was an Italian Dominican order, scholar and historian, born Giovanni Nanni in Viterbo....
, called "Il Pastura", the cabalist and orientalist who guided Pinturicchio
Pinturicchio

Bernardino di Betto, called Pintoricchio or Pinturicchio was an Italy Painting of the Renaissance.He was born in Perugia, the son of Benedetto or Betto di Blagio....
's allegorical frescoes for Pope Alexander VI
Pope Alexander VI

Pope Alexander VI , born Roderic Llan?ol, later Roderic de Borja i Borja was Pope from 1492 to 1503. He is the most controversial of the Secularism popes of the Renaissance, and his surname became a byword for the debased standards of the papacy of that era....
's Vatican apartments. In 1498 Annio published his antiquarian miscellany titled Antiquitatum variarum (in 17 volumes) where he put together a fantastic theory in which both the Hebrew and Etruscan languages were said to originate from a single source, the "Aramaic" spoken by Noah and his descendants, founders of Etruscan Viterbo
Viterbo

Viterbo is an ancient city and comune in the Latium region of central Italy, the capital of the province of Viterbo. It is approximately 100 kilometers north of Rome on the Via Cassia, and it is surrounded by the Monti Cimini and Monti Volsini....
. Annio also started to excavate Etruscan tombs, unearthing sarcophagi and inscriptions, and made a bold attempt at deciphering the Etruscan language. Still, in the 19th century the theory of the Semitic origins found its supporters. In 1858, the last attempt was made by Johann Gustav Stickel
Johann Gustav Stickel

Johann Gustav Stickel was a Germany theologian, orientalist and numismatist....
, Jena University: "Das Etruskische (...) als Semitische Sprache erwiesen". A reviewer concluded, that Stickel brought forward every possible argument which would speak for that hypothesis, and he proved with it the opposite of what he attempted to do (Johannes Gildemeister in ZDMG 13, 1859, 289-304).

A more modern look at linking Etruscan to Semitic languages comes from Gary L. Alton's book "Renderings of Four Etruscan Inscriptions", published in 2003. In this book Alton claims to translate two Etruscan inscriptions from Pyrgi, the Lemnos Stele, and the Arringatore inscription, using a comparison to Hebrew and other ancient Semitic languages.

Indo-European
Some modern scholars assert that the Tyrsenian family is distantly related to the Indo-European
Indo-European languages

The Indo-European languages are a Language family of several hundred related languages and dialects, including most major languages of Europe, the Iranian plateau , Central Asia and the Indian subcontinent ....
 family.

Frederik Woudhuizen suggests relation to the Anatolian
Anatolian languages

The Anatolian languages are a group of extinct Indo-European languages languages, which were spoken in Asia Minor, the best attested of them being the Hittite language....
 branch in particular. Woudhuizen revived a conjecture
Etruscan civilization

Etruscan civilization is the modern English name given to the culture and way of life of a people of ancient Italy and Corsica whom the ancient Romans called Etrusci or Tusci....
 to the effect that the Tyrsenians came from Anatolia
Anatolia

Anatolia or Asia Minor is a region of Western Asia, comprising most of the modern Republic of Turkey. It is a geographic region bounded by the Black Sea to the north, the Caucasus to the northeast, the Aegean Sea to the west, the Mediterranean Sea to the south, and the Iranian plateau to the east and southeast....
, including Lydia
Lydia

Lydia was an Iron Age kingdom of western Asia Minor located generally east of ancient Ionia in the modern Turkey provinces of Manisa Province and inland Izmir Province....
, whence they were driven out by the Cimmerians
Cimmerians

The Cimmerians or Kimmerians were ancient equestrian nomads who, according to Herodotus, originally inhabited the region north of the Caucasus and the Black Sea, in what is now Ukraine and Russia, in the 8th century BC and 7th century BC....
 in the early Iron Age, 750-675 BC, leaving some colonists on Lemnos
Lemnos

Lemnos is an island in the northern part of the Aegean Sea. It is part of the prefecture of Greece of Lesbos Prefecture and has a considerable area, about 477 km?....
. He makes a number of comparisons of Etruscan to Luwian and asserts that Etruscan is modified Luwian. He accounts for the non-Luwian features as a Mysia
Mysia

Mysia was a region in the northwest of ancient Asia Minor or Anatolia . It was located on the south coast of the Sea of Marmara. It was bounded by Bithynia on the east, Phrygia on the southeast, Lydia on the south, Aeolis on the southwest, Troad on the west and by the Propontis on the north....
n influence: "deviations from Luwian ... may plausibly be ascribed to the dialect of the indigenous population of Mysia." According to Woudhuizen, the Etruscans were colonizing the Latins and the Villanovan and all preceding cultures were Indo-European
Indo-European languages

The Indo-European languages are a Language family of several hundred related languages and dialects, including most major languages of Europe, the Iranian plateau , Central Asia and the Indian subcontinent ....
. The Etruscans brought the alphabet from Anatolia. Dionysius of Halicarnassus rejected this hypothesis in his time, because the late Iron Age inhabitants of Lydia
Lydia

Lydia was an Iron Age kingdom of western Asia Minor located generally east of ancient Ionia in the modern Turkey provinces of Manisa Province and inland Izmir Province....
 were Luwian.

In 1861 Robert Ellis proposed that Etruscan was related to Armenian
Armenian language

The 'Armenian language' is an Indo-European language spoken by the Armenians. It is the official language of the Armenia as well as in the region of Nagorno-Karabakh....
, a view that is now untenable.

Relation with Albanian in particular has been advanced by a number of people, notably Zacharie Mayani, as well as earlier writers such as Ascoli, 1877, E. Schneider, 1889, Thomopoulos, 1912, Buonamici, 1919.

Ugric
Mario Alinei
Mario Alinei

Mario Alinei is Professor Emeritus at the University of Utrecht, where he taught from 1959 to 1987, currently living in Impruneta. He is founder and editor of Quaderni di semantica, a journal of theoretical and applied semantics....
 in 2003 has proposed the idea that Etruscan may have been "an archaic form of Hungarian
Hungarian language

Hungarian is a Uralic languages unrelated to most other languages in Europe. It is mainly spoken in Hungary and by the Hungarian minorities in the seven neighbouring countries....
." This theory has not been widely accepted in academic circles, and it has been rejected by practically all specialists of Uralic
Uralic languages

The Uralic languages constitute a language families of 39 languages spoken by approximately 25 million people. The healthiest Uralic languages in terms of the number of native speakers are Hungarian language, Finnish language, Estonian language, Mari language and Udmurt language....
 comparative linguistics
Comparative linguistics

Comparative linguistics is a branch of historical linguistics that is concerned with comparing languages in order to establish their history relatedness....
. Critics accuse Alinei's work of being the product of mass comparison
Mass lexical comparison

Mass comparison is a method developed by Joseph Greenberg to determine the level of genetic relationship between languages. It is now usually called multilateral comparison....
, a methodology that is not accepted by comparative linguists.

Writing system


Alphabet

The Latin alphabet
Latin alphabet

The Latin alphabet, also called the Roman alphabet, is the most widely used alphabetic writing system in the world today. It evolved from the western variety of the Greek alphabet called the Cumae alphabet, and was initially developed by the Ancient Romes to write the Latin....
 that is used in English owes its existence to the Etruscan writing system, which was adapted for Latin in the form of the Old Italic alphabet
Old Italic alphabet

Old Italic refers to several now extinct alphabet systems used on the Italian Peninsula in ancient times for various Indo-European and non-Indo-European languages....
. The Etruscan alphabet employs a Euboea
Euboea

For the Greek mythology figure, see Euboea Euboea is the second largest of the Greece Aegean Islands and the second largest List of islands of Greece overall in area and population, after Crete....
n variant of the Greek alphabet
Greek alphabet

The Greek alphabet is a set of twenty-four letters that has been used to write the Greek language since the late 9th century BC or early 8th century BCE....
 using the letter digamma
Digamma

Digamma is an Archaic Greece letter of the Greek alphabet, used primarily as a Greek numeral.The letter had the phonetic value of a voiced labial-velar approximant ....
 and was in all probability transmitted through Pithecusae and Cumae
Cumae

Cumae is an ancient Greek settlement lying to the northwest of Naples in the Italian region of Campania. Cumae was the first Greek colony on the mainland of Italy and is perhaps most famous as the seat of the Cumaean Sibyl....
, two Euboean settlements in southern Italy
Italy

Italy , officially the Italian Republic , is a country located on the Italian Peninsula in Southern Europe and on the two largest islands in the Mediterranean Sea, Sicily and Sardinia....
. This system is ultimately derived from West Semitic scripts
History of the alphabet

The history of the alphabet begins in Ancient Egypt, more than a millennium into the history of writing. The first pure alphabet emerged around 2000 BCE to represent the language of Semitic workers in Egypt , and was derived from the alphabetic principles of the Egyptian hieroglyphs....
.

The Etruscans recognized a full 26-letter alphabet, which they depicted as itself for decoration on some objects such as an occasional ink-jar; for example, the "rooster ink-stand." This has been termed the model alphabet. They did not use four letters of it, mainly because Etruscan had no voiced stops, b, d and g, and also no o. They innovated one letter for f.

Text

Writing was from right to left except in archaic inscriptions, which might use boustrophedon
Boustrophedon

Boustrophedon , is an ancient way of writing manuscripts and other inscriptions.Rather than going from left to right as in modern English language, or right to left as in Hebrew language and Arabic language, alternate lines must be read in opposite directions....
. An example found at Cerveteri
Cerveteri

Cerveteri is a town and comune of the northern Lazio, in the province of Rome. Originally known as Caere, it is famous for a number of Etruscan civilization necropoleis that include some of the best Etruscan tombs anywhere....
 used left to right. In the earliest inscriptions, the words are continuous. From the 6th century BC, they are separated by a dot or a colon, which might also separate syllables. Writing was phonetic; the letters represented the sounds and not conventional spellings. On the other hand, many inscriptions are highly abbreviated and often casually formed, so the identification of many individual letters is sometimes difficult. Spelling might vary from city to city, probably reflecting differences of pronunciation.

Impossible consonants

Speech featured a heavy stress on the first syllable of a word, causing syncopation by weakening of the remaining vowels, which then were not represented in writing: Alcsntre for Alexandros, Rasna for Rasena. This speech habit is one explanation of the Etruscan "impossible consonant clusters." The resonants
Sonorant

In phonetics and phonology, a sonorant is a speech sound that is produced without turbulent airflow in the vocal tract. Essentially this means a sound that's "squeezed out" or "spat out" is not a sonorant....
 however may have been syllabic, accounting for some of the clusters (see below under Consonants). In other cases the scribe sometimes inserted a vowel: Greek Herakles became Hercle by syncopation and then was expanded to Herecele. Pallottino regarded this variation in vowels as "instability in the quality of vowels" and accounted for the second phase (e.g., Herecele) as "vowel harmony
Vowel harmony

Vowel harmony is a type of long-distance Assimilation Phonology process involving vowels in some languages. In languages with vowel harmony, there are constraints on what vowels may be found near each other....
, i.e., of the assimilation of vowels in neighboring syllables ...."

Phases

The writing system had two historical phases: the archaic, 7th to 5th century BC, which used the early Greek alphabet, and the later, 4th to 1st century BC, which modified some of the letters. In the later period syncopation increased.

The alphabet went on in modified form after the language disappeared. In addition to being the source of the Roman alphabet, it has been suggested that it passed northward into Venetic and from there through Raetia
Raetia

File:REmpire Rhetia.pngRaetia was a Roman province of the Roman Empire, bounded on the west by the country of the Helvetii, on the east by Noricum, on the north by Vindelicia, and on the south by Cisalpine Gaul....
 into the Germanic
Germanic languages

The Germanic languages are a group of related languages that constitute a branch of the Indo-European languages language family. The common ancestor of all the languages in this branch is Proto-Germanic, spoken in approximately the mid-1st millennium BC in Pre-Roman Iron Age....
 lands, where it became the Futhark
Runic alphabet

The runic alphabets are a set of related alphabets using Letter known as runes to write various Germanic languages prior to the adoption of the Latin alphabet and for specialized purposes thereafter....
, a system of runes.

The media


Bilinguals

The Pyrgi Tablets
Pyrgi Tablets

The Pyrgi Tablets, found in a 1964 excavation of a sanctuary of ancient Pyrgi on the Tyrrhenian Sea of Italy , are three golden leaves that record a dedication made around 500 BC by Thefarie Velianas, king of Caere, to the Phoenicia goddess Astarte....
 are a bilingual text in Etruscan and Phoenician engraved on three gold leaves, one for the Phoenician and two for the Etruscan. The Etruscan is in 16 lines, 37 words. The date is roughly 500 BC. The tablets were found in 1964.

Longer texts

According to Rix and his collaborators only two unified (though fragmentary) texts are available in Etruscan:
  • The Liber Linteus
    Liber Linteus

    The Liber Linteus Zagrabiensis is the longest Etruscan language text and the only extant linen book. It remains mostly untranslated because of the lack of knowledge about the Etruscan language, though the few words which can be understood indicate that the text is most likely a ritual calendar....
     used for mummy wrappings (now at Zagreb, Croatia). Roughly 1200 words of readable text, mainly repetitious prayers yielding about 50 lexical items.
  • The Tabula Capuana
    Tabula Capuana

    The Tabula Capuana , now conserved in Berlin, represents the second most extensive surviving Etruscan civilization text, after the linen book the used in Egypt for mummy wrappings, now at Zagreb....
     (the inscribed tile from Capua
    Capua

    Capua is a city in the province of Caserta, Campania, southern Italy, situated 25 km north of Naples, on the northeastern edge of the Campanian plain....
    ). About 300 readable words in 62 lines, dating to the 5th century BC.
Some additional longer texts are:
  • The lead foils of Punta della Vipera, about 40 legible words having to do with ritual formulae. Dated to about 500 BC.
  • The Cippus Perusinus
    Cippus perusinus

    The Cippus Perusinus or Cippus of Perugia is a stone tablet discovered on the hill of San Marco, near Perugia, Italy, in 1822. The tablet bears 46 lines of Etruscan language text exquisitely carved into it....
    , a stone slab (cippus) found at Perugia
    Perugia

    Perugia is the capital city of the region of Umbria in central Italy, near the Tiber river, and the capital of the province of Perugia. The city symbol is the griffin, which can be seen in the form of plaques and statues on buildings around the city....
    . Contains 46 lines, 130 words.
  • The Tabula Cortonensis
    Tabula Cortonensis

    The Tabula Cortonensis, or the Cortona Tablet in English, is a ca. 2200-year-old artifact found in the ancient city of Cortona, Italy in 1992....
    , a bronze tablet from Cortona
    Cortona

    Cortona is a town and comune in the province of Arezzo, in Tuscany, Italy. It is the setting for the film Under the Tuscan Sun, starring Diane Lane, based on the book by Frances Mayes....
     recording a legal contract. About 200 words.
  • The Piacenza Liver, a bronze model of a sheep's liver representing the sky, with the engraved names of the gods ruling different sections.


Inscriptions on monuments

Banditaccia1
The main material repository of Etruscan civilization
Etruscan civilization

Etruscan civilization is the modern English name given to the culture and way of life of a people of ancient Italy and Corsica whom the ancient Romans called Etrusci or Tusci....
 is or was its tombs. Public and private buildings were dismantled and the stone reused centuries ago. The tombs remain as they were except for the ravages of time and the activities of plunderers. More tombs continue to be found regularly.

The tombs are the main source of portables in collections throughout the world, provenance unknown. The Etruscans lived well and valued art. Their objets d'art are of incalculable value, causing a brisk black market and equally brisk law enforcement effort. It is against the law to remove objects from Etruscan tombs unless authorized by the Italian government.

The total number of tombs is unknown due to the magnitude of the task of cataloguing them. They are of many different types. Especially fruitful are the hypogeal
Hypogeum

Hypogeum or Hypogaeum literally means "underground", from Greek language hypo and gaia . It usually refers to an underground, pre-Christian temple or a tomb....
 or "underground" chamber or system of chambers cut into tuff
Tuff

Tuff is a type of Rock consisting of consolidated volcanic ash ejected from vents during a volcanic eruption. Tuff is also sometimes called tufa, particularly when used as construction material....
 and covered by a tumulus
Tumulus

A tumulus is a mound of Soil and Rock s raised over a Grave or graves. Tumuli are also known as barrows, burial mounds, H?gelgrab or kurgans, and can be found throughout much of the world....
. The interior of the tomb represents a habitation of the living stocked with furniture and favorite objects. The walls may display painted mural
Mural

A mural is a painting on a wall, ceiling, or other large permanent surface....
s, the predecessor of wallpaper. Tombs are identified as Etruscan dating form the Villanovan period to about 100 BC, when presumably the cemeteries were abandoned in favor of Roman ones. Some of the major cemeteries are as follows:
  • Caere
    Caere

    Caere is the Latin name given by the Ancient Rome to one of the larger cities of Southern Etruria, the modern Cerveteri, approximately 50-60 kilometres north-northwest of Rome....
     or Cerveteri
    Cerveteri

    Cerveteri is a town and comune of the northern Lazio, in the province of Rome. Originally known as Caere, it is famous for a number of Etruscan civilization necropoleis that include some of the best Etruscan tombs anywhere....
    , a UNESCO
    UNESCO

    United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization is a specialized agency of the United Nations established on 16 November 1945....
     site. Three complete necropolis
    Necropolis

    A necropolis is a large cemetery or burial place . Apart from the occasional application of the word to modern cemeteries outside large towns, the term...
    es with streets and squares. Many hypogea
    Hypogeum

    Hypogeum or Hypogaeum literally means "underground", from Greek language hypo and gaia . It usually refers to an underground, pre-Christian temple or a tomb....
     are concealed beneath tumuli
    Tumulus

    A tumulus is a mound of Soil and Rock s raised over a Grave or graves. Tumuli are also known as barrows, burial mounds, H?gelgrab or kurgans, and can be found throughout much of the world....
     retained by walls; others are cut into cliffs. The Banditaccia necropolis contains more than 1000 tumuli. Access is through a door.


  • Tarquinia
    Tarquinia

    Tarquinia, formerly Corneto and in Antiquity Tarquinii, is an ancient city in the province of Viterbo, Lazio, Italy.History ...
    , Tarquinii or Corneto, a UNESCO
    UNESCO

    United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization is a specialized agency of the United Nations established on 16 November 1945....
     site. Approximately 6000 graves dating from the Villanovan (9th & 8th centuries BC) distributed in necropolis
    Necropolis

    A necropolis is a large cemetery or burial place . Apart from the occasional application of the word to modern cemeteries outside large towns, the term...
    es, the main one being the Monterozzi hypogea
    Hypogeum

    Hypogeum or Hypogaeum literally means "underground", from Greek language hypo and gaia . It usually refers to an underground, pre-Christian temple or a tomb....
     of the 6th - 4th centuries BC. About 200 painted tombs display murals of various scenes with call-outs and descriptions in Etruscan. Elaborately carved sarcophagi of marble
    Marble

    Marble is a nonfoliated metamorphic rock resulting from the metamorphism of limestone, composed mostly of calcite . It is extensively used for Marble sculpture, as a architecture material, and in many other applications....
    , alabaster
    Alabaster

    Alabaster is a name applied to varieties of two distinct minerals: gypsum and calcite . The former is the alabaster of the present day; the latter is generally the alabaster of the ancients....
     and nenfro include identificatory and achievemental inscriptions. The Tomb of Orcus
    Tomb of Orcus

    The Tomb of Orcus , sometimes called the Tomb of Murina , is a 4th century BC Etruscan civilization hypogeum in Tarquinia, Italy. Discovered in 1868, it displays Hellenism influences in its remarkable murals, which include the portrait of Velia Velcha, an Etruscan society, and the only known pictorial representation of the demon Tuchu...
     at the Scatolini necropolis depicts scenes of the Spurinna family with call-outs.


  • Inner walls and doors of tombs and sarcophagi.
  • Engraved steles (tombstones)
  • ossuaries
    Ossuary

    An ossuary is a chest, building, well, or site made to serve as the final resting place of human skeleton remains. They are frequently used where burial space is scarce....


Inscriptions on portable objects


Votives
Votive gifts
Votive offering

A votive deposit or votive offering is an object left in a sacred place for ritual purposes. Such items are a feature of modern and ancient societies and are generally made in order to gain favor with supernatural forces....

Specula
A speculum is a circular or oval hand-mirror used predominantly by Etruscan women. Speculum is Latin; the Etruscan word is malena or malstria. Specula were cast in bronze
Bronze

Bronze is a metal alloy consisting primarily of copper, usually with tin as the main additive, but sometimes with other chemical element such as phosphorus, manganese, aluminium, or silicon....
 as one piece or with a tang into which a wooden, bone or ivory handle fitted. The reflecting surface was created by polishing the flat side. A higher percentage of tin in the mirror improved its ability to reflect. The other side was convex and featured intaglio
Intaglio

Intaglio may refer to:*Intaglio , a printmaking technique with an incised image*Intaglio , a similar effect in jewelry*Intaglio , a similar effect in burial mounds...
 or cameo scenes from mythology. The piece was generally ornate.

About 2300 specula are known from collections all over the world. As they were popular plunderables, the provenance of only a minority is known. An estimated time window is 530-100 BC. Most probably came from tombs.

Many bear inscriptions naming the persons depicted in the scenes, for which reason they are often called picture bilinguals. In 1979, Massimo Pallottino
Massimo Pallottino

Massimo Pallottino was an archaeologist specializing in Etruscan civilization civilization and art.Pallottino was a student of Giulio Quirino Giglioli and worked early in his career on the Temple of Apollo at Veii....
, then president of the Istituto di Studi Etruschi ed Italici initiated the Committee of the Corpus Speculorum Etruscanorum (CSE), which resolved to publish all the specula and set editorial standards for doing so.

Since then the committee has grown, acquiring local committees and representatives from most institutions owning Etruscan mirror collections. Each collection is published in its own fascicle by diverse Etruscan scholars.

Cistae
A cista is a bronze container of circular, ovoid or more rarely rectangular shape used by women for the storage of sundries. They are ornate, often with feet and lids to which figurines may be attached. The internal and external surfaces bear carefully crafted scenes usually from mythology, usually intaglio
Intaglio

Intaglio may refer to:*Intaglio , a printmaking technique with an incised image*Intaglio , a similar effect in jewelry*Intaglio , a similar effect in burial mounds...
, rarely part intaglio, part cameo.

Cistae date from the Roman Republic
Roman Republic

The Roman Republic was the phase of the Ancient Rome characterized by a republican form of government; a period which began with the overthrow of the Roman Roman Kingdom, c....
 of the 4th and 3rd centuries BC in Etruscan contexts. They may bear various short inscriptions concerning the manufacturer or owner or subject matter. The writing may be Latin
Latin

Latin is an Italic language, historically spoken in Latium and Ancient Rome. Through the Military history of the Roman Empire, Latin spread throughout the Mediterranean and a large part of Europe....
, Etruscan or both.

Excavations at Praeneste
Palestrina

Palestrina is an ancient city and comune with a population of about 18,000, in Lazio, c. 35 km east of Rome. It is connected to latter by the Via Prenestina....
, an Etruscan city turned Roman, turned up about 118 cistae, one of which has been termed "the Praeneste cista" or "the Ficoroni cista" by art analysts, with special reference to the one manufactured by Novios Plutius and given by Dindia Macolnia to her daughter, as the archaic Latin inscription says. All of them are more accurately termed "the Praenestine cistae."

Rings and ringstones
Among the most plunderable portables from the Etruscan tombs of Etruria
Etruria

Etruria — usually referred to in Greek language and Latin language source texts as Tyrrhenia — was a region of Central Italy, an area that covered part of what now are Tuscany, Latium, Emilia-Romagna and Umbria....
 are the finely engraved gemstones
Gemstones

Gemstones is the third solo album by Adam Green , released in 2005. The album is characterised by the heavy presence of Wurlitzer electric piano piano, whereas its predecessor relied on a string section in its instrumentation....
 set in patterned gold to form circular or ovoid pieces intended to go on finger rings. Of the magnitude of one centimeter, they are dated to the Etruscan floruit from the 2nd half of the 6th to the 1st centuries BC. The two main theories of manufacture are native Etruscan and Greek.

The materials are mainly dark red cornelian
Cornelian

Cornelian is a red variety of chalcedony, which is cryptocrystalline quartz. Its red colour is due to the presence of iron impurities in the form of iron oxide or hematite....
 with agate
Agate

Agate is a microcrystalline variety of quartz , chiefly chalcedony, characterised by its fineness of grain and brightness of color. Although agates may be found in various kinds of rock, they are classically associated with volcanic rocks but can be common in certain metamorphic rocks....
 and sard
SARD

is a Japanese tuning company and racing team from Toyota, Aichi, mainly competing in the Super GT series and specialising in Toyota tuning parts....
 coming in from the 3rd to the 1st centuries BC along with purely gold finger rings of a hollow engraved bezel
Bezel

Bezel might refer to:*Jay Bezel, an United States rapper*a...
. The engravings, mainly cameo, but sometimes intaglio
Intaglio

Intaglio may refer to:*Intaglio , a printmaking technique with an incised image*Intaglio , a similar effect in jewelry*Intaglio , a similar effect in burial mounds...
, depict scarab
Dung beetle

Dung beetles are beetles that feed partly or exclusively on feces. All of these species belong to the superfamily Scarabaeoidea; most of them to the subfamilies Scarabaeinae and Aphodiinae of the family Scarabaeidae....
s at first and then scenes from Greek mythology, often with heroic personages called out in Etruscan. The gold setting of the bezel bears a border design, such as cabling.

Coins
Etruscan-minted coins date ca. 500-200 BC. Use of the Euboïc-Syracusan standard, based on the silver litra of 13.5 grams maximum, indicates the custom, like the alphabet, came from Greece. Roman coinage supplanted Etruscan, but the basic Roman coin, the sesterce, is believed to have been based on the 2.5 denomination Etruscan coin. Etruscan coins have turned up in caches or individually in tombs and in excavations seemingly at random, concentrated, of course, in Etruria
Etruria

Etruria — usually referred to in Greek language and Latin language source texts as Tyrrhenia — was a region of Central Italy, an area that covered part of what now are Tuscany, Latium, Emilia-Romagna and Umbria....
.

Etruscan coins were in gold, silver and bronze, the gold and silver usually having been struck on one side only. The coin bore a denomination, a minting authority name, and a cameo motif. Gold denominations were in units of silver; silver, in units of bronze. Full or abbreviated names are mainly pupluna (Populonia
Populonia

Populonia is a frazione of the commune of Piombino . It is especially noteworthy for its Etruscan civilization remains, including one of the main necropolis in Italy, discovered by Isidoro Falchi....
), Vatl or Veltuna (Vetulonia
Vetulonia

Vetulonia, formerly called Vetulonium or Vatluna, was an ancient town of Etruria, Italy, the site of which is probably occupied by the modern village of Vetulonia, which up to 1887 bore the name of Colonnata and Colonna di Buriano: the site is currently a frazione of the comune of Castiglione della Pescaia, with...
), Velathri (Volaterrae), Velzu or Velznani (Volsinii) and Cha for Chamars (Camars). Insignia are mainly heads of mythological characters or depictions of mythological beasts arranged in a symbolic motif: Apollo
Apollo

In Greek mythology and Roman mythology, Apollo , is one of the most important and many-sided of the Twelve Olympians. The ideal of the kouros , Apollo has been variously recognized as a god of light and the sun; truth and prophecy; archery; medicine and healing; music, poetry, and the arts; and more....
, Zeus
Zeus

Zeus in Greek mythology is the king of the gods, the ruler of Mount Olympus and the god of the sky father and List of thunder gods. His symbols are the thunderbolt, eagle, bull , and oak....
, Janus
Janus

Janus may refer to:*Janus , the two-faced Roman god of gates, doors, doorways, beginnings, and endings.*Janus , a moon of Saturn.*Janus Patera, a shallow volcanic crater on Io, a moon of Jupiter....
, Athena
Athena

In Greek mythology, Athena is the shrewd companion of Hero and the goddess of Hero endeavour. She is the virgin patron of Athens, which built the Parthenon to worship her....
, Hermes
Hermes

Hermes is the messenger of the gods in Greek mythology. An Twelve Olympians, he is also the patron of boundaries and of the travelers who cross them, of shepherds and cowherds, of thieves and road travelers, of orators and wit, of literature and poets, of athletics, of weights and measures, of invention, of general commerce, and of the cunni...
, griffin
Griffin

The griffin is a fantasy creature with the body of a lion and the head and often wings of an eagle. As the lion was traditionally considered the king of the beasts and the eagle the king of the birds, the griffin was thought to be an especially powerful and majestic creature....
, gorgon
Gorgon

In Greek mythology, the Gorgon was a vicious monster with sharp fangs. She was a protective deity from early religious concepts. Her power was so strong that one attempting to look upon her, would be turned to stone, therefore, such images were put upon items from temples to wine kraters for protection....
, sphinx
Sphinx

A sphinx is a zoomorphic mythological figure which is depicted as a recumbent lion with a human head. It has its origins in sculpted figures of Old Kingdom Ancient Egypt, to which the ancient Greeks applied their own name for a female monster, the "strangler", an archaic figure of Greek mythology....
, hippocamp
Hippocamp

The hippocamp or hippocampus , often called a sea-horse in English language, is a mythological creature shared by Phoenician and Greek mythology, though the name by which it is recognized is purely Greek; it became part of Etruscan mythology....
, bull, snake, eagle, etc.

Recent discoveries

A book of gold sheets bound with gold rings went on display in May 2003 at the National History Museum in Sofia, Bulgaria. It consists of six bound sheets of 24-carat
Carat (purity)

The carat is a measure of the purity of gold alloys. In the United States and Canada, the spelling karat is used, while the spelling carat is used to refer to the measure of mass for gemstones ....
 (100%) gold, with low-reliefs of a horseman, a mermaid
Mermaid

A mermaid is a mythological aquatic creature that is half human , half aquatic creature .Various cultures throughout the world have similar figures....
, a harp and soldiers, with text. It was claimed to have been discovered about 1940 in a tomb uncovered during digging for a canal along the Strouma river in south-western Bulgaria, kept secretly and anonymously donated by its 87-year-old owner, living in the Republic of Macedonia.

Sounds

In the tables below, conventional letters used for transliterating Etruscan are accompanied by likely pronunciation in IPA symbols within the square brackets, followed by examples of the early Etruscan alphabet which would have corresponded to these sounds:

Vowels


The Etruscan vowel system
Vowel

In phonetics, a vowel is a sound in spoken language, such as English ah! or oh! , pronounced with an open vocal tract so that there is no build-up of air pressure at any point above the glottis....
 consisted of four distinct vowels. Vowels "o" and "u" appear to have not been phonetically distinguished based on the nature of the writing system where only one symbol is used to cover both in loans from Greek
Greek language

Greek is an Indo-European languages native to the southern Balkan peninsula, the language of the Greek people. It forms an independent branch within Indo-European....
 (e.g. Greek kothon > Etruscan qutun "pitcher").

Front
Front vowel

A front vowel is a type of vowel sound used in some spoken languages. The defining characteristic of a front vowel is that the tongue is positioned as far forward as possible in the mouth without creating a constriction that would be classified as a consonant....
Central
Central vowel

A central vowel is a type of vowel sound used in some spoken languages. The defining characteristic of a central vowel is that the tongue is positioned halfway between a front vowel and a back vowel....
Back
Back vowel

A back vowel is a type of vowel sound used in some spoken languages. The defining characteristic of a back vowel is that the tongue is positioned as far back as possible in the mouth without creating a constriction that would be classified as a consonant....
High i
[]
Etruscani 01
  u
[]
Etruscano 01
Mid
Mid vowel

A mid vowel is a vowel sound used in some spoken languages. The defining characteristic of a mid vowel is that the tongue is positioned mid-way between an open vowel and a close vowel....
e
[]
  
Low   a
[]
Etruscana 01


Consonants


Table of consonants
Bilabial Dental
Dental consonant

In linguistics, a dental consonant or dental is a consonant that is articulated with the tongue against the upper teeth, such as , , , and in some languages....
Alveolar
Alveolar consonant

Alveolar consonants are articulated with the tongue against or close to the superior alveolar ridge, which is called that because it contains the Dental alveolus of the superior teeth....
Palatal Velar
Velar consonant

Velars are consonants articulated with the back part of the tongue against the soft palate, the back part of the roof of the mouth, known also as the Soft palate)....
Glottal
Glottal consonant

Glottal consonants are consonants articulated with the glottis. Many phoneticians consider them, or at least the so-called fricatives, to be transitional states of the glottis without a point of articulation as other consonants have; in fact, some do not consider them to be consonants at all....
Stopsp
[]
Etruscanp 01
[]
t, d
[]
Etruscant 01
Etruscand 01
[]
 c, k, q
[]
Etruscanc 01
Etruscank 01
Etruscanq 01
[]
Etruscanx 01
Fricatives f
[]
Etruscanf 01
s
[]
Etruscans 01
[]
Phoenician Sade
  h
[]
Etruscanh 01
Affricates  z
[]
Etruscanz 01
   
Nasals
Nasal consonant

A nasal consonant is produced with a lowered soft palate in the mouth, allowing air to escape freely through the nose. The oral cavity still acts as a resonance chamber for the sound, but the air does not escape through the mouth as it is blocked by the tongue....
m
[]
Etruscanm 01
n
[]
Etruscann 01
    
Lateral
Lateral consonant

Laterals are "L"-like consonants pronounced with an occlusion made somewhere along the axis of the tongue, while air from the lungs escapes at one side or both sides of the tongue....
s
  l
[]
Etruscanl 01
r
[]
Etruscanr 01
    
Approximantsv
[]
Etruscanf 01
  i
[]
Etruscani 01
  


Voiced stops missing
The Etruscan consonant system primarily distinguished between aspirated and non-aspirated stops. Voiced stops such as English "b", "d" or "g" were non-distinct from [p], [t] and [k], respectively. When words were borrowed that had voiced stops, the stops were unvoiced: Greek thriambos was borrowed into Etruscan, becoming triumpus and triumphus in Latin.

Syllabic theory
Based on standard spellings by Etruscan scribes that appear otherwise to lack vowels or that have strings of clusters that as they occur seem phonetically impossible to pronounce, as seen in words like cl "of this (gen.)" and lautn "freeman", it is likely that "m", "n", "l" and "r" were sometimes written for syllabic resonants
Sonorant

In phonetics and phonology, a sonorant is a speech sound that is produced without turbulent airflow in the vocal tract. Essentially this means a sound that's "squeezed out" or "spat out" is not a sonorant....
. Thus cl // and lautn //.

Rix postulates several syllabic consonants, namely and palatal as well as a labiovelar spirant and some scholars such as Mauro Cristofani
Mauro Cristofani

Mauro Cristofani was a linguistics and researcher in Etruscan civilization studies.Cristofani was a student of Massimo Pallottino and would himself teach at the Universit? di Pisa, Universit? di Siena and, his final post, at the Universit? "Federico II" in Naples....
 also view the aspirates as palatal rather than aspirated but these views are not shared by most Etruscologists. Rix supports his theories by means of variant spellings such as amfare/amfiare, lar?al/lar?ial, aran?/aran?iia.

Word formation

Etruscan was inflected, varying the endings of noun
Noun

In linguistics, a noun is a member of a large, open class lexical category whose members can occur as the main word in the subject of a clause, the object of a verb, or the object of a preposition....
s, pronoun
Pronoun

In linguistics and grammar, a pronoun is a pro-form that substitutes for a noun with or without a Determiner , such as Wiktionary:you and Wiktionary:they in English language....
s and verb
Verb

In syntax, a verb is a word that usually denotes an action , an occurrence , or a state of being . Depending on the language, a verb may vary in form according to many factors, possibly including its grammatical tense, grammatical aspect, grammatical mood and grammatical voice....
s. It also had adjectives, adverb
Adverb

An adverb is a part of speech. It is any word that modifies any other part of language: verbs, adjectives , clauses, sentence s and other adverbs, except for nouns; modifiers of nouns are primarily determiners and adjectives....
s and conjunctions
Conjunctions

conjunctions are words that connect diffreces and simmilar things to one and an otherConjunctions editorial approach is often collaborative. Both the editor and the distinguished staff of active contributing editors — including Walter Abish, Chinua Achebe, John Ashbery, Mei-mei Berssenbrugge, Mary Caponegro, Robert Creeley, Elizabeth Fra...
, which were uninflected.

Nouns

Etruscan substantives had five cases, a singular and a plural. Not all five cases are attested for every word. Nouns merge the nominative and accusative; pronouns do not generally. Gender appears in personal names (masculine and feminine) and in pronouns (animate, or either masculine and feminine, and inanimate or neuter); otherwise, it is not marked.

Unlike the Indo-European languages
Indo-European languages

The Indo-European languages are a Language family of several hundred related languages and dialects, including most major languages of Europe, the Iranian plateau , Central Asia and the Indian subcontinent ....
, the Etruscans might add two or three endings instead of alternative endings; for example, where Latin would have distinct nominative plural and dative plural endings, Etruscan would suffix the case ending to a plural marker: Latin nominative singular fili-us, "son", plural fili-i, dative plural fili-is, but Etruscan clan, clen-ar and clen-ar-asi.

Pallottino calls this phenomenon "morphological redetermination", which he defines as "the typical tendency ... to redetermine the syntactical function of the form by the superposition of suffices." His example is Uni-al-i, "in the sanctuary of Juno", where -al is a genitive ending and -i a locative. Steinbauer uses the term "inflecting language" (rather than inflected), which he explains as a language in which "... there can be more than one marker ... to design a case, and ... the same marker can occur for more than one case."

Nominative
Nominative case

The nominative case is a grammatical case for a noun, which generally marks the subject of a verb, as opposed to its object or other verb arguments....
/Accusative
Accusative case

The accusative case of a noun is the grammatical case used to mark the direct object of a transitive verb. The same case is used in many languages for the objects of prepositions....
 Case:
No distinction is made between nominative and accusative of nouns. Common nouns use the unmarked root. Names of males may end in -e: Hercle (Hercules), Achle (Achilles), Tite (Titus); of females, in -i, -a or -u: Uni (Juno), Menrva (Minerva), Zipu. Names of gods may end in -s: Fufluns, Tins; or they may be the unmarked stem ending in a vowel or consonant: Aplu (Apollo), Paa (Bacchus), Turan.

Genitive case
Genitive case

In grammar, the genitive case or possessive case is the grammatical case that marks a noun as modifying another noun. It often marks a noun as being the possessor of another noun but it can also indicate various relationships other than possession; certain verbs may take argument in the genitive case; and it may have adverbial uses ....
:
Pallottino defines two declensions based on whether the genitive ends in -s/-s or -l. In the -s group are most noun stems ending in a vowel or a consonant: fler/fler-s, ramtha/ramtha-s. In the second are names of females ending in i and names of males that end s, th or n: ati/ati-al, Laris/Laris-al, Arn/Arn-al. After l or r -us instead of -s appears: Vel/Vel-us. Otherwise a vowel might be placed before the ending: Arn-al instead of Arn-l.

There is a patronymic
Patronymic

A patronym or patronymic, is a component of a personal name based on the name of one's father, grandfather or an even earlier male ancestor....
 ending: -sa or -isa, "son of", but the ordinary genitive might serve that purpose. In the genitive case morphological redetermination becomes elaborate. Given two male names, Vel and Avle, Vel Avles means "Vel son of Avle." This expression in the genitive become Vel-us Avles-la. Pallottino's example of a three-suffix form is Arnth-al-isa-la.

Dative case
Dative case

The dative case is a grammatical case generally used to indicate the noun to whom something is given. For example, in "John gave a book to Mary"....
:
The dative ending is -si:Tita/Tita-si.

Locative case
Locative case

Locative is a grammatical case which indicates a location. It corresponds vaguely to the English prepositions "in", "on", "at", and "by". The locative case belongs to the general local cases together with the lative case and separative case case....
:
The locative ending is -i: Tarna/Tarna-l-i.

Pronouns

Personal pronouns refer to persons; demonstrative point out: English this, that.
Personal
The first person personal pronoun has a nominative mi ("I") and an accusative mini ("me"). The second person has a dative
Dative

Dative has several meanings.*In grammar, the dative case is used to indicate the noun to whom something is given.*In chemistry, a dative bond is a chemical bond in which the shared electrons come from one atom only....
 singular une ("to thee"), an accusative singular un ("thee") and an accusative plural unu ("you"). The third person has a personal form an ("he" or "she") and an inanimate in ("it").

Demonstrative
The demonstratives are ca and ta used without distinction. The nominative/accusative singular forms are: ica, eca, ca, ita, ta; the plural: cei, tei. There is a genitive singular: cla, tla, cal and plural clal. The accusative singular: can, cen, cn, ecn, etan, tn; plural cnl. Locative singular: calti, ceii, cl(i), ecli; plural caiti, ceii.

Adjectives

Though uninflected, adjectives fall into a number of types formed from nouns with a suffix:
  • quality, -u, -iu or -c: ais/ais-iu, "god/divine"; zamai/zami-c, "gold/golden."
  • possession or reference, -na, -ne, -ni: paa/paa-na, "Bacchus, Bacchic"; laut/laut-ni, "family/familiar" (in the sense of servant)
  • collective, -cva, -chva, -cve, -ve, -ia: sren/sren-cva: "figure/figured"; etera/etera-ia, "slave/servile"


Adverbs

Adverbs are unmarked: etnam, "again"; ui, "now"; uni, "at first." Most Indo-European
Indo-European languages

The Indo-European languages are a Language family of several hundred related languages and dialects, including most major languages of Europe, the Iranian plateau , Central Asia and the Indian subcontinent ....
 adverbs are formed from the oblique cases, which become unproductive and descend to fixed forms. Cases such as the ablative are therefore called "adverbial." If there is any such system in Etruscan it is not obvious from the relatively few surviving adverbs.

Verbs

Verbs had an indicative mood and an imperative mood
Imperative mood

The imperative mood is a grammatical mood that expresses direct commands or requests. It is also used to signal a prohibition, permission or any other kind of exhortation....
. Tenses were present
Present tense

The present tense is the Grammatical tense that may be used to express:* action at the present* a state of being;* a habitual action;* an occurrence in the near future; or...
 and past
Past tense

The past tense is a verb grammatical tense expressing action, activity, state or being in the past of the current moment , or prior to some other event, whether that is past, present, or future ....
. The past tense had an Active voice and a Passive voice.
Present active
Etruscan uses a verbal root with a zero suffix or -a without distinction to number or person: ar, ar-a, "he, she, we, you, they make."

Past or preterite active
The -ce or -ke suffix to the root produces a third person singular active, which has been called variously a "past", a "preterite" or an "aorist." In contrast to Indo-European
Indo-European languages

The Indo-European languages are a Language family of several hundred related languages and dialects, including most major languages of Europe, the Iranian plateau , Central Asia and the Indian subcontinent ....
, this form is not marked for aspect
Grammatical aspect

In linguistics, the grammatical aspect of a verb defines the temporal flow in the described event or state. In English, for example, the past-tense sentences "I swam" and "I was swimming" differ in aspect ....
, nor are the roots, apparently, distinguished for their aspect; they are simply actions that went on in the past. Examples: tur/tur-ce, "gives/gave"; sval/sval-ce, "lives/lived."

Past passive
The third person past passive is formed with -che: mena/mena-ce/mena-che, "offers/offered/was offered."

Vocabulary

See the list of Etruscan words and list of words of Etruscan origin at Wiktionary
Wiktionary

Wiktionary is a multilingualism, World Wide Web-based project to create a free content dictionary, available in over 151 languages. Unlike standard dictionaries, it is written collaboratively by volunteers, dubbed "Wiktionarians", using wiki software, allowing articles to be changed by almost anyone with access to the website....
, the free dictionary and Wikipedia's sibling project


The Etruscan vocabulary is now a few hundred words known with some certainty. The exact count depends on whether the different forms and the expressions are included. The Wiktionary list referenced above is in alphabetic order. Below is a table of some of the words grouped by topic.

Some words with corresponding Latin or other Indo-European forms are likely loanwords to or from Etruscan. For example, nefts "nephew", is probably from Latin (Latin nepos, nepotis; German Neffe, Old Norse nefi). A few dozen from Etruscan survive in Latin; for example, elementum (letter), litterae (writing), cera (wax) (????? in Ancient Greek), arena (sand).

At least one word has an apparent Semitic origin: talitha "girl" (Aramaic; could have been transmitted by Phoenicians).

The Etruscan numerals
Etruscan numerals

The Etruscan numerals were used by the ancient Etruscan civilizations. The system was adapted from the Greek Attic numerals and formed the inspiration for the later Roman numerals....
 are known although debate lingers about which numeral means "four" and which "six" (hu or sa). Numerals are listed in their own article. Of them, and of the basic words in general, Bonfante (1990) says:

Bibliography

Available for preview on Google Books. Preview available on Google Books. Preview available at Google Books.

Translated from the Italian by J. Cremona. 2 vols.

  • Woudhuizen, Frederik Christiaan. April 2006. . Doctoral dissertation; Rotterdam: Erasmus Universiteit Rotterdam, Faculteit der Wijsbegeerte.


See also

  • Corpus Inscriptionum Etruscarum
    Corpus Inscriptionum Etruscarum

    The Corpus Inscriptionum Etruscarum is a Text corpus of Etruscan language texts, collected by Karl Pauli and his followers since 1885. After the death of Olof August Danielsson in 1933, this collection was passed on to the Uppsala University Library....
  • Etruscan alphabet
    Old Italic alphabet

    Old Italic refers to several now extinct alphabet systems used on the Italian Peninsula in ancient times for various Indo-European and non-Indo-European languages....
  • Etruscan civilization
    Etruscan civilization

    Etruscan civilization is the modern English name given to the culture and way of life of a people of ancient Italy and Corsica whom the ancient Romans called Etrusci or Tusci....
  • Etruscan documents
    • Liber Linteus
      Liber Linteus

      The Liber Linteus Zagrabiensis is the longest Etruscan language text and the only extant linen book. It remains mostly untranslated because of the lack of knowledge about the Etruscan language, though the few words which can be understood indicate that the text is most likely a ritual calendar....
       — An Etruscan linen
      Linen

      Linen is a textile made from the fibers of the flax plant, Linum usitatissimum. Linen is labor-intensive to manufacture, but when it is made into garments, it is valued for its exceptional coolness and freshness in hot weather....
       book that ended as mummy wraps in Egypt.
    • Tabula Cortonensis
      Tabula Cortonensis

      The Tabula Cortonensis, or the Cortona Tablet in English, is a ca. 2200-year-old artifact found in the ancient city of Cortona, Italy in 1992....
       — An Etruscan inscription.
    • Cippus perusinus
      Cippus perusinus

      The Cippus Perusinus or Cippus of Perugia is a stone tablet discovered on the hill of San Marco, near Perugia, Italy, in 1822. The tablet bears 46 lines of Etruscan language text exquisitely carved into it....
       — An Etruscan inscription.
    • Pyrgi Tablets
      Pyrgi Tablets

      The Pyrgi Tablets, found in a 1964 excavation of a sanctuary of ancient Pyrgi on the Tyrrhenian Sea of Italy , are three golden leaves that record a dedication made around 500 BC by Thefarie Velianas, king of Caere, to the Phoenicia goddess Astarte....
       — Bilingual Etruscan-Phoenician golden leaves.
  • Etruscan mythology
    Etruscan mythology

    The Etruscan civilizations were a people of unknown origin living in Northern Italy, who were eventually integrated into Roman culture and politically became part of the Roman Republic....
  • Etruscan numerals
    Etruscan numerals

    The Etruscan numerals were used by the ancient Etruscan civilizations. The system was adapted from the Greek Attic numerals and formed the inspiration for the later Roman numerals....
  • Lemnian language
    Lemnian language

    The Lemnian language is a language of the 6th century BC spoken on the island of Lemnos. It is mainly attested by an inscription found on a funerary stele, termed the Lemnos stele, discovered in 1885 near Kaminia....
  • List of English words of Etruscan origin
    List of English words of Etruscan origin

    This is a list of English language words that may be of Etruscan language origin, and were borrowed through Latin, often via French language. The Etruscan origin of many of these words is disputed, and some may be of Indo-European or other origin....
  • List of Spanish words of Etruscan origin
    List of Spanish words of Etruscan origin

    This is a list of Spanish language words of Etruscan language origin. All of these words existed in Latin and most of them have alternate etymology....
  • Raetic language
    Raetic language

    Raetic is an extinct language spoken in the ancient region of Raetia in the Eastern Alps in pre-Roman and Roman times. It is documented by a limited number of short inscriptions in a variant of the Etruscan alphabet....
  • Tyrsenian languages
    Tyrsenian languages

    Tyrsenian , after the Tyrrhenoi, is a proposed classification by Helmut Rix , who argues for a close relationship of the Etruscan language and the Raetic language, together with the Lemnian language....


External links


General

  • , the Newsletter of the American Section of the Institute for Etruscan and Italic Studies.
  • , Center for Ancient Studies at New York University.
  • , the website of Dr. Dieter H. Steinbauer, in English. Covers origins, vocabulary, grammar and place names.
  • at web.archive.org.
  • , the linguistlist.org site. Links to many other Etruscan language sites.


Inscriptions

  • A searchable database of Etruscan texts.
  • , article by Rex Wallace displayed at the umass.edu site.
  • , paper by Michael Weiss, Cornell University
    Cornell University

    Cornell University located in Ithaca, New York, USA, is a private university with four Statutory college. Its two medical campuses are in New York City and Education City, Qatar....
    .


Lexical items

  • at web.archive.org. A short, one-page glossary with numerals as well.
  • , a vocabulary organized by topic at etruskisch.de, in English.
  • at iolairweb.co.uk. An extensive lexicon compiled from other lexicon sites. Links to the major Etruscan glossaries on the Internet are included.


Fonts

  • [https://webspace.utexas.edu/jp9334/www/fonts.html Etruscan and Early Italic Fonts], download site by James F. Patterson at webspace.utexas.edu.