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Etruscan language
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Etruscanmechl Rasnal
Spoken in: Ancient Etruria
Region: Italian Peninsula
Language extinction: 1st century AD
Language family: Tyrrhenian
Language codes
ISO 639-1: None
ISO 639-2: und
ISO 639-3: ett
Note: This page may contain IPA phonetic symbols in Unicode.
The Etruscan language was spoken and written by the Etruscan civilization in the ancient region of Etruria (modern Tuscany plus western Umbria and northern Latium) and in parts of Lombardy, Veneto, and Emilia-Romagna (where the Etruscans were displaced by Gauls), in Italy. However, Latin superseded Etruscan completely, leaving only a few documents and a few loanwords in Latin (e.g., persona from Etruscan φersu[1]), and some place-names, such as Roma.
History of Etruscan literacy
Etruscan literacy was widespread over the Mediterranean shores, as can be seen by about 13,000 inscriptions (dedications, epitaphs etc), most fairly short, but some of some length.[2] They date from about 700 BC.[3]
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 By AD 100, Etruscan had been replaced by Latin.
Only a few educated Romans with antiquarian interests, such as Varro, could read Etruscan. The last person known to have been able to read it was the Roman emperor Claudius (10 BC – AD 54), 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, his first wife, was Etruscan.[4]
Livy and Cicero 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 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[citation needed]; the single surviving Etruscan book, Liber Linteus, 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
Inscriptions have been found in north-west and west-central Italy, in the region that even now bears the name of the Etruscans, Tuscany (from Latin tuscī "Etruscans"), as well as in today's Latium north of Rome, in today's Umbria west of the Tiber, around Capua in Campania and in the Po 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[5] inscriptions have been found in Africa, Corsica, Elba, Gallia Narbonensis, Greece, the Balkans and the Black Sea. 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 which in itself is an isolate family, that is, unrelated to other language groups by any known relationship. Since Rix (1998) it is widely accepted that Tyrsenian is composed of Rhaetic and Lemnian together with Etruscan.
In the 1st century BC the Greek historian Dionysius of Halicarnassus stated that the Etruscan language was unlike any other.[6] 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 ...."[2]
Speculative relationships
The Etruscan language has been difficult to analyze, which is attributable to its being an isolate. The phonology is known through the alternation of Greek and Etruscan letters in some inscriptions (for example, the Iguvine Tables), and many individual words are known through loans into or from Greek and Latin, 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 hypothesis
The interest in Etruscan antiquities and the mysterious Etruscan language found its modern origin in a book by a Dominican monk, Annio da Viterbo, called "Il Pastura", the cabalist and orientalist who guided Pinturicchio's allegorical frescoes for Pope Alexander VI'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. 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, 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 hypothesis
In 1861 Robert Ellis proposed that Etruscan was related to Armenian,[7] a view that is now untenable. Some modern scholars[8] assert that the Tyrsenian family is distantly related to the Indo-European family. Proponents of this hypothesis put together what they view to be similarities of phonetics, vocabulary and syntax.
Luvian
Frederik Woudhuizen has revived an ancient conjecture that the Tyrsenians came from Anatolia, including Lydia, whence they were driven out by the Cimmerians in the early Iron Age, 750-675 BC, leaving some colonists on Lemnos. He makes a number of comparisons of Etruscan to Luvian and asserts that Etruscan is modified Luvian. He accounts for the non-Luvian features as a Mysian influence: "deviations from Luwian ... may plausibly be ascribed to the dialect of the indigenous population of Mysia."[9] According to Woudhuizen, the Etruscans were colonizing the Latins and the Villanovan and all preceding cultures were Indo-European. The Etruscans brought the alphabet from Anatolia. Dionysius of Halicarnassus rejected this hypothesis in his time, because the late Iron Age inhabitants of Lydia were Luvian.
Albanian hypothesis
Please see the discussion on the talk page. (January 2009)
Please do not remove this message until the dispute is resolved.
This 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.[10]
Hungarian hypothesis
Please see the discussion on the talk page. (January 2009)
Please do not remove this message until the dispute is resolved.
A recent (2003) study by linguist Mario Alinei has proposed the idea that Etruscan may have been an archaic form of Hungarian. Alinei's theory is based on similarities between certain words (magistrature names), agglutination, vowel harmony, construction of personal pronouns when used together with prepositions, etc. This theory has not been widely accepted in academic circles, and it has been rejected by practically all specialists of Uralic comparative linguistics. Critics accuse Alinei's work of being the product of mass comparison, a methodology that is not accepted by comparative linguists.