Etruscan ( )Bauer, Laurie (2007). The Linguistics Student's Handbook. Edinburgh. was the language of the Etruscan civilization in the ancient region of Etruria, in Etruria Padana and Etruria Campana in what is now Italy. Etruscan influenced Latin but was eventually superseded by it. Around 13,000 Etruscan inscriptions 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. It is attested from 700 BC to 50 AD and the relation of Etruscan to other languages has been a source of long-running speculation and study. Nowadays it is generally agreed to be in the Tyrrhenian language family but it used commonly to be treated as an isolate, although there were also a number of other lesser-known hypotheses.
The consensus among linguists and Etruscologists is that Etruscan was a Pre-Indo-EuropeanMassimo Pallottino, La langue étrusque Problèmes et perspectives, 1978.Mauro Cristofani, Introduction to the study of the Etruscan, Leo S. Olschki, 1991.Romolo A. Staccioli, The "mystery" of the Etruscan language, Newton & Compton publishers, Rome, 1977. and Paleo-European language, closely related to the Raetic language that was spoken in the Alps,Schumacher, Stefan (1994) Studi Etruschi in Neufunde 'raetischer' Inschriften Vol. 59 pp. 307–320 (German)Schumacher, Stefan (1994) Neue 'raetische' Inschriften aus dem Vinschgau in Der Schlern Vol. 68 pp. 295-298 (German)Schumacher, Stefan (1999) Die Raetischen Inschriften: Gegenwärtiger Forschungsstand, spezifische Probleme und Zukunfstaussichten in I Reti / Die Räter, Atti del simposio 23–25 settembre 1993, Castello di Stenico, Trento, Archeologia delle Alpi, a cura di G. Ciurletti – F. Marzatico Archaoalp pp. 334–369 (German)Schumacher, Stefan (2004) Die Raetischen Inschriften. Geschichte und heutiger Stand der Forschung Archaeolingua. Innsbrucker Beiträge zur Kulturwissenschaft. (German)Norbert Oettinger, Seevölker und Etrusker, 2010. and to the Lemnian language, attested in a few inscriptions on Lemnos.de Simone Carlo (2009) La nuova iscrizione tirsenica di Efestia in Aglaia Archontidou, Carlo de Simone, Albi Mersini (Eds.), Gli scavi di Efestia e la nuova iscrizione 'tirsenica', Tripodes 11, 2009, pp. 3–58. (Italian)Carlo de Simone, Simona Marchesini (Eds), La lamina di Demlfeld [= Mediterranea. Quaderni annuali dell'Istituto di Studi sulle Civiltà italiche e del Mediterraneo antico del Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche. Supplemento 8], Pisa – Roma: 2013. (Italian)
The Etruscan alphabet derived from the Greek alphabet, specifically from the Euboean script, which Greek colonists brought to southern Italy. 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. However by using combinatory method it was possible to assign some Etruscan words to grammatical categories such as noun and verb, to identify some inflectional endings and to assign meanings to a few words of very frequent occurrence.Etruscan language
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.
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. 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.
History of Etruscan literacy
Etruscan literacy was widespread over the Mediterranean shores, as evidenced by about 13,000 inscriptions (dedications, epitaphs, etc.), most fairly short but some of considerable length. They date from about 700 BC.
The Etruscans had a rich literature, as noted by Latin authors. 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 . The dealt with divination by reading entrails from a sacrificed animal, whilst the expounded the art of divination by observing lightning. A third set, the , may have provided a 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 AD Latin writer Maurus Servius Honoratus, a fourth set of Etruscan books existed, dealing with animal gods, but it is unlikely that any scholar living in that era could have read Etruscan. However only one book (as opposed to inscription), the Liber Linteus, survived, and only because the linen on which it was written was used as mummy wrappings.Van der Meer, L. Bouke, ed. Liber Linteus Zagrabiensis (= Monographs on antiquity, vol. 4). Peeters, 2007, .
By 30 BC Livy had noted that Etruscan was once widely taught to Roman boys but had since been replaced by the teaching of Greek, whilst Varro noted that theatrical works had once been composed in Etruscan.
Demise
The date of the extinction of Etruscan is held by scholarship to have been either in the late 1st century BC or the early 1st century AD. Freeman's analysis of inscriptional evidence implies that Etruscan was still flourishing in the 2nd century BC, still alive in the 1st century BC and surviving in at least one location in the beginning of the 1st century AD; however the replacement of Etruscan by Latin likely occurred earlier in southern regions closer to Rome.
In southern Etruria the first Etruscan site to be Latinized was Veii, when it was destroyed and repopulated by Romans in 396 BC. Caere (Cerveteri), another southern Etruscan town on the coast 45 kilometres from Rome, appears to have shifted to Latin in the late 2nd century BC. In Tarquinia and Vulci Latin inscriptions coexisted with Etruscan inscriptions in wall paintings and grave markers for centuries, from the 3rd century BC until the early 1st century BC, after which Etruscan is replaced by the exclusive use of Latin.
In northern Etruria Etruscan inscriptions continue after they disappear in southern Etruria. At Clusium (Chiusi) tomb markings show mixed Latin and Etruscan in the first half of the 1st century BC, with cases where two subsequent generations are inscribed in Latin and then surprisingly the third, youngest generation is transcribed in Etruscan. At Perugia, monolingual monumental inscriptions in Etruscan are still seen in the first half of the 1st century BC whilst the period of bilingual inscriptions appears to have stretched from the 3rd century to the late 1st century BC. The isolated last bilinguals are found at three northern sites. Inscriptions in Arezzo include one dated to 40 BC followed by two with slightly later dates, whilst in Volterra, there is one dated to just after 40 BC and a final one dated to 10–20 AD; coins with written Etruscan near Saena (Sienna) have also been dated to 15 BC. Freeman notes that in rural areas, the language may have survived a bit longer and that survival into the late 1st century AD and beyond "cannot wholly be dismissed", especially given the revelation of Oscan writing on the walls of Pompeii.Freeman, Philip. Survival of Etruscan. p. 82: "How much longer may have Etruscan survived in isolated rural locations? The answer is impossible to say, given that we can only argue from evidence, not conjecture. But languages are notoriously tenacious, and the possibility of an Etruscan survival into the late 1st century A.D. and beyond cannot be wholly dismissed. Oscan graffiti on the walls of Pompeii show that non-Latin languages survived well into the 1st century AD, making rural survival of Etruscan more credible. But this is only speculation..."
Despite the apparent extinction of Etruscan, it appears that Etruscan religious rites continued much later, continuing to use the Etruscan names of deities and possibly with some liturgical usage of the language. In late Republican and early Augustan times various Latin sources including Cicero noted the esteemed reputation of Etruscan soothsayers. An episode where lightning struck an inscription with the name Caesar, turning it into Aesar, was interpreted to have been a premonition of the deification of Caesar because of the resemblance to Etruscan , meaning 'gods', although this indicates knowledge of a single word and not the language. Centuries later and long after Etruscan is thought to have died out Ammianus Marcellinus reports that Julian the Apostate, the last pagan emperor, apparently had Etruscan soothsayers accompany him on his military campaigns with books on war, lightning and celestial events, but the language of these books is unknown. According to Zosimus, when Rome was faced with destruction by Alaric in 408 AD, the protection of nearby Etruscan towns was attributed to Etruscan pagan priests who claimed to have summoned a raging thunderstorm, and they offered their services "in the ancestral manner" to Rome as well, but the devout Christians of Rome refused the offer, preferring death to help by pagans. Freeman notes that these events may indicate that a limited theological knowledge of Etruscan may have survived among the priestly caste much longer. One 19th-century writer argued in 1892 that Etruscan deities retained an influence on early-modern Tuscan folklore.Leland (1892). Etruscan Roman Remains in Popular Tradition.
Around 180 AD, the Latin author Aulus Gellius mentions Etruscan alongside the Gaulish language in an anecdote.Aulus Gellius, Noctes Atticae. Extract: 'ueluti Romae nobis praesentibus uetus celebratusque homo in causis, sed repentina et quasi tumultuaria doctrina praeditus, cum apud praefectum urbi uerba faceret et dicere uellet inopi quendam miseroque uictu uiuere et furfureum panem esitare uinumque eructum et feditum potare. "hic", inquit, "eques Romanus apludam edit et flocces bibit". aspexerunt omnes qui aderant alius alium, primo tristiores turbato et requirente uoltu quidnam illud utriusque uerbi foret: post deinde, quasi nescio quid Tusce aut Gallice dixisset, uniuersi riserunt.' English translation: 'For instance in Rome in our presence, a man experienced and celebrated as a pleader, but furnished with a sudden and, as it were, hasty education, was speaking to the Prefect of the City, and wished to say that a certain man with a poor and wretched way of life ate bread from bran and drank bad and spoiled wine. "This Roman knight", he said, "eats apluda and drinks flocces." All who were present looked at each other, first seriously and with an inquiring expression, wondering what the two words meant; thereupon, as if he might have said something in, I don't know, Gaulish or Etruscan, all of them burst out laughing.' (based on Blom 2007: 183.) Freeman notes that although Gaulish was clearly still alive during Gellius' time, his testimony may not indicate that Etruscan was still alive because the phrase could indicate a meaning of the sort of "it's all Greek (incomprehensible) to me".Freeman. Survival of Etruscan. p. 78