Talk:Old Italic alphabet

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Contents

[edit] Phi

Depending on your browser, you may or may not see Greek letters in this line

Ψ ψ

or this:

\Psi\ \psi

Maybe those could be useful in this article? Michael Hardy 15:53, 12 Sep 2003 (UTC)

The only thing I see under the "letter" column is squares.--Jerryseinfeld 13:24, 7 Jan 2005 (UTC)
That just means you don't have an Old Italic font with Unicode encoding. Evertype 10:49, 2005 Mar 8 (UTC)
And may you give as a hint as to were such a font can be retrieved? I have a bunch of Unicode fonts installed, including Code2000. I can see runic and I can see Khmer letters, but I cannot see anything here but ?'s. Salleman 22:16, 12 Jun 2005 (UTC)
I have probably close to a thousand fonts, including those distributed with OS from Microsoft, Apple and Ubuntu Linux. Not a single one of them has any letters from the Old Italic Unicode range. I therefore surmise that apart from a handful of technically savvy specialists in ancient history, this page is unreadble for Wikipedia users and as such is not encyclopedic in nature. Until such a time when fonts normally ship with Old Italic letters, we should also present the letters as graphic images in addition to Unicode letters. (PS: I can see both the HTML entities and math tag images fine.) Geira (talk) 15:04, 1 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Relation to Runes

Maybe it could be mentioned that, at least to one thory, this alphabet is the source for the runes.

It's usually the Venetic alphabets that are considered the proximate source for the runes. Old Italic is their source, though. Evertype 23:56, 2005 Mar 1 (UTC)
OK, thanks. Maybe I could check out some pages to watch the development of the Latin and Runic alphabet more carefully. http://www.omniglot.com/writing/olditalic.htm http://www.proel.org/alfabetos.html http://pedroiy.free.fr/alphabets/
Can you please cite your source for the Old Italic > Venetic > Runic alphabet lineage? I have not been able to verify this independently. If there is something to back it up it would be an invaluable addition to this article. Thank you. Trollaxor 16:08, 18 September 2007 (UTC)

Image:Latin-Etruscan_alphabet_table.png would be perfect for this article, but it needs to be redrawn. dab (ᛏ) 06:41, 13 July 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Xi

well yes, please do, explain what you mean. Xi doesn't survive in Etruscan anyway. So the Masiliana alphabet is close to a Western Greek alphabet. Still, if we say that San is directly from Tsade, I don't see why we shouldn't say that Xi is directly from Samek, what's the problem? dab (ᛏ) 15:13, 14 March 2006 (UTC)

No, Xi is (and i agree and never claimed otherwise) from the Phoenician Samek. And pretty much everything, on this site or related is correct. But the symbol that we are arguing about, is 1. Different in appearance than phoenician Samek (3 horizontal lines and one vertical that goes beyond the 3 horizontal lines) 2. Different in appearance than the Greek Xi,(3 horizontal lines) 3. Its a square with a cross in it. 4. One asumes its the greek Xi (that derives from the phoenician samek) because of the alphabetical order of the Masiliana Etruscan compared to western greek.

so the logical conclusion would be that its either an etruscan version of the greek Xi or an individual etruscan symbol. The greeks adopted the phoenician samek and made it greek Xi (pronunciation and writing) so either its directly linked to the greek Xi or individual. So therefor it would be more correct if Xi or nothing would stand as information.

I daresay the only evidence that the Masiliana alphabet is Greek, not Phoenician, is the presence of Υ Φ Χ Ψ (which is of course a rather strong hint). The remaining letters are exactly the Phoenician alphabet. Now our Western Greek alphabet article is not very strong, but if their Χ was [ks] and their Ψ was [kʰ], what was the value of their Ξ? We have no idea what the value of the Masiliana Ξ might have been. In shape it is not identical to either Samek or Ξ, having two vertical strikes too many for the former and three for the latter. We can remove reference to Samek, if you like, but we'd then need a fuller description of the letter inventory at Western Greek alphabet. dab (ᛏ) 16:02, 14 March 2006 (UTC)

I would really like to have a photograph of the Masiliana tablet. Maybe the scribe was familiar with both alphabets and wrote the Samek/Xi by mistake, trying to efface it after he realized it didn't belong in the [Western] Greek alphabet? dab (ᛏ) 17:10, 14 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Alphabet images

I'm not too fond of the idea of using example images from different alphabets (Etruscan, Phoenician, Runes) to show what the alphabet looked like, the Raetic Sanzeno alphabet in particular looks quite messy and could surely need some uniformity in style, possibly by redrawing inscription examples in a clearer style. 惑乱 分からん 19:11, 12 July 2006 (UTC)

very much so, you are more than welcome to the job. dab (ᛏ) 22:35, 12 July 2006 (UTC)
Heehee... =S OK, it's easier to complain at others but I'll see if I could find any good inscription examples I could redraw... 惑乱 分からん 00:13, 13 July 2006 (UTC)
Not an easy task, I'm stuck with the TITUS page, right now... 惑乱 分からん 00:42, 13 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Sources for Raetic Sanzeno?

The article links the TITUS page, which is extremely interesting but unfortunately lacks a bibliography. I can also find this:

Ancient North Italic Inscriptions

Unfortunately, none of the inscriptions are a particularly close fit to the alphabet on the Titus page.

I found a few leads in Etruscan News (Newsletter Of The American Section Of The Institute For Etruscan And Italic Studies. Volume 2. Spring, 2003):

Raetic And Etruscan Languages. Rex Wallace, University Of Massachusetts.
Rätisch und Etruskisch, by Helmut Rix. (= Innsbrucker Beitrage zur Sprachwissenschaft: Vortrage und kleinere Schriften 68.) Innsbruck: Innsbrucker Beiträge zur Sprachwissenschaft, 1998. Pages 64.
...
The standard edition of Raetic inscriptions is by Stefan Schumacher, Die rätischen Inschriften. Geschichte und heutiger Stand der Forschung (Innsbruck, 1992). ADDENDA to Die rätischen Inschriften were published by Schumacher in Studi Etruschi 59, 1994, pages 306-320 and in Der Schlern, 68 (1994), pages 295-298, and by Alberto Mancini in Quaderni del Dipartimento di Linguistica -- Università di Firenze, 6 (1995), pages 137-153. Shumacher is responsible also for many of the major articles on the Raetic language published within the last 10 years, including a splendid paper entitled Sprachliche Gemeinsamkeiten zwischen Rätisch und Etruskisch, Die Schlern (1998), pages 90-114.

Several of the books and articles mentioned appear to be difficult to obtain. Does anyone have any further pointers? - emk

OK, after much searching (and some interlibrary loan) I've found pictures of dozens of Raetic inscriptions. So far, none of my sources resemble the alphabet from the TITUS page. Raetic R typically looks like a Latin D, the Futhark double-triangle shape for "D" is transcribed as š, the Raetic P is written in a fashion similar to Raetic L, etc. Adolfo Zavaroni's page is fairly typical and comprehensive, judging from the smaller set of line drawings in Schumacher's "Die rätischen Inschriften".
Although many of the letter forms on the TITUS page appear somewhere in an Old Italic inscription, I'm currently unable to find any inscriptions which contain that particular set of letter-forms. I can find many of the individual shapes, but not all in one alphabet, or with those transcriptions.
Oddly, the helmet on the bottom of the TITUS page shows a fairly typical Raetic inscription, with relatively standard letter forms and a typical transliteration. I'm not sure why the illustration and table don't match.
Unless we can get more information from the TITUS folks, I don't think we understand their table well enough to be using it, or linking to it as an example of Raetic. - emk
Yeah, I figured that, too. Btw, here's the Titus link discussed: [1] 惑乱 分からん 22:36, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Problems with the page layout / CSS?

This page doesn't load correctly in Opera v9.10 or Safari 2.0.4. In Safari, the contents wind up under the image of the grave marker, and in Opera, they wind up displayed over the image. Also, this discussion page has no ToC... is that on purpose? Anyhow, just thought I'd let folks know.  — gogobera (talk) 06:43, 27 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Old Italic versus Western Greek alphabet versus Cumaean

There seems to be some confusion over this. Was the Cumaean alphabet an Old Italic alphabet? A western Greek aplhabet? Is Old Italic the same as Western Greek?... FilipeS (talk) 21:09, 8 December 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Etruscan

Etruscan alphabet redirects here, yet the page has nothing to say about it. Why? FilipeS (talk) 21:09, 8 December 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Fair use rationale for Image:Masiliana tablet.png

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BetacommandBot (talk) 06:46, 1 January 2008 (UTC)