Etruscan language

Etruscan
mechl Rasnal
Native to	Ancient Etruria
Region	Italian Peninsula
Extinct	>AD 180[1]
Language family	Tyrsenian?
Writing system	Old Italic script
Language codes
ISO 639-3	ett
Linguist list	ett
Glottolog	etru1241[2]

The Etruscan language (/ᵻˈtrʌskən/)^[3] was the spoken and written language of the Etruscan civilization, in Italy, in the ancient region of Etruria (modern Tuscany plus western Umbria and northern Latium) and in parts of Campania, Lombardy, Veneto, and Emilia-Romagna (where the Etruscans were displaced by Gauls). Etruscan influenced Latin, but was eventually completely superseded by it. The Etruscans left around 13,000 inscriptions which have been found so far, only a handful of which are of significant length, some bilingual inscriptions with texts also in Latin, Greek or Phoenician, and a few dozen loanwords, such as the name Roma (from Etruscan Ruma), but Etruscan's influence was significant.

Attested from 700 BC to AD 50, the language is not related to any living language, and has historically been referred to as an isolate, but some scholars now hold that it is one of the hypothetical Tyrsenian languages,^[4][5][6][7] along with the Raetic language of the Alps and the Lemnian language of the Aegean island of Lemnos. Lacking large corpora or extended texts, more distant relations of that family are unclear. A connection to the Anatolian languages, or at a further remove to Proto-Indo-European, has been suggested, while Russian scholars such as Sergei Starostin^[8] have suggested a link to the speculative Dené–Caucasian macrophylum. Neither of these two hypotheses has widespread support.

Grammatically, the language is agglutinating, with nouns and verbs showing suffixed inflectional endings and ablaut in some cases. Nouns show four cases, singular and plural numbers, and masculine and feminine genders. Phonologically, Etruscan appears uncomplicated, with a four-vowel system and an apparent contrast between aspirated and unaspirated stops. The language shows phonetic change over time, with the loss and then re-establishment of word-internal vowels due to the effect of Etruscan's strong word-initial stress.

Etruscan religion influenced that of the Romans and many of the few surviving Etruscan language artifacts are of votive or religious significance. Etruscan was written in an alphabet derived from the Greek alphabet; this alphabet was the source of the Latin alphabet. The Etruscan language is also believed to be the source of certain important cultural words of Western Europe such as 'military' and 'people', 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.^[9] They date from about 700 BC.^[10]

The Etruscans had a rich literature, as noted by Latin authors. However, only one book (mostly undeciphered) has survived. By AD 100, Etruscan had been replaced by Latin. Around AD 180, the Latin author Aulus Gellius mentions Etruscan alongside Gaulish in an anecdote.^[11]

Only a few educated Romans with antiquarian interests, such as Varro, could read Etruscan. The last person known to have been able to read Etruscan was the Roman emperor Claudius (10 BC – AD 54), who authored a treatise in 20 volumes on the Etruscans, Tyrrenikà (now lost), and compiled a dictionary (also lost) by interviewing the last few elderly rustics who still spoke the language. Urgulanilla, the emperor's first wife, was Etruscan.^[12]

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, while the Libri Fulgurales expounded the art of divination by observing lightning. A third set, the Libri Rituales, might 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 fourth-century AD Latin writer Servius, a fourth set of Etruscan books existed, dealing with animal gods, but it is unlikely that any scholar living in the fourth century AD could have read Etruscan. The single extant Etruscan book, Liber Linteus, which was written on linen, survived only because it was used as mummy wrappings.

Etruscan had some influence on Latin, as a few dozen Etruscan words and names were borrowed by the Romans, some of which remain in modern languages, such as: columna (column), voltur (vulture), tuba (trumpet), vagina (originally meaning 'sheath'), populus (people).^[13]

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 modern Latium north of Rome, in today's Umbria west of the Tiber, in Campania and in the Po River valley to the north of Etruria. This range may indicate a maximum Italian homeland where the language was at one time spoken.

Outside of mainland Italy^[14] 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 similar to that used to write the Etruscan language and the older Phrygian inscriptions, all derived from Euboean scripts (Western Greek alphabet, alphabets of Asia Minor). Several scholars believe that Lemnian language could have arrived in the Aegean Sea during the Late Bronze Age, when Mycenaean rulers recruited groups of mercenaries from Sicily, Sardinia and various parts of the Italian peninsula.^[15]

Classification

Isolate hypothesis

Etruscan is traditionally considered to be a language isolate. Bonfante, a leading scholar in the field, says "... it resembles no other language in Europe or elsewhere ...".^[9] The ancients were aware that Etruscan was an isolate. In the first century BC, the Greek historian Dionysius of Halicarnassus stated that the Etruscan language was unlike any other.^[16]

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). Modern knowledge of the language is incomplete.

Tyrsenian family hypothesis

In 1998 Helmut Rix put forward the view that Etruscan is related to other members of what he called the "Tyrsenian language family". Rix's Tyrsenian family of languages, composed of Rhaetic and Lemnian together with Etruscan, has gained acceptance among some scholars.^[17][18][19] Lately it has been suggested that the Tyrsenian languages are distantly related to the Indo-European family.^[20]

Other hypotheses

Another Aegean language which is possibly related to Etruscan is Minoan. The idea of a relation between the language of the Aegean Linear scripts was taken into consideration as the main hypothesis by Michael Ventris before he discovered that, in fact, the language behind the later Linear B script was Mycenean, a Greek dialect. Giulio Mauro Facchetti, a researcher who has dealt with both Etruscan and Minoan, put forward this hypothesis again, comparing some Minoan words of known meaning with similar Etruscan words.^[21]

More recently, Robert S.P. Beekes argued that the people later known as the Lydians and Etruscans had originally lived in northwest Anatolia, with a coastline to the Sea of Marmara, whence they were driven by the Phrygians circa 1200 BC, leaving a remnant known in antiquity as the Tyrsenoi. A segment of this people moved south-west to Lydia, becoming known as the Lydians, while others sailed away to take refuge in Italy, where they became known as Etruscans.^[22]

In 2006, Frederik Woudhuizen suggested that Etruscan belongs to the Anatolian branch of the Indo-European family, specifically to Luwian.^[23] Woudhuizen revived a conjecture to the effect that the Tyrsenians came from Anatolia, including Lydia, whence they were driven 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 Luwian and asserts that Etruscan is modified Luwian. He accounts for the non-Luwian features as a Mysian influence: "deviations from Luwian ... may plausibly be ascribed to the dialect of the indigenous population of Mysia."^[24] According to Woudhuizen, the Etruscans were colonizing the Latins. The Etruscans brought the alphabet from Anatolia.

Both of these accounts draw on the story by Herodotus (i, 94) of the Lydian origin of the Etruscans. Dionysius of Halicarnassus (book 1) rejected this account of the people he called the Tyrrhenians, partly on the authority of Xanthus, a Lydian historian, who had no knowledge of the story, and partly on what he judged to be the different languages, laws, and religions of the two peoples.

Another proposal, currently pursued mainly by a few linguists from the former Soviet Union, suggests a relationship with Northeast Caucasian (or Daghestanian) languages.^[25][26]

Various other speculative proposals have been made, all of them failing to gain wide acceptance because no significant evidence of the proposed connections has been found.

The interest in Etruscan antiquities and the mysterious Etruscan language found its modern origin in a book by a Renaissance Dominican friar, Annio da Viterbo, a cabalist and orientalist now remembered mainly for literary forgeries. 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.

Ideas of Semitic origins found supporters until the 19th-century. In 1858, the last attempt was made by Johann Gustav Stickel, Jena University: "Das Etruskische (...) als Semitische Sprache erwiesen".^[27] A reviewer concluded that Stickel brought forward every possible argument which would speak for that hypothesis, but he proved the opposite of what he had attempted to do (Johannes Gildemeister in ZDMG 13, 1859, 289–304).

A Uralic connection with the Etruscan language was also proposed in the 19th century. The French orientalist Baron Carra de Vaux^[28] had suggested a connection between Etruscan and Altaic languages. In 1874, the British scholar Isaac Taylor^[28] brought up the idea of a genetic relationship between Etruscan and Hungarian. The Hungarian connection was recently revived by Mario Alinei, Emeritus Professor of Italian Languages at the University of Utrecht.^[29] Alinei's proposal has been rejected by Etruscan experts such as Giulio M. Facchetti,^[30][31] Finno-Ugric experts such as A. Marcantonio,^[32][33] and by Hungarian historical linguists such as Bela Brogyanyi.^[34]

In 1861, Robert Ellis proposed that Etruscan was related to Armenian, which is nowadays acknowledged as an Indo-European language.^[35] Some scholars also see in Urartian art, architecture, language, and general culture traces of kinship to the Etruscans of the Italian peninsula.^[36]

A relationship with Albanian was advanced by Zecharia Mayani in 1961,^[37] but Albanian is known to be an Indo-European language.

The Pyrgi Tablets, an ancient bilingual text in Etruscan and Phoenician, were discovered in 1964 and have helped in the interpretation of the Etruscan language.

Writing system

Alphabet

The Latin script owes its existence to the Etruscan alphabet, which was adapted for Latin in the form of the Old Italic alphabet. The Etruscan alphabet^[38] employs a Euboean variant^[39] of the Greek alphabet using the letter digamma and was in all probability transmitted through Pithecusae and Cumae, two Euboean settlements in southern Italy. This system is ultimately derived from West Semitic scripts.

The Etruscans recognized a 26-letter alphabet, which they used in and of itself for decoration on some objects such as the "rooster ink-stand".^[40] This has been termed the model alphabet.^[41] 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.^[39]

Text

Writing was from right to left except in archaic inscriptions, which occasionally used boustrophedon. An example found at Cerveteri used left to right. In the earliest inscriptions, the words are continuous. From the sixth century BC, they are separated by a dot or a colon, which symbol might also be used to 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 individual letters is sometimes difficult. Spelling might vary from city to city, probably reflecting differences of pronunciation.^[42]

Complex consonant clusters

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.^[39] This speech habit is one explanation of the Etruscan "impossible consonant clusters". The resonants, 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 Hēraklēs became Hercle by syncopation and then was expanded to Herecele. Pallottino^[43] regarded this variation in vowels as "instability in the quality of vowels" and accounted for the second phase (e.g. Herecele) as "vowel harmony, i.e., of the assimilation of vowels in neighboring syllables ...."

Phases

The writing system had two historical phases: the archaic from the seventh to fifth centuries BC, which used the early Greek alphabet, and the later from the fourth to first centuries 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 Venetia and from there through Raetia into the Germanic lands, where it became the Elder Futhark alphabet, the oldest form of the runes.^[44]

Corpus

The Etruscan corpus is edited in the Thesaurus Linguae Etruscae (TLE).^[45]

Bilingual text

The Pyrgi Tablets are a bilingual text in Etruscan and Phoenician engraved on three gold leaves, one for the Phoenician and two for the Etruscan. The Etruscan language portion has 16 lines and 37 words. The date is roughly 500 BC.^[46]

The tablets were found in 1964 by Massimo Pallottino during an excavation at the ancient Etruscan port of Pyrgi, now Santa Severa. Unfortunately the only new Etruscan word that could be extracted from close analysis of the tablets was the word for "three", ci.^[47]

Longer texts

According to Rix and his collaborators, only two unified (though fragmentary) texts are available in Etruscan:

• The Liber Linteus, which was later used for mummy wrappings in Egypt. Roughly 1200 words of readable text, mainly repetitious prayers, yielded about 50 lexical items.^[46]
• The Tabula Capuana (the inscribed tile from Capua) has about 300 readable words in 62 lines, dating to the fifth century BC.

Some additional longer texts are:

• The lead foils of Punta della Vipera have^[48] about 40 legible words having to do with ritual formulae. It is dated to about 500 BC.
• The Cippus Perusinus, a stone slab (cippus) found at Perugia, contains 46 lines and 130 words.
• The Piacenza Liver, a bronze model of a sheep's liver representing the sky, has the engraved names of the gods ruling different sections.
• The Tabula Cortonensis, a bronze tablet from Cortona, is believed to record a legal contract, with about 200 words. Discovered in 1992, this new tablet contributed the word for "lake", tisś, but not much else.^[49]

Inscriptions on monuments

The main material repository of Etruscan civilization, from the modern perspective, was its tombs. Public and private buildings were dismantled and the stone reused centuries ago. The tombs are the main source of portables in collections throughout the world, provenance unknown. The Etruscans' objets d'art are of incalculable value, causing a brisk black market and equally brisk law enforcement effort, as 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 catalogueing them. They are of many different types. Especially fruitful are the hypogeal or "underground" chambers or system of chambers cut into tuff and covered by a tumulus. The interior of the tomb represents a habitation of the living stocked with furniture and favorite objects. The walls may display painted murals, the predecessor of wallpaper. Tombs identified as Etruscan date from the Villanovan period to about 100 BC, when presumably the cemeteries were abandoned in favor of Roman ones.^[50] Some of the major cemeteries are as follows:

• Caere or Cerveteri, a UNESCO site.^[51] Three complete necropoleis with streets and squares. Many hypogea are concealed beneath tumuli retained by walls; others are cut into cliffs. The Banditaccia necropolis contains more than 1000 tumuli. Access is through a door.^[52]

• Tarquinia, Tarquinii or Corneto, a UNESCO site:^[51] Approximately 6000 graves dating from the Villanovan (9th and eighth centuries BC) distributed in necropoleis, the main one being the Monterozzi hypogea of the sixth–fourth centuries BC. About 200 painted tombs display murals of various scenes with call-outs and descriptions in Etruscan. Elaborately carved sarcophagi of marble, alabaster, and nenfro include identificatory and achievemental inscriptions. The Tomb of Orcus at the Scatolini necropolis depicts scenes of the Spurinna family with call-outs.^[53]
• Inner walls and doors of tombs and sarcophagi
• Engraved steles (tombstones)
• ossuaries

Inscriptions on portable objects

Votives

See Votive gifts.

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 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 or cameo scenes from mythology. The piece was generally ornate.^[54]

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.^[55] Most probably came from tombs.

Many bear inscriptions naming the persons depicted in the scenes, so they are often called picture bilinguals. In 1979, Massimo Pallottino, then president of the Istituto di Studi Etruschi ed Italici initiated the Committee of the Corpus Speculorum Etruscanorum, 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.^[56]

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, or rarely part intaglio, part cameo.

Cistae date from the Roman Republic of the fourth and third centuries BC in Etruscan contexts. They may bear various short inscriptions concerning the manufacturer or owner or subject matter. The writing may be Latin, Etruscan, or both.

Excavations at Praeneste, an Etruscan city which became 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".^[57]

Rings and ringstones

Among the most plunderable portables from the Etruscan tombs of Etruria are the finely engraved gemstones 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 second half of the sixth to the first centuries BC. The two main theories of manufacture are native Etruscan^[58] and Greek.^[59]

The materials are mainly dark red carnelian, with agate and sard entering usage from the third to the first centuries BC, along with purely gold finger rings with a hollow engraved bezel setting. The engravings, mainly cameo, but sometimes intaglio, depict scarabs 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 can be dated between 5th and 3rd centuries BC. Use of the 'Chalcidian' standard, based on the silver unit of 5.8 grams, indicates the custom, like the alphabet, came from Greece. Roman coinage later supplanted Etruscan, but the basic Roman coin, the sesterce, is believed to have been based on the 2.5-denomination Etruscan coin.^[60] Etruscan coins have turned up in caches or individually in tombs and in excavations seemingly at random, and concentrated, of course, in Etruria.

Etruscan coins were in gold, silver, and bronze, the gold and silver usually having been struck on one side only. The coins often bore a denomination, sometimes 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), Vatl or Veltuna (Vetulonia), 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, Zeus, Culsans, Athena, Hermes, griffin, gorgon, male sphinx, hippocamp, bull, snake, eagle, or other creatures which had symbolic significance.

Phonology

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 consisted of four distinct vowels. Vowels "o" and "u" appear to have not been phonetically distinguished based on the nature of the writing system, as only one symbol is used to cover both in loans from Greek (e.g. Greek κώθων kōthōn > Etruscan qutun "pitcher").

	Front	Central	Back
Close	i [i]		u [u]
Mid	e [e]
Open			a [ɑ]

Consonants

Table of consonants

	Bilabial		Dental		Palatal	Velar		Glottal
Nasal	m [m]		n [n]
Plosive	p [p]	φ [pʰ]	t, d [t]	θ [tʰ]		c, k, q [k]	χ [kʰ]
Affricate			z [ts]
Fricative	f [ɸ]		s [s]		ś [ʃ]			h [h]
Approximant			l [l]		i [j]	v [w]
Rhotic			r [r]

Voiced stops missing

The Etruscan consonant system primarily distinguished between aspirated and non-aspirated stops. There were no voiced stops and loanwords with them were typically devoiced, e.g. Greek thriambos was borrowed by Etruscan, becoming triumpus and triumphus in Latin.^[61]

Syllabic theory

Based on standard spellings by Etruscan scribes of words without vowels or with unlikely consonant clusters (e.g. cl 'of this (gen.)' and lautn 'freeman'), it is likely that /m n l r/ were sometimes syllabic sonorants (cf. English "little", "button"). Thus cl /kl̩/ and lautn /ˈlɑwtn̩/.

Rix postulates several syllabic consonants, namely /l, r, m, n/ and palatal /lʲ, rʲ, nʲ/ as well as a labiovelar spirant /xʷ/ and some scholars such as Mauro Cristofani 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 amφare/amφiare, larθal/larθial, aranθ/aranθiia.

Word formation

Etruscan was inflected, varying the endings of nouns, pronouns and verbs. It also had adjectives, adverbs, and conjunctions, which were uninflected.

Nouns

Etruscan substantives had five cases, and a singular and a plural. Not all five cases are attested for every word. Nouns merge the nominative and accusative; pronouns do not generally merge these. Gender appears in personal names (masculine and feminine) and in pronouns (animate and inanimate); otherwise, it is not marked.^[62]

Unlike the Indo-European languages, Etruscan noun endings were more agglutinative, with some nouns bearing two or three agglutinated suffixes. 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-aśi.^[63] Moreover, Etruscan nouns could bear multiple suffixes from the case paradigm alone: that is, Etruscan exhibited Suffixaufnahme. 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."^[64] His example is Uni-al-θi, "in the sanctuary of Juno", where -al is a genitive ending and -θi a locative.

Steinbauer says of Etruscan, "there can be more than one marker ... to design a case, and ... the same marker can occur for more than one case."^[65]

Nominative/accusative 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), or 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), Paχa (Bacchus), or Turan.

Genitive case 

Pallottino defines two declensions based on whether the genitive ends in -s/-ś or -l.^[66] In the -s group are most noun stems ending in a vowel or a consonant: fler/fler-ś, ramtha/ramtha-ś. 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, Arnθ/Arnθ-al. After l or r -us instead of -s appears: Vel/Vel-us. Otherwise, a vowel might be placed before the ending: Arnθ-al instead of Arnθ-l.

There is a patronymic 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 Avleś means "Vel son of Avle." This expression in the genitive become Vel-uś Avles-la. Pallottino's example of a three-suffix form is Arnθ-al-iśa-la.

Dative case 

The dative ending is -si: Tita/Tita-si.^[62]

Locative case 

The locative ending is -θi: Tarχna/Tarχna-l-θi.^[67]

Plural number 

In one case, a plural is given for clan, "son", as clenar, "sons". This shows both umlaut and an ending -ar. Plurals for cases other than nominative are made by agglutinating the case ending on clenar.

Pronouns

Personal pronouns refer to persons; demonstrative point out: English this, that.^[68]

Personal

The first-person personal pronoun has a nominative mi ("I") and an accusative mini ("me"). The coincidence of this with Indo-European forms such as English 'me' proves nothing, as many languages from around the world use a form beginning with 'm' for first person.^[69] The third person has a personal form an ("he" or "she") and an inanimate in ("it"). The second person is uncertain, but some like the Bonfantes have claimed a dative singular une ("to thee") and an accusative singular un ("thee").

Demonstrative

The demonstratives, ca and ta, are 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, ceiθi, clθ(i), eclθi; plural caiti, ceiθi.

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"; zamaθi/zamθi-c, "gold/golden"
• possession or reference, -na, -ne, -ni: paχa/paχa-na, "Bacchus, Bacchic"; laut/laut-ni, "family/familiar" (in the sense of servant)
• collective, -cva, -chva, -cve, -χve, -ia: sren/sren-cva: "figure/figured"; etera/etera-ia, "slave/servile"

Adverbs

Adverbs are unmarked: etnam, "again"; θui, "now"; θuni, "at first." Most Indo-European 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. Tenses were present and past. The past tense had an active voice and a passive voice.

Present active

Etruscan used 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

Adding the suffix -(a)ce to the verb root produces a third-person singular active, which has been called variously a "past", a "preterite", a "perfect" or an "aorist". In contrast to Indo-European, this form is not marked for person. 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

Borrowings from Etruscan

Only a few hundred words of the Etruscan vocabulary are understood with some certainty. The exact count depends on whether the different forms and the expressions are included. Below is a table of some of the words grouped by topic.^[70]

Some words with corresponding Latin or other Indo-European forms are likely loanwords to or from Etruscan. For example, neftś "nephew", is probably from Latin (Latin nepōs, nepōtis; this is a cognate of German Neffe, Old Norse nefi). A number of words and names for which Etruscan origin has been proposed survive in Latin.

At least one Etruscan word has an apparent Semitic origin: talitha "girl" (Aramaic; could have been transmitted by Phoenicians). The word pera "house" is a false cognate to the Coptic language per "house".^[71]

In addition to words believed to have been borrowed into Etruscan from Indo-European or elsewhere, there is a corpus of words such as familia which seem to have been borrowed into Latin from the older Etruscan civilization as a superstrate influence.^[72] Some of these words still have widespread currency in English and Latin-influenced languages. Other words believed to have a possible Etruscan origin include:

arena 

from arēna "arena"<harēna, "arena, sand" < archaic hasēna < Sabine fasēna, unknown Etruscan word as the basis for fas- with Etruscan ending -ēna.^[73]

autumn 

from autumnus "autumn." Just as Etruscan veltha, an earth god, appears as Latin Vola or Olta and is in Voltumna and Vertumnus, so the parallel construction autumnus ought to come from Etruscan autu-, related to avil, "year": *av(i)-to-m(e)nos, with loss of the l. There are some names with both l and t: avlethaium, authnal, avtle, and so on, which appear related to autu or auta in Venetic, the idea being that autumn signifies the passing of the year.^[74]

belt 

from balteus, "sword belt" - the sole connection between this word and Etruscan is a statement by Marcus Terentius Varro that it was of Etruscan origin. All else is speculation.^[75]

ceremony 

oldest form cærimonia, obscure, perhaps Etruscan.^[76]

market 

Latin, of obscure origin, perhaps Etruscan.^[77]

military 

from Latin milēs "soldier"; either from Etruscan or related to Greek homilos, "assembled crowd" (compare homily).^[78]

person 

from Middle English persone, from Old French persone, from Latin persona, "mask", probably from Etruscan phersu, "mask".^[79]

satellite 

from Latin satelles, meaning "bodyguard, attendant", perhaps from Etruscan satnal.^[80]

Etruscan vocabulary

Numerals

Much debate has been carried out about a possible Indo-European origin of the Etruscan cardinals. In the words of Larissa Bonfante (1990), "What these numerals show, beyond any shadow of a doubt, is the non-Indo-European nature of the Etruscan language".^[81] Conversely, other scholars, including Francisco R. Adrados, Albert Carnoy, Marcello Durante, Vladimir Georgiev, Alessando Morandi and Massimo Pittau, have proposed a close phonetic proximity of the first ten Etruscan numerals to the corresponding numerals in other Indo-European languages.^[82][83] Italian linguist and glottologist Massimo Pittau has argued that "all the first ten Etruscan numerals have a congruent phonetic matching in as many Indo-European languages" and "perfectly fit within the Indo-European series", supporting the idea that the Etruscan language was of Indo-European origins.^[84]

The Etruscan numbers are (G.Bonfante 2002:96):

1. θu
2. zal
3. ci
4. śa
5. maχ
6. huθ
7. semϕ
8. cezp
9. nurϕ
10. śar

Core vocabulary

Etruscan English Family apa father (Latin: pater) apana paternal papa, papacs grandfather ati, ativu mother teta, ati nacna grandmother pui, puia wife tusurθir married couple clan son papals grandson sec, sech daughter ruva brother neftś, nefś, nefiś nephew (Latin: nepos) prumaθ, prumaθś, prumats, prumts great-nephew or great-grandson nene wetnurse snenaθ maid, companion hus youth husiur children pava boy taliθa girl (Aramaic: talitha) lautun, lautn gens lautni freedman lautniθa, lautnita freedwoman etera, eteri foreigner, slave, client (Greek ἕτερος) Society aesar[85] god Rasna Etruscans meχl Rasnal Etruria pes land tul stone tular, tularu boundaries tular rasnal public boundaries tular spural city boundaries vaχr contract tudthi, tuθiu, tuθi, tuti state tuθin, tuθina public mech people meχl, meθlum nation, league, district spur, śpur civitas, populus spureni, spurana civic θruna sovereignty lucair to rule lauχum king, prince lauχumna regal, palace tenve, tenine, tenu, tenθas hold office zil, zilac, zilc, zilaχ, zilath praetor camthi unknown magistrates or magistracies ceχase parniχ macstreve maru, marunu, marniu, marunuχ, maruχva purθ, purθne tamera

Etruscan English Time tin- day θesan morning, day uslane at noon tiur, tivr, tiu month, moon avil year ril at the age of Velcitna March Capr- April Ampile May Acale June Hermi August or summer? Celi September Chosfer October Masan, Masn unknown month Nature anθa northwind, eagle (Latin: aquila) arac sparrow-hawk, falcon (possibly Greek ἱέραξ) arim monkey capu falcon falatu sky hiuls screech-owl leu lion (Latin: leo) neri water pulumχva stars thamna horse thevru bull (Latin: taurus) tisś lake tiu moon θi water usil sun (Latin: sol) vers- fire Vessels aska Greek ἄσκος áskos "wineskin" aska eleivana olive oil flask cape, capi container (perhaps Latin capio "take" or capis "one-handled bowl") capra urn cletram Umbrian kletra, a basin or basket culiχna κύλιξ, a large wine-cup cupe κύπη or Latin cūpa, English cup leχtum λήκυθоς, a small bottle leχtumuza a small lechtum patna πατάνη, a bowl pruχ, pruχum πρόχоυς, a ewer qutun, qutum κώθων, a vessel of Laconia qutumuza small qutum θafna chalice θina, tina derived from θi "water" Common verbs am- to be cer- to make tur- to give ziχ- to write

See also

• Combinatorial method (linguistics)
• Corpus Inscriptionum Etruscarum
• Etruscan alphabet
• Etruscan civilization
• Etruscan documents
  • Liber Linteus – An Etruscan linen book that ended as mummy wraps in Egypt.
  • Tabula Cortonensis – An Etruscan inscription.
  • Cippus perusinus – An Etruscan inscription.
  • Pyrgi Tablets – Bilingual Etruscan-Phoenician golden leaves.
• Etruscan mythology
• Etruscan numerals
• Lemnian language
• List of English words of Etruscan origin
• List of Spanish words of Etruscan origin
• Pre-Greek substrate
• Raetic language
• Robert S. P. Beekes
• Tyrsenian languages

Notes

Bibliography

• Adams, J. N. (2003). Bilingualism and the Latin Language. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-81771-4.  Available for preview on Google Books.
• Bonfante, Giuliano; Bonfante, Larissa (2002). The Etruscan Language: an Introduction. Manchester: University of Manchester Press. ISBN 0-7190-5540-7.  Preview available on Google Books.
• Bonfante, Larissa (1990). Etruscan. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press. ISBN 0-520-07118-2.  Preview available at Google Books.
• Cristofani, Mauro; et al. (1984). Gli Etruschi: una nuova immagine. Firenze, Giunti Martello. 
• Cristofani, Mauro (1979). The Etruscans: A New Investigation (Echoes of the ancient world). Orbis Pub. ISBN 0-85613-259-4. 

• Facchetti, Giulio M. (2000). L'enigma svelato della lingua etrusca. Roma: Newton & Compton. ISBN 978-88-8289-458-0. 

• Facchetti, Giulio M. (2002). Appunti di morfologia etrusca. Con un'appendice sulle questioni delle affinità genetiche dell'etrusco. Roma: Olshcki. ISBN 978-88-222-5138-1. 

• Pallottino, Massimo (1955). The Etruscans. Penguin Books.  Translated from the Italian by J. Cremona.
• Rix, Helmut (1991). Etruskische Texte. G. Narr. ISBN 3-8233-4240-1.  2 vols.
• Steinbauer, Dieter H. (1999). Neues Handbuch des Etruskischen. Scripta Mercaturae. ISBN 3-89590-080-X. 
• Wallace, Rex E. (2008). Zikh Rasna: A Manual of the Etruscan Language and Inscriptions. Beech Stave Press. ISBN 978-0-9747927-4-3. 
• Woudhuizen, Frederik Christiaan. April 2006. The Ethnicity of the Sea Peoples. Doctoral dissertation; Rotterdam: Erasmus Universiteit Rotterdam, Faculteit der Wijsbegeerte.

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Etruscan language.

General

• Etruscan News Online, the Newsletter of the American Section of the Institute for Etruscan and Italic Studies.
• Etruscan News back issues, Center for Ancient Studies at New York University.
• Etruscology at Its Best, the website of Dr. Dieter H. Steinbauer, in English. Covers origins, vocabulary, grammar and place names.
• Viteliu: The Languages of Ancient Italy at the Wayback Machine (archived December 7, 2002).
• The Etruscan Language, the linguistlist.org site. Links to many other Etruscan language sites.

Inscriptions

• TM Texts Etruscan A list of all texts in Trismegistos.
• ETP: Etruscan Texts Project A searchable database of Etruscan texts.
• Etruscan Inscriptions in the Royal Ontario Museum, article by Rex Wallace displayed at the umass.edu site.

Lexical items

• Etruscan Vocabulary, a vocabulary organized by topic by Dieter H. Steinbauer, in English.
• An Etruscan Vocabulary at the Wayback Machine (archived December 13, 2002). A short, one-page glossary with numerals as well.
• Etruscan–English Dictionary at the Wayback Machine (archived September 27, 2007). An extensive lexicon compiled from other lexicon sites. Links to the major Etruscan glossaries on the Internet are included.
• Paleoglot: Online Etruscan-English dictionary; summary of Etruscan grammar. A searchable Etruscan-to-English dictionary applet and a summary of Etruscan grammar.
• A Tentative Etymological Glossary of Etruscan by Arnaud Fournet.

Font

• Etruscan font download site with unicode information

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