The Faliscan language is the extinct

Italic language The Italic languages form a branch of the Indo-European language family, whose earliest known members were spoken on the Italian Peninsula in the first millennium BC. The most important of the ancient languages was Latin, the official languag ...

of the ancient

Falisci Falisci ( grc, Φαλίσκοι, ''Phaliskoi'') is the ancient Roman exonym for an Italic tribe who lived in what is now northern Lazio, on the Etruscan side of the Tiber River. They spoke an Italic language, Faliscan, closely akin to Latin. ...

, who lived in Southern Etruria. Together with

Latin Latin (, or , ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally a dialect spoken in the lower Tiber area (then known as Latium) around present-day Rome, but through the power of the ...

, it formed the Latino-Faliscan languages group of the Italic languages. It seems probable that the language persisted, being gradually permeated with Latin, until at least 150 BC.

Corpus

An estimated 355

inscription Epigraphy () is the study of inscriptions, or epigraphs, as writing; it is the science of identifying graphemes, clarifying their meanings, classifying their uses according to dates and cultural contexts, and drawing conclusions about the w ...

s survive, mostly short and dating from the 7th to the 2nd centuries BC. Some are written from right to left in a variety of the Old Italic alphabet, derived from the

Etruscan alphabet The Etruscan alphabet was the alphabet used by the Etruscans, an ancient civilization of central and northern Italy, to write their language, from about 700 BC to sometime around 100 AD. The Etruscan alphabet derives from the Euboean alphabet u ...

, but they show some traces of the influence of the

Latin alphabet The Latin alphabet or Roman alphabet is the collection of letters originally used by the ancient Romans to write the Latin language. Largely unaltered with the exception of extensions (such as diacritics), it used to write English and th ...

. An inscription to Ceres of c. 600 BC, found in

Falerii Falerii (now Fabrica di Roma) was a city in southern Etruria, 50 km (31 mi) northeast of Rome, 34 km (21 mi) from Veii (a major Etruscan city-state near the River Tiber) and about 1.5 km (0.9 mi) west of the ancient Via Flaminia. It was the main c ...

, usually taken to be the oldest example, is written left to right. A specimen of the language appears written round the edge of a picture on a

patera In the material culture of classical antiquity, a ''phiale'' ( ) or ''patera'' () is a shallow ceramic or metal libation bowl. It often has a bulbous indentation (''omphalos'', "bellybutton") in the center underside to facilitate holding it, in ...

, the genuineness of which is established by the fact that the words were written before the glaze was put on: "''foied vino pipafo, cra carefo''", in Latin ''hodie vinum bibam, cras carebo'' 'today I will drink wine; tomorrow I will not have any.' That sample indicates that Faliscan was less conservative in some respects than Latin, with the wearing down of final case endings and the obscuring of the etymology of ''foied'' "today", which is more obvious in Latin ''hodie'' (from ''hoc die''). There are remains found in graves, which belong mainly to the period of Etruscan domination and give ample evidence of material prosperity and refinement. Earlier strata have yielded more primitive remains from the Italic epoch. Many inscriptions with mainly proper names may be regarded as Etruscan rather than Faliscan; they have been disregarded in the account of the dialect just given. The town of Feronia, in

Sardinia Sardinia ( ; it, Sardegna, label=Italian, Corsican and Tabarchino ; sc, Sardigna , sdc, Sardhigna; french: Sardaigne; sdn, Saldigna; ca, Sardenya, label=Algherese and Catalan) is the second-largest island in the Mediterranean Sea, after ...

, was named probably after their native goddess by Faliscan settlers. A votive inscription from some of them is found at S. Maria di Falleri.

Phonology

Here are some of the phonetic characteristics of the Faliscan language: #The retention of medial ''f'', which Latin changed to ''b'' (FHEFHAKED /fefaked/ in the

Praeneste fibula , native_name_lang = la , image = Praeneste fibula.JPG , image_size = , alt = , image2 = , image2_size = , alt2 = , image_caption = , material = Gold , s ...

may be Proto-Latino-Faliscan); #The palatalization of ''d'' followed by consonantal ''i'' into some sound, denoted merely by ''i-'', the central sound of ''foied'', from ''fo-died''; #The loss of final ''s'', at least before certain following sounds (''cra'' = Latin ''cras''); #The retention with Latin of the labiovelars (''cuando'' = Latin ''quando'', compare Umbrian ''pan''(''n'')''u''); #The assimilation of some final consonants to the initial sound of the next word: ''pretod de zenatuo sententiad'' (Conway, ''lib. cit.'' 321) = Latin ''praetor de senatus sententia'' (''zenatuo'' for ''senatuos'', an archaic genitive).

Problem of ''f'' and ''h''

The question of irregular, unexpected developments of the

Proto-Indo-European Proto-Indo-European (PIE) is the reconstructed common ancestor of the Indo-European language family. Its proposed features have been derived by linguistic reconstruction from documented Indo-European languages. No direct record of Proto-Indo- ...

voiced aspirates in Faliscan, as opposed to the normal Latin rendering, is the appearance of both ''h'' and ''f'' as reflexes of *bh/*dh and *gh: ''filea'' 'daughter' and ''hileo'' 'son' = Latin ''filius'' < Proto-Indo-European *dheh₁-lyo- and ''fe'' 'here' and ''hec'' = Latin ''hic'' < Proto-Indo-European *ghey-ke. In 1991, Rex E. Wallace and B. D. Joseph offered an explanation. They suggested that while it is documented also in Latin, it is the Faliscan material that provides a clearer picture of the supposed developments. They remark that the unexpected outcomes are absent from the archaic Faliscan inscriptions and that the regular outcomes largely outnumber the irregular ones in the Faliscan epigraphic corpus. The unexpected outcomes show up only in middle and late Faliscan. The following are the only instances: :''h'' for expected ''f'': ::''hileo'' (son) Middle Faliscan ::''hirmia'' ( gentilicium) Middle Faliscan (''firmio'' is also attested) ::''hirmio'' (gentilicium) Late Faliscan ::''holcosio'' (gentilicium) Late Faliscan ::''haba'' 'a kind of bean' < *bhabo- (cited by grammarian Quintus Terentius Scaurus as Faliscan) :''f'' for expected ''h'': ::''foied'' 'today' Middle Faliscan < *gho:d d(i)ed ::''fe'' 'here' Late Faliscan < *ghey-ke Wallace and Joseph suppose that the first change is a natural sound change that can be seen in many languages (

Spanish Spanish might refer to: * Items from or related to Spain: **Spaniards are a nation and ethnic group indigenous to Spain **Spanish language, spoken in Spain and many Latin American countries **Spanish cuisine Other places * Spanish, Ontario, Can ...

''hijo'' 'son' from Latin ''filium'' 'son' ccusative, which in Faliscan affected only a few possible candidate words. The second outcome cannot be explained as a sound change and so they argue it is a hypercorrect form caused by the other development. While the change from ''f'' to ''h'' was taking place and awareness of the correct forms was being lost, some speakers started restoring ''f'' even when it was not etymologically appropriate.Rex E. Wallace and Brian D. Joseph "On the Problematic ''f/h'' Variation in Faliscan " in ''Glotta'' LXIX 1991 pp. 84–93.

Corpus

Phonology

Problem of ''f'' and ''h''

References

Sources

Further reading