The Latino-Faliscan or Latinian languages form a group of the

Italic languages The Italic languages form a branch of the Indo-European languages, 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 Italic languages ...

within the Indo-European family. They were spoken by the Latino-Faliscan people of

Italy Italy, officially the Italian Republic, is a country in Southern Europe, Southern and Western Europe, Western Europe. It consists of Italian Peninsula, a peninsula that extends into the Mediterranean Sea, with the Alps on its northern land b ...

who lived there from the early

1st millennium BC File:1st millennium BC.jpg, 400x400px, From top left clockwise: The Parthenon, a former temple in Athens, Greece; Aristotle, Greek philosopher; Gautama Buddha, a spiritual teacher and the founder of Buddhism; Wars of Alexander the Great last from ...

Latin Latin ( or ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic languages, Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally spoken by the Latins (Italic tribe), Latins in Latium (now known as Lazio), the lower Tiber area aroun ...

and Faliscan belong to the group, as well as two others often considered dialects of archaic Latin: Lanuvian and Praenestine. As the power of

Ancient Rome In modern historiography, ancient Rome is the Roman people, Roman civilisation from the founding of Rome, founding of the Italian city of Rome in the 8th century BC to the Fall of the Western Roman Empire, collapse of the Western Roman Em ...

grew, Latin absorbed elements of the other languages and replaced Faliscan. The other variants went extinct as Latin became dominant. Latin in turn developed via

Vulgar Latin Vulgar Latin, also known as Colloquial, Popular, Spoken or Vernacular Latin, is the range of non-formal Register (sociolinguistics), registers of Latin spoken from the Crisis of the Roman Republic, Late Roman Republic onward. ''Vulgar Latin'' a ...

into the Romance languages, now spoken by more than 800 million people, largely as a result of the influence of the

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initially, and in later times the Spanish, French and

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Lanuvian

Lanuvian was an archaic Latino-Faliscan language. It was spoken by Latins who lived close to

Rome Rome (Italian language, Italian and , ) is the capital city and most populated (municipality) of Italy. It is also the administrative centre of the Lazio Regions of Italy, region and of the Metropolitan City of Rome. A special named with 2, ...

and could have been a dialect of

Praenestine

Praenestine or Praenestinian was an archaic form of

Latino-Faliscan The Latino-Faliscan or Latinian languages form a group of the Italic languages within the Indo-European family. They were spoken by the Latino-Faliscan people of Italy who lived there from the early 1st millennium BC. Latin and Faliscan belong ...

. It was spoken in eastern

Old Latium or ' () is a region of the Italian Peninsula bounded to the north by the Tiber, Tiber River, to the east by the central Apennine Mountains, to the west by the Mediterranean Sea and to the south by Monte Circeo. It was the territory of the Latins ...

in modern day

Lazio Lazio ( , ; ) or Latium ( , ; from Latium, the original Latin name, ) is one of the 20 Regions of Italy, administrative regions of Italy. Situated in the Central Italy, central peninsular section of the country, it has 5,714,882 inhabitants an ...

, Italy.

Linguistic description

Latin and Faliscan have several features in common with other Italic languages: *The late Indo-European diphthong /*eu/ evolved into ''ou''. *The late Indo-European /*ə/ from vocalic laryngeals evolved into ''a''. *The Indo-European syllabic liquids /*l̥, *r̥/ developed an epenthetic vowel ''o'', giving Italic ''ol, or''. *The Indo-European syllabic nasals /*m̥, *n̥/ developed an epenthetic vowel ''e'', giving Italic ''em, en''. *Word-initial aspirated stops from Indo-European were fricativised: /*bʰ, *dʰ, *gʰ, gʷʰ / > ''f, f, h, f''. *The sequence /*p...kʷ/ was assimilated into ''kʷ...kʷ'' (Proto-Indo-European ' 'five' > Latin '). Latin and Faliscan also have characteristics not shared by other branches of Italic. They retain the Indo-European labiovelars /*kʷ, *gʷ/ as ''qu-, gu-'' (later becoming velar and semivocal), whereas in Osco-Umbrian they become labial ''p, b''. Latin and Faliscan use the ablative suffix ''-d'', seen in ''med'' ("me", ablative), which is absent in Osco-Umbrian. In addition, Latin displays evolution of ''ou'' into ''ū'', though this happens later than the Latino-Faliscan era, occurring around the 2nd century BCE (Latin ' < Proto-Italic ''*louksnā'' < PIE ' "moon").

Phonology

It is likely that the consonant inventory of Proto-Latino-Faliscan was basically identical to that of archaic Latin. Consonants not found in the

Praeneste fibula The Praeneste fibula (the "brooch of Palestrina") is a golden ''fibula'' or brooch, today housed in the Pigorini National Museum of Prehistory and Ethnography in Rome. The fibula bears an inscription in Old Latin, claiming craftsmanship by ...

are marked with an asterisk. : The /kʷ/ sound still existed in archaic Latin when the

Latin alphabet The Latin alphabet, also known as the Roman alphabet, is the collection of letters originally used by the Ancient Rome, ancient Romans to write the Latin language. Largely unaltered except several letters splitting—i.e. from , and from � ...

was developed, since it gives rise to the minimal pair ''quī'' /kʷiː/ ("who", nominative) > ''cuī'' /ku.iː/ ("to whom", dative). In other positions there is no distinction between

diphthongs A diphthong ( ), also known as a gliding vowel or a vowel glide, is a combination of two adjacent vowel sounds within the same syllable. Technically, a diphthong is a vowel with two different targets: that is, the tongue (and/or other parts of ...

and hiatuses: for example, ''persuādere'' ("to persuade") is a diphthong but ''sua'' ("his"/"her") is a hiatus. For reasons of symmetry, it is quite possible that many sequences of ''gu'' in archaic Latin in fact represent a voiced labiovelar /gʷ/.

References

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External links

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, Project fund by the Italian Ministry of University and Research (P.R.I.N. 2017) {{DEFAULTSORT:Latino-Faliscan languages