Venetic is an extinct

Indo-European language The Indo-European languages are a language family native to the overwhelming majority of Europe, the Iranian plateau, and the northern Indian subcontinent. Some European languages of this family, English, French, Portuguese, Russian, Du ...

, usually classified into the Italic subgroup, that was spoken by the Veneti people in ancient times in northeast

Italy Italy ( it, Italia ), officially the Italian Republic, ) or the Republic of Italy, is a country in Southern Europe. It is located in the middle of the Mediterranean Sea, and its territory largely coincides with the homonymous geographical ...

(

Veneto Veneto (, ; vec, Vèneto ) or Venetia is one of the 20 regions of Italy. Its population is about five million, ranking fourth in Italy. The region's capital is Venice while the biggest city is Verona. Veneto was part of the Roman Empire unt ...

and Friuli) and part of modern

Slovenia Slovenia ( ; sl, Slovenija ), officially the Republic of Slovenia (Slovene: , abbr.: ''RS''), is a country in Central Europe. It is bordered by Italy to the west, Austria to the north, Hungary to the northeast, Croatia to the southeast, and ...

, between the Po Delta and the southern fringe of the

Alps The Alps () ; german: Alpen ; it, Alpi ; rm, Alps ; sl, Alpe . are the highest and most extensive mountain range system that lies entirely in Europe, stretching approximately across seven Alpine countries (from west to east): France, Sw ...

. The language is attested by over 300 short inscriptions dating from the 6th to the 1st century BCE. Its speakers are identified with the ancient people called '' Veneti'' by the Romans and ''Enetoi'' by the

Greeks The Greeks or Hellenes (; el, Έλληνες, ''Éllines'' ) are an ethnic group and nation indigenous to the Eastern Mediterranean and the Black Sea regions, namely Greece, Cyprus, Albania, Italy, Turkey, Egypt, and, to a lesser extent, ot ...

. It became extinct around the 1st century when the local inhabitants assimilated into the Roman sphere. Inscriptions dedicating offerings to

Reitia Reitia (Venetic: 𐌓𐌄:𐌉:𐌕𐌉:𐌀) is a goddess, one of the best known deities of the Adriatic Veneti of northeastern Italy. While her place in the Venetic pantheon cannot be known for certain, the importance of her cult to Venetic ...

are one of the chief sources of knowledge of the Venetic language.

Linguistic classification

Venetic is a centum language. The inscriptions use a variety of the Northern Italic alphabet, similar to 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 alphab ...

. The exact relationship of Venetic to other Indo-European languages is still being investigated, but the majority of scholars agree that Venetic, aside from

Liburnian The Liburnians or Liburni ( grc, Λιβυρνοὶ) were an ancient tribe inhabiting the district called Liburnia, a coastal region of the northeastern Adriatic between the rivers ''Arsia'' ( Raša) and ''Titius'' ( Krka) in what is now Croati ...

, shared some similarities with the

Italic languages 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 ...

and so is sometimes classified as Italic. However, since it also shared similarities with other Western Indo-European branches (particularly

Celtic languages The Celtic languages (usually , but sometimes ) are a group of related languages descended from Proto-Celtic. They form a branch of the Indo-European language family. The term "Celtic" was first used to describe this language group by Edward ...

and

Germanic languages The Germanic languages are a branch of the Indo-European language family spoken natively by a population of about 515 million people mainly in Europe, North America, Oceania and Southern Africa. The most widely spoken Germanic language, ...

), some linguists prefer to consider it an independent Indo-European language. Venetic may also have been related to the

Illyrian languages The Illyrian language () was an Indo-European language or group of languages spoken by the Illyrians in Southeast Europe during antiquity. The language is unattested with the exception of personal names and placenames. Just enough information ...

once spoken in the western

Balkans The Balkans ( ), also known as the Balkan Peninsula, is a geographical area in southeastern Europe with various geographical and historical definitions. The region takes its name from the Balkan Mountains that stretch throughout the who ...

, though the theory that Illyrian and Venetic were closely related is debated by current scholarship. While some scholars consider Venetic plainly an Italic language, more closely related to the Osco-Umbrian languages than to Latin, many authorities suggest, in view of the divergent verbal system, that Venetic was not part of Italic proper, but split off from the core of Italic early. A 2012 study has suggested that Venetic was a relatively conservative language significantly similar to Celtic, on the basis of morphology, while it occupied an intermediate position between Celtic and Italic, on the basis of phonology. However these phonological similarities may have arisen as an areal phenomenon. Phonological similarities to Rhaetian have also been pointed out. In 2016, Celtologist

Peter Schrijver Peter Schrijver (; born 1963) is a Dutch linguist. He is a professor of Celtic languages at Utrecht University and a researcher of ancient Indo-European linguistics. He worked previously at Leiden University and the Ludwig Maximilian University ...

argued that Venetic and Italic together form one sub-branch of an Italo-Celtic branch of Indo-European, the other sub-branch being Celtic.

Fate

During the period of Latin-Venetic bilingual inscriptions in the Roman script, i.e. 150–50 BCE, Venetic became flooded with Latin loanwords. The shift from Venetic to Latin resulting in

language death In linguistics, language death occurs when a language loses its last native speaker. By extension, language extinction is when the language is no longer known, including by second-language speakers. Other similar terms include linguicide, the de ...

is thought by scholarship to have already been well under way by that time.

Features

Venetic had about six, possibly seven, noun cases and four conjugations (similar to Latin). About 60 words are known, but some were borrowed from

Latin Latin (, or , ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic languages, 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 ...

(''liber.tos.'' < ''libertus'') or Etruscan. Many of them show a clear Indo-European origin, such as ''vhraterei'' < PIE ''*bʰréh₂trey'' = to the brother.

Phonology

In Venetic,

PIE A pie is a baked dish which is usually made of a pastry dough casing that contains a filling of various sweet or savoury ingredients. Sweet pies may be filled with fruit (as in an apple pie), nuts (pecan pie), brown sugar ( sugar pie), sweete ...

stops ''*bʰ'', ''*dʰ'' and ''*gʰ'' developed to , and , respectively, in word-initial position (as in Latin and Osco-Umbrian), but to , and , respectively, in word-internal intervowel position (as in Latin). For Venetic, at least the developments of ''*bʰ'' and ''*dʰ'' are clearly attested. Faliscan and Osco-Umbrian have , and internally as well. There are also indications of the developments of PIE ''*kʷ'' > ''kv'', ''*gʷ-'' > ''w-'' and PIE ''*gʷʰ-'' > ''f-'' in Venetic, the latter two being parallel to Latin; as well as the regressive assimilation of the PIE sequence ''*p...kʷ...'' > ''*kʷ...kʷ...'', a feature also found in Italic and Celtic.

Language sample

A sample inscription in Venetic, found on a

bronze Bronze is an alloy consisting primarily of copper, commonly with about 12–12.5% tin and often with the addition of other metals (including aluminium, manganese, nickel, or zinc) and sometimes non-metals, such as phosphorus, or metalloids suc ...

nail at Este (Es 45): Another inscription, found on a '' situla'' (vessel such as an urn or bucket) at Cadore (Ca 4 Valle):

Scholarship

The most prominent scholars who have deciphered Venetic inscriptions or otherwise contributed to the knowledge of the Venetic language are Pauli, Krahe, Pellegrini, Prosdocimi, (Catalogue of an exposition at Montebelluna, 12/2001–05/2002) and Lejeune. Recent contributors include Capuis and Bianchi.

References

External links

*

, Project fund by the Italian Ministry of University and Research (P.R.I.N. 2017) * * * * {{DEFAULTSORT:Venetic Language Unclassified Indo-European languages Languages of ancient Italy Languages attested from the 5th century BC Languages extinct in the 1st century BC Este culture Italo-Celtic