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81-791: Quinigua (Kiniwa) is an extinct language that was spoken in northeastern Mexico . Quinigua was spoken between the Sierra Madre Oriental and the Sierra Tamaulipa la Nueva, and between the Rio Grande and the Rio del Pilón Grande. It has no apparent relatives and remains unclassified . Gursky (1964) notes that Quinigua is highly different from its neighbors such as Coahuilteco , but observes some limited similarities with " Hokan - Coahuiltecan languages" such as Comecrudan and Yuman languages. A vocabulary list of Quinigua

162-434: A vernacular language . The revival of Hebrew has been largely successful due to extraordinarily favourable conditions, notably the creation of a nation state (modern Israel in 1948) in which it became the official language, as well as Eliezer Ben-Yehuda 's extreme dedication to the revival of the language, by creating new words for the modern terms Hebrew lacked. Revival attempts for minor extinct languages with no status as

243-656: A (now lost) treatise on Etruscan history ; a separate dedication made by Claudius implies a knowledge from "diverse Etruscan sources", but it is unclear if any were fluent speakers of Etruscan. Plautia Urgulanilla , the emperor's first wife, had Etruscan roots. 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, among which are possibly voltur 'vulture', tuba 'trumpet', vagina 'sheath', populus 'people'. Inscriptions have been found in northwest and west-central Italy, in

324-532: A 26-letter alphabet, which makes an early appearance incised for decoration on a small bucchero terracotta lidded vase in the shape of a cockerel at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, ca. 650–600 BC. The full complement of 26 has been termed the model alphabet. The Etruscans did not use four letters of it, mainly because Etruscan did not have the voiced stops b , d and g ; the o was also not used. They innovated one letter for f ( 𐌚 ). Writing

405-537: 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. The tablets were found in 1964 by Massimo Pallottino during an excavation at the ancient Etruscan port of Pyrgi , now Santa Severa . The only new Etruscan word that could be extracted from close analysis of

486-565: A few inscriptions on Lemnos . The Etruscan alphabet is similar to the Greek one. Therefore, linguists have been able to read the inscriptions in the sense of knowing roughly how they would have been pronounced, but have not yet understood their meaning. A comparison between the Etruscan and Greek alphabets reveals how accurately the Etruscans preserved the Greek alphabet. The Etruscan alphabet contains letters that have since been dropped from

567-756: A few lexical correspondences are documented, at least partly due to the scant number of Raetic and Lemnian texts. On the other hand, the Tyrsenian family, or Common Tyrrhenic, is often considered to be Paleo-European and to predate the arrival of Indo-European languages in southern Europe. Several scholars believe that the 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

648-420: A historical language may remain in use as a literary or liturgical language long after it ceases to be spoken natively. Such languages are sometimes also referred to as "dead languages", but more typically as classical languages . The most prominent Western example of such a language is Latin , and comparable cases are found throughout world history due to the universal tendency to retain a historical stage of

729-407: A language as the liturgical language . In a view that prioritizes written representation over natural language acquisition and evolution, historical languages with living descendants that have undergone significant language change may be considered "extinct", especially in cases where they did not leave a corpus of literature or liturgy that remained in widespread use (see corpus language ), as

810-568: A limited theological knowledge of Etruscan may have survived among the priestly caste much longer. One 19th-century writer argued in 1892 that Etruscan deities retained an influence on early modern Tuscan folklore. Around 180 AD, the Latin author Aulus Gellius mentions Etruscan alongside the Gaulish language in an anecdote. Freeman notes that although Gaulish was clearly still alive during Gellius' time, his testimony may not indicate that Etruscan

891-509: A liturgical language typically have more modest results. The Cornish language revival has proven at least partially successful: after a century of effort there are 3,500 claimed native speakers, enough for UNESCO to change its classification from "extinct" to "critically endangered". A Livonian language revival movement to promote the use of the Livonian language has managed to train a few hundred people to have some knowledge of it. This

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972-518: A new generation of native speakers. The optimistic neologism " sleeping beauty languages" has been used to express such a hope, though scholars usually refer to such languages as dormant. In practice, this has only happened on a large scale successfully once: the revival of the Hebrew language . Hebrew had survived for millennia since the Babylonian exile as a liturgical language, but not as

1053-399: A rare case from this early period of a female (Venalia) dedicating the votive. 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

1134-414: A result of the process of cultural assimilation leading to language shift , and the gradual abandonment of a native language in favor of a foreign lingua franca , largely those of European countries. As of the 2000s, a total of roughly 7,000 natively spoken languages existed worldwide. Most of these are minor languages in danger of extinction; one estimate published in 2004 expected that some 90% of

1215-510: A rich literature, as noted by Latin authors. 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 by reading entrails from a sacrificed animal, while the Libri Fulgurales expounded the art of divination by observing lightning . A third set,

1296-416: A substantial trace as a substrate in the language that replaces it. There have, however, also been cases where the language of higher prestige did not displace the native language but left a superstrate influence. The French language for example shows evidence both of a Celtic substrate and a Frankish superstrate. Institutions such as the education system, as well as (often global) forms of media such as

1377-601: A symbolic motif: Apollo , Zeus , Culsans , Athena , Hermes , griffin , gorgon , male sphinx , hippocamp , bull, snake, eagle, or other creatures which had symbolic significance. Wallace et al. include the following categories, based on the uses to which they were put, on their site: abecedaria (alphabets), artisans' texts, boundary markers, construction texts, dedications, didaskalia (instructional texts), funerary texts, legal texts, other/unclear texts, prohibitions, proprietary texts (indicating ownership), religious texts, tesserae hospitales (tokens that establish "the claim of

1458-507: Is a list of languages reported as having become extinct since 2010. For a more complete list, see Lists of extinct languages . Etruscan language The consensus among linguists and Etruscologists is that Etruscan was a Pre-Indo-European and Paleo-European language , closely related to the Raetic language that was spoken in the Alps , and to the Lemnian language , attested in

1539-438: Is documented in del Hoyo (1960). Gursky (1964) has selected and retranscribed some of del Hoyo's (1960) vocabulary, reproduced below. Extinct language An extinct language is a language with no living descendants that no longer has any first-language or second-language speakers. In contrast, a dead language is a language that no longer has any first-language speakers, but does have second-language speakers or

1620-565: Is one dated to just after 40 BC and a final one dated to 10–20 AD; coins with written Etruscan near Saena have also been dated to 15 BC. Freeman notes that in rural areas the language may have survived a bit longer, and that a survival into the late 1st century AD and beyond "cannot wholly be dismissed", especially given the revelation of Oscan writing in Pompeii 's walls. Despite the apparent extinction of Etruscan, it appears that Etruscan religious rites continued much later, continuing to use

1701-420: Is one explanation of the Etruscan "impossible" consonant clusters. Some of the consonants, especially 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 regarded this variation in vowels as "instability in

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1782-434: Is published in its own fascicle by diverse Etruscan scholars. 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

1863-647: Is that Etruscan, and therefore all the languages of the Tyrrhenian family, is neither Indo-European nor Semitic, and may be a Pre–Indo-European and Paleo-European language. At present the major consensus is that Etruscan's only kinship is with the Raetic and Lemnian languages. The idea of a relation between the language of the Minoan Linear A scripts was taken into consideration as the main hypothesis by Michael Ventris before he discovered that, in fact,

1944-540: Is the case with Old English or Old High German relative to their contemporary descendants, English and German. Some degree of misunderstanding can result from designating languages such as Old English and Old High German as extinct, or Latin dead, while ignoring their evolution as a language or as many languages. This is expressed in the apparent paradox "Latin is a dead language, but Latin never died." A language such as Etruscan , for example, can be said to be both extinct and dead: inscriptions are ill understood even by

2025-557: Is transcribed in Etruscan. At Perugia , monolingual monumental inscriptions in Etruscan are still seen in the first half of the 1st century BC, while the period of bilingual inscriptions appears to have stretched from the 3rd century to the late 1st century BC. The isolated last bilinguals are found at three northern sites. Inscriptions in Arezzo include one dated to 40 BC followed by two with slightly later dates, while in Volterra there

2106-460: Is used fluently in written form, such as Latin . A dormant language is a dead language that still serves as a symbol of ethnic identity to an ethnic group ; these languages are often undergoing a process of revitalisation . Languages that have first-language speakers are known as modern or living languages to contrast them with dead languages, especially in educational contexts. In the modern period , languages have typically become extinct as

2187-512: 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 4th-century AD Latin writer Maurus Servius Honoratus , a fourth set of Etruscan books existed, dealing with animal gods, but it is unlikely that any scholar living in that era could have read Etruscan. However, only one book (as opposed to inscription),

2268-472: The Liber Linteus , survived, and only because the linen on which it was written was used as mummy wrappings. By 30 BC, Livy noted that Etruscan was once widely taught to Roman boys, but had since become replaced by the teaching of Greek, while Varro noted that theatrical works had once been composed in Etruscan. The date of extinction for Etruscan is held by scholarship to have been either in

2349-679: The Anatolian branch . More recently, Robert S. P. Beekes argued in 2002 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

2430-811: The Balkans . But by far the greatest concentration is in Italy. In 1998, Helmut Rix put forward the view that Etruscan is related to other extinct languages such as Raetic , spoken in ancient times in the eastern Alps , and Lemnian , to which other scholars added Camunic language , spoken in the Central Alps . Rix's Tyrsenian language family has gained widespread acceptance among scholars, being confirmed by Stefan Schumacher, Norbert Oettinger, Carlo De Simone , and Simona Marchesini. Common features between Etruscan, Raetic, and Lemnian have been found in morphology , phonology , and syntax , but only

2511-739: The Greek alphabet ; this alphabet was the source of the Latin alphabet , as well as other alphabets in Italy and probably beyond. The Etruscan language is also believed to be the source of certain important cultural words of Western Europe such as military and person , which do not have obvious Indo-European roots. 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. They date from about 700 BC. The Etruscans had

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2592-516: The Lydians , while others sailed away to take refuge in Italy, where they became known as Etruscans. This account draws on the well-known story by Herodotus (I, 94) of the Lydian origin of the Etruscans or Tyrrhenians, famously rejected by Dionysius of Halicarnassus (book I), partly on the authority of Xanthus, a Lydian historian, who had no knowledge of the story, and partly on what he judged to be

2673-608: 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

2754-564: The University of Utrecht . Alinei's proposal has been rejected by Etruscan experts such as Giulio M. Facchetti, Finno-Ugric experts such as Angela Marcantonio, and by Hungarian historical linguists such as Bela Brogyanyi. Another proposal, pursued mainly by a few linguists from the former Soviet Union, suggested a relationship with Northeast Caucasian (or Nakh-Daghestanian) languages. None of these theories has been accepted nor enjoys consensus. The Latin script owes its existence to

2835-480: The Villanovan period to about 100 BC, when presumably the cemeteries were abandoned in favor of Roman ones. Some of the major cemeteries are as follows: One example of an early (pre-fifth century BC) votive inscription is on a bucchero oinochoe (wine vase): ṃiṇi mulvaṇịce venalia ṡlarinaṡ. en mipi kapi ṃi(r) ṇuṇai = "Venalia Ṡlarinaṡ gave me. Do not touch me (?), I (am) nunai (an offering?)." This seems to be

2916-531: The "Aramaic" spoken by Noah and his descendants, founders of the Etruscan city Viterbo . The 19th century saw numerous attempts to reclassify Etruscan. Ideas of Semitic origins found supporters until this time. In 1858, the last attempt was made by Johann Gustav Stickel , Jena University in his Das Etruskische durch Erklärung von Inschriften und Namen als semitische Sprache erwiesen . A reviewer concluded that Stickel brought forward every possible argument which would speak for that hypothesis, but he proved

2997-501: The "kill the Indian, save the man" policy of American Indian boarding schools and other measures was to prevent Native Americans from transmitting their native language to the next generation and to punish children who spoke the language of their culture of origin. The French vergonha policy likewise had the aim of eradicating minority languages. Language revival is the attempt to re-introduce an extinct language in everyday use by

3078-443: The 3rd century BC until the early 1st century BC, after which Etruscan is replaced by the exclusive use of Latin. In northern Etruria, Etruscan inscriptions continue after they disappear in southern Etruria. At Clusium ( Chiusi ), tomb markings show mixed Latin and Etruscan in the first half of the 1st century BC, with cases where two subsequent generations are inscribed in Latin and then the third, youngest generation, surprisingly,

3159-594: The British scholar Isaac Taylor brought up the idea of a genetic relationship between Etruscan and Hungarian , of which also Jules Martha would approve in his exhaustive study La langue étrusque (1913). In 1911, the French orientalist Baron Carra de Vaux suggested a connection between Etruscan and the Altaic languages . The Hungarian connection was revived by Mario Alinei , emeritus professor of Italian languages at

3240-708: The Early Iron Age Latins , and that the Etruscan language, and therefore the other languages of the Tyrrhenian family, may be a surviving language of the ones that were widespread in Europe from at least the Neolithic period before the arrival of the Indo-European languages, as already argued by German geneticist Johannes Krause who concluded that it is likely that the Etruscan language (as well as Basque , Paleo-Sardinian and Minoan ) "developed on

3321-457: The Etruscan alphabet, which was adapted for Latin in the form of the Old Italic script . The Etruscan alphabet employs a Euboean variant 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

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3402-545: The Etruscan apogee from the second half of the sixth to the first centuries BC. The two main theories of manufacture are native Etruscan and Greek. 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

3483-466: The 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 theory in which both the Hebrew and Etruscan languages were said to originate from a single source,

3564-415: The Etruscan names of deities and possibly with some liturgical usage of the language. In late Republican and early Augustan times, various Latin sources including Cicero noted the esteemed reputation of Etruscan soothsayers . An episode where lightning struck an inscription with the name Caesar, turning it into Aesar, was interpreted to have been a premonition of the deification of Caesar because of

3645-541: The Greek alphabet, such as the digamma , sampi and qoppa . Grammatically, the language is agglutinating , with nouns and verbs showing suffixed inflectional endings and some gradation of vowels . Nouns show five cases , singular and plural numbers , with a gender distinction between animate and inanimate in pronouns . Etruscan appears to have had a cross-linguistically common phonological system, with four phonemic vowels and an apparent contrast between aspirated and unaspirated stops . The records of

3726-468: The Internet, television, and print media play a significant role in the process of language loss. For example, when people migrate to a new country, their children attend school in the country, and the schools are likely to teach them in the majority language of the country rather than their parents' native language. Language death can also be the explicit goal of government policy. For example, part of

3807-526: The Italian peninsula. Scholars such as Norbert Oettinger, Michel Gras and Carlo De Simone think that Lemnian is the testimony of an Etruscan commercial settlement on the island that took place before 700 BC, not related to the Sea Peoples. A 2021 archeogenetic analysis of Etruscan individuals, who lived between 800 BC and 1 BC, concluded that the Etruscans were autochthonous and genetically similar to

3888-574: The Latins, bringing the alphabet from Anatolia. For historical, archaeological, genetic, and linguistic reasons, a relationship between Etruscan and the Indo-European Anatolian languages (Lydian or Luwian) and the idea that the Etruscans initially colonized the Latins, bringing the alphabet from Anatolia, have not been accepted, since the account by Herodotus is no longer considered reliable. The interest in Etruscan antiquities and

3969-676: The bezel bears a border design, such as cabling. Etruscan-minted coins can be dated between the 5th and 3rd centuries BC. Use of the 'Chalcidian' standard, based on the silver unit of 5.8 grams, indicates that this 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. 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,

4050-519: The classification of Etruscan remained problematic for historical linguists, though it was almost universally agreed upon that Etruscan was a language unlike any other in Europe. Before it gained currency as one of the Tyrrhenian languages, Etruscan was commonly treated as a language isolate . Over the centuries many hypotheses on the Etruscan language have been developed, most of which have not been accepted or have been considered highly speculative since they were published. The major consensus among scholars

4131-575: The continent in the course of the Neolithic Revolution ". The lack of recent Anatolian-related admixture and Iranian-related ancestry among the Etruscans, who genetically joined firmly to the European cluster, might also suggest that the presence of a handful of inscriptions found at Lemnos, in a language related to Etruscan and Raetic, "could represent population movements departing from the Italian peninsula". For many hundreds of years

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4212-550: The currently spoken languages will have become extinct by 2050. Normally the transition from a spoken to an extinct language occurs when a language undergoes language death by being directly replaced by a different one. For example, many Native American languages were replaced by Dutch , English , French , Portuguese , or Spanish as a result of European colonization of the Americas . In contrast to an extinct language, which no longer has any speakers, or any written use,

4293-516: The different languages, laws, and religions of the two peoples. In 2006, Frederik Woudhuizen went further on Herodotus' traces, suggesting that Etruscan belongs to the Anatolian branch of the Indo-European family, specifically to Luwian . Woudhuizen revived a conjecture to the effect that the Tyrsenians came from Anatolia , including Lydia , whence they were driven by the Cimmerians in

4374-496: The dominant lingua francas of world commerce: English, Mandarin Chinese , Spanish, and French. In their study of contact-induced language change, American linguists Sarah Grey Thomason and Terrence Kaufman (1991) stated that in situations of cultural pressure (where populations are forced to speak a dominant language), three linguistic outcomes may occur: first – and most commonly – a subordinate population may shift abruptly to

4455-453: The dominant language, leaving the native language to a sudden linguistic death. Second, the more gradual process of language death may occur over several generations. The third and most rare outcome is for the pressured group to maintain as much of its native language as possible, while borrowing elements of the dominant language's grammar (replacing all, or portions of, the grammar of the original language). A now disappeared language may leave

4536-412: 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." According to Woudhuizen, the Etruscans were initially colonizing

4617-409: The first Etruscan site to be Latinized was Veii , when it was destroyed and repopulated by Romans in 396 BC. Caere ( Cerveteri ), another southern Etruscan town on the coast 45 kilometers from Rome, appears to have shifted to Latin in the late 2nd century BC. In Tarquinia and Vulci , Latin inscriptions coexisted with Etruscan inscriptions in wall paintings and grave markers for centuries, from

4698-459: 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. About 2,300 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. Most probably came from tombs. Many bear inscriptions naming

4779-507: 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

4860-520: The language behind the later Linear B script was Mycenean , a Greek dialect . It has been proposed to possibly be part of a wider Paleo-European "Aegean" language family, which would also include Minoan , Eteocretan (possibly descended from Minoan) and Eteocypriot . This has been proposed by Giulio Mauro Facchetti, a researcher who has dealt with both Etruscan and Minoan, and supported by S. Yatsemirsky, referring to some similarities between Etruscan and Lemnian on one hand, and Minoan and Eteocretan on

4941-730: The language disappeared. In addition to being the source of the Roman and early Oscan and Umbrian alphabets, it has been suggested that it passed northward into Veneto and from there through Raetia into the Germanic lands, where it became the Elder Futhark alphabet, the oldest form of the runes . The corpus of Etruscan inscriptions is edited in the Corpus Inscriptionum Etruscarum (CIE) and Thesaurus Linguae Etruscae (TLE). The Pyrgi Tablets are

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5022-548: The language in question must be conceptualized as frozen in time at a particular state of its history. This is accomplished by periodizing English and German as Old; for Latin, an apt clarifying adjective is Classical, which also normally includes designation of high or formal register . Minor languages are endangered mostly due to economic and cultural globalization , cultural assimilation, and development. With increasing economic integration on national and regional scales, people find it easier to communicate and conduct business in

5103-470: The language of these books is unknown. According to Zosimus , when Rome was faced with destruction by Alaric in 408 AD, the protection of nearby Etruscan towns was attributed to Etruscan pagan priests who claimed to have summoned a raging thunderstorm, and they offered their services "in the ancestral manner" to Rome as well, but the devout Christians of Rome refused the offer, preferring death to help by pagans. Freeman notes that these events may indicate that

5184-462: The language suggest that phonetic change took place over time, with the loss and then re-establishment of word-internal vowels, possibly due to the effect of Etruscan's word-initial stress . Etruscan religion was influenced by that of the Greeks , and many of the few surviving Etruscan-language artifacts are of votive or religious significance. Etruscan was written in an alphabet derived from

5265-434: The late first century BC, or the early first century AD. Freeman's analysis of inscriptional evidence would appear to imply that Etruscan was still flourishing in the 2nd century BC, still alive in the first century BC, and surviving in at least one location in the beginning of the first century AD; however, the replacement of Etruscan by Latin likely occurred earlier in southern regions closer to Rome. In southern Etruria ,

5346-402: The main source of Etruscan portables, provenance unknown, in collections throughout the world. Their incalculable value has created a brisk black market in Etruscan objets d'art – and equally brisk law enforcement effort, as it is illegal to remove any objects from Etruscan tombs without authorization from the Italian government. The magnitude of the task involved in cataloguing them means that

5427-446: The most knowledgeable scholars, and the language ceased to be used in any form long ago, so that there have been no speakers, native or non-native, for many centuries. In contrast, Old English, Old High German and Latin never ceased evolving as living languages, thus they did not become extinct as Etruscan did. Through time Latin underwent both common and divergent changes in phonology, morphology, syntax, and lexicon, and continues today as

5508-420: The native language of hundreds of millions of people, renamed as different Romance languages and dialects (French, Italian, Spanish, Corsican , Asturian , Ladin , etc.). Similarly, Old English and Old High German never died, but developed into various forms of modern English and German, as well as other related tongues still spoken (e.g. Scots from Old English and Yiddish from Old High German). With regard to

5589-495: 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". 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. Around one centimeter in size, they are dated to

5670-403: The opposite of what he had attempted to do. In 1861, Robert Ellis proposed that Etruscan was related to Armenian . Exactly 100 years later, a relationship with Albanian was to be advanced by Zecharia Mayani , a theory regarded today as disproven and discredited. Several theories from the late 19th and early 20th centuries connected Etruscan to Uralic or even Altaic languages . In 1874,

5751-481: 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. 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 . This speech habit

5832-427: The other. It has also been proposed that this language family is related to the pre-Indo-European languages of Anatolia, based upon place name analysis. The relationship between Etruscan and Minoan, and hypothetical unattested pre-Indo-European languages of Anatolia, is considered unfounded. Some have suggested that Tyrsenian languages may yet be distantly related to early Indo-European languages , such as those of

5913-677: 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

5994-476: 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". 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

6075-724: The region that even now bears the name of the Etruscan civilization , Tuscany (from Latin tuscī 'Etruscans'), as well as in modern Latium north of Rome, in today's Umbria west of the Tiber , in the Po Valley to the north of Etruria, and in Campania . This range may indicate a maximum Italian homeland where the language was at one time spoken. Outside Italy, inscriptions have been found in Corsica , Gallia Narbonensis , Greece ,

6156-467: The resemblance to Etruscan aisar , meaning 'gods', although this indicates knowledge of a single word and not the language. Centuries later and long after Etruscan is thought to have died out, Ammianus Marcellinus reports that Julian the Apostate , the last pagan Emperor, apparently had Etruscan soothsayers accompany him on his military campaigns with books on war, lightning and celestial events, but

6237-479: The tablets was the word for 'three', ci . According to Rix and his collaborators, only two unified (though fragmentary) long texts are available in Etruscan: Some additional longer texts are: The main material repository of Etruscan civilization , from the modern perspective, is its tombs, all other public and private buildings having been dismantled and the stone reused centuries ago. The tombs are

6318-413: The total number of tombs is unknown. They are of many types. Especially plentiful are the hypogeal or "underground" chambers or system of chambers cut into tuff and covered by a tumulus . The interior of these tombs 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

6399-492: The written language, skills in reading or writing Etruscan are all but non-existent, but trained people can understand and write Old English, Old High German, and Latin. Latin differs from the Germanic counterparts in that an approximation of its ancient form is still employed to some extent liturgically. This last observation illustrates that for Latin, Old English, or Old High German to be described accurately as dead or extinct,

6480-408: 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 6th century BC, they are separated by a dot or a colon, which might also be used to separate syllables. Writing was phonetic; the letters represented the sounds and not conventional spellings. On

6561-464: Was still alive because the phrase could indicate a meaning of the sort of "it's all Greek (incomprehensible) to me". At the time of its extinction, only a few educated Romans with antiquarian interests, such as Marcus Terentius Varro , could read Etruscan. The Roman emperor Claudius (10 BC – AD 54) is considered to have possibly been able to read Etruscan, and authored the Tyrrhenika ,

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