Talk:Etruscan language

I would be able to post much more on this subject, but I really don't have the time...

Kári

Your contributions would be most welcome. - Fennec 22:14, 9 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Let me second that, as an amateur who has reported material for this entry. This entry needs an overview from a professional to present a nuanced account of the mainstream reaction to current theories. Wetman 01:40, 10 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Some points about the article on the Etruscan Language

Some points about the article on the Etruscan Language

There are actually many thousands of inscriptions in Etruscan. The vast majority of these are completely, or more or less, understood, as they are mostly short texts.

Most people believe that Etruscan ethnogenesis occurred in Italy. This is not the same as believing them to be autochthonous. Many commentators, especially outside Italy, believe them to be of Anatolian origin, an immigrant elite who arrived approximately 1000 BCE, and conquered a previously Italic-speaking peasant class.

There are three main theories about the linguistic affinities of Etruscan:

i) That it is an isolate, not discoverably related to any other language.

ii) That it represents some sort of peri-Indo-European group of languages, ultimately related to Indo-European proper, and is particularly associated with the Indo-Anatolian languages.

iii) That it is genetically related to the East Caucasian languages, i.e. Hurrian, Urartian and the modern Nakh-Daghestanian languages, although this is masked by intensive contact with Indo-European languages.

Various wacko sites on the Internet and a good deal of amateur proposals over the years have suggested that it is actually an Indo-European language and related to or even a direct ancestor of Albanian, Lithuanian, Ukrainian etc. This is impossibly ridiculous.

Raetic was a written language and about 200 inscriptions survive. Helmut Rix demonstrated a genetic relationship between Raetic and Etruscan, which is now generally accepted by Etruscologists. It may be that the Raetic language represents an early northern military conquest by the Etruscans, later abandoned.

There are several dozen Camunic inscriptions, but no reason to believe that we are actually dealing with a single language. Some of the Camunic inscriptions are definitely Celtic, not Etruscan. As they are all very short, no clear conclusions can be made.

The Kaminia stele in the Lemnian language can be more or less understood in terms of Etruscan and is clearly in a closely related language to Etruscan. This is not seriously doubted by any mainstream Etruscologist.

The "Etruscan" golden book found in Bulgaria last year is thought now to be a FAKE.

There is a proportion of Etruscan vocabulary whose meanings are more or less known with certainty, another proportion whose meanings are rather more vaguely understood, another whose meanings are debated, and another, probably the largest in terms of quantity, but the least common in terms of number of occurrences, whose meaning is not understood at all. Many of the words which occur in Etruscan inscriptions are personal names, of course.

Hope this helps,

Ed Robertson

Hah! I thought that Bulgarian gold book with the ring binding looked suspicious! The mermaid, for a start! Any publication about it yet? All I could find was the initial PR report.

The article gives an outline of Etruscan inscriptions as published in Rix. Flesh it out! flesh it out! Add to the references and links at least, to steer us, Ed Robertson! Wetman 18:35, 26 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Raetian or Rhaetian?

Pardon my ignorance: can someone explain the difference between Raetian (as used in this article) and Rhaetian? Cbdorsett 17:17, 14 Jun 2005 (UTC)