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Lepontic Language
Lepontic is an ancient Alpine Celtic languageJohn T. Koch (ed.) ''Celtic culture: a historical encyclopedia'' ABC-CLIO (2005) that was spoken in parts of Rhaetia and Cisalpine Gaul (now Northern Italy) between 550 and 100 BC. Lepontic is attested in inscriptions found in an area centered on Lugano, Switzerland, and including the Lake Como and Lake Maggiore areas of Italy. While some recent scholarship (e.g. Eska 1998) has tended to consider Lepontic simply as an early outlying form of Gaulish and closely akin to other, later attestations of Gaulish in Italy (Cisalpine Gaulish), some scholars (notably Lejeune 1971) continue to view it as a distinct Continental Celtic language. In this latter view, the earlier inscriptions found within a 50 km radius of Lugano are considered Lepontic, while the later ones, to the immediate south of this area, are considered Cisalpine Gaulish. Lepontic was assimilated first by Gaulish, with the settlement of Gallic tribes north of the River ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Cisalpine Gaul
Cisalpine Gaul ( la, Gallia Cisalpina, also called ''Gallia Citerior'' or ''Gallia Togata'') was the part of Italy inhabited by Celts (Gauls) during the 4th and 3rd centuries BC. After its conquest by the Roman Republic in the 200s BC it was considered geographically part of Roman Italy but remained administratively separated until 42 BC. It was a Roman province from c. 81 BC until 42 BC, when it was ''de jure'' merged into Roman Italy as indicated in Caesar's unpublished acts (''Acta Caesaris''). Cisalpine means "on this side of the Alps" (from the perspective of the Romans), as opposed to Transalpine Gaul ("on the far side of the Alps"). Gallia Cisalpina was further subdivided into ''Gallia Cispadana'' and ''Gallia Transpadana'', i.e. its portions south and north of the Po River, respectively. The Roman province of the 1st century BC was bounded on the north and west by the Alps, in the south as far as Placentia by the river Po, and then by the Apennines and the river ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Cisalpine Gaulish
The Celtic Cisalpine Gaulish inscriptions are frequently combined with the Lepontic inscriptions under the term ''Celtic language remains in northern Italy''. While it is possible that the Lepontii were autochthonous to Northern Italy since the end of the 2nd millennium BC, it is known from ancient sources that the Gauls invaded the regions north of the river Po in several waves since the 5th century BC. They apparently took over the art of writing from the Lepontii, including some of the orthographic peculiarities. There are 20 Cisalpine Gaulish inscriptions, five of them longer than just one or two words. The inscriptions stem largely from the area south of the Lepontians. There is ongoing debate whether Cisalpine Gaulish is a dialect of Gaulish (e.g. Schumacher 2004), or a historical or dialectical continuation of Lepontic (e.g. Eska 2010). In the latter case, the term Cisalpine Celtic refers to the two together, contrasting with ''Transalpine Celtic'' (traditionally ''Transa ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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 used in the Greek colonies in southern Italy which belonged to the "western" ("red") type, the so-called Western Greek alphabet. Several Old Italic scripts, including the Latin alphabet, derived from it (or simultaneously with it). Origins The Etruscan alphabet originated as an adaptation of the Euboean alphabet used by the Euboean Greeks in their first colonies in Italy, the island of Pithekoussai and the city of Cumae in Campania. In the alphabets of the West, X had the sound value , Ψ stood for ; in Etruscan: X = , Ψ = or (Rix 202–209). The earliest known Etruscan '' abecedarium'' is inscribed on the frame of a wax tablet in ivory, measuring 8.8×5 cm, found at Marsiliana (near Grosseto, Tuscany). It dates from about 700 BC ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Old Italic Alphabet
The Old Italic scripts are a family of similar ancient writing systems used in the Italian Peninsula between about 700 and 100 BC, for various languages spoken in that time and place. The most notable member is the Etruscan alphabet, which was the immediate ancestor of the Latin alphabet currently used by English and many other languages of the world. The runic alphabets used in northern Europe are believed to have been separately derived from one of these alphabets by the 2nd century AD. Origins The Old Italic alphabets clearly derive from the Phoenician alphabet, although the precise chain of cultural transmission is unknown. Some scholars argue that the Etruscan alphabet was imported from the Euboean Greek colonies of Cumae and Ischia (Pithekoūsai) in the Gulf of Naples in the 8th century BC; this Euboean alphabet is also called 'Cumaean' (after Cumae), or 'Chalcidian' (after its metropolis Chalcis). The Cumaean hypothesis is supported by the 1957†... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Glozel
The Glozel artifacts are a collection of over 3,000 artifacts, including clay tablets, sculptures and vases, some of which were inscribed, discovered from 1924 to 1930 in the vicinity of French hamlet of Glozel. Glozel () is part of the commune of Ferrières-sur-Sichon in the Allier department, some 17 km from Vichy in central France. Variously dated to at times Neolithic, Iron Age and Medieval times, the finds initiated a series of claims, counterclaims and heated debates among archaeologists. The objects were all initially dismissed as a hoax. Later research confirmed that some of the items date back to the iron age. After further analysis and dating, the French Ministry of Culture released a report in 1995 which concluded that the site was medieval and later but also contained Iron Age artifacts. It also stated that the site included forgeries, author unknown. Discovery and Excavation The initial discovery was made on 1 March 1924 by 17-year-old Émile Fradin (born A ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Occlusive
In phonetics, an occlusive, sometimes known as a stop, is a consonant sound produced by occluding (i.e. blocking) airflow in the vocal tract, but not necessarily in the nasal tract. The duration of the block is the ''occlusion'' of the consonant. An occlusive may refer to one or more of the following, depending on the author: *Stops, or more precisely, oral stops—also known as plosives—are oral occlusives, where the occlusion of the vocal tract stops all airflow—oral and nasal. :Examples in English are (voiced) , , and (voiceless) , , . *Nasals, also known as nasal stops, are nasal occlusives, where occlusion of the vocal tract shifts the airflow to the nasal tract. :Examples in English are , , and . *Affricates such as English , are partial occlusives. Typically ''stops'' and ''affricates'' are contrasted, but affricates are also described as ''stops with fricative release'', contrasting with ''simple stops'' (= plosives). *Implosives, in which the airstream differs ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Voiced Consonant
Voice or voicing is a term used in phonetics and phonology to characterize speech sounds (usually consonants). Speech sounds can be described as either voiceless (otherwise known as ''unvoiced'') or voiced. The term, however, is used to refer to two separate concepts: *Voicing can refer to the ''articulatory process'' in which the vocal folds vibrate, its primary use in phonetics to describe phones, which are particular speech sounds. *It can also refer to a classification of speech sounds that tend to be associated with vocal cord vibration but may not actually be voiced at the articulatory level. That is the term's primary use in phonology: to describe phonemes; while in phonetics its primary use is to describe phones. For example, voicing accounts for the difference between the pair of sounds associated with the English letters "s" and "z". The two sounds are transcribed as and to distinguish them from the English letters, which have several possible pronunciations, depe ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Canton Ticino
Ticino (), sometimes Tessin (), officially the Republic and Canton of Ticino or less formally the Canton of Ticino,, informally ''Canton Ticino'' ; lmo, Canton Tesin ; german: Kanton Tessin ; french: Canton du Tessin ; rm, Chantun dal Tessin . is one of the 26 cantons forming the Swiss Confederation. It is composed of eight districts and its capital city is Bellinzona. It is also traditionally divided into the Sopraceneri and the Sottoceneri, respectively north and south of Monte Ceneri. Red and blue are the colours of its flag. Ticino is the southernmost canton of Switzerland. It is one of the three large southern Alpine cantons, along with Valais and the Grisons. However, unlike all other cantons, it lies almost entirely south of the Alps, and has no natural access to the Swiss Plateau. Through the main crest of the Gotthard and adjacent mountain ranges, it borders the canton of Valais to the northwest, the canton of Uri to the north and the canton of Grisons to the nort ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Venetic Raetic Camunic Lepontic Alphabets
Venetic is an extinct Indo-European language, usually classified into the Italic subgroup, that was spoken by the Veneti people in ancient times in northeast Italy (Veneto and Friuli) and part of modern Slovenia, between the Po Delta and the southern fringe of the Alps. 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. It became extinct around the 1st century when the local inhabitants assimilated into the Roman sphere. Inscriptions dedicating offerings to Reitia 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 exact relationship of Venetic to other Indo-European languages is still being investigated, but the majorit ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ligurian Language (ancient)
The Ligurian language was spoken in pre-Roman times and into the Roman era by an ancient people of north-western Italy and current south-eastern France known as the Ligures. Very little is known about ancient Ligurian; the lack of inscriptions and the unknown origin of the Ligurian people prevent its certain linguistic classification as a Pre-Indo-European or an Indo-European language. The linguistic hypotheses are mainly based on toponymy and onomastics. Ancient sources Strabo indicates that the Ligurians were different from the Celts: Because of the strong Celtic influences on the language and culture, the Ligurians were known in antiquity as ''Celto-Ligurians'' (in Greek ''KeltolÃgues'') in some other sources. Herodotus wrote that '' sigunnai'' meant 'hucksters, peddlers' among the Ligurians who lived above Massilia. Ligurian as a Pre-Indo-European language Scholars, such as Ernst Gamillscheg, Pia Laviosa Zambotti and Yakov Malkiel, posit that ancient Ligurian was a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Indo-European Languages
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, Dutch, and Spanish, have expanded through colonialism in the modern period and are now spoken across several continents. The Indo-European family is divided into several branches or sub-families, of which there are eight groups with languages still alive today: Albanian, Armenian, Balto-Slavic, Celtic, Germanic, Hellenic, Indo-Iranian, and Italic; and another nine subdivisions that are now extinct. Today, the individual Indo-European languages with the most native speakers are English, Hindi–Urdu, Spanish, Bengali, French, Russian, Portuguese, German, and Punjabi, each with over 100 million native speakers; many others are small and in danger of extinction. In total, 46% of the world's population (3.2 billion people) speaks an ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Roman Republic
The Roman Republic ( la, Res publica Romana ) was a form of government of Rome and the era of the classical Roman civilization when it was run through public representation of the Roman people. Beginning with the overthrow of the Roman Kingdom (traditionally dated to 509 BC) and ending in 27 BC with the establishment of the Roman Empire, Rome's control rapidly expanded during this period—from the city's immediate surroundings to hegemony over the entire Mediterranean world. Roman society under the Republic was primarily a cultural mix of Latin and Etruscan societies, as well as of Sabine, Oscan, and Greek cultural elements, which is especially visible in the Roman Pantheon. Its political organization developed, at around the same time as direct democracy in Ancient Greece, with collective and annual magistracies, overseen by a senate. The top magistrates were the two consuls, who had an extensive range of executive, legislative, judicial, military, and religious powers ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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