Rhaetic or Raetic (), also known as Rhaetian, was a language spoken in the ancient region of

Rhaetia Raetia ( ; ; also spelled Rhaetia) was a province of the Roman Empire, named after the Rhaetian people. It bordered on the west with the country of the Helvetii, on the east with Noricum, on the north with Vindelicia, on the south-west with Tr ...

in the eastern Alps in pre-Roman and Roman times. It is documented by around 280 texts dated from the 5th up until the 1st century BC, which were found through northern Italy, southern Germany, eastern Switzerland, Slovenia and western Austria, in two variants of the Old Italic scripts. Rhaetic is largely accepted as being closely related to Etruscan. The ancient Rhaetic language is not to be confused with the modern Romance languages of the same Alpine region, known as Rhaeto-Romance.

Classification

The German linguist Helmut Rix proposed in 1998 that Rhaetic, along with Etruscan, was a member of a language family he called Tyrrhenian, and which was possibly influenced by neighboring Indo-European languages. Robert S. P. Beekes likewise does not consider it Indo-European. Howard Hayes Scullard (1967), on the contrary, suggested it to be an

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, Dutch ...

, with links to Illyrian and

Celtic Celtic, Celtics or Keltic may refer to: Language and ethnicity *pertaining to Celts, a collection of Indo-European peoples in Europe and Anatolia **Celts (modern) *Celtic languages **Proto-Celtic language * Celtic music *Celtic nations Sports Fo ...

. Nevertheless, most scholars now think that Rhaetic is closely related to Etruscan within the Tyrrhenian grouping. Rix's Tyrsenian family is supported by a number of linguists such as Stefan Schumacher,

Carlo De Simone Carlo De Simone (4 March 1885 – 1951) was an officer in the Italian Army during World War II. Biography During most of the East African Campaign, Lieutenant-General De Simone commanded Italian forces in southern Italian Somaliland. However ...

, Norbert Oettinger, Simona Marchesini, or

Rex E. Wallace Rex E. Wallace (born September 13, 1952) is an American linguist and classical scholar specializing in Etruscan language, languages of ancient Italy, epigraphy, historical linguistics. He served as Professor of Classics at University of Massachus ...

. Common features between Etruscan, Rhaetic, and

Lemnian The Lemnian language was spoken on the island of Lemnos, Greece, in the second half of the 6th century BC. It is mainly attested by an inscription found on a funerary stele, termed the Lemnos stele, discovered in 1885 near Kaminia. Fragments of ...

have been observed in morphology, phonology, and

syntax In linguistics, syntax () is the study of how words and morphemes combine to form larger units such as phrases and sentences. Central concerns of syntax include word order, grammatical relations, hierarchical sentence structure ( constituency) ...

. On the other hand, few lexical correspondences are documented, at least partly due to the scanty number of Rhaetic and Lemnian texts and possibly to the early date at which the languages split. 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.Mellaart, James (1975), "The Neolithic of the Near East" (Thames and Hudson)

History

In 2004

L. Bouke van der Meer Lammert Bouke van der Meer (born 1945 in Leeuwarden, Friesland) is a Dutch classicist and classical archaeologist specialized in Etruscology. He studied classics and archaeology at the University of Groningen, and received his Ph.D. from the same ...

proposed that Rhaetic could have developed from Etruscan from around 900 BCE or even earlier, and no later than 700 BCE, since divergences are already present in the oldest Etruscan and Rhaetic inscriptions, such as in the

grammatical voices In linguistics, grammaticality is determined by the conformity to language usage as derived by the grammar of a particular speech variety. The notion of grammaticality rose alongside the theory of generative grammar, the goal of which is to form ...

of past tenses or in the endings of male ''gentilicia''. Around 600 BCE, the Rhaeti became isolated from the Etruscan area, probably by the Celts, thus limiting contacts between the two languages. Such a late datation has not enjoyed consensus, because the split would still be too recent, and in contrast with the archaeological data, the Rhaeti in the second Iron Age being characterized by the Fritzens-Sanzeno culture, in continuity with late Bronze Age culture and early Iron Age Laugen-Melaun culture. The Raeti are not believed, archeologically, to descend from the Etruscans, as well as it is not believed plausible that the Etruscans are descended from the Rhaeti. Helmut Rix dated the end of the Proto-Tyrsenian period to the last quarter of the

2nd millennium BC The 2nd millennium BC spanned the years 2000 BC to 1001 BC. In the Ancient Near East, it marks the transition from the Middle to the Late Bronze Age. The Ancient Near Eastern cultures are well within the historical era: The first half of the mil ...

and Simona Marchesini have proposed a much earlier date, placing the Tyrsenian language split before the Bronze Age. This would provide one explanation for the low number of lexical correspondences. Retic culture and inscriptions

The language is documented in Northern Italy between the 5th and the 1st centuries BCE by about 280 texts, in an area corresponding to the Fritzens-Sanzeno and Magrè cultures. It is clear that in the centuries leading up to Roman imperial times, the Rhaetians had at least come under Etruscan influence, as the Rhaetic inscriptions are written in what appears to be a northern variant of the Etruscan alphabet. The ancient Roman sources mention the Rhaetic people as being reputedly of Etruscan origin, so there may at least have been some ethnic Etruscans who had settled in the region by that time. In his '' Natural History'' (1st century CE), Pliny wrote about Alpine peoples: Pliny's comment on a leader named ''Rhaetus'' is typical of mythologized origins of ancient peoples, and not necessarily reliable. The name of the Venetic goddess '' Reitia'' has commonly been discerned in the Rhaetic finds, but the two names do not seem to be linked. The spelling as ''Raet-'' is found in inscriptions, while ''Rhaet-'' was used in Roman manuscripts; it is unclear whether this ''Rh'' represents an accurate transcription of an aspirated ''R'' in Rhaetic, or is merely an error.

Notes

References

Sources

* * * Prosdocimi, Aldo L. (2003-4). "Sulla formazione dell'alfabeto runico. Promessa di novità documentali forse decisive". ''Archivio per l'Alto Adige'' 97–98.427–440 * * * * * * *

External links

* * . {{Authority control Languages of ancient Italy Tyrsenian languages Unclassified languages of Europe Languages attested from the 1st millennium BC Languages extinct in the 3rd century