Rhaetic

Rhaetic
Raetic
Bronze plate from Demlfeld, near Ampass (Innsbruck, Austria) written in Sanzeno script. From the turn of the fifth century BC
Native to	Ancient Rhaetia
Region	Eastern Alps, Italy, Austria, Switzerland, Germany, Slovenia
Ethnicity	Rhaetian people
Era	5th–1st centuries BC
Language family	Tyrsenian Rhaetic
Language codes
ISO 639-3	xrr
Linguist List	xrr
Glottolog	raet1238
ELP	Template:Endangered Languages Project
Linguasphere	Template:Infobox language/lingualist
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Rhaetic or Raetic (/ˈraɪtɪk/), also known as Rhaetian, was a Tyrsenian language spoken in the ancient region of Rhaetia in the eastern Alps in pre-Roman and Roman times. It is documented by around 280 texts dated from the 5th through 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

File:Common Tyrrhenic model.svg

Tyrrhenian language family tree as proposed by de Simone and Marchesini (2013)

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, with links to Illyrian and Celtic. 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, Norbert Oettinger, Simona Marchesini, and Rex E. Wallace. Common features between Etruscan, Rhaetic, and Lemnian have been observed in morphology, phonology, and syntax. 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.

History

In 2004 L. Bouke van der Meer proposed that Rhaetic could have developed from Etruscan from around 900 BC or even earlier, and no later than 700 BC, since divergences are already present in the oldest Etruscan and Rhaetic inscriptions, such as in the grammatical voices of past tenses or in the endings of male gentilicia. Around 600 BC, 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. Carlo De Simone 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.*

File:Retic culture and inscriptions.jpg

Retic culture and inscriptions

The language is documented in Northern Italy between the 5th and the 1st centuries BC 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.

Writing

Rhaetic was written using two varieties of the Etruscan alphabet: the Sanzeno and Magrè alphabets. They were almost identical except for the writing of a few characters. Generally, in the Sanzeno alphabet, pi is written with two lines, lambda and upsilon are pointed down, and heta uses two horizontal lines. In the Magrè alphabet, pi uses three lines, lambda and upsilon are pointed up, and heta uses three horizontal lines. Additionally, alpha, phi, tau, and the letter for the dental affricate are written differently. Besides characters, the two alphabets also differ slightly in punctuation. Word separation is sometimes seen in Sanzeno texts, but never seen in Magrè texts.

Magrè was more commonly used to write Rhaetic than Sanzeno. The vast majority of Sanzeno texts are from far northern Italy, and only from the 4th and 5th centuries BC. Magrè texts however have been found from northern Italy to southern Germany, and cover the entire known time Rhaetic was spoken.

The origins of Rhaetic's alphabets are ultimately unknown, but they seem to have been adopted through Venetic. The punctuation and the direction certain letters face in Magrè, as well as Magrè's use in close vicinity to Venetic, suggest some sort of relationship between them. Sanzeno, however, retains many traditional Etruscan writing traditions. Both alphabets use a unique letter for the dental affricate however, something that Etruscan's zeta could have provided if Etruscan was the source of either of the Rhaetic alphabets. In Venetic however, zeta is rarely used, suggesting it as the more likely source of the Rhaetic alphabets. It is still unknown whether the two alphabets share a common origin or if they developed independently of each other, and to what degree if they did.

Rhaetic alphabets

	alpha	epsilon	wau	zeta	heta	theta	iota	kappa	lambda	mu	nu	pi	san	rho	sigma	tau	/ts/	upsilon	phi	chi
Sanzeno	File:Rhaetic m alpha.png	File:Greek Epsilon 04.svg	File:Greek Digamma oblique.svg	(none)	File:Greek Eta diagonal-2-bars.svg	File:Greek Chi normal.svg	File:Greek Iota normal.svg	File:Greek Kappa left.svg	File:Greek Lambda Athenian.svg	File:Greek Mu 04.svg	File:Greek Nu 01.svg	File:Greek Lambda Gamma-shaped.svg	File:Greek San straight.svg	File:Phoenician daleth.svg	File:Greek Sigma Z-shaped.svg	File:Greek Lambda Gamma-shaped.svg	File:Arrow-up-line.svg	File:Greek Upsilon 07.svg	File:Greek Phi 08.svg	File:Greek Chi 03.svg
Magrè	File:Greek Alpha 06.svg			File:Rhaetic zeta.png	File:Greek Eta 08.svg				File:Greek Lambda Gamma-shaped.svg			File:Greek Rho pointed.svg				File:Rhaetic m tau 1.pngFile:Rhaetic m tau 2.png	File:Rhaetic dental affricate.png	File:Greek Upsilon 07.svg	File:Rhaetic m phi.png

As of April 2020, there are 389 total inscriptions listed in the Thesaurus Inscriptionum Raeticarum's corpus. Of these, only 112 have been positively identified as Rhaetic. 177 have only two characters or less, and many have not been transliterated.

Phonology

Our understanding of Rhaetic phonology is quite uncertain, and the working hypothesis is that it is very similar to Etruscan phonology.

Vowels

It appears that Rhaetic, like Etruscan, had a four-vowel system: /a/, /i/, /e/, /u/.

Consonants

Unlike Etruscan, Rhaetic does not seem to have the distinction between aspirated and non-aspirated stops. Consonant phonemes attested in Rhaetic include a dental (or palatal) affricate /ts/, dental sibilant /s/, palatal sibilant /ʃ/, nasals /n/, /m/ and liquids /r/, /l/.

Morphology

Nouns

The following cases are attested in Rhaetic:

• Nominative/Accusative: No ending
• Genitive: Ending -s
• Pertinentive (locative to the genitive): Endings -si and -(a-)le
• Locative: Ending -i (uncertainly attested)
• Ablative: Ending -s

For plural, the ending -r(a) is attested.

Verbs

Two verbal suffixes have been identified, both known from Etruscan:

• -ke is the 3rd person preterite ending
• -u is the suffix that derives verbal nouns from preterite forms.

See also

• Rhaetian people
• Rhaetic alphabets
• Fritzens-Sanzeno culture
• Etruscan language
• Etruscan civilization
• Tyrsenian languages
• Camunic language
• Iceman (2017 film)

Sources

• Beekes, Robert Stephen Paul (2011). Comparative Indo-European Linguistics: An Introduction (2nd ed.). Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing. ISBN 9789027211859.
• de Simone, Carlo (2009). "La nuova iscrizione tirsenica di Efestia" [The New Tyrsenic Inscription of Hephaistia]. In Archontidou, Aglaia; de Simone, Carlo; Greco, Emmanuele (eds.). Gli scavi di Efestia e la nuova iscrizione 'tirsenica'. Tripodes (in italiano). Vol. 11. pp. 3–58.
• de Simone, Carlo; Marchesini, Simona, eds. (2013). "La lamina di Demlfeld". Mediterranea. Quaderni annuali dell'Istituto di Studi sulle Civiltà italiche e del Mediterraneo antico del Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche (in italiano). Supplemento 8. Pisa/Roma: Fabrizio Serra Editore. ISSN 1827-0506.
• Haarmann, Harald (2014). "Ethnicity and Language in the Ancient Mediterranean". In McInerney, Jeremy (ed.). A Companion to Ethnicity in the Ancient Mediterranean. Chichester, UK: John Wiley & Sons, Inc. pp. 17–33. doi:10.1002/9781118834312.ch2. ISBN 9781444337341.
• Harding, Anthony H. (2014). "The later prehistory of Central and Northern Europe". In Renfrew, Colin; Bahn, Paul (eds.). The Cambridge World Prehistory. Vol. 3. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
• Marchesini, Simona (2013). "I rapporti etrusco/retico-italici nella prima Italia alla luce dei dati linguistici: il caso della "mozione" etrusca". Rivista storica dell'antichità (in italiano). 43. Bologna: Pàtron editore: 9–32. ISSN 0300-340X.
• Marchesini, Simona (2018). "Raetic". Mnamon - Ancient Writing Systems in the Mediterranean. Translated by Rockenhaus, Melanie. Scuola Normale Superiore. Retrieved 26 July 2018.
• Marchesini, Simona (2019). "L'onomastica nella ricostruzione del lessico: il caso di Retico ed Etrusco". Mélanges de l'École française de Rome: Antiquité (in italiano). 131 (1). Rome: École française de Rome: 123–136. doi:10.4000/mefra.7613. ISBN 978-2-7283-1428-7. S2CID 214398787. Retrieved January 31, 2020.
• Marzatico, Franco (2019). "I Reti e i popoli delle Alpi orientali". Preistoria Alpina (in italiano). 49bis. Trento: MUSE-Museo delle Scienze: 73–82. ISSN 2035-7699.
• Mellaart, James (1975). The Neolithic of the Near East. World of Archeology. New York: Scribner. ISBN 9780684144832.
• Morandi, Alessandro (1999). "Il cippo di Castelciès nell'epigrafia retica". Studia archaeologica. 103. Rome: Bretschneider.
• Oettinger, Norbert (2010). "Seevölker und Etrusker". In Cohen, Yoram; Gilan, Amir; Miller, Jared L. (eds.). Pax Hethitica Studies on the Hittites and their Neighbours in Honour of Itamar Singer (in Deutsch). Wiesbaden: Otto Harrassowitz Verlag. pp. 233–246. ISBN 978-3-447-06119-3.
• 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
• Rix, Helmut (1998). Rätisch und Etruskisch [Rhaetian & Etruscan]. Vorträge und kleinere Schriften (in Deutsch). Innsbruck: Innsbrucker Beiträge zur Sprachwissenschaft: Institut für Sprachwissenschaft der Universität Innsbruck.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: publisher location (link)
• Rix, Helmut (2008). "Etruscan". In Woodard, Roger D. (ed.). The Ancient Languages of Europe. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. pp. 141–164. doi:10.1017/CBO9780511486814.010. ISBN 9780511486814.
• Roncador, Rosa; Marchesini, Simona (2015). Monumenta Linguae Raeticae. Rome: Scienze e Lettere.
• Salomon, Corinna (2020). "Rético" [Raetic]. Palaeohispanica. Revista sobre lenguas y culturas de la Hispania Antigua (20): 263–298. doi:10.36707/palaeohispanica.v0i20.380. ISSN 1578-5386.
• Tomezzoli, Giancarlo (2001). "About Two Magre-Rhaetic Inscriptions in the Civic Natural History Museum in Verona" (PDF). Origin of the Slovenes. Proceedings of the First International Topical Conference the Veneti within the Ethnogenesys of the Central-European Population.: 182–187.
• Schumacher, Stefan (1998). "Sprachliche Gemeinsamkeiten zwischen Rätisch und Etruskisch". Der Schlern (in Deutsch). 72: 90–114.
• Schumacher, Stefan (1999). "Die Raetischen Inschriften: Gegenwärtiger Forschungsstand, spezifische Probleme und Zukunfstaussichten". I Reti / Die Räter, Atti del simposio 23-25 settembre 1993, Castello di Stenico, Trento, Archeologia delle Alpi, a cura di G. Ciurletti. F. Marzatico Archaoalp. pp. 334–369.
• Schumacher, Stefan (2004) [1992]. Die rätischen Inschriften. Geschichte und heutiger Stand der Forschung. Sonderheft (2nd ed.). Innsbruck: Innsbrucker Beiträge zur Kulturwissenschaft: Institut für Sprachwissenschaft der Universität Innsbruck.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: publisher location (link)
• Scullard, HH (1967). The Etruscan Cities and Rome. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.
• Silvestri, M.; Tomezzoli, Giancarlo (2007). "Linguistic Distance between Raetian, Venetic, Latin and Slovenian Language". In Perdih, Anton (ed.). Zbornik pete mednarodne konference Izvor Evropejcev, Ljubljana, 8. in 9. junija (June 8th and 9th), 2007. Ljubljana: Jutro. pp. 184–190.
• Van der Meer, L. Bouke (2004). "Etruscan origins. Language and archaeology". Babesch. 79: 51–57.
• Wallace, Rex E. (2010). "Italy, Languages of". In Gagarin, Michael (ed.). The Oxford Encyclopedia of Ancient Greece and Rome. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press. pp. 97–102. doi:10.1093/acref/9780195170726.001.0001. ISBN 9780195170726.
• Wallace, Rex E. (2018), "Lemnian language", Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Classics, Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, doi:10.1093/acrefore/9780199381135.013.8222, ISBN 978-0-19-938113-5

Further reading

• A. Baruffi, Spirit of Rhaetia: The Call of the Holy Mountains (LiteraryJoint, Philadelphia, PA, 2020), Template:ISBN
• Salomon, Corinna (2017). Raetic: Language, Writing, Epigraphy. Prensas de la Universidad de Zaragoza. ISBN 978-84-16935-03-1.

External links

• Schumacher, Stefan; Kluge, Sindy (2013–2017). Salomon, Corinna (ed.). "Thesaurus Inscriptionum Raeticarum". Department of Linguistics. of the University of Vienna.
• Zavaroni, Adolfo, Rhaetic inscriptions, Tripod.