Italic languages

The Italic languages are a group of languages that belong to the larger Indo-European language family. The earliest known Italic languages were spoken on the Italian Peninsula over 3,000 years ago. The most important ancient Italic language was Latin, the official language of ancient Rome. As Rome grew in power, it conquered many other groups of people on the peninsula known as the Italic peoples, and these groups gradually stopped speaking their own languages and began using Latin instead.

Over time, the ancient Italic languages besides Latin disappeared. Their speakers became part of the Roman Empire and started speaking Latin. Between the third and eighth centuries after the birth of Jesus, common everyday Latin, known as Vulgar Latin, changed and evolved into what we now call the Romance languages. These are the only Italic languages still spoken today by native speakers, and they include languages such as Spanish, French, Italian, Portuguese, and Romanian. Another form of Latin, called Literary Latin, continued to be used in writing and formal settings.

Besides Latin, other ancient Italic languages included Faliscan, Umbrian, Oscan, and South Picene. These languages are known only from inscriptions found by archaeologists. They are very old and no one speaks them anymore. There were also other languages on the Italian Peninsula that were not Italic, such as Etruscan, Celtic, and Greek.

Today, with over 900 million speakers, the Romance languages make Italic the second-most spoken branch of the Indo-European language family. These languages are usually written using versions of the Latin alphabet, which came from an alphabet used to write the Etruscan language and was itself based on the Greek alphabet. Some languages, like Judaeo-Spanish and certain forms of Romanian, use different writing systems.

History of the concept

People who study old languages looked at the languages from the Italian peninsula. They saw that these languages were different from Greek, Celtic, or Germanic languages. They thought these languages might all be one group. Antoine Meillet started this idea.

Some scholars, like Alois Walde and Giacomo Devoto, thought these languages were two groups. This idea was popular in the middle of the last century, but many still think they were all one group. Today, most experts agree with the first idea.

Classification

This classification was suggested by Michiel de Vaan in 2008 and is mostly accepted.

The main group is Proto-Italic, which includes several ancient languages. One branch is Venetic, spoken long ago. Another branch is Latino-Faliscan, which includes early forms of Faliscan and Latin. Old Latin developed into Classical Latin, which later evolved into Vulgar Latin. Vulgar Latin eventually led to the Romance languages, which are the only Italic languages still spoken today. These include French, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, and Romanian, among others.

The Sabellic group includes languages like Umbrian and Oscan, spoken by ancient peoples in Italy. Other possible Italic languages are Siculian and Lusitanian, but their classification is uncertain.

History

Proto-Italic period

Main article: Proto-Italic

Proto-Italic was likely first spoken by Italic tribes north of the Alps. Early contacts with speakers of Celtic and Germanic languages are suggested by language clues.

The Italic peoples probably moved toward the Italian Peninsula during the second half of the second millennium BC. The Proto-Italic language is often linked with the Terramare and Proto-Villanovan culture.

Languages of Italy in the Iron Age

Around 700 BC, Ionian Greek settlers from Euboea set up colonies along the coast of southern Italy. They brought an alphabet they had learned from the Phoenicians, which quickly spread across the whole peninsula. This led to several Old Italic alphabets.

By 700 BC, many languages were spoken in the region, including several Indo-European and non-Indo-European languages. The most important non-Indo-European language was Etruscan, known from thousands of inscriptions. Other languages included Rhaetian in the Alpine region, Ligurian near present-day Genoa, and some unidentified languages in Sardinia.

Timeline of Latin

Latin went through several periods. In the early days, we have inscriptions and fragments of old laws and songs. The pre-classical period saw the growth of literary Latin based on Rome’s dialect. The classical period, lasting until about AD 17, was a golden age of literature with writers like Cicero, Caesar, and Virgil. The silver Latin period lasted until AD 180 and included works by Juvenal and Tacitus.

As the Roman Republic grew, Latin became the main language across the Italian peninsula, replacing other Italic languages by the 1st century AD. From Vulgar Latin, the Romance languages later developed.

Origin theories

The main debate about where the Italic languages came from is similar to debates about the origins of Greek. We don’t have early records to help us understand Italic languages like we do for Mycenaean Greek.

What we know about languages in Italy comes from inscriptions made after the alphabet was introduced around 700 BC, and from later Greek and Roman writers. The oldest known examples are from Umbrian and Faliscan inscriptions from the 7th century BC. Their alphabets came from the Etruscan alphabet, which itself came from the Western Greek alphabet. We don’t have reliable information about languages spoken before this time.

Some experts think there may not have been a single “Proto-Italic” language that later split into different Italic languages. Instead, they suggest that the languages of Italy came from two or more different languages that each came from Indo-European in the distant past and entered Europe at different times or through different paths. This idea comes from the difficulty in finding a common home for Italic languages in prehistoric times. Some shared features might just be due to languages influencing each other over a long time, as suggested in the Italo-Celtic hypothesis.^{[undue weight? – discuss]}

Characteristics

The Italic languages, spoken in ancient Italy, had special sounds and word patterns. For example, in Oscan, an old language, some sounds stayed the same as in very old words, unlike in Latin.

One big feature of these languages is how they changed certain sounds from ancient times. In the middle of words, these sounds changed in special ways in Latin and other Italic languages. The sounds stayed the same in some places but shifted in others.

In grammar, Italic languages shared some new ways of forming words, like adding endings to show past actions or creating special verb forms. These shared features help experts see that these languages were related.

Italic languages also kept many old words and sound patterns, making them careful compared to other ancient languages. They shared some words and patterns especially with Celtic and Germanic languages. The way these languages handled certain sounds helped divide them into two groups: one where a specific sound became "p" and another where it stayed as "qu".