Raetic language

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For the modern Romance languages spoken in Switzerland and North-Eastern Italy, see Rhaeto-Romance languages.

Raetic or Rhaetic is a largely obscure language of antiquity, which used to be spoken in the province of Raetia, in the Eastern Alps, to the north and west of Venetic. It is sparsely attested, in inscriptions in various northern developments of the Etruscan alphabet, leaving room for much speculation on its ancestry. For a research history, see Schumacher (1992) and Schumacher (1998) and Morandi (1999) for editions of the inscriptions. All recent authorities have stressed a connection with Etruscan (Rix 1998, Schumacher 1998).

In his Natural History (1st century AD), Pliny wrote about Alpine peoples:

adjoining these (the Noricans) are the Raeti and Vindelici. All are divided into a number of states. The Raeti are believed to be people of Tuscan race driven out by the Gauls; their leader was named Raetus.

Based on this information and Raetian inscriptions it is clear that Raetic is related to Etruscan. Indeed in the usual classification the two are often grouped with Lemnian in the Aegean to form the wider Tyrsenian language family. This is itself usually taken to be an isolate family not demonstrably related to any other known language family - i.e. Raetic is not an Indo-European language. Nonetheless, establishing languages as extinct isolates is rather uncertain and others have proposed to link Tyrsenian with the Anatolian branch of Indo-European.

Raetic became extinct by the 3rd century, after the speakers were assimilated and adopted Latin (in the south) and German (in the north). Many inscriptions are known, but most of them are only fairly repetitive and short, probably mostly votive texts. The name of the Venetic goddess Reitia has commonly been discerned in the Raetic finds, but the two names do not seem to be linked.

References

Morandi, Alessandro. (1999). Il cippo di Castelciès nell’epigrafia retica (Studia archaeologica, 103). Rome: Bretschneider
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 (Innsbrucker Beiträge zur Sprachwissenschaft; Vorträge und kleinere Schriften, 68). Innsbruck: Institut für Sprachwissenschaft der Universität Innsbruck.
Schumacher, Stefan. (1992). Die rätischen Inschriften. Geschichte und heutiger Stand der Forschung (Innsbrucker Beiträge zur Kulturwissenschaft; Sonderheft, 79). Innsbruck: Institut für Sprachwissenschaft der Universität Innsbruck, 2nd ed. 2004.
Schumacher, Stefan. (1998). 'Sprachliche Gemeinsamkeiten zwischen Rätisch und Etruskisch'. Der Schlern 72.90-114.

External links

Raetic inscriptions Adolfo Zavaroni.

Raetic language

References

External links

See also