Rhaetic orRaetic (/ˈriːtɪk/), also known asRhaetian,[3] was aTyrsenian language spoken in the ancient region ofRhaetia 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,[4][2] in two variants of theOld Italic scripts.[5] Rhaetic is largely accepted as being closely related toEtruscan.[6]
The ancient Rhaetic language is not to be confused with the modernRomance languages of the same Alpine region, known asRhaeto-Romance.
Tyrrhenian language family tree as proposed by de Simone and Marchesini (2013)[7]
The German linguistHelmut Rix proposed in 1998 that Rhaetic, along withEtruscan, was a member of a language family he calledTyrrhenian, and which was possibly influenced by neighboring Indo-European languages.[8][9]Robert S. P. Beekes likewise does not consider it Indo-European.[10]Howard Hayes Scullard (1967), on the contrary, suggested it to be anIndo-European language, with links toIllyrian andCeltic.[11] Nevertheless, most scholars now think that Rhaetic is closely related to Etruscan within the Tyrrhenian grouping.[12]
Rix's Tyrsenian family is supported by a number of linguists such as Stefan Schumacher,[13][14]Carlo De Simone,[15] Norbert Oettinger,[16] Simona Marchesini,[7] andRex E. Wallace.[17] Common features between Etruscan, Rhaetic, andLemnian have been observed inmorphology,phonology, andsyntax. 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.[4][18] The Tyrsenian family (or Common Tyrrhenic) is often considered to bePaleo-European and topredate the arrival of Indo-European languages in southern Europe.[19][20][21]
In 2004L. 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 thegrammatical voices of past tenses or in the endings of malegentilicia. Around 600 BC, the Rhaeti became isolated from the Etruscan area, probably by the Celts, thus limiting contacts between the two languages.[12] 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 theFritzens-Sanzeno culture, in continuity with late Bronze Age culture and early Iron AgeLaugen-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.[22]Helmut Rix dated the end of the Proto-Tyrsenian period to the last quarter of the2nd millennium BC.[23]Carlo De Simone and Simona Marchesini have proposed a much earlier date, placing the Tyrsenian language split before theBronze Age.[24][25] This would provide one explanation for the low number of lexical correspondences.[4]*
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 theFritzens-Sanzeno andMagrè cultures.[4] 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.[citation needed]
... adjoining these (theNoricans) are theRhaeti andVindelici. All are divided into several states.[a] The Rhaeti are believed to be people of Etruscan race[b] driven out by theGauls; their leader was named Rhaetus.[26]
Pliny's comment on a leader namedRhaetus is typical of mythologized origins of ancient peoples, and not necessarily reliable. The name of the Venetic goddessReitia has commonly been discerned in the Rhaetic finds, but the two names do not seem to be linked. The spelling asRaet- is found in inscriptions, whileRhaet- was used in Roman manuscripts; it is unclear whether thisRh represents an accurate transcription of anaspiratedR in Rhaetic, or is merely an error.[citation needed]
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/.
^Schumacher, Stefan; Kluge, Sindy (2013–2017). Salomon, Corinna (ed.). "Thesaurus Inscriptionum Raeticarum". Department of Linguistics. of the University of Vienna
^Wallace 2010, pp. 97–102:Etruscan origins lie in the distant past. Despite the claim by Herodotus, who wrote that Etruscans migrated to Italy from Lydia in the eastern Mediterranean, there is no material or linguistic evidence to support this. Etruscan material culture developed in an unbroken chain from Bronze Age antecedents. As for linguistic relationships, Lydian is an Indo-European language. Lemnian, which is attested by a few inscriptions discovered near Kamania on the island of Lemnos, was a dialect of Etruscan introduced to the island by commercial adventurers. Linguistic similarities connecting Etruscan with Raetic, a language spoken in the sub-Alpine regions of northeastern Italy, further militate against the idea of eastern origins.
^Beekes 2011, p. 26: It seems improbable thatRhaetic (spoken from Lake Garda to the Inn valley) is Indo-European, as it appears to contain Etruscan elements.
^Sindy, Kluge; Corinna, Salomon; Stefan, Schumacher (2013–2018)."Raetica".Thesaurus Inscriptionum Raeticarum. Department of Linguistics, University of Vienna. Retrieved26 July 2018.
^Harding 2014, p. 1912: Italy was home to a number of languages in the Iron Age, some of them clearly Indo-European (Latin being the most obvious, although this was merely the language spoken in the Roman heartland, that is, Latium, and other languages such as Italic, Venetic or Ligurian were also present), while the centre-west and northwest were occupied by the people we call Etruscans, who spoke a language which was non-Indo-European and presumed to represent an ethnic and linguistic stratum which goes far back in time, perhaps even to the occupants of Italy prior to the spread of farming.
^Marzatico 2019: Se resta il fatto che la documentazione archeologica smentisce in tutta evidenza un rapporto filogenetico fra Etruschi e Reti, visti anche fenomeni di continuità come nell’ambito della produzione vascolare di boccali di tradizione Luco/Laugen (fig. 8), non è escluso che la percezione di prossimità esistenti fra la lingua e la scrittura delle due entità etniche possano avere indotto eruditi del tempo a costruite "a tavolino" un rapporto di parentela. (...)
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