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Old Italic alphabet
Old Italic refers to several now extinct alphabet systems used on the Italian Peninsula in ancient times for various Indo-European|Indo-European languages (predominantly Italic languages|Italic) and non-Indo-European (e.g. Etruscan language|Etruscan) languages. The alphabets derive from the Euboean Greek Cumaean alphabet, used at Ischia and Cumae in the Bay of Naples in the eighth century BC.
Various Indo-European languages belonging to the Italic languages|Italic branch (Faliscan language|Faliscan and members of the Sebellian (language)|Sebellian group, including Oscan, Umbrian, and South Picene, and other Indo-European branches such as Venetic and Messapic) originally used the alphabet. Faliscan, Oscan, Umbrian, North Picene, and South Picene all derive from an Etruscan form of the alphabet.
The Germanic languages|Germanic runic alphabet was most likely derived from one of these alphabets in about the 2nd century.
Etruscan alphabet
It is not clear whether the process of adaptation from the Greek alphabet took place in Italy from the first colony of Greeks, the city of Cumae, or in Greece/Asia Minor. It was in any case a Western Greek alphabet. In the alphabets of the West, X had the help:IPA|sound value , Ψ stood for ; in Etruscan: X = , Ψ = or (Rix 202-209).
The earliest Etruscan ''abecedarium,'' the Marsiliana d'Albegna (near Grosseto) tablet which dates to c. 700 BC, lists 26 letters corresponding to contemporary forms of the Greek alphabet which retained San (letter)|san and qoppa but which had not yet developed omega.
See also
- Cumae alphabet
- Negau helmet
- Alphabets of Asia Minor
External links
- Etruscan Texts Project: A searchable online database of Etruscan inscriptions.
- Old Italic Unicode
- The Etruscan alphabet (Omniglot)
- Old Italic alphabets (Omniglot)
- Etruscan (Ancient Scripts)
- Oscan (Ancient Scripts)
- Unicode Fonts
Category:Etruscan language
Category:Palaeography
Category:Latin alphabet
Category:Greek alphabet
Related Images- Comparison of the Western Greek alphabet with archaic and classical Etruscan variants.
Sources: StartLearningNow, Wikipedia | Usage license: GNU FDL
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