Latino-Faliscan or Latinian languages were a group of Italic languages within the Indo-European family. They were spoken by the Latino-Faliscan people of Italy who lived there from the early 1st millennium BC.
| Latino-Faliscan | |
|---|---|
| Latinian | |
| Geographic distribution | Originally Latium in Italy, then throughout the Roman Empire, especially in the western regions; now also throughout Latin America, Eastern Canada, and many countries in Africa |
| Linguistic classification | Indo-European
|
| Proto-language | Proto-Latino-Faliscan |
| Subdivisions |
|
| Language codes | |
| Glottolog | lati1262 |
 Latino-Faliscan languages and dialects in different shades of blue. | |
Latin and Faliscan belong to the group, as well as Lanuvian and Praenestine, which are sometimes considered dialects of Latin.[1]
Linguistic description
editLatin and Faliscan have several features in common with other Italic languages:
- The late Indo-European diphthong /*eu/ evolved into ou.[2]
- The late Indo-European /*ə/ from vocalic laryngeals evolved into a.[3]
- The Indo-European syllabic liquids /*l̥, *r̥/ developed an epenthetic vowel o, giving Italic ol, or.[4]
- The Indo-European syllabic nasals /*m̥, *n̥/ developed an epenthetic vowel e, giving Italic em, en.[5]
- Word-initial aspirated stops from Indo-European were fricativised: /*bʰ, *dʰ, *gʰ, gʷʰ/ > f, f, h, f.[6]
- The sequence /*p...kʷ/ was assimilated into kʷ...kʷ (Proto-Indo-European *penkʷe 'five' > Latin quinque).[7]
Latin and Faliscan also have characteristics not shared by other branches of Italic. They retain the Indo-European labiovelars /*kʷ, *gʷ/ as qu-, gu- (later becoming velar and semivocal), whereas in Osco-Umbrian they become labial p, b. Latin and Faliscan use the ablative suffix -d, seen in med ("me", ablative), which is absent in Osco-Umbrian. In addition, Latin displays evolution of ou into ū, though this happens later than the Latino-Faliscan era, occurring around the 2nd century BCE (Latin lūna < Proto-Italic *louksnā < PIE *lówksneh₂ "moon").
Phonology
editIt is likely that the consonant inventory of Proto-Latino-Faliscan was basically identical to that of archaic Latin. Consonants not found in the Praeneste fibula are marked with an asterisk.
Labial Alveolar Palatal Velar Labio-
velarGlottal Plosive voiceless *p *t k *kʷ voiced *b d *g *gʷ Fricative f s *h Sonorants *r, *l j *w Nasal m n
The /kʷ/ sound still existed in archaic Latin when the Latin alphabet was developed, since it gives rise to the minimal pair quī /kʷiː/ ("who", nominative) > cuī /ku.iː/ ("to whom", dative). In other positions there is no distinction between diphthongs and hiatuses: for example, persuādere ("to persuade") is a diphthong but sua ("his"/"her") is a hiatus. For reasons of symmetry, it is quite possible that many sequences of gu in archaic Latin in fact represent a voiced labiovelar /gʷ/.[citation needed]
Lanuvian
editPraenestine
editPraenestine or Praenestinian was an archaic form of Latino-Faliscan spoken in eastern Old Latium (modern day Lazio), Italy.[9]
See also
edit
References
edit- 1 2 Sturtevant 1920, p. 66.
- ↑ Bakkum 2008, pp. 61–3.
- ↑ Bakkum 2008, p. 58, 59.
- ↑ Bakkum 2008, p. 64.
- ↑ Bakkum 2008, p. 70.
- ↑ Bakkum 2008, p. 65.
- ↑ Bakkum 2008, p. 69.
- ↑ "Lanuvian". LINGUIST List. Archived from the original on 5 June 2019. Retrieved 2024-12-24.
- ↑ Pei, Mario; Gaynor, Frank (1954). Dictionary of Linguistics. Rowman & Littlefield. p. 173. ISBN 9781442234055.
{{cite book}}: ISBN / Date incompatibility (help)
Sources
edit- Villar, Francisco [in Italian] (1997). Gli Indoeuropei e le origini dell'Europa [Indo-Europeans and the origins of Europe] (in Italian). Bologna, Il Mulino: Il mulino. ISBN 88-15-05708-0.
- Vineis, Edoardo (1995). "X. Latin". In Giacolone Ramat, Anna; Ramat, Paolo (eds.). Las lenguas indoeuropeas [The Indo-European languages] (in Spanish). Madrid: Cátedra. pp. 349–421. ISBN 84-376-1348-5.
- Bakkum, Gabriël C.L.M. (2008). The Latin Dialect of the Ager Faliscus : 150 Years of Scholarship. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press. doi:10.5117/9789056295622 (inactive 1 July 2025). ISBN 978-90-5629-562-2.
{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: DOI inactive as of July 2025 (link) - Sturtevant, E. H. (1920). "The Italic Languages". The Classical Weekly. 14 (9): 66–69. doi:10.2307/4388079. ISSN 1940-641X. JSTOR 4388079.
Further reading
edit- Baldi, Philip (1999). The Foundations of Latin. Berlin; New York: Walter de Gruyter. ISBN 978-3-11-016294-3.
- Clackson, James; Horrocks, Geoffrey (2007). The Blackwell history of the Latin language. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing. ISBN 978-1-4051-6209-8. OCLC 473646442.
- Giacomelli, Roberto. 1979. "Written and spoken language in latin-faliscan and greek-messapic." Journal of Indo-European Studies 7 no. 3–4: 149–75.
- Mercado, Angelo (2012). Italic Verse. Innsbruck: Inst. für Sprachen und Literaturen der Univ. Innsbruck, Bereich Sprachwissenschaft. ISBN 978-3-85124-731-2.
- Palmer, Leonard R. 1961. The Latin language. London: Faber and Faber.
- Joseph, Brian D.; Wallace, Rex E. (1991-01-01). "Is Faliscan a Local Latin Patois?" (PDF). Diachronica. 8 (2): 159–186. doi:10.1075/dia.8.2.02jos. ISSN 0176-4225. Retrieved 2025-11-16.
- Rigobianco, Luca (2019). Faliscan. ISBN 978-84-17873-32-5.
- Rigobianco, Luca (2020-05-01). "Falisco". Palaeohispanica. Revista sobre lenguas y culturas de la Hispania Antigua (in Italian) (20). ISSN 1578-5386. Retrieved 2025-11-16.
External links
edit- "Languages and Cultures of Ancient Italy. Historical Linguistics and Digital Models", Project fund by the Italian Ministry of University and Research (P.R.I.N. 2017)