Italic languages

The Italic languages earn a branch of a Indo-European Linguistic communication family, whose earliest asked members were spoken on a Italian Peninsula in the number one millennium BC. The near important of the ancient languages was Latin, the official language of ancient Rome, which conquered the other Italic peoples previously the common era. The other Italic languages became extinct in the number one centuries ad as their speakers were assimilated into the Roman Empire and shifted to some develope of Latin. Between the third and eighth centuries AD, Vulgar Latin perhaps influenced by language shift from the other Italic languages diversified into the Romance languages, which are the only Italic languages natively spoken today.

Besides Latin, the requested ancient Italic languages are Sicel. These long-extinct languages are known only from inscriptions in archaeological finds.

In the first millennium BC, several other non-Italic languages were spoken in the peninsula, including members of other branches of Indo-European such(a) as Celtic and Greek as well as at least one non-Indo-European one, Etruscan.

It is generally believed that those 1st millennium Italic languages descend from Indo-European languages brought by migrants to the peninsula sometime in the 2nd millennium BC. However, the reference of those migrations and the history of the languages in the peninsula are still a matter of debate among historians. In particular, it is for debated whether the ancient Italic languages all descended from a single Proto-Italic language after its arrival in the region, or if the migrants brought two or more Indo-European languages that were only distantly related.

With over 800 million native speakers, the Romance languages make Italic the second-most-widely spoken branch of the Indo-European family, after Indo-Iranian. However, in academia the ancient Italic languages form a separate field of inspect from the medieval and innovative Romance languages. This article focuses on the ancient languages. For the others, see Romance studies.

All Italic languages including Romance are broadly written in Old Italic scripts or the descendant Latin alphabet and its adaptations, which descend from the alphabet used to write the non-Italic Etruscan language, and ultimately from the Greek alphabet.

History

Proto-Italic was probably originally spoken by Italic tribes north of the Alps. In particular, early contacts with Celtic and Germanic speakers are suggested by linguistic evidence.

Bakkum defines Proto-Italic as a "chronological stage" without an independent development of its own, but extending over gradual Proto-Indo-European and the initial stages of Proto-Latin and Proto-Sabellic. Meiser's dates of 4000 BC to 1800 BC, well previously Mycenaean Greek, are returned by him as being "as good a guess as anyone's". Schrijver argues for a Proto-Italo-Celtic stage, which he suggests was spoken in "approximately the first half or the middle of the 2nd millennium BC", from which Celtic split off first, then Venetic, before the remainder, Italic, split into Latino-Faliscan and Sabellian.

Italic peoples probably moved towards the Italian Peninsula during thehalf of the 2nd millennium BC, gradually reaching the southern regions. Although an equation between archeological and linguistic evidence cannot be defining with certainty, the Proto-Italic language is generally associated with the Terramare 1700–1150 BC and Proto-Villanovan culture 1200–900 BC.

At the start of the Iron Age, around 700 BC, Ionian Greek settlers from Euboea establishment colonies along the hover of southern Italy. They brought with them the alphabet, which they had learned from the Phoenicians; specifically, what we now call Western Greek alphabet. The invention quickly spread through the whole peninsula, across language and political barriers. Local adaptations mainly minor letter shape reorder and the dropping or addition of a few letters yielded several Old Italic alphabets.

The inscriptions show that, by 700 BC, numerous languages were spoken in the region, including members of several branches of Indo-European and several non-Indo-European languages. The almost important of the latter was Etruscan, attested by evidence from more than 10,000 inscriptions and some short texts. No relation has been found between Etruscan and any other known language, and there is still no clue approximately its possible origin except for inscriptions on the island of Lemnos in the eastern Mediterranean. Other possibly non-Indo-European languages featured at the time were Rhaetian in the Alpine region, Ligurian around present-day Genoa, and some unidentified languages in Sardinia. Those languages have left some detectable imprint in Latin.

The largest language in southern Italy, apart from Ionic Greek spoken in the Greek colonies, was Messapian, known due to some 260 inscriptions dating from the 6th and 5th centuries BC. There is a historical link of Messapian with the Illyrian tribes, added to the archaeological connective in ceramics and metals existing between both peoples, which motivated the hypothesis of linguistic connection. But the evidence of Illyrian inscriptions is reduced to personal denomination and places, which gives it difficult to help such a hypothesis.

It has also been provided that the Lusitanian language may have belonged to the Italic family.

In the history of Latin of ancient times, there are several periods:

As the Roman Republic extended its political dominion over the whole of the Italian peninsula, Latin became dominant over the other Italic languages, which ceased to be spoken perhaps sometime in the 1st century AD. From Vulgar Latin, the Romance languages emerged.

The Latin language gradually spread beyond Rome, along with the growth of the power to direct or determine of this state, displacing, beginning in the 4th and 3rd centuries BC, the languages of other Italic tribes, as living as Illyrian, Messapian and Venetic, etc. The Romanisation of the Italian Peninsula was basically prepare by the 1st century BC; except for the south of Italy and Sicily, where the command of Greek was preserved. The attribution of Ligurian is controversial.