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Old Italic refers to several now extinct alphabet systems used on the Italian Peninsula in ancient times for various Indo-European (predominantly Italic) and non-Indo-European (e.g. Etruscan) languages. The alphabets derive from Euboean Greek Cumaean alphabet, used at Ischia and Cumae in the Bay of Naples in the eighth century BC. Cumaean, in turn showed strong similarities to the Phoenician alphabet, lending support to theories of Phoenician influence in the West-Central Mediterranean region.
The Germanic runic alphabet was most likely derived from one of these alphabets in about the 2nd century.
The Etruscan alphabet
Image:Etruscan cippus warrior head side.jpg Etruscan cippus (grave marker) from the necropolis Crocifisso del Tufo outside Orvieto, Italy, side view showing the inscription in the Old Italic (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 sound value [ks], Ψ stood for [kʰ]; in Etruscan: X = [s], Ψ = [kʰ] or [kχ] (Rix 202-209).
Image:Etruscan alphabet.png Comparison of the Western Greek alphabet with archaic and classical Etruscan variants. Until about 600 BC, the archaic form of the Etruscan alphabet remained practically unchanged, and the direction of writing was free. From the 6th century, however, evolutions of the alphabet took place, guided by the phonology of the Etruscan language, and letters representing phonemes nonexistent in Etruscan were dropped. By 400 BC, it appears that all of Etruria was using the classical Etruscan alphabet of 20 letters, mostly written from left to right:
An additional sign, in shape similar to the numeral 8, Image:EtruscanF-02.png transcribed as F, was present in both Lydian and Etruscan (Jensen 513). Its origin is disputed; it may have been an altered B or H or an ex novo creation (Rix 202). Its sound value was /f/ and it replaced the Etruscan FH. Some letters were, on the other hand, falling out of use: B and D were apparently considered superfluous over P and T. K was dropped in favour of G (also transcribed as C). O disappeared and was replaced by U. In the course of its simplification, the redundant letters showed some tendency towards a syllabary: C, K and Q were predominantly used in the contexts CE, KA, QU. This classical alphabet remained in use until the 2nd century BC when it began to be contaminated by the rise of the Latin alphabet. Soon after the Etruscan language itself became extinct. The Oscan alphabetThe Osci probably adopted the archaic Etruscan alphabet during the 7th century BC, but a recognizably Oscan variant of the alphabet is attested only from the 5th century BC; its sign inventory extended over the classical Etruscan alphabet by the introduction of long vowel variants of I and U, transcribed as Í and Ú. U came to be used to represent Oscan o, while Ú was used for actual Oscan u.
Alphabet of LuganoThe "Alphabet of Lugano" was used to record Lepontic inscriptions, among the oldest testimonies of any Celtic language, in use from the 7th to the 5th centuries BC. The alphabet has 17 letters, derived from the archaic Etruscan alphabet:
The alphabet does not distinguish voiced and unvoiced occlusives, i.e. P represents /b/ or /p/, T is for /t/ or /d/, K for /g/ or /k/. Z is probably for /ts/. U /u/ and V /w/ are distinguished. Θ is probably for /t/ and X for /g/. There are claims of a related script discovered in Glozel. Raetic alphabetsThe alphabet of Sanzeno (also, of Bolzano), about 100 Raetic inscriptions. The alphabet of Sondrio, west Raetian and Camunic inscriptions. The alphabet of Magrè, east Raetian inscriptions. Alphabet of EsteSimilar but not identical to that of Magrè, Venetic inscriptions. Latin alphabetImage:Duenos inscription.jpg Duenos inscription, 6th century BC 21 of the 26 archaic Etruscan letters were adopted for Old Latin from the 7th century BC, either directly from the Cumae alphabet, or via archaic Etruscan forms, compared to the classical Etruscan alphabet retaining B, D, K, O, Q, X but dropping Θ, Ś, Φ, Ψ, F (Etruscan U is Latin V, Etruscan V is Latin F).
UnicodeUnicode range U+10300–U+1033F is reserved for "Old Italic" without specification of a particular alphabet (i.e. the Old Italic alphabets are considered equivalent, and the font used will determine the variant).
See also
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