Etruscan Alphabet

The Etruscan alphabet was the Alphabet used by the Étrusques to note their language. It comprises 26 letters (in the model of alphabet) of which four are never used in Etruscan ( B C D O ).

History

Origin

The Etruscan alphabet draws its origin from the Greek alphabet, but one is unaware of if the adaptation took place in the Greek colonies of Italy or in Greece, even in Asia Mineure. It is probable that it is about the Greek colony of Ischia (then Pithékuses), opposite Cumes, in the middle of seventh century BC. In all the cases, it was about a Western Greek alphabet, where “X” was pronounced and “Ψ”; in Etruscan, “X” was pronounced, “Ψ” or.

The Etruscan texts oldest are Abécédaire S. the most known example is the alphabet of Marsiliana d' Albegna (close to Grosseto,), comprising 26 letters including 5 vowels, 22 Greek letters of origin phenician and 4 letters suitable for the Greek alphabet. The san and the Koppa are preserved, but the Oméga does not appear there yet. The alphabetical one is written from right to left and reveals the following letters:

Φ Χ Υ Τ Σ Ρ ϟ Ϻ Π Ο Ξ Ψ Ν Μ Λ Κ Ι Θ Η Ζ Ϝ Ε Δ Γ Β Α

Traditional Etruscan

Until worms 600 av. J. - C., the antiquated form of the Etruscan alphabet remained practically unchanged and the direction of writing was free. Starting from the VI E, evolutions appeared, guided by the phonology of the Etruscan, and the letters representing of the non-existent phonemes in Etruscan were abandoned.

In 400 av. J. - C., it seems that all Étrurie used a traditional Etruscan alphabet of 20 letters, writes mainly from left to right:

ACEVZHΘILMNPŚRSTUΦΨF

The following modifications were made:

B and D was forsaken, the corresponding sounds not existing in Etruscan which was unaware of the sound consonants (they will be re-used by the Romans which needed some to transcribe the sounds of Latin);
K was also forsaken, except front has, as in Latin KALENDAE (Calendes), and in the septentrional cities of Étrurie;
O disappears, replaced by U/Y (delivery or);
the letters Χ and Ϻ are not used any more;
an additional graphème, whose form resembles figure 8 current, is used for the Consonne F.

This traditional alphabet remained of topicality until worms it where it started to be competed with by the Latin alphabet. The Etruscan died out shortly after.

Alphabet

The table below presents the Etruscan alphabets antiquated and traditional, thus the equivalent letters in the Greek alphabets and Latin (when they exist) and the reconstituted pronunciation:

Punctuation

The Etruscan alphabet used two kinds of Ponctuation S:

the external Punctuation: it is used to separate the Phrase S and the Mot S;
the punctuation interns being, as its name indicates it, inside the words. Its significance was not clearly defined yet.

Data-processing coding

Unicode includes a block “old italic” - U+10300 with U+1033F - which, although not being properly Etruscan, contains characters which come from it directly. The creators of font faces are thus inspired mainly antiquated Latin inscriptions, which use the last stage of the Etruscan letters. Coded in-outside basic multilingual plan, these characters are not easily displayable.

See too

Internal bonds

External bonds

the alphabet and the language Etruscans (Jean-Paul Thuillier, professor with the National university)
sound Etruscan Alphabet

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