Old Italic scripts

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Old Italic
An inscription from the Marsiliana tablet, around 700 BC
Script type	Alphabet
Direction	right-to-left script, left-to-right
Related scripts
Parent systems	Phoenician Old Italic
ISO 15924
ISO 15924	Ital, 210 , ​Old Italic (Etruscan, Oscan, etc.)
Unicode
Unicode alias	Old Italic
Unicode range	U+10300–U+1032F[1]
This article contains phonetic transcriptions in the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA). For an introductory guide on IPA symbols, see Help:IPA. For the distinction between [ ], / / and ⟨ ⟩, see IPA § Brackets and transcription delimiters.

The Old Italic scripts are a family of similar ancient writing systems used in the Italian Peninsula between around 700 and 100 BC, for various languages spoken in that time and place.^{[citation needed]} The most notable member is the Etruscan alphabet, which was the immediate ancestor of the Latin alphabet currently used by English and many other languages of the world.^{[citation needed]} The runic alphabets used in northern Europe are believed to have been separately derived from one of these alphabets by the 2nd century AD.^{[citation needed]}

Origins[]

The Old Italic alphabets clearly derive from the Phoenician alphabet, although the precise chain of cultural transmission is unknown.^{[citation needed]} Some scholars argue that the Etruscan alphabet was imported from the Euboean Greek colonies of Cumae and Ischia (Pithekoūsai) in the Gulf of Naples in the 8th century BC; this Euboean alphabet is also called 'Cumaean' (after Cumae), or 'Chalcidian' (after its metropolis Chalcis).^[2] The Cumaean hypothesis is supported by the 1957–58 excavations of Veii by the British School at Rome, which found pieces of Greek pottery indicating that contacts between the Etruscan city of Veii and the Greek colonies of Cumae and Ischia have existed ever since the second half of the 8th century.^[2] Other scholars posit a different hypothetical Western Greek alphabet that was even older than those attested to have given rise to the Etruscan letters.^[2] Whatever the case, the Etruscans added the c, the q and the combination of vh or hv (for /f/) in order to spell sounds that did not exist in Ancient Greek.^[3] The development and usage of their own Greek-derived alphabet arguably marked the end of the Villanovan culture and ushered in the Etruscan Orientalising period.^[3]: 19

As the Etruscans were the leading civilization of Italy in that period, it is widely accepted that they spread their alphabet across the peninsula, and the other Old Italic scripts were derived from theirs.^[3] Scholars provide three reasons: Etruscans and non-Etruscans had strong contacts in the 8th and 7th centuries, surviving inscriptions from other languages appear later (after the end of the 8th century) than the earliest Etruscan ones (first amongst the Umbrians, Faliscans, Latins, and Sabines to the south, in the 6th century also in the Po Valley and amongst the Cisalpine Celtic, Venetic and Raetic tribes), and the letters used in these texts are evidently based on the Etruscan version of the Western Greek alphabet.^[3] However, some of them, including the Latin alphabet, retained certain Greek letters that the Etruscans themselves dropped at a rather early stage.^{[citation needed]}

The Old Italic alphabets were used for various different languages, which included some Indo-European ones (predominantly from the Italic branch, but also in Gaulish and probably in inscriptions interpreted as Proto-Germanic) and some non-Indo-European ones (such as Etruscan itself).^{[citation needed]}

Alphabets related to Etruscan[]

The following table shows the ancient Italic scripts that are presumed^{[by whom?]} to be related to the Etruscan alphabet. Symbols that are assumed to be correspondent are placed on the same column. Many symbols occur with two or more variant forms in the same script; only one variant is shown here. The notations [←] and [→] indicate that the shapes shown were used when writing right-to-left and left-to-right, respectively.

Warning: For the languages marked [?] the appearance of the "Letters" in the table is whatever one's browser's Unicode font shows for the corresponding code points in the Old Italic Unicode block. The same code point represents different symbol shapes in different languages; therefore, to display those glyph images properly one needs to use a Unicode font specific to that language.

Phoenician
Letter [←]
Value	ʾ	b	g	d	h	w	z	ḥ	ṭ	y	k	l	m	n	s	ʿ	p	ṣ	q	r	š	t
Western Greek [4] [5]
Letter [→]
Value	a	b	g	d	e	w	zd	h	tʰ	i	k	l	m	n		o	p	s	k	r	s	t	u	ks	pʰ	kʰ
Transcription	Α	Β	Γ	Δ	Ε	Ϝ	Ζ	Η	Θ	Ι	Κ	Λ	Μ	Ν	Ξ	Ο	Π	Ϻ	Ϙ	Ρ	Σ	Τ	Υ	X	Φ	Ψ
Etruscan - from 7th century BC [6][7]
Marsiliana [←]
Archaic (to 5th c.) [←]
Neo (4th to 1st c.)[←]
Value	a		k		e	v	ts	h	th	i	k	l	m	n			p	sh	k	r	s	t	u	s	ph	kh	f
Transcription	a		c		e	v	z	h	θ	i	k	l	m	n			p	ś	q	r	s	t	u	ṡ	φ	χ	f
Oscan - from 5th century BC [8]
Letter [←]
Value	a	b	g	d	ɛ	v	ts	x?		i	k	l	m	n			p			r	s	t	o:				f	o	e
Transcription	A	B	G	D	E	V	Z	H		I	K	L	M	N			P			R	S	T	U				F	Ú	Í
Lepontic - 7th to 5th century BC
Letter [?][→]