Abstract
The aim of this paper is to offer an overview of the use of the Latin alphabet to write the so-called fragmentary languages of Italy and Western Europe during Antiquity. The Latin alphabet was created from an Etruscan model to write Latin, but was also used to record texts in other languages: Etruscan, Oscan, Umbrian, the minor Italic dialects, Faliscan, and Venetic in Italy; Gaulish in the Gauls and other provinces in the north of Europe; and, finally, Iberian, Celtiberian, and Lusitanian in the Iberian Peninsula. The use of the Latin alphabet to write the so-called fragmentary languages represents a step before complete Latinisation. Two models are proposed to explain how the use and/or adaptation of the Latin alphabet to write the local languages came about.
Highlights
The aim of this paper is to offer an overview of the use of the Latin alphabet to write the so-called fragmentary languages of Western Europe during Antiquity
The gemination of consonants and vowels is attested in the Tabulae Igubinae, written in Latin alphabet, which are usually dated to the late second or early first century BCE.9 i longa is well documented in Gaulish inscriptions: in La Graufesenque it is used to represent yod, vocalic i followed by yod and, less commonly, long i, which seem to be the same ways of using it as we find in other long texts (RIG II-2, L-93, L-98 and L-100; fig. 5), it does not appear that all the scribes in the pottery centre knew it, and those that did use it do not seem to have done so systematically (Marichal 1988, 60-65, RIG II-2, 381-382)
The use of the Latin alphabet to write the so-called fragmentary languages represents a step before complete Latinisation
Summary
The Latin alphabet was created from an Etruscan model to write Latin, but was used to record texts in other languages: Etruscan, Oscan, Umbrian, the minor Italic dialects, Faliscan, and Venetic in Italy; Gaulish in the Gauls and other provinces in the north of Europe; and, Iberian, Celtiberian, and Lusitanian in the Iberian Peninsula They are documented in almost all the epichoric epigraphies, there is no unequivocal example in either Messapic or Raetic.. The gemination of consonants and vowels is attested in the Tabulae Igubinae, written in Latin alphabet, which are usually dated to the late second or early first century BCE. i longa is well documented in Gaulish inscriptions: in La Graufesenque it is used to represent yod (consonantal i), vocalic i followed by yod and, less commonly, long i, which seem to be the same ways of using it as we find in other long texts The fact that G occupies the place of Z in the alphabet opens the possibility that the invention of one and the elimination of the other are related; the latter is attributed to Appius Claudius, see Prosdocimi 2002, 160-170
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