Old Italic alphabet
| Old Italic |
|
|---|---|
The Marsiliana tablet abecedarium, ca. 700 BC: ABGDEVZHΘIKLMNΞOPŚQRSTUXΦΨ, read right to left
|
|
| Type |
Alphabet
|
| Languages | Italic languages, Etruscan, Raetic, Venetic, Lepontic, Messapic |
|
Time period
|
8th to 1st centuries BC |
|
Parent systems
|
|
|
Child systems
|
Latin alphabet, Runic alphabet |
|
Sister systems
|
Anatolian alphabets |
| Direction | Left-to-right |
| ISO 15924 | Ital, 210 |
|
Unicode alias
|
Old Italic |
| U+10300–U+1032F | |
Old Italic is one of several now extinct alphabet systems used on the Italian Peninsula in ancient times for various Indo-European languages (predominantly Italic) and non-Indo-European (e.g. Etruscan) languages. The alphabets derive from the Euboean Greek Cumaean alphabet, used at Ischia and Cumae in the Bay of Naples in the eighth century BC.
Various Indo-European languages belonging to the Italic branch (Faliscan and members of the Sabellian group, including Oscan, Umbrian, and South Picene, and other Indo-European branches such as Celtic, Venetic and Messapic) originally used the alphabet. Faliscan, Oscan, Umbrian, North Picene, and South Picene all derive from an Etruscan form of the alphabet.
The Germanic runic alphabet was derived from one of these alphabets by the 2nd century AD.
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).
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