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Rhaetian language

Rhaetian
Native to Ancient Rhaetia
Region Eastern Alps
Era 1st millennium BC to 3rd century AD
uncertain, perhaps Tyrsenian or Indo-European (Venetic or Celtic)
Language codes
ISO 639-3
Linguist list
xrr
Glottolog raet1238
Tyrsenian languages.svg

Rhaetian /ˈrʃən/ or Rhaetic (Raetic) /ˈrtk/ is an ancient language spoken in the ancient region of Rhaetia in the Eastern Alps in pre-Roman and Roman times. It is documented by a limited number of short inscriptions (found through Northern Italy, Southern Germany, Eastern Switzerland, Slovenia and Western Austria) in two variants of the Etruscan alphabet. Its linguistic categorization is not clearly established, and it presents a confusing mixture of what appear to be Etruscan, Indo-European and uncertain other elements.

The ancient Rhaetic language is not the same as one of the modern Romance languages of the same Alpine region, known as Rhaeto-Romance, but both are sometimes referred to as "Rhaetian".

The most credible theories are that Rhaetic was either a member, along with Etruscan, of a proposed Tyrrhenian language family by German linguist Helmut Rix, possibly influenced by neighboring Indo-European languages or else an Indo-European language, with links to Illyrian and Celtic.


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