Rhaetian language

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

Rhaetian /ˈriːʃən/ or Rhaetic (Raetic) /ˈriːtᵻk/ 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.