Camunic language

Camunic
Native to the south side of the Central Alps (Valcamonica, Valtellina), Italy
Region Italian Peninsula
Ethnicity Camunni
Era first millennium BC[1]
uncertain, perhaps Tyrsenian[2] or Celtic[3]
    Language codes
    ISO 639-3 xcc
    Linguist list
    		 xcc
    Glottolog camu1235[4]

    The Camunic language is an extinct language which was spoken in the first millennium BC in the Valcamonica and Valtellina valleys of the Central Alps.

    Language

    Alphabet of Sondrio

    The extant corpus is carved on rock, similar to the rock carvings of Valcamonica. There are at least 170 known inscriptions, the majority of which are only a few words long. The writing system used is a variant of the north-Etruscan alphabet, known as the Camunian alphabet or alphabet of Sondrio. Longer inscriptions show that Camunic writing used boustrophedon.

    Its name derives from the people of the Camunni, who lived during the Iron Age in Val Camonica and were the creators of many of the stone carvings in the area. Abecedariums found in Nadro and Piancogno have been dated to between 500 BC and 50 AD.[5]

    The amount of material is insufficient to decipher the language, or even to establish what relationship it has to other languages. Some scholars think it may be related to Etruscan and Raetic.[2] Most recently Camunic has been proposed to be a Celtic language.[3]

    Transliteration

    Gliph Tibiletti Bruno 1992[6] Zavaroni 2004[7] Martinotti 2009[8]
    - A -
    A A
    A -
    B B (V?)
    B B (V?)
    - D
    h D (?) -
    E E
    E E
    E E
    V -
    G K (G?)
    G -
    h H J (ii/h/η?)
    - H -
    I I
    I I
    - K K (G?)
    L L
    L L
    M M
    M M
    N N
    N N
    O Φ (Q?)
    - P -
    P P
    R R
    R R
    S χ
    S S
    S S
    T T
    T T
    - T I
    -
    -
    - TS - -
    TS - χ
    U - W U
    - U - W U
    Z χ
    Z χ

    See also

    References

    1. ↑ Camunic at MultiTree on the Linguist List
    2. 1 2 http://www.blackwellreference.com/public/tocnode?id=g9780631220398_chunk_g97806312203989_ss1-3
    3. 1 2 Markey, Thomas (2008). Shared Symbolics, Genre Diffusion, Token Perception and Late Literacy in North-Western Europe. NOWELE.
    4. ↑ Hammarström, Harald; Forkel, Robert; Haspelmath, Martin; Bank, Sebastian, eds. (2016). "Camunic". Glottolog 2.7. Jena: Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History.
    5. ↑ "Iscrizioni camune a cura di Adolfo Zavaroni" (in Italian). Retrieved 2009-09-20.
    6. ↑ Maria Grazia Tibiletti Bruno, Gli alfabetari, Quaderni camuni n° 60, 1992, p. 307
    7. ↑ Adolfo Zavaroni, Iscrizioni camune, 2004
    8. ↑ Angelo Martinotti, Le iscrizioni preromane in Lucus rupestris, 2009, p. 325

    Bibliography

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