Talk:Venetic language

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The attempt to connect Venetic to Slavic is so weak, it is a joke. Nothing more than fantasy-wish-fulfillment on the part of some Slovenian nationalists, who hope they can somehow claim some sort of autochthonic status in the area. Good luck, because Venetic was obviously very close to Italic, despite what some say. Alexander 007 03:51, 16 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Some Slavic scholars think they see similarities with Slavic languages of the region, Slovenian and Serbo-Croatian, though this is not apparent.

Could you please deweaselize - who are "some (Slavic) scholars"? Boraczek 11:49, 26 Mar 2005 (UTC)

I don't know all the names of the Slavic scholars who see these imaginary similarities, but such "scholars" (propagandists) exist. Excuse me for using the term "Slavic" (which sounds racist) but I couldn't just say Slovenian or just say Croatian because they are not all Croatians or Slovenians, but they are all Slavic. See the second link in the article which mentions the name (Matej Bor) of a Slovenian "linguist" who first promoted the "Slavic-Venetic" idea, in contrast to the prevailing and correct view that Venetic was close to Italic. Alexander 007 00:37, 27 Mar 2005 (UTC)

About Venetic being closest to Italic, save me some trouble and search this topic yourself. A few references I'll mention now (I don't remember the others) are John Wilkes, who in his 1992 book The Illyrians stated the consensus (he was not stating his idea, because his field is Roman archaeology) that Venetic was very close to Italic; see also [1]. I'll also try to find again a comparison of PIE to Venetic and PIE to Italic sound-changes, which are also very close. There really is no debate among the scholars that Venetic was closest to Italic from all the IE branches. This is proven by language-samples, names, and sound-changes. The illusion of a debate is promoted by propagandists. Alexander 007 01:42, 27 Mar 2005 (UTC)

it is clear to the majority of scholars that Venetic shared many similarities with the Italic languages (a group that includes Latin and Umbrian).

The same request. Any name of a prominent scholar who advances a theory of Italic-Venetic relation? Boraczek 11:54, 26 Mar 2005 (UTC)

There are many scholars who have stated this, and it is well-known and not even controversial except among some Slovenian or whatever nationalists who don't want to admit it. I'll find some names and quotes later. This is not my personal Point of View, it is the majority scholarly consensus, while the alleged similarities to Slavic are not at all in evidence, and are promoted by fringe nationalistic groups. After Italic, the next closest language to Venetic is Illyrian.Alexander 007 00:37, 27 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Given the consensus, the burden of legitimizing their arguments is on those who deny the close relation of Venetic to Italic. I don't think there is any actual scientific debate, because all the references I've seen affirm the Italic connection, while the supposed Slavic-Venetic idea (which is demented) I first came across in this Wikipedia article and in a not-credible link provided in the Wikipedia article: I am referring to the link entitled "The Enigma of the Venetic Script".

To a nationalist, any ancient IE language can magically appear to be "close to Slavic", including the Venetic language, the Ancient Macedonian language, Thracian, Dacian, Illyrian, Scythian, et cetera. Alexander 007 02:27, 27 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Dear 007,
Thank you for your answer. As regards "some Slavic scholars", my real concern is whether they can be called scholars. The Venetic theory seems to be quite popular among Slovenians, but not among Slovenian scholars (linguists and slavists). Matej Bor, for example, was a poet rather than a scholar.
I also read that Venetic was closely related to the Italic languages, which was stated as a matter of fact. So I am inclined to believe you that this is a generally accepted conclusion among the linguists. I never investigated the Venetic language. I edited the phrase about the Italic relation because I did not like the wording. If I put something wrong, sorry!
I only dealt with the Venetic language as a slavist. I read some text written by Venetic theory supporters which was meant to show that Venetic was close to Slovene and I have to say that it was a pure and arbitrary game of associations which had nothing to do with a linguistic analysis. Boraczek 09:35, 27 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Dear Boraczek, your point is well taken: before I edited the Venetic language article, I found the sentence "some scholars also see a similarity to the Slavic, etc.". After searching the net, I found that in fact all such scholars (who, as you point out, are not actually scholars) were mostly Slovenian, so I changed the phrase to "some Slavic scholars claim, etc.", because I knew from my own knowledge of the situation that it could only be a claim, unsupported by the majority consensus. It is one of those nationalistic pseudo-scientific claims, as you know. See also the situation concerning the ancient Macedonian language, and how some Macedonian Slav nationalists allege that the language of the ancient Macedonians was also "close to Slavic". Alexander 007 09:53, 27 Mar 2005 (UTC)

I read the language sample; it would be madness indeed to link it with the Slavonic languages. But why does it constitute a seperate branch at all? Why isn't it simply an Italic language? Caesarion 18:01, 13 Apr 2005 (UTC)

I guess the reason must be that there are enough differences to make some linguists hesitate to classify it as Italic. But I'm not sure. It's possible that it may one day be included as a branch of Italic. The question is still being debated as of now. See also: [2]. This is an interesting site with info on the old Italic languages and more, where Venetic is discussed also. Click on Classification of the Languages, and other links.

I found a file online from Cornell University Edu (not a personal page, it was a page describing lectures on Indo-European linguistics) where Venetic is included under Italic and described as being possibly part of the Latino-Faliscan group of Italic languages. There was also reproduced another complete Venetic sentence which again was quite Italic in nature. Alexander 007 03:51, 20 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Contents

[edit] Etruscan alphabet

Weren't Venetic inscriptions written with the Etruscan alphabet? Can anyone confirm that? If so, I think this is worth mentioning in the article. Boraczek 11:59, 26 Mar 2005 (UTC)

(see Old Italic alphabet)--007)

There were five alphabets in ancient northern Italy specifically derived from the Etruscan alphabet, i.e. not from other Old Italic alphabets. In any case, there was never any such thing as a single "Old Italic alphabet" and it is incorrect for the Wikipedia to carry an article entitled "Old Italic alphabet". (It should at least be changed to "Old Italic alphabets".)
Those five alphabets are named after the main site of each:
1. Alphabet of Lugano (used primarily for Lepontic and Cisalpine Gaulish, but also on coins minted by other tribes, such as the Salassi of present-day Val d'Aosta, and the Salluvii and Cavares of Provence;
2. Alphabet of Sondrio (used for an unidentified pre-Roman language of the Italian Alps (ancient Raetia);
3. Alphabet of Bolzano (used for another unidentified pre-Roman language of the Italian Alps (ancient Raetia);
4. Alphabet of Magrè (used for yet another unidentified pre-Roman language of the Italian Alps (ancient Raetia);
5. Alphabet of Este (used for Venetic).
(NOTE: The Runic alphabet is a further derivation from one of the above five, probably Bolzano.)
Anyway, in my modest opinion, this article on Venetic is little more than garbage and should be completely rewritten. What is the purpose of saying that "They first known Venice was on Baltic river in front of Gdańsk." [sic]? Huh?? What does that mean? Is this a joke?
The Venetic language remains for the moment an unclassified, standalone Indo-European language. While it was probably closest to Italic, the evidence is not sufficient to assign it to the Italic group (if that was indeed a unified group, which is not quite clear). On the other hand, it clearly also has intriguing similarities to Germanic, which may point to a northern origin. Ultimately, it may well be that the Venetic language originated near the Baltic Sea, but that certainly does not make it a Balto-Slavic language. The Venetic language was also close to the Illyrian languages, except that too little is known about this latter Indo-European group to pass judgment. It too may have ultimately had a northern origin.
Pasquale 22:39, 19 October 2005 (UTC)
Not to cause more controversy but is the Italic Classification really so Certain and University accepted? I ask because, although I'm no linguist, when I read books and websites that cover the Venetic language, I've see it always classified as either Unknown or as Illyrian. Indeed I was just looking up a little history book the other day and it clearly stated that it was Illyrian. BTW I'm not trying to drag up that thing about Slavic, that sounds like B.S to me too, but the issue of Illyrian really does seem to be under debate. --Hibernian 04:26, 29 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Reverted

The article became a mess after 16:57 16 September, when an anonymous came by while I was on Wiki-break (Sep 12--Oct 1st). Before that, it was a skeletal article---not much, but somewhat clean. I have reverted it back to September 12th, to bypass any need for rewriting (this is the solution I prefer, anyway). -Alexander 007 09:53, 26 October 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Need your help

Please take a look at this stub: Venet. Are these two articles relative? - Caiyu (采豫) 04:56, 13 December 2005 (UTC)

I redirected Venet to Veneti. The Venet stub contained pseudo-historical information. Alexander 007 06:38, 13 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] A Slavic point of view

Let us take a look at one example of a Venetic inscription through Italian and Slavic eyes.

Es 2

EGOV8UKOSSIAIVOLTIIOMMNINAI

According to Zavaroni, through Italian eyes the inscription says:

“ego fukssiiai / voltiiommni / nai.”

So it would appear that we have here one example of an ancient 'egofuks'.

An illustration of what the inscription might mean through Slovene eyes:

“Ehov Bogu, s sijaj voltijom mni naj.”

Ehov – G goes to H in western Slovene dialects; russian ‘ehat’ (to go, to travel; therefore (j)ehov = went; compare Slovene ‘jahati’ – to ride a horse, past tense ‘jahal’);
Bog – God, compare to other inscriptions, where through Italian eyes it is written FUGSSIAI, also compare with Bakus / Dionis, and with Sanskrit ‘Bhaga’ – Lord; Bogu = to God, towards God;
s – with;
sij(aj) – a shine;
voltiom – from voliti = to choose, to vote, to love, connected with sl. ‘volja’ (will), srbcr. ‘voljeti’ (to love), lat. 'voluntas'; ‘s sijaj voltiom’ = with shining will (love);
mni – sl. miniti, to pass away (‘mini!’ in exclamation form; without the 'i' as in 'pomni', 'spomni', 'opomni', 'zapomni' etc.);
naj – should, may;

Jehov Bogu, s sijaj vol(t)jom mni naj.

Went to God, with shining will may (he) pass.

Not all the inscriptions are as easily understandable through Slovene as this one, but nevertheless. The symbolism of the horse and the chariot in Venetic inscriptions is easily understandable. This is clear to most self-aware Slovenes. Intentionally I wrote ‘Jehov’, because G goes to H in western Slovene dialects. So don’t say it is ridiculous or a joke to interpret through Slavic languages, because it is more credible to have God in an inscription that was found on a pyramid-shaped burial stone, than to interpret grotesquely as ‘egofuks’. The letter is not F, the letter is 8. And 8 can mean B or H or BH, not F. There is no letter for F in any inscriptions of the Veneti. Pro-Italian interpreters of these inscriptions invent this F in suspiciously innovative manners! Often they even read the letter I (!?) as F. Therefore Wikipedia = Wfkfpedfa? They need the F to ‘prove’ that the language is not Slavic, since F is originally foreign to Slavic languages.

Venetic was an Indo-European language, it had duality and it didn’t have a letter for F. This alone speaks in itself about the character of the language, because of all the modern Indo-European languages, the only two that have duality on the one hand and do not originally have F on the other, are Slovene and Lusatian Sorb languages. Both Slovenes as well as Lusatian Sorbs are historically called Veneti (Winden, Wenden) in German language. And both are Slavic.

In my opinion wikipedia and the whole of science should be about discovering the truth and not about denying or ignoring it. 58.76.145.167 11:49, 20 May 2007 (UTC)

While entertaining, there are several flaws with this interpretation. First and foremost is that almost a full millennium separates Venetic and Slovene or any of the the South Slavic languages. The morphological forms that seem similar now simply did not exist in Slavic's ancestor's at the time the Venetic speech communities made their inscriptions. There are also several problems with the phonological methods as well. Considering those points and the fact that knowledge of near-contemporary Italic and Germanic linguistics make for a clearer interpretations of the Venetic with much less effort (see Occam's Razor), the work above is incorrect hobbyist historical linguistics at best. Trollaxor 21:01, 20 September 2007 (UTC)
It's not so simple, full millennium is questionable in fact, also expansion of South Slavic languages was connected for a long time to Slavic migration in 7th century which is recently disputed by genetics, anthropology etc... A several authors have claimed about presence of Slavic speakers much earlier in the same place... Zenanarh 15:51, 10 November 2007 (UTC)
Cite your sources, please. I'd love to dispute this with you (re: shoot down your unauthoratative, quack Serbian nationalist ideas one by one) but I can't without seeing this "genetics, anthropology etc." that contradicts opinions reached by thousands of studies done by hundreds of scholars between several different disciplines performed over the last few hundred years. This article has enough problems to begin with, not the least of which is that evidence for Venetic is scant and scholarship on the topic is even scanter (sic). Your agenda is doing nothing for the article or the talk page and the least you could do is provide some published scholarship on the topic so we can all make sure we're not missing anything.
Also, learn how to nest your replies under their appropriate parent comment as I have done for you here. Dr. C.S. Lewis-Barrie, Ph.D. (talk) 17:40, 5 February 2008 (UTC)

As per Zenarah's comment, I have amended my post above. I invite others to weigh in on this exchange and/or provide relevant sources; for some of those same sources see here and here. Dr. C.S. Lewis-Barrie, Ph.D. (talk) 18:13, 8 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Pronominal Examples

I have Leonard R. Palmer's The Latin Language (1954) that contains the same personal pronoun examples for Venetic, Latin, and Gothic as well as Hittite. Since this is earlier than Pokorny and more extensive, I suggest replacing the current examples with Palmer's. Though I do not have Pokorny in front of me, I would hazard a guess that his examples came from Palmer originally. Are there any objections to this? Trollaxor 20:48, 20 September 2007 (UTC)

Mr. Trollaxor, you are absolutely correct; Palmer is both earlier and more elaborate than Pokorny. Since Pokorny adds nothing new to topic, Palmer is therefore more authoritative. If you are unable to proceed with these changes, I have the sources on hand and can step in. Dr. C.S. Lewis-Barrie, Ph.D. (talk) 19:17, 28 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] The Finnic Hypothesis

The traditional theory covered by the article, and the Slovenian theory discussed above, are not the only theories. I have spent 6-7 years investigating the Venetic inscriptions from the point of view of Venetic being Finnic. The theory is that while the Phoenicians and Greeks dominated trade in the Mediterranean and up the Atlantic coast, and established nodes and colonies to facilitate their shipping/trading, there were ALSO major shippers/traders through the rivers of the interior. The Veneti can be shown both archeologically and in ancient historical references to be the source of trade amber. Archeology shows there were two amber routes. One route came down from the Jutland Peninsula source of amber, ending up coming down the Adige. The other route came from the southeast Baltic, where the people were called Venedi by the Greeks and Aestii by the Suebi (Tacitus took the Aestii name from the Suebi that took him there). The tribes or families dominating these two trade routes would have acted just like the Phoenicians, etc establishing nodes, colonies, where needed. Indeed the ancient name of the Adige - Atesis and the city Este - Ateste, can be interpreted via Finnic to mean 'in the nature of the terminus' and 'arising from the terminus' respectively. Thus there is validity in a theory that the Veneti at the Adriatic were established from the north as colonies for the wealthy and powerful amber trade. The language they spoke would therefor be the Finnic languages in the north. The modern Estonians have always known themselves as Eesti, and there is no question it is the same name as Aestii (a Latin interpretation). There was once an 'Aestic' trade region going up the east Baltic coast oriented to the market at the mouth of the Vistula, and the trade language of the east Baltic was 'Aestic' just like the trade language of the south Baltic was 'Suebic'. I have used simple Estonian to successfully translate the Venetic inscriptions, achieving much more parallelism and good meaningful results than any previous interpretation from the traditional of Slovenian perspective. I completed the book only a year or so ago, and peer review will take years because ideally it requires knowledge of a Finnic language and carefully going through it all. I interpreted ALL the complete inscriptions. I did not pick and choose like the previous Indo-European studies have done. Anyone interested in this third theory should go to http://www.paabo.ca/veneti/index.html [3] where there is information about the book including its content. There is also a link to a page discussing the whole idea of there being a 'Phoenicians of the Interior' and the reasons why the lingua franca would have been Finnic. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Contributor2this (talk • contribs) 04:10, 23 February 2008 (UTC)

So in other words, this is original research of which you are providing no solid examples. Simple comparison between single words is something that is notoriously problematic; it is an approach which lets the viewer see whatever he or she wishes to and has been knocked down dozens of times not only on Wikipedia but in historical linguistics as well. The fact that "simple Estonian" (which is never qualified but should be) can translate a language some 2,400 its senior is another red flag, since Estonian did not exist when the Venetic inscriptions were made and, again, we have no examples of these "translations" to peruse and comment on. Peer-review is important for the same reason proof-readers are: one's view on one's own work becomes skewed over time and colleagues offering suggestions brings the work back into useful focus. You, on the other hand, seem to be completely cross-eyed with this "hypothesis."
Like the various Slavic nationalist theories above, this Finnic idea is another waste of time. See The The Blackwell History of Latin, among many others (Bopp, Buck, Palmer, et al), for more on how Venetic is not just Indo-European but squarely Italic, closely allied with Latino-Faliscan. Clackson and Horrock's work is impeccable and, unlike your above suggestion, generally available for critical eyes to comb through. Quit wasting Wikipedia's time with your silly agendas.
Dr. C.S. Lewis-Barrie, Ph.D. (talk) 18:09, 25 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Liburnian language

I have returned the mentioning of Liburnian which actually was related to Venetic. This has been suggested on the basis of Liburnian toponymic and onomastic evidence which contains elements and phonetic developments parallel to those seen in Venetic. For more on this see J. Untermann's Venetisches in Dalmatien, H. Krahe's Die Sprache der Illyrier and J.P. Mallory's In Search of the Indo-Europeans. --Jalen (talk) 18:10, 3 May 2008 (UTC)