Latino-Faliscan languages

The Latino-Faliscan or Latinian languages form a group of the Italic languages within the Indo-European family. They were spoken by the Latino-Faliscan people of Italy who lived there from the early 1st millennium BC.

Latino-Faliscan
Latinian
Geographic distribution	Originally Latium in Italy, then throughout the Roman Empire, especially in the western regions; now also throughout Latin America, Eastern Canada, and many countries in Africa
Linguistic classification	Indo-European Italic Latino-Faliscan
Proto-language	Proto-Latino-Faliscan
Subdivisions	Latin (including Romance languages) Faliscan† Lanuvian† Praenestine† Siculian?†
Language codes
Glottolog	lati1262
Latino-Faliscan languages and dialects in different shades of blue.

Latin and Faliscan belong to the group, as well as two others often considered dialects of archaic Latin:^{[citation needed]} Lanuvian and Praenestine.

As the power of Ancient Rome grew, Latin absorbed elements of the other languages and replaced Faliscan. The other variants went extinct as Latin became dominant. Latin in turn developed via Vulgar Latin into the Romance languages, now spoken by more than 800 million people, largely as a result of the influence of the Roman Empire initially, and in later times the Spanish, French and Portuguese Empires.

Lanuvian

Lanuvian was an archaic Latino-Faliscan language.^[1] It was spoken by Latins who lived close to Rome and could have been a dialect of Latin.^[2]

Praenestine

Praenestine or Praenestinian was an archaic form of Latino-Faliscan.^[3] It was spoken in eastern Old Latium in modern day Lazio, Italy.

Linguistic description

Latin and Faliscan have several features in common with other Italic languages:

• The late Indo-European diphthong /*eu/ evolved into ou.^[4]
• The late Indo-European /*ə/ from vocalic laryngeals evolved into a.^[5]
• The Indo-European syllabic liquids /*l̥, *r̥/ developed an epenthetic vowel o, giving Italic ol, or.^[6]
• The Indo-European syllabic nasals /*m̥, *n̥/ developed an epenthetic vowel e, giving Italic em, en.^[7]
• Word-initial aspirated stops from Indo-European were fricativised: /*bʰ, *dʰ, *gʰ, gʷʰ / > f, f, h, f.^[8]
• The sequence /*p...kʷ/ was assimilated into kʷ...kʷ (Proto-Indo-European *penkʷe 'five' > Latin quinque).^[9]

Latin and Faliscan also have characteristics not shared by other branches of Italic. They retain the Indo-European labiovelars /*kʷ, *gʷ/ as qu-, gu- (later becoming velar and semivocal), whereas in Osco-Umbrian they become labial p, b. Latin and Faliscan use the ablative suffix -d, seen in med ("me", ablative), which is absent in Osco-Umbrian. In addition, Latin displays evolution of ou into ū, though this happens later than the Latino-Faliscan era, occurring around the 2nd century BCE (Latin lūna < Proto-Italic *louksnā < PIE *lówksneh₂ "moon").

Phonology

It is likely that the consonant inventory of Proto-Latino-Faliscan was basically identical to that of archaic Latin. Consonants not found in the Praeneste fibula are marked with an asterisk.

		Labial	Alveolar	Palatal	Velar	Labio- velar	Glottal
Plosive	voiceless	*p	*t		k	*kʷ
	voiced	*b	d		*g	*gʷ
Fricative		f	s				*h
Sonorants			*r, *l	j		*w
Nasal		m	n

The /kʷ/ sound still existed in archaic Latin when the Latin alphabet was developed, since it gives rise to the minimal pair quī /kʷiː/ ("who", nominative) > cuī /ku.iː/ ("to whom", dative). In other positions there is no distinction between diphthongs and hiatuses: for example, persuādere ("to persuade") is a diphthong but sua ("his"/"her") is a hiatus. For reasons of symmetry, it is quite possible that many sequences of gu in archaic Latin in fact represent a voiced labiovelar /gʷ/.^{[citation needed]}

See also

• languages portal

• Italic peoples