Page:The New International Encyclopædia 1st ed. v. 11.djvu/40

* ITALIC LANGUAGES. 28 sions of Indo-Gernianie, although certain anal- ogies with the Celtic languages (q.v.) may be traced. The most striking parallel of Italic vith Celtic is the use of -/■ in deponent and pas- sive verbs, as Umbrian fenir, "one carries,' Old Irish du-bjiar, 'it is given'; hat. sc(jiiilur, Old Irish -sechctliiir, "he follows'; Latin najuor, Old Irish -sechui; "1 follow"; Lat. sequimur. Old Irish -aecheinmar, "we follow,' although some scholars hold that Italic has directly iulluenced Celtic in this regard. Despite the wide divergencies in phonology, especially in the consonants, from the (ireck, it may be said in a very general way that Italic, like UcUenic. is one of the best representa- tives of tile so-called ce/ifHiH-languages of the Indo-Germanic linguistic family. Italic is di- vided into three pr'iicipal groups, each of which has a number of dialects. These chief divisions arc Latinian, Sabellian. and Osco-Umbrian, or Samnito-Umbrian. The most important, lin- guistically, literarily, and historically, is the Latin (see Latin L. guage), the chief rep- resentative of the Latinian division, vvliich is known from a vast number of inscrip- tions (q.v.) and an extensive literature (see Latin Litebatlke I from the third century B.C. down to the present time, even though for cen- turies it has been employed only as a learned and ecclesiastical tongue. Closely related to Latin were the dialects of Falerii. rr;eneste, and Lanuvium. of which only Falerian, also often called Faliscan, has any extensive remains. The Latin is further of the utmost importance as being the ancestor of the modern Romance lan- guages (q.v.), including Italian, Spanish. Portu- guese, Catalan, French, Provencal. Rha:to-Ro'- mansch, Rumanian, and minor dialects. The Osco-Umbrian is subdivided, as its name implies, into Oscan and Umbrian. which, although more closely related to each other than either of ITALIC LANGUAGES. glosses, and proper names. Besides these great divisions there was a third class of Italic dia- lects which f(irm the so-called Sabellian group, of which the most important mcmliers were Mar- sian, Pielignian. .Marruciiiiaii, Vcstinian, Sabine, Picenian, and Volscian. The remains of all these are, unfortunately, extremely meagre; but so far as the evidence goes it would seem that the Vol- scian resembled Umbrian rather than O.scan, while the other Sabellian dialects, especially the Padignian, aiqiarcntly were more closely related to Oscan than lo L'mbrian. The majority of the Osco-Umbrian inscriptions date from the second and first centuries n.c, although some scholars consider the oldest Umbrian texts to be of much greater antiiiuity. Similarly the most of the Sabellian inscriptions seem to have been written during the lirst two centuries B.C., but the so- called Old .Sabellian texts may be as early as the fifth or si.xth century before our era. To the con- stant expansion of the territory of Latin the other Italic dialects gradually yiebh'd. The first to lose its independence was tlic Sabidlian Sabine, which was absorbed by Latin in the third cen- tury B.C. Marsian apparently did not survive much later, but the other Sabellian dialects seeiu to have had a somewhat longer existence, at least Volscian was still spoken in the second century B.C. Umbrian preserved its identity per- haps until the first century before or even the first century after Christ. Although Oscan was not employed as an ollicial language after the Social War (n.c. 90-88), it survived for many years as a popular speech, as is shown by the Pompeian inscriptions, and doubtless lingered on in the mountains for several centuries, thus being the last of the non-Latin Italic dialects to dis- appear. The mutual relation of the Italic dia- lects may be represented very roughly by the. following table : Pi'e-Indo- Gennanic ^v'^^ fZ ' /'' /s f/ c a F ^ 3 ♦■ o them is to the Latin, present considerable diver- gencies one from the other. These dialects, like the Falerian, Pr*nestinian, and Lanuvian of the Latin group, are known only by inscriptions, Alphabet. The Italic dialects employed sev- eral different alphabets. Omitting the special scripts employed in the scanty remains of Old Sabellian, which was written in the boustro-