| Group | Single |
| Geography | The territory of north-eastern Italy and the adjacent regions of modern Slovenia and Austria used to be inhabited in Roman times by the tribes of Veneti. They first founded Venice on an island near the Adriatic coast. |
| History | About 250 short inscriptions were found written in Venetic, all of them were created from the 6th to the 1st century BC. Such inscriptions were found in Italian towns of Este, Vicenza, Padua, Spina. The majority of them evidently suffer the influence of either Etruscan or Latin languages. After the region fell under the Roman rule in the 1st century, Venetic was quickly assimilated by Latin which was obviously very close to it. |
| Phonetics | Venetic was rather archaic in phonetics; its vowels could be either long or short, numerous diphthongs existed. The reflection of Indo-European stops is very similar to Latin and Illyrian - voiced aspirates disappear. New spirants f, h, ts appear, the Indo-European labiovelar *kw was preserved. |
| Nominal Morphology | Inscription show clear five noun cases with three genders, the dual number was also in use - unlike in Italic and Celtic. Some noun endings can be identified, like instrumental plural -fos or genitive singular -. Several pronouns are known: exo 'I' (IE *eg'hom), mexo 'me', selboi 'for oneself'. |
| Verbal Morphology | Four types of conjugation were used in Venetic, obviously all tenses merged into two: the present and the past (with maybe sigmatic aorist forms). Samples of the mediopassive voice with -r endings were found. Participles used suffixes -nd- and -mno-. |
| Lexicon | About 600 names are known, but many of them are borrowed from Etruscan and Latin. Words are not numerous to judge about the vocabulary in general, but some are exactly Indo-European (like vhraterei 'for a brother'). |
| Writing | Venetic alphabet |
| Close Contacts | Venetic is believed to be a single group very close to Italic, Illyrian and Celtic. Obvious are contacts with Etruscan and maybe Rhaetian. |
| Sample | eik goltanos doto louderai kanei.
Goltanus sacrificed this for the virgin Kanis. |
| More info |
TIED Home | Verbix Main Site