Discrepancies

It's eLeMeNtary

Bibliography

The progress which has been made in understanding the Etruscan vocabulary has come from a combination of methods. These include careful studies of bilingual inscriptions, analysis of Etruscan or reputed Etruscan words found in ancient Latin and Greek glosses, the archaeological context of the inscriptions, internal evidence, and comparisons of Etruscan text formulas with that of other ancient languages.

Although Etruscan is an unknown language in the sense that it cannot be assigned to any language family, it is not an undeciphered language. Etruscan is written in an archaic Greek alphabet and can be read phonetically with little difficulty. Using a combination of methods with slow and steady progress Etruscologists have come to understand much of the Etruscan grammar and the fairly certain meanings of more than two hundred words.

Using the Etruscan vocabularies contained in Massimo Pallottino's The Etruscans 1975, and Larissa Bonfante's Etruscan, 1990, as a basis for reliable comparison I will demonstrate the possibility that Etruscan is a cryptolect which was ingeniously devised by the Etruscan priestly and ruling castes whose primary language and culture was decidedly Italic. Like their cousins the Celtic Druids (who possessed a cryptic speech called Ogham) the Etruscan Haruspices framed their secret language for both religious and secular reasons.

The mention of Etruscan in connection with arbitrarily contrived speeches, cants, jargons etc. may sound far fetched, Etruscan is an ancient language whereas the notices of cant and other secret languages are of more recent occurance, with one exception and this is Shelta, the language of the Irish Travelers or Tinker clans. Shelta is a cant or arbitrarily contrived speech which the eminent Gaelic scholar Kuno Meyer believed to have been at one time the possession of the Filid or ancient poets of Ireland, and to be the same as the cryptic speech called Ogham. In his article, On The Irish Origin and Age of Shelta, Journal of The Gypsy Lore Society, Vol.2, no.5, pp.257-66. Meyer stated that Shelta is mainly a systematic perversion of the pre-aspirated Gaelic spoken in Ireland anterior to the eleventh century, that in Irish manuscripts there were mentions and records of it under various names and, that though now confined to tinkers, its knowledge was once possessed by Irish poets and scholars, who, probably were its original framers. Kuno Meyer goes on to describe the processes by which Shelta words were fabricated from the Irish ones, and it is with these same processes applied to Latin words that we will begin to understand how Etruscan words were formed.

In Shelta the Caird's Language , reprinted from the transactions of the Gaelic Society, Inverness, 1899-1901, David Macritchie, and F.S.A. Scot combine the researches of Kuno Meyer, and several other scholars with their own to throw light on the construction of Shelta:

" A certain portion of Shelta consists of ordinary Gaelic words pronounced backwards. Thus 'mac' son, becomes 'kam'; 'da' two, becomes 'ad ' or 'od '; 'carr' a wagon or car, becomes 'rag'; 'naoi' nine becomes 'ayen', etc. . Sometimes to the word obtained (from back-slang), a suffix is added: 'thal-osk' day, from 'lath-a' [for this inversion took place before 'latha' had been refined into 'la-a' ]; 'thur-og' rag, from 'brat'. Or the final is changed as in 'nup' neck, from Irish 'muin'. The several other processes consist of prefixing or suffixing an arbitrary letter or letters to a word, or by the transpositioning of letters or syllables as is illustrated by " 'acharam' tomorrow , from Irish 'amara^'ch', and by ' mugathon' fool, instead of 'amadan' ".

Using the simplest method of disguising words, that of spelling or pronouncing certain Etruscan words backwards some interesting results can be obtained by using Latin and in a few cases Greek to explain word formation. We must keep in mind that Etruscan possessed only the voiceless stops k, t, and p, they changed the letters g, d, and b when these appeared in Greek, Latin, or Umbrian.

To begin with, it is almost certain that form(a) (form) came into Latin via Etruscan from Greek morph(e) (form); a perfect example of Etruscans reversing a borrowed word before adding it to their own vocabulary in order to disquise its meaning. from the uninitiated. In a similar case the Latin word for lead plumbum (of unknown origin), seems to have been derived from the Greek word for lead, molubdos , Latin plum(b) is the phonetic reverse of Greek molub(d), (Gk. b = Etr. p) .

Etruscan spur (city) is practically the phonetic reverse of Lat. urbs (city) interestingly the Etruscan quarter of Rome was called Subura. As Lat. urbs is of obscure origin, and the Latin Romans evidently learned the concept of cities from the advanced Etruscans, We must first ask the question ,"where did the Etruscans come by their term for city?". In the eigth century B.C. the first major city in Italy to which the Etruscans were exposed was the Greek port city of Sybaris, it also became their major trading partner . It is quite possible that Sybaris,which according to Etruscan orthography would be written *Supuru, also became their ultimate designation for city. This scenario would leave Lat. Urbs a second hand borrowing (Sybaris > Suburu> urbis).

One of the reasons why Etruscan has remained so confusing to linguists is that many Etruscan words were formed from the reversed suffixes of Latin words, the resulting Etruscan word stems appear to have no connection with the Latin words from which they were derived, ultimately leading to the common consensus that Etruscan is a non-Indo-European language. A good example of this process is the Etruscan word lauchum (king), which bears no resemblance to its Latin equivalent rex, regis (king), but Etr. lucair (to rule) can easily be recognized as a reverse version of Latin regula (rule), the Etr. C represents both the Lat. hard C (k), and Lat. G, cf. Lat. Graecus (Greek), Etr. (Creice)Greek

In comparing the Etruscan word nets ^'vis with its Latin equivalent haruspex, one would be hard pressed to find any similarities, for haruspex is formed from the Proto-Indo-european roots gher¹ (gut, entrail), and spek (to observe), but if you take the Etr. word neths^'rac, pronounced nee'tshurack= , in its reverse form, i.e. cars^'then , the destinctive Italic, Indo-European nature of Etruscan becomes evident, Lat. harus= Etr. cars^', Lat. picine=Etr.then, cf. also Etr. athumic (noble), Nethune, with Lat.optimus(noble), Neptune).