Italic languages - Definition

The Italic subfamily is a member of the Centum branch of the Indo-European language group. Italic has two branches:

• Sabellic including:
  • Oscan, spoken in the south-central region of the Italian peninsula
  • Umbrian (not to be confused with the modern Umbrian dialect of Italian), spoken in the north-central region
• Latino-Faliscan including:
  • Faliscan - spoken in the area around Falerii Veteres (modern Civita Castellana) north of the city of Rome
  • Latin, originally spoken in west-central Italy - (SIL Code, LTN; ISO 639-1 code, la; ISO 639-2 code, lat)

The Italic languages are first attested in writing from Latin inscriptions dating to the 6th or 5th centuries BCE. The alphabets used are based on the Old Italic alphabet, which is itself based on the Greek alphabet. The Italic languages themselves show minor influence from the Etruscan and somewhat more from the ancient Greek languages. As Rome extended its political dominion over the whole of the Italian peninsula, so too did Latin become dominant over the other Italic languages, which ceased to be spoken perhaps sometime in the 1st century CE. From so-called Vulgar Latin the Romance languages emerged.

See also

• Language families and languages