ITALIC LANGUAGES. The name applied to the ancient Indo-Germanic dialects of Italy, which form a distinct branch of the Indn-Ger manic languages (q.v.). They are on the whole more closely related to the Hellenic (see GREEK LANGUAGE) than to any other of the great sions of Indo-Germanic, although certain anal ogies with the Celtic. languages (q.V. ) may be traced. The most striking parallel of Italic with is the use of -r in deponent and pas sive verbs, as Umbrian one carries,' Old Irish do-b,ror, 'it is given'; Lat. sequitur, Old Irish -sechethar, 'he follows'; Latin scquur, Old -scchur, follow' ; Lat. scquintur, Old Irish -sechclumor, 'we follow,' although some scholars hold that Italic has directly influenced Celtic in this regard. Despite the wide divergencies in phonology, especially in the consonants. from the “reck, it may be said in a very general way that Italic, like Hellenic. is one of the best representa tives of the so-called ccntum-languages of the Indo-Germanic linguistic family. Italic is di vided into three pCncipal groups, each of which has a number of dialects. These chief divisions are Latinian. Sabellian. and Osco-Umbrian, or Samnito-Umbrian. The most important. lin guistically, literarily, and historically, is the Latin (see LATIN LANt.ux(..E). the chief rep resentath e of the Latinian division, which is known from a vast number of inscrip tions (q.v.) and an extensive literature (see LATIN LITERATURE) from the third century B.C. (105%11 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, Prameste. and Lanovium. of which only also often called Palis•an, has any extensive remains. The Latin is further of the utmost importance mis being the ancestor of the modern Romance lan guages (q.v.), including Italian, Spanish. Portu guese. Catalan, French, Provencal, Rhieto-Re mansch, Rumanian, and minor dialects. The Osco-Umbrian is subdivided, as its name into Oscan and Umbrian. which, although more closely related to each other than either of glosses, and proper names. Besides these great divisions there was a third class of Italic dia lects which form the so-called Sabellian group, of which the most important members were Alar sian, helignian, Alarrucinian, Vestinian, 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 :•hin resembled Umbrian rather than Oscan, while the other Sabellian dialects, especially the Padignian, apparently were more closely related to Oscan than to Umbrian. 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 antiquity. Similarly the most of the
Sabellian inscriptions seem to have been written during the first two centuries u.c., but the so called Old Sabellian texts may be as early as the fifth or sixth century before our era. To the con stant expansion of the territory of Latin the other Italic dialects gradually yielded. The first to lose its independence was the Sabellian Sabine, which was absorbed by Latin in the third cen tury B.C. Ain l'Sia n apparently did not survive much later, but the other Sabellian dialects to have had a somewhat longer existence, at least Volscian was still spoken in the second century 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 official language after the Social \Var (n.e. 90-SS), 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 Italie dia le•ts may be represented very roughly by the following table: them is to the Latin, present considerable diver gencies one from the other. These dialects. like the Falerian, Pnenestinian, and Lanuvian of the Latin group, are known only by inscriptions ALPHAnET. 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 phedon (q.v.) manner, the Italic characters seem to have been based on the Greek alphabet of the Chalcidian colonies in Italy, especially on that of CumH. Two forms were derived from this source, the Latino-Faliscan and the Etrusco Osco-Umbrian. (For a discussion of the origin and the development of the Latino-Faliscan dialect, reference may be made to the article on LATIN LANGUAGE.) The Osco-Umbrian alphabets consipted of twenty-one and nineteen letters re spectively, and were read, like the oldest Latin and Greek, from right to left. The letters were as follows: There were a few numerical signs, Osco-Umbrian I for 1, X for TO, Oscan V for 5, ) for NO. Both Oscan and Umbrian, however, frequently em ployed the Latin alphabet. In modern linguistic works the words in Osco-Umbrian script are usu ally.printed in spaced Roman type, those in Latin letters are represented by italics, as Oscan faksia d, 'let him make,' fefacust, `he shall have made.' In addition the oldest Italic inscrip tions are in many cases written in the Greek alphabet. Punctuation in the inscriptions is capricious, and frequently neglected; the usual system, however, is one or more dots, the num ber ranging even to four in the Old Sabellian text.