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Oscan

Dissemination of Oscan

Oscan inscription found in the gate of Nola in Pompeii , preserved in the British Museum in London. Reads from right to left: "Vibius Popidius son of Vibius, Chief Magistrate, was responsible for this work and approved it." Between 300 and 100 BC. AD

The Oscan is an Indo-European language of the group Sabellian now extinct and distant cousin of Latin with which it shares a common grammatical structure. The settlement area of the Oscan language corresponds to the southern part of Italy to the exclusion of existing regions of Puglia and Calabria , and goes on the Adriatic coast to the Abruzzi.

It is believed that the stand of the Italian peninsula by the Indo-Europeans was in two waves: first the ^second millennium BC (the Italians , who founded civilization among others of Terramare or terramaricole) and a second wave to -1000 (civilization known Villanovan ). The first wave corresponds linguistically to the subgroup of Italic languages Latin - Faliscan - Sicilians , the second group Oscan- Umbrian , which explains the discrepancies between the Oscan and Latin.

There is little information regarding the formation of the Oscan, but we assume that this language was no longer spoken after the ^first century BC. AD , at least not find it does more than trace, the dominant latin then throughout Italy. The first written records date back to the Oscan ^fourth century BC. AD

In terms of vocabulary, if some words are easily identifiable from the Latin (eg Citizen: cevs in Oscan is said in Latin civis), many words are unique to Oscan and probably from a substrate non-Indo -European (eg, temple Caila in Oscan, templum in Latin).

Compared to other Italic languages, many Oscan texts have survived, including the famous Cippus Abellanus and Tabula Bantin. The Oscans used an alphabet inspired by the Etruscan , itself inspired by the Greek alphabet.

Oscan language is probably the best known language italics after the Latin because of the dominance of late Rome on this region.