Editing Venetic language (section)

==Linguistic classification==
[[Image:venetico.png|thumb|130px|Venetic alphabet]]
Venetic is a [[centum]] language. The inscriptions use a variety of the [[Northern Italic alphabet]], similar to the [[Etruscan alphabet]].

The exact relationship of Venetic to other Indo-European languages is still being investigated, but the majority of scholars agree that Venetic, aside from [[Liburnian language|Liburnian]], shared some similarities with the [[Italic languages]] and so is sometimes classified as Italic. However, since it also shared similarities with other Western Indo-European branches (particularly [[Celtic languages]] and [[Germanic languages]]), some linguists prefer to consider it an independent Indo-European language. Venetic may also have been related to the [[Illyrian languages]] once spoken in the western [[Balkans]], though the theory that Illyrian and Venetic were closely related is debated by current scholarship.

While some scholars consider Venetic plainly an Italic language, and [[Eric P. Hamp]] in 1954 thought it more closely related to Latino-Faliscan than to the [[Osco-Umbrian languages]], many authorities suggest, in view of the divergent verbal system, that Venetic was not part of Italic proper, but split off from the core of Italic early.<ref>{{cite journal |last=de&nbsp;Melo |first=Wolfgang David Cirilo |date=2007 |title=The sigmatic future and the genetic affiliation of Venetic: Latin faxō "I shall make" and Venetic vha.g.s. to "he made" |journal=Transactions of the Philological Society |volume=105 |issue=105 |pages=1–21 |doi=10.1111/j.1467-968X.2007.00172.x |url=https://biblio.ugent.be/publication/1186868/file/1189048}}</ref>

A 2012 study has suggested that Venetic was a relatively [[Linguistic conservatism|conservative language]] significantly similar to Celtic, on the basis of morphology, while it occupied an intermediate position between Celtic and Italic, on the basis of phonology. However these phonological similarities may have arisen as an areal phenomenon.<ref name="Jadranka">{{cite journal |last=Gvozdanović |first=Jadranka |year=2012 |title=On the linguistic classification of Venetic |journal=Journal of Language Relationship |volume=7 |pages=33–46 |doi=10.31826/jlr-2012-070107 |s2cid=212688857 |url=http://www.jolr.ru/files/%2883%29jlr2012-7%2833-46%29.pdf|doi-access=free }}</ref> Phonological similarities to [[Rhaetian language|Rhaetian]] have also been pointed out.<ref>{{cite conference |first1=M. |last1=Silvestri |first2=G. |last2=Tomezzoli |year=2007 |title=Linguistic distances between Rhaetian, Venetic, Latin, and Slovenian languages |conference=Int'l Topical Conf. Origin of Europeans |pages=184–190 |url=http://www.korenine.si/zborniki/zbornik07/tomezzoli_dist07.pdf}}</ref>

In 2016, [[Celtic studies|Celtologist]] [[Peter Schrijver]] argued that Venetic and Italic together form one sub-branch of an [[Italo-Celtic]] branch of Indo-European, the other sub-branch being Celtic.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Schrijver |first1=Peter |author-link1=Peter Schrijver |editor1-last=Koch |editor1-first=John T. |editor2-last=Cunliffe |editor2-first=Barry |editor1-link=John T. Koch |editor2-link=Barry Cunliffe |title=Celtic from the West 3: Atlantic Europe in the Metal Ages – Questions of Shared Language |date=2016 |publisher=[[Oxbow Books]] |location=Oxford, UK |isbn=978-1-78570-227-3 |pages=489–502 |chapter=17. Ancillary study: Sound Change, the Italo-Celtic Linguistic Unity, and the Italian Homeland of Celtic |chapter-url=https://books.google.com/books?id=HP4sDwAAQBAJ&q=%22peter+schrijver%22+%22celtic+from+the+west+3%22&pg=PA9 |access-date=May 12, 2019 }}</ref>