Talk:Oscan language

Vitalieu
I'd like to see some citation for the claim that Italian vita is related to this. I have no knowledge of any connection between vita and veal. -- (Unsigned)

I've removed the reference, I could find no other reference to this on the Web, and the article for Italy states that the etymology for that word is very uncertain: "The name appears to be a Greek form of Latin Vitelia, related to the Latin vitulus and Greek ἰταλός 'calf', but nature of the relationship is obscure: see Italus." -- Archfalhwyl 16:52, 20 February 2007 (UTC)

Example of an Oscan text ? why is it written using english style letters can we have the actual example in its original alphabet
 * The article mentions already that the language often was written in the Latin alphabet. 惑乱 分からん * \)/ (\ (&lt; \) (2 /) /)/ * (talk) 16:32, 2 March 2008 (UTC)

slaagid
I'm not an expert in the Italic languages, but I think the last sentence in this paragraph may be mistaken, or at least misleading:

''Oscan had much in common with Latin, though there are also many striking differences, and many common word-groups in Latin were absent and represented by entirely different forms. For example, Latin volo, velle, volui, and other such forms from the Proto-Indo-European root *wel ('to will') were represented by words derived from *gher ('to desire'): Oscan herest ('he wants, desires') as opposed to Latin vult (id.). Latin locus (place) was absent and represented by slaagid (place).''

Isn't Oscan slaagid (ablative), slagím (accusative) cognate with Latin locus? The Latin word appears earlier as stlocus, and I gather that Indo-European *sl was preserved in Oscan but regularly changed to *stl in many Indo-European languages spoken in the Mediterranean area, including Latin. Compare the Oscan proper name Slabiis with Latin Stlabius, later Labius. See Phelps (1937) "Indo-European Initial sl", Language 13:4, pp. 279-284. --Dependent Variable.

herest - quiere
I wonder whether Oscan "herest" is really related to spanish "quiere". "Quiere" obviously descends from Latin "quaerit". Latin initial /kw/ corresponds to Oscan /p/, so, if Oscan had a cognate of "quaerit", it should have been *pairit or *pairet or something, certainly NOT "herest". --Pail (talk) 23:47, 15 May 2008 (UTC)


 * I am not a linguist, but if the Indo-European root is *gher ('to desire') (as referenced above) it's not that far-fetched to see Latin quaerere and Spanish querer coming from it, nor does it take that much imagination to see *gh become h. But again, I don't really know what I'm talking about. 174.21.7.133 (talk) 23:52, 13 September 2009 (UTC)


 * Except I just found something online that says Latin quaerere comes from *kwer, not *gher. 174.21.7.133 (talk) 23:59, 13 September 2009 (UTC)

Notes + bibliography
"don't combine autogenerated notes with asterisked bibiography [sic] items"

The combining of those two does happen to be totally standard, although I personally prefer that addition of the second heading.

Cheers, Varlaam (talk) 15:44, 27 July 2010 (UTC)

The classification
First things first. We are using the SIL classification in these language articles and I dare say that is not a bad, though not the only possible, choice. We list the SIL standard in the box. Therefore I think we are justified is presenting that classification as our standard classification and not getting it mixed up with other opinions and classifications. So, I'm going to change it to be that way. If you want something different, I don't think we should ignore that possibility. I do think we should identify it as a variant and give the source for the variant. Thanks.Dave (talk) 03:09, 21 August 2010 (UTC)

Sabine etc
"Dialects of Oscan include Samnite, Marrucine, Paelignan, Vestinian, Sabine, and Marsian."

This sentences mixes up Oscan and Umbrian dialects. I'm following the SIL.Dave (talk) 09:25, 21 August 2010 (UTC)


 * Oscan, the specific language, was spoken mainly by the Samnites, a people of southern Italy and a formidable opponent of Rome in the second half of the 4th century BC. They called their language Oscan, but they called themselves Samnites after the name of their country, Samnium. Oscan speakers also included a group of tribes of Campania and Latium, the Aurunci, the Sidicini and the Ausones, who were generally known as the Oscans. this is good but you should also mention the Lucani south of the Samnites in modern Basilicata and CalabriaCunibertus (talk) 10:24, 21 August 2010 (UTC)
 * Well hello bert. We have a map there I believe, which looks about right. Rather than define the range of the Samnites here I though that should be under Samnium and Samnites. Why pick out Lucania? I'm going on now. Be back later. Quite a bit remains to be done on this article. We have the full text of Buck though.Dave (talk) 11:54, 21 August 2010 (UTC) - wiat minute - whoa - I misundertood you. You are saying the ones mentioned are not the only Oscan speakers, are you not? May be, I do not know. If it was spoken south of Samnium that range should be mentioned also. I think that would impact some of the other articles. I am however going on. I will be back before too long and when I do I will look into that if it has not been taken care of already. Ciao.Dave (talk) 12:00, 21 August 2010 (UTC)
 * a "pure" form of oscan language was spoken by the 1. Osci, 2. Samnites and 3. Lucani. so it is 3 (three) major oscan speaking nations, not only the 2 (two) Osci and Samnite nations. Then there were the Peligni, Marrucini et Sabines whom spoke quietly distinctive, characteristic, oscan "dialects" who were enough different from the "oscan standard language" of the other 3 (three) major groups (that's the reason some authors speak of a group of "sabellic dialects" ) . the map showing the Marsi dialect too enclosed as an oscan dialect is wrong  about this or may be debatable if originally meant something else (of course in a different classification marsican too is a "sabellic dialect"), but plainly the map also shows the tribal names in different colors distinguishing the 3 (three) speakers of the true, mainstream, oscan "standard" language (brown-reddish names) and the speakers of the other distinctive, less standard, oscan dialects (red)Cunibertus (talk) 14:08, 21 August 2010 (UTC)
 * The Lucani (Lucanians) were an ancient people of Italy who spoke an Oscan language. The Lucani spoke a variety of the Umbrian-Oscan language, like their neighbours, the Samnites, who had absorbed the Oscii in the 5th century BC. The few Oscan inscriptions and coins in the area that survive from the 4th or 3rd century BC use the Greek alphabet. Cunibertus (talk) 14:17, 21 August 2010 (UTC)
 * for the tribes of the Lucani I have just updated the list on Ancient peoples of Italy with the reference name=Naturalis>Pliny the Elder, Naturalis Historia, III, 98 Cunibertus (talk) 14:46, 21 August 2010 (UTC)
 * and edited the Brutti too who were reported as neighbours of the Sabines (a sabellic - aka oscan - people) and not of the Lucani (another sabellic - aka oscan - people) their former masters Cunibertus (talk) 15:00, 21 August 2010 (UTC)

The lede
I've simplified the lead to make it understandable to the average Wikipedia reader. I'm sure SIL international standards etc. are important for language classification but they should not be mentioned in the very first sentence of the article. The lead of an article should be in clear, comprehensible layman's English with no jargon or shibbolethic references per the manual of style. Also, "Corpus" is not a word the average reader is going to immediately understand (the average reader is going to think "dead body", not "body of evidence"), and the manual of style does warn against unnecessary jargon - "Evidence" is a better choice for a top level header. --NellieBly (talk) 00:16, 21 May 2011 (UTC)


 * But clarity should not trump basic accuracy. Oscan is not a direct 'sister language' to Latin, so I have deleted that term here. There are real disagreements among scholars about the unity of the Italic family, specifically whether Osco-Umbrian/Sabellic is actually a distinct branch of Indo-European from Italo-Faliscan or not. We don't have to go into detail on that in the introductory paragraph, but just saying that Oscan and Latin are sister languages is certainly quite misleading, unless you want to claim that all related languages, no matter how distant, are 'sisters.'Johundhar (talk) 02:39, 6 October 2021 (UTC)
 * I agree: only Oscan and Umbrian are sure to be sister languages.--3knolls (talk) 10:04, 6 October 2021 (UTC)

Letters
This needs pictures for the letters, my computer is rendering the current representation as squares, so I don't have the font required. -- 65.94.79.6 (talk) 21:13, 28 June 2013 (UTC)

Cippus Abellanus
A Latin translation would really be welcome! Nobody ever had that idea? --and would it kill the original poster to include an English translation? Or is this page only for cognoscenti? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Pablo.paz (talk • contribs) 06:54, 28 May 2018 (UTC)

Nuremberg / Bavaria -  Ángel.García2001 131.188.3.21 (talk) 00:29, 26 April 2014 (UTC)

Edits 1/24/2015
Hi. I edited the page tonight. I added references to stuff that I probably originally put in some years ago. The alphabet was not showing. I also don't know where I got it from - probably another page on Wikipedia. I removed it. I also removed the picture of heta and the refence to it in the text. It did look like heta, but did Buck mention heta specifically in his text? Should that be added back in? Habemus (talk) 23:23, 24 January 2015 (UTC)

There were a lot of citations... Habemus (talk) 23:29, 24 January 2015 (UTC)

Oscan online
Read this and expand this article. https://archive.org/details/grammarofoscanum00buckuoft 108.18.136.147 (talk) 12:08, 30 April 2015 (UTC)

Didn't notice this injunction till now, but I've been in the process of doing both for a few days now! Please review my additions for errors, etc. ThanksJohundhar (talk) 20:40, 12 October 2021 (UTC)

We made a new image for Oscan alphabet
Enjoy.



--Agatino Catarella (talk) 17:51, 27 October 2015 (UTC)

Nice. Note that they also seem to use an Etruscan form of phi for 1000 (rather than the usual value of 500!). It's in the Bantina text.Johundhar (talk) 20:39, 12 October 2021 (UTC)

"Latin locus was absent"
could someone take a look at this? It looks a bit malformed/misleading to me. Firstly, is it really so impossible that this supposed Oscan slaagid is in fact cognate to locus after all (Latin locus is from IE *stl̥-ḱo- ...)? Secondly, even if not it seems bizarre to expect that a Latin word be "present" in a sister language rather than a daughter language, and weirder still to (if we accept that slaagid could not be cognate) assume it is "absent" rather than merely unattested given the fragmentary attestation... --Calthinus (talk) 16:47, 31 October 2020 (UTC)


 * Latin /k/ does not correspond to Oscan /g/, so there's that. In any case, it might not be the best example of differences in vocabulary between Latin and Sabellic languages, since there are cognates of Latin locus in Umbrian.Johundhar (talk) 17:04, 13 November 2022 (UTC)

Added Texts and translations from Tabula Bantina
Please look it over for any errors, etc. From Buck. Johundhar (talk) 03:05, 10 October 2021 (UTC)

Wiki Education assignment: Pompeii and the Cities of Vesuvius
Here are some possible edits I'm thinking of adding to the article.

The Testament of Vibius Adiranus

In Oscan:

''v(iíbis). aadirans. v(iíbieís). eítiuvam. paam vereiiaí. púmpaiianaí. trístaamentud. deded. eísak. eítiuvad v(iíbis). viínikiís. m(a)r(aheis).kvaísstur. púmpaiians. trííbúm. ekak. kúmbennieís. tanginud. úpsannam deded. ísídum. prúfatted''

In English:

Vibius Adiranus, son of Vibius, gave in his will money to the Pompeian vereiia-. With this money, Vibius Vinicius, son of Maras, Pompeian quaestor, dedicated the construction of this building by decision of the senate, and the same man approved it.

Adapted from the Etruscan alphabet, the Central Oscan alphabet was used to write Oscan in Campania and surrounding territories from the 4th century BCE until possibly the first century CE.

From current article:

"A very strong piece of evidence is the presence of Oscan graffiti on walls of Pompeii that were reconstructed after the earthquake of CE 62, and must therefore have been written between CE 62 and 79."

Other scholars argue that this is not strong evidence for the survival of Oscan, given the disappearance of public inscriptions in Oscan after Roman colonization. It is possible that both languages may have existed simultaneously under different conditions, in which Roman was given political, religious, and administrative importance while Oscan was considered a 'low' language. This phenomenon is referred to as diglossia with bilingualism. Some Oscan graffiti exists from the first century CE, but it is rare to find evidence from Italy of Latin-speaking Roman citizens representing themselves as having non-Latin-speaking ancestors. Minervascripps (talk) 22:37, 9 April 2022 (UTC)


 * Most of this looks solid. You should definitely mention the graffiti, but your language here is a bit confusing--is the evidence "very strong" or "not strong," and how could graffiti written in a language on the walls of a city not be good evidence that the language was spoken, at least at that moment, in that city?Johundhar (talk) 17:08, 13 November 2022 (UTC)

Direction of writing?
The shape of the letters suggests that Oscan was written from right to left. Is this the case? One way or the other, it needs to be stated. Koro Neil (talk) 21:12, 6 March 2023 (UTC)