What Etruscan Sounded Like - and how we know

Italy's lost language? They gave Rome the alphabet, but we hardly know them. Here's how we pieced together the extinct language of an early Italian civilization.

~ Briefly ~

A strange Egyptian mummy was found in the 1800s. Its bandages were filled with the letters of a book - not an Egyptian book, but a book written in an archaic Italian language known to Romans as "Etruscan". The book held a deeper mystery beyond the question of its provenance: it couldn't be read, not because the text was undeciphered but because the language was unknown.

Throughout the video we'll discover what we can (and can't) say about Etruscan sounds and words. You'll glimpse bits of Etruscan consonants, vowels, grammar, syllables, accentuation and one major change in the language's history. Along the way, I'll share tales of the hopes and frustrations of the scholars who worked through these discoveries. Finally, you'll hear the reconstructed pronunciation of an Etruscan phrase, along with a likely translation, before concluding we're still far from understanding this captivating tongue.

~ Credits ~

Art, animation, narration and some music by Josh from NativLang

Full credits for images, sfx and for claims made:

Music I did not create (see above doc for full attribution):
Jason Shaw: Sneaky Snooper, The Great Unknown
Josh Woodward: Twinklebell, Cherubs
Kevin MacLeod: Big Mojo, Return of the Mummy, The Sky of our Ancestors, Thinking Music, March of the Spoons, Rynos Theme, The Path of the Goblin King v2

[skeeterinnewjersey]

My late husband was a passionate student of all things Etruscan. I wish he had lived to hear the language spoken, even if translations may be incomplete. Your channel brings me such joy because I can hear him following along in my head as if he was still with me.

[alanoken]

How pleasant is the narrator’s voice, unlike so many others with informative YouTube channels, he is both scholarly and kind on the ear.

[metteholm]

The loss of Claudius´work is truly sad. He was even the last to master the etruscan language in speech - nerdy as he was.

[FlexibleFlyer]

Many, many years ago I signed up for an intersession course on The Culture of Italy. The professor provided the class with about 60 topics for research and study. We had six weeks to do research and submit our work (everyone turned in well over 150 typewritten pages). I chose the Etruscans. I had read about them, but I felt they were deserving of more study. I still have my "tome" on the Etruscans somewhere in the house. But it wasn't until I got to travel to Italy and one of my cousins took me to see some of the Etruscan tombs that all my research came back to me. It was one thing to read about the Etruscans but another thing to see their objects, statues, artifacts, etc. They contributed so much to Rome---engineering, architecture, fine arts, gladiator games, food preparation, and more.
Now, I'm going to make a concerted effort to find that "tome" and re-read what I wrote about the Etruscans so many decades ago. Your video piqued my interest!

[andrewptob]

Early advanced civilizations are so interesting. I can never get enough of this stuff.

[harrybrooks]

I’m 62 now; have been a language fan since age 12. There’s always more to learn. These are intriguing and challenging resources.

[mosatsoni]

Employer: Why should I hire you?

Me: Do you know what Etruscan sounded like?

[InkanSpider]

Love how Aiser sounds just like Æsir, which is one of the families of gods in Norse mythology. Gods like Thor, Odin and Frigg (Loki was half-æsir too btw) were æsir

[hipwave]

The name of the town here where I live used to be KEIKNA (kaikna, kaiknas), after the name of the local noble family of etruscan landlords that took their name from the local river (Keik ?). Then Rome took over and the family along with the place became CÆCINA and later Cecina. Dante mentioned it as a mostly savage and desolate place where just wild beasts hang out and by the 17th century the place was a desert hellhole of swamps where wolves would eat you in the unlikely occurrence that you had managed to survive malaria. There are etruscan dome tombs around here at mere meters from my garden and the remains of the roman villa owned by that posh family. Their underground cistern is still here and it is freaking huge and deep. Tunnels depart from that cave and lead god knows where but voices are they go under the river and to the centre of town. From time to time pieces of etruscan red and black pottery are still found around.

[albertopozzi]

Hello from Tuscany Italy I'm near Populonia one of the first etruscan cities

[Awakeningspirit]

Imagine some far-future historian: "around the dawn of the Third Millennium, the English language appears to have underwent an enormous shift. Words like "babe" became "bae." Words like "brother" became "bro, " or even "bruh." Long words such as "legitimate" shortened to "legit, " and later, "lit". Even entire phrases became condensed into largely consonant-based iconography- phrases such as "laugh out loud" became "lol" and "[I will] be right back" became "brb".

[vintagelady]

I took about 3 weeks of an intro to linguistics course when getting my master's degree---I was so hooked on the details of the phonetics, accents, dialects, comparing languages, how much language tells you about a culture & its origins. Such an interesting channel, so well done, well researched, professional. thank you.

[adamchurvis]

Claudius: "If you strike out the letter 'C' from 'Caesar', the word 'Aesar' is left, and in Etruscan, Aesar means 'god'."
Livia: "If Jove ever melts the 'C' off your name, what's left will turn out to mean 'jackass'."

[KreepyPanda]

I was so ahead of my time in school that i already knew and used *Guessology* on my exams.

[dlwatib]

Careful! Just because vowels aren't written doesn't mean they don't exist in the spoken language. Scribes get lazy and start writing just enough of a word to be recognizable, or they abbreviate common phrases, and the first things dropped are usually vowels because they carry relatively little semantic meaning. They're there chiefly to help our mouths flow from one consonant to another. The harder or scarcer the writing material, the more incentive there is to shorten phrases via abbreviation and words via truncation and vowel elision.

[tapiopelkonen]

The Etruscans have had a special place in my heart after I read Mika Waltari’s The Etruscan years ago. Strong recommendation 👌🏻

Thank you for this 🙏🏻

[deyesed]

RIP Emperor Claudius and all his academic work.

[jamesbon]

I've always found Etruscan and Minoan history fascinating. This was cool.

[kravenLaw]

In Norse mythology the Aesir are the gods of Asgard [Valhalla]. Interesting how in the Etruscan language they called gods Aiser which is similar to the Norse Aesir.

[hugolafhugolaf]

I visited Umbria in 2022 and there is a ton of Etruscan stuff to see there.