Romansh, spoken by two percent of the population in southeast Switzerland, is an ancient Rheato-Romanic language derived from Latin, remnants of ancient Celtic languages and perhaps Etruscan.

The last person known to have been able to read Etruscan was the Roman emperor Claudius ( 10 BC – AD 54 ), the author of a treatise in twenty volumes on the Etruscans, Tyrrenikà ( now lost ), who compiled a dictionary ( also lost ) by interviewing the last few elderly rustics who still spoke the language.

The Etruscan language has been difficult to analyze, due to its being an isolate.

Bonfante, a leading scholar in the field, says "... it resembles no other language in Europe or elsewhere ...." The ancients were aware that Etruscan was an isolate.

In the 1st century BC, the Greek historian Dionysius of Halicarnassus stated that the Etruscan language was unlike any other.

The majority consensus is that Etruscan is related only to other members of what is called the Tyrsenian language family which is an isolate family, that is, unrelated to other language groups by any known relationship ( see Language isolate ).

Another Aegean language which is possibly related to Etruscan is Minoan.

The interest in Etruscan antiquities and the mysterious Etruscan language found its modern origin in a book by a Dominican friar, Annio da Viterbo ( d. 1502 ), the cabalist and orientalist, now remembered mainly for literary forgeries.

Annio also started to excavate Etruscan tombs, unearthing sarcophagi and inscriptions, and made a bold attempt at deciphering the Etruscan language.

An Ural – Altaic connection with the Etruscan language has also been proposed.

In 1861, Robert Ellis proposed that Etruscan was related to Armenian, which is nowadays acknowledged as an Indo-European language.

The Pyrgi Tablets laminated sheets of gold with a treatise both in Etruscan and Phoenician language s in the Etruscan Museum in Rome

The Etruscan language portion has 16 lines and 37 words.

G. M. Facchetti has attempted to link Linear A to the Tyrrhenian language family comprising Etruscan, Rhaetic, and Lemnian.

G. M. Facchetti proposed some possible similarities between the Etruscan language and ancient Lemnian, and other Aegean languages like Minoan.

However, recent decipherment of Lydian and its classification as an Anatolian language mean that Etruscan and Lydian were possibly not even in the same language family.

The Etruscan alphabet was in turn adopted and further modified by the ancient Romans to write the Latin language.

The Sumerian and Etruscan languages, usually regarded as language isolates, are thought by some to be Nostratic languages as well.

At the moment he was excited about his son's having received the Prix De Rome in archaeology and was looking forward to being present this summer at the excavation of an Etruscan tomb.

Since some of the Roman months were named in honor of divinities, and as April was sacred to the goddess Venus, the Festum Veneris et Fortunae Virilis being held on the first day, it has been suggested that Aprilis was originally her month Aphrilis, from her equivalent Greek goddess name Aphrodite ( Aphros ), or from the Etruscan name Apru.

In Etruscan legend, he was known as Aivas Vilates.

In Greek mythology, Daedalus ( Latin, also Hellenized Latin Daedalos, Greek Daidalos () meaning " cunning worker ", and Etruscan Taitale ) was a skillful craftsman and artisan.

An early image of winged Daedalus appears on an Etruscan jug of ca 630 BC found at Cerveteri, where a winged figure captioned Taitale appears on one side of the vessel, paired on the other side, uniquely, with Metaia, Medea: " its linking of these two mythical figures is unparalleled ," Robin Lane Fox observes: " The link was probably based on their wondrous, miraculous art.

Etruscan was superseded completely by Latin, leaving only a few documents and some loanwords in Latin, such as persona ( from Etruscan φersu ), and some place-names, such as Roma.

Etruscan literacy was widespread over the Mediterranean shores, as evidenced by about 13, 000 inscriptions ( dedications, epitaphs, etc.

Urgulanilla, the emperor's first wife, was Etruscan.

The single extant Etruscan book, Liber Linteus, which was written on linen, survived only because it was used as mummy wrappings.

The Latin script owes its existence to the Etruscan alphabet, which was adapted for Latin in the form of the Old Italic alphabet.

The Etruscan alphabet employs a Euboean variant of the Greek alphabet using the letter digamma and was in all probability transmitted through Pithecusae and Cumae, two Euboean settlements in southern Italy.

The main material repository of Etruscan civilization, from the modern perspective, was its tombs.

In this function, it was borrowed in the 8th century BC by the Etruscan and other Old Italic alphabets, which were based on the Euboean form of the Greek alphabet.

The topos of Heracles suckling at Hera's breast was especially popular in Magna Graecia, here on a mid-4th century Apulia n painted vase ; Etruscan mythology adopted this iconic image

The factory was so-named after the Etruria district of Italy, where black porcelain dating to Etruscan times was being excavated.

In 1498, Annio published his antiquarian miscellany titled Antiquitatum variarum ( in 17 volumes ) where he put together a fantastic theory in which both the Hebrew and Etruscan languages were said to originate from a single source, the " Aramaic " spoken by Noah and his descendants, founders of Etruscan Viterbo.

The Etruscans are believed to have spoken a non-Indo-European language ; the majority consensus is that Etruscan is related only to other members of what is called the Tyrsenian language family, which in itself is an isolate family, that is, unrelated directly to other known language groups.

The Etruscan language was unrelated to the other languages spoken in Italy, and accordingly it contains many names which have no equivalents in the Latin or Oscan languages.

Frequently, efforts to look for deeper linguistic origins of these languages will also attempt to integrate them into attested extinct languages of Europe, such as the Etruscan language of Northern Italy, the Ligurian language of Italy, the Lemnian language of the Aegean Island of Lemnos, the Minoan language aka Linear A of ancient Crete, the Sumerian language once spoken in Mesopotamia ( which is the oldest attested written language ), the language of the Indus River Valley civilization, the Elamite language of Iran, and the Hurrian language and Hattic language of Anatolia.

The eight branches of Eurasiatic are Etruscan, Indo-European, Uralic – Yukaghir, Altaic, Korean-Japanese-Ainu, Gilyak, Chukotian, and Eskimo – Aleut, spoken in northernmost North America and Greenland with a toehold in easternmost Siberia.

Livy and Cicero were both aware that highly specialized Etruscan religious rites were codified in several sets of books written in Etruscan under the generic Latin title Etrusca Disciplina.

With the exception of the Liber Linteus, the only written records of Etruscan origin that remain are inscriptions, mainly funerary.

Perugia was an Umbrian settlement but first appears in written history as Perusia, one of the 12 confederate cities of Etruria ; it was first mentioned in Q. Fabius Pictor's account, utilized by Livy, of the expedition carried out against the Etruscan league by Fabius Maximus Rullianus in 310 or 309 BC.

Vejovis may be based on the Etruscan god of vendetta, known to them by the name Vetis written on the Piacenza Liver, a bronze model used in haruspical divination.

They were written in the Etruscan language, despite their Latin titles.

The older, the Umbrian alphabet, like other Old Italic alphabets, was derived from the Etruscan alphabet, and was written right-to-left.

Such a meaning is connected to the Umbrian word for border, tuder: Tursa is written Tuda in the Etruscan tablets, the intervocalic d being pronounced as a weak rs ( i. e..

It was his work that established that the linen wrappings constituted a manuscript written in Etruscan.

Lepontic is known from around 140 inscriptions written in the alphabet of Lugano, one of five main Northern Italic alphabets derived from the Etruscan alphabet.

It is clear that in the centuries leading up to Roman imperial times, the Raetians had at least come under Etruscan influence, as the Raetic inscriptions are written in what appears to be a northern variant of the Etruscan alphabet.

Some are written in a variety of the Old Italic alphabet derived from the Etruscan, and are written from right to left, but show some traces of the influence of the Latin alphabet.

* both Etruscan and Lemnian share two unique dative cases, type-I *- si and type-II *- ale, shown both on the Lemnos Stele ( Hulaie-ši " for Hulaie ", Φukiasi-ale " for the Phocaean ") and in inscriptions written in Etruscan ( aule-si " To Aule " on the Cippus Perusinus as well as the inscription mi mulu Laris-ale Velχaina-si " I was blessed for Laris Velchaina ").

Having a contrast between front and back vowels, it would ( unlike Etruscan ) appear to lack a high back rounded vowel ( written in IPA as / u /) which is curious because this defies the linguistic universal of contrast maximization.

Pitigliano and its area were inhabited in Etruscan times, but the first extant written mention of Pitigliano dates only to 1061.

On coins and inscriptions the name is almost always written Aquillius, but in manuscripts generally with a single l. The oldest branch of the family bore the cognomen Tuscus, suggesting that the gens may have been of Etruscan origin, although the nomen of the gens is indisputably Latin, and the name Tuscus could have been acquired in other ways.