Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, "Latin Language" to "Lefebvre, François-Joseph" / Volume 16, Slice 3

Articles in This Slice

2. Earliest Roman Inscriptions. —At Rome, at all events, it is clear from the unwavering voice of tradition that Latin was spoken from the beginning of the city. Of the earliest Latin inscriptions found in Rome which were known in 1909, the oldest, the so-called “Forum inscription,” can hardly be referred with confidence to an earlier century than the 5th; the later, the well-known Duenos (= later Latin bonus ) inscription, certainly belongs to the 4th; both of these are briefly described below (§§ 40, 41). At this date we have probably the period of the narrowest extension of Latin; non-Latin idioms were spoken in Etruria, Umbria, Picenum and in the Marsian and Volscian hills. But almost directly the area begins to expand again, and after the war with Pyrrhus the Roman arms had planted the language of Rome in her military colonies throughout the peninsula. When we come to the 3rd century B.C. the Latin inscriptions begin to be more numerous, and in them ( e.g. the oldest epitaphs of the Scipio family) the language is very little removed from what it was in the time of Plautus.
4. Position of the Italic Group. —The Italic group, then, when compared with the other seven main “families” of Indo-European speech, in respect of their most significant differences, ranges itself thus:
(i.) Back-palatal and Velar Sounds. —In point of its treatment of the Indo-European back-palatal and velar sounds, it belongs to the western or centum group, the name of which is, of course, taken from Latin; that is to say, like German, Celtic and Greek, it did not sibilate original k and g , which in Indo-Iranian, Armenian, Slavonic and Albanian have been converted into various types of sibilants (Ind.-Eur. kṃtom = Lat. centum , Gr. (ἑ)-κατόν , Welsh cant , Eng. hund -( red ), but Sans. ṡatam , Zend satƏm ); but, on the other hand, in company with just the same three western groups, and in contrast to the eastern, the Italic languages labialized the original velars (Ind.-Eur. qod = Lat. quod , Osc. pod , Gr. ποδ-(απός) , Welsh pwy , Eng. what , but Sans. kás , “who?”).