Customer Reviews

The Etruscan Language: An Introduction, Revised Editon

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I'm getting a little tired of reviewers who bash a book that is about a hard-to-find topic, then end their reviews with "look elsewhere", or "this was a good introduction, BUT..." I mean, where else would you look for a book on the Etruscan language? And what is all this about "comparative"?? Did the previous reviewer just learn this word? One can only find so much on a dead language. If you know so much, then please give us some book titles that can help us go even farther in our studies.

After I read this and Pallottino's The Etruscans, I found a lot of answers I was looking for on the Etruscans. I am not an expert, but this book made me understand a lot about these inhabitants of Central Italy.

I say this because when I got interested in the subject I searched the Web and watched videos that present a lot of fiction as facts about the Etruscans, and frankly I am really aggravated that this stuff is even out there. Theories about the Etruscans coming from Armenia and such.

Pallottino makes the case, studying the Etruscans' burial methods, that they were a pre-Indoeuropean people (who therefore preceded the arrival of the Latins) with their distinct customs. Just like the Basques of Northern Spain, which display a very distinct language from the rest of Spain.

The language issue has long been the subject of other fiction. Growing up in Italy, I remember distinctly documentaries on TV saying the Etruscan language was a mystery. This book is very much proof to the contrary. It's short and to the point.

THE ETRUSCAN LANGUAGE: An Introduction by Giuliano and Larissa Bonfante, the second edition of which appeared in 2002, is one of the few resources in English on this enigmatic language of early Italy. As a student of comparative linguistics, I thought that the work would be interesting and would include some discussion of the possible links between Etruscan and other language families. However, the authors show some dislike of the comparative method and are unwilling to consider Etruscan in a comparative context.

The book is divided into three parts. First comes the historical background, i.e. who the Etruscan people were. The discussion of the language itself comes in the second part, a meagre grammar with most of the phonology and morphology that can be discerned from available evidence. The third part, "Study aids", has sample inscriptions and texts and glossaries.

I imagine that this book will be most useful to archaeologists and historians who need some basic understanding of the language. Comparative linguists will want to look elsewhere.