[-GALLE]NI.M.F.OSTIALAE.GALLEN | IAEEQVPETARS
[MLV-134, LLV-Pa6]

See the word IAEQVPETARS down the right side. Note too how it seems added as a tag, one of the reasons for interpreting it as a ‘happy journey’, ‘bon voyage’, etc.

3.4 Dots around Initial Vowels – In General

The above example showed the dots around the intial vowel E proving the palatali-zation.. Similar effects can be expected on the other vowels. We begin with the basic I with dots also discussed earlier. The phonetic representations use Roman pronunciation (J = English Y).
.i. = “J”
.e. = “jE”
.a. = “jA”
.o. = “jO”
.u. = “jU”
Perhaps Venetic put the stress strongly on the first syllable, and this feature may be the result of needing to ‘launch’ the initial vowel strongly. Such a need would pro-duce a consonantal feature at the start –a J/Y or H. This could simply have been a feature arising from the manner of speech, accent, etc, a para-linguistic feature not part of the language itself; but if it was strong, the phonetic writing needed to record it. A good modern example would be that if we found a dialect of English in which all E sounds were pronounced “I”, a writer might want to show it explicitly – especially if writing dialogue – instead of normal writing. For example if there were people who spoke “Hippy Dey ti yeh”, a writer transcribing this might want to write it phonetically as I just did (or in other phonetic writing) instead of writing “Happy Day to you” .

Early phonetic writing was not aware how languages only need certain sounds called “phonemes” in order for the text to represent the language, and therefore early phonetic writing tended towards being literally phonetic, capturing even strong paralinguistic sounds even if they were not part of the language.

Furthermore, if ancient scribes used too few characters for the sounds, a reader who knew the language was still able to read the text. Consider the Livonian language. Linguists have identified many palatalized sounds, and determined that many of them are phonemic; but if Livonian were written without the identified palatalized let-ters, a Livonian would still be able to identify the words. They might however read it more like Estonian where palatalization is weaker and needs not be marked. The reason Livonian has been assigned many additional palatalized letters is largely be-cause of the influence of linguists.In the actual history of written language the written language naturally reduces to a form that is readable, regardless of whether is agrees with linguistic representations. English is a good example – it is filled with letters wherein we cannot tell the sound without looking at the whole word. For example, we can only tell that the word “where” is pronounced with the final e silent, only by recognizing the whole word. Thus the more history there is in a phonetically written language, the more it departs from strict phonetic representation, and the more the reader determines words from experience with the full words: the more the words become their own graphics.

To summarize, early phonetically written language like Venetic, naively tries to record the actual spoken language and captures many features which may not really need to be written down. Conversely there have been many written languages that minimized the alphabet, and the actual sound of the language has been lost. Too much information makes it possible to reproduced the sentences without knowing the language, and too little information requires the reader know the language well enough to identify the intended words even with a lack of information.

In the case of Venetic, therefore, we must recognize that, since the Venetic writing had very little history, for the most part, it is highly phonetic. It is valid to read Venetic phonetically, following the Roman alphabet equivalents, and expect it to quite closely reflect how it was actually spoken. At the height of the Roman Empire it is certain that the way Latin was spoken varied from one region to another while the written language remained unchanged. In other words, the Latin spoken by common folk in Britain would have sounded different from the Latin spoken in Gaul, or Spain. But the Latin would be written the same way. A good example is modern English. Eng-lish is spoken in many different ways, many different dialects – compareaccents in America vs. Britain vs. Australia vs. India etc. All use the same written language. If we were to write English truly phonetically, there would be a hundred or so written forms of English.

If Venetic writing tried to reproduce its language explictly then we can expect dialec-tic variations will appear in the writing. But what is most intriguing is that by adding the dots – serving not just mostly palalization and similar tongue-produced effects but (see later) situations with lengthening (of either sound or silence) –allows us to reproduced Venetic quite accurately.

Even if all the dots were not necessary and word boundary writing could have been used, the Veneti thought that it was important to mark the palatalizations explicitly, maybe thinking that if they didn’t it would be read like Etruscan.

While the dots strictly speaking are not needed for someone who knew the lan-guage, and a Venetic reader could do just as well with dots only marking word boun-daries, if we initially know no Venetic at all, the dots certainly give us a vivid idea of how the Venetic sounded.

Perhaps it sounded like Danish relative to German, or Livonian relative to Estonian. It is a blessing in disguise!! Furthermore as the dialects changed, the scribes who recorded it, captured significant changes in pronunciation. That is why we will see variations on some words, and especially with the application of the dots.

If we regard the Venetic writing as extremely phonetic because of all the dots, we cannot view the variations as erroneous, but that some words were spoken a little differently between two locations and two periods in time. For example if there is an inscription that shows .e.petars instead of .e.kupetari.s. that does not mean the scribe made a mistake. It simply means that, just like in English good-bye can become g’bye, so too a commonly used .e.cupetari.s. could reduce to .e.petars over time.

When Venetic at the beginning of Roman times was written with Roman alphabet letters, the dots vanished, confirming that the original Venetic written language was more a phonetic recording of actual speech than its Roman alphabet form. We also have to bear in mind the fact that Romans explicitly showed word boundaries, which reduced the need for additional phonetic punctuation.

Figure 3.4

9b-B)

9b-B) ENONI . ONTEI . APPIOI . SSELBOI SSELBOI . ANDETIC OBOSECUPETARIS – [container – MLV 236, LLV B-1]

This is one of the few inscriptions (other than Roman writing inscriptions on urns) where Roman letters are used, and the Roman convention of simply using dots to separate words. The dots around letters are missing. This tends to prove that strictly speaking the dot-punctuation was not necessary to read the text. But without the dots, someone who does not know Venetic will read it like reading Latin, and the palatalizations, etc. that reproduce how it was really spoken is lost.

Throughout the investigations of the Venetic writing, investigators have wondered why the word “Veneti” does not appear (other than in one instance Venetkens, which could simply be a borrowing from Latin.) But we must bear in mind both that ancient Latin spoke the V as a “W” and Greeks called them “Eneti” (or “Henetoi”) both of which suggests the word was introduced with a palatalized initial “E”. In my analysis of the Venetic inscriptions I came to the conclusion that in the inscriptions the word is represented in the stem .e..n.no-. For example it appears as .e..n.noniia. The iia ending suggests the Venetic way of saying the Roman “Venetia”

moloto.e..n.noniia

[urn- MLV 91, LLV-Pa90]

Instead of showing any V-character (=W-sound), it shows the E surrounded by dots. The actual Venetic pronunciation of .e..n.noniia may have sounded something like (playing on the phonetics of the Roman alphabet) “WHEI-NO-NII-A”.

This helps us reproduce the sound of other Venetic words that begins with dotted vowels. For example there is one sentence in which the scribe has added plenty of dots – .e..i.k. It must have sounded very unusual, such as WHEIHK, YEIHK, etc.

Note that the above discussion is a good example of determining the meaning of the dots through looking at evidence, starting from our first observation that showed .e.ku sounded like “IAEEQU”. It puzzles me how earlier studies of Venetic writing failed to identify the dots as punctuation that modified normal Etruscan letter sounds, and that it has nothing to do with syllables (which someone proposed.) It is nothing more than added information on pronunciation.The fact that it was added is evidence the Venetic language was pronounced with extreme palatalization – maybe like how Danish or southern Swedish speaks its Germanic language today – and the Venetic scribes were motivated to introduce the dots simply because their language was extremely different from the pure round sounds of neighbouring Etruscan or Latin.

We will look at the effect of the dots on consonants in the next sections. But first, for comparison, let us look at something similar with respect to intial vowel treatments in Estonian versus Livonian, were Estonian has weak palatalization and rounder sounds like in Latin, while Livonian is extremely palatalized like Danish.

3.4.1 Examples of Palatalization on Initial Vowels in Livonian and Estonian

To illustrate the above phenomenon of consonantal features appearing with intial vowels in a language in which there is stress on the initial vowel, we can look to some examples in Livonian, a Finnic language that was located on the coast south of the related language of Estonian. Perhaps you know of other languages to observe. One might for example look at highly palatalized Danish versus standard Swedish, for example. I use these examples that compare Livonian and Estonian, since my own greatest familiarity is with Finnic languages.

Since Livonian is highly palatalized and Estonian considerably less, it is possible to compare Livonian words with Estonian equivalents, and then compare what we witness with the above described circumstances visible in Venetic initial vowels with dots.

While Estonian does have palatalization it is mild and not explicitly noted in the written language. However, in Livonian, as I say, palatalization is strong and signifi-cant. Livonian explicitly shows the palatalization with diacritical marks. However, this applies only to situations commonly viewed as ‘palatalization’. As I indicate here, the Venetic use of dots seems more broadly applied to all situations in which the tongue modified a sound, and even side effects like length or pause.

Let us see what we can discover from Livonian compared to Estonian. Estonian like Finnish, in putting stress on the first syllable, commonly adds some consonantal feature at the start that helps launch the initial vowel. Note it is impossible not to have something consonantal on an initial vowel, in any language – but usually it is so weak it can be ignored in languages that do not put a stress or emphasis on the first syllable. For example in English, stress is applied later in the word. For example English people will mistakenedly pronounce Helsinki with “HelSINKi” instead of the Finnish “HEL-sinki”.

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In fact this is a good example of a word in which the initial H probably appeared as a result of the emphasis on the first syllable in Finnish. There are other words in Esto-nian and Finnish where an “H” or “J/Y” has been explicitly recognized. But the con-sonantal sound launching an initial consonant is there, and its strength will vary with the dialect. In the following, we see some examples in which the Livonian is shown with an explicit J at the start, where it is not explicitly noted in written Estonian:

Table 3.4.1

initial vowel Estonian Livonian
E ema jemā
A ära jarā
I iga jegā
(J follows the convention of pronouncing it like English “Y”)

What can we derive from this? It suggests that in pronouncing Venetic too,we should place the emphasis on the first syllable, and this will help us understand the reasons for the Venetic employment of the dots in various locations. Having observed similarities with Finnic intial vowels, we will continue to make reference to other coincidences with Finnic languages.

The reader is always welcome to advance examples of other languages with empha-sis on the first syllable. It is possible that a consonantal launch for initial vowels, is quite common for all languages – not just Finnic – that place the emphasis on initial syllables. The observations in the following sections will probably be found in those as well. The reader is welcome to investigate other languages. Our discussion merely observes phonetic parallels with Finnic purely as examples.

3.5 Palatalization of Consonants.

Besides the vowels, the Venetic inscriptions are also liberally sprinkled with dots on both sides of consonants. On sounded consonants, the resulting sounds are our familiar consonant palatalizations such as the Spanish palatalization of the N written as Ñ. In Livonian the palatalization of sounded consonants L and N involve the use of diacritical marks in the form of a cedilla underneath.Livonian palatalizes the D and T and R and shows it in this way as well, with the cedilla underneath. Other written languages that actually show palatalization,may have other markers. If palatalization is weak and not linguistically significant, it will not be shown. For example Estonian has palatalization in places similar to Livonian, but they are weaker, and so not explicitly indicated.

But there is more to the Venetic dots than simply the common palatalizations of consonants we know in modern languages. They appear to have a broader more general application than what is meant by the modern conventional idea of ‘palatalization’.

Dots around the Venetic N and L have easy comparison to modern Spanish or Livo-nian. And dots around Venetic D and T are analogous to those in Livonian. But there are other applications of dots in Venetic. After completing my project, it was very clear that the dots marked all situations in which the forward, upward, tongue modi-fied a letter sound from its normal relaxedtongue state. And that results in the dots marking consonants in other ways than what we might normally consider palatali-zation. We already saw how the dots modified vowels – introducing a J or H sound.

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That too is not what we normally associate with the term ‘palatalization’. The scheme of dot addition in general makes things very easy. It is also the reason the dots were even used –it was a scheme that any writer could understand: For any tongue action up to to the top of the mouth, add a dot!!! Let us explore additional application on consonants: From all the evidence so far, if the dots in the Venetic writing surround a consonant like an “S” we should discover its sound very simply by adding our faint “J” (=”Y”), where the dot appears, and interpret the result. For example .s. sounding like “JS” can be considered the sound of the ss in English issue. In modern langu-ages this sound is represented in many ways, beginning with the “SH”, which is de-scribed in other languages with “Š” Currently a Venetic character that looks like an M is assumed to be “SH” but this dot scheme suggests the current view about the M is wrong and that the “SH”is the dotted S as in .s. What then should the M be? I will give the argument later, but for now I believe it to be an unpalatalized “(I)SS”as in English hiss. I therefore represent the character in the transcriptions to Roman alphabet with $.

The following table shows some palatalized consonants, and Venetic examples. In addition, I selected some Estonian words that are similar to the Venetic, where Esto-nian has palatalization in the same locations. Livonian will have similar examples. A more comprehensive study might also look for parallels in other palatalized langu-ages, like Danish. The reader is invited to investigate if these locations of palatali-zation are more or less universal, and a function of preceding and following sounds.

Table 3.5

PALATALIZATION OF CONSONANTS COMPARISON

Consonant
NS
T
R = trilled
L
Venetic
.n.
.s.
.t.
.r.
.l.
Venetic example

ka.n.te.s. = alueelle
dona.s.to = hyvin
vo.t.te.i = ottaa
.u.r.kli = tutkia
mo.l.ta = maa, multa

Compare with palatalization in Estonian words like this:

kanti ‘into the region’
hästi ‘well’
võtteid ‘takings’
uuri ‘investigate’
muld ‘soil’

The table shows another consonant that we would not normally consider a palata-lized consonsant. I propose dots around the Venetic R represent a trilled R. The R with dots does not appear often in Venetic, but there is an inscription in which a trilled and non-trilled R appear together – .a.tra.e.s. te.r.mon.io.s. The R in the first word, by out theory, is not trilled and in the second it is trilled. We can find that in lan-guages that have the trilled R, the trilling strength is also dependent on its situation within the word – the letters preceding and following. For example, Estonian uses trilling, and we can find that a word like adra produces the R in a weak position that does not have to be trilled, while on the other hand, tarvis places the R in a stronger position that promotes strong trilling. Estonian will, like Venetic, similarly strongly trill the loanword terminus (is it from Greek?) which is similar to the Venetic te.r.min.io.s.

I believe that for a person who already knew the language, the dots as represen-tations of all tongue-effects was enough for the reader to recognize what sound was intended. The dot was an all-purpose phonetic marker, but mostly marked palatalization and other tonguemodifications of pure sounds.

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3.6 Dots in Venetic Around Silent Consonants Representing a Stød?

Let us consider now, what happens if we “palatalize” a silent consonant (if dots sur-round a silent consonant). That would be represented in Livonian explicitly with the D or T with the cedilla mark beneath it. But in Venetic we see it also around other si-lent consonants, such as G (.g.). How can silence be palatalized? The true palatali-zing of a silent consonant should result in more silence, and that would be represen-ted by the break in tone called “stød”. Represented by a mark similar to an apost-rophe, stød is found today in the highly palatalized langugages of Danish and Livo-nian.Stød can be viewed as palatalization on a high vowel so that the high vowel dis- appears from being ultra high. For example “I” >“J/Y”. Indeed the Venetic dotted “I” is an overhigh “I” that becomes silent while the tongue positions are the same as with “I”. Normally it appears as the “J/Y” or a frontal “H”. But what if we have “MIN”? Then raising the “I” in this case becomes “MJN” or “M’N”. This is in Danish called “stød”.

In Livonian an example of a word with stød would be jo’g ‘river’ where ’marks the stød. Estonian, without the stød would say it jõgi. Based on our view of the Venetic dots, if we used Venetic writing to write the Livonian it would probably look like jo.g. except that Venetic “j” would be written .i. (palatalized “I”) so it would be .i.o.g. or simply .o.g .

Another example in Livonian would be le’t ‘leaf’. If we wrote it in Venetic writing,by our theory, it would be le.t. In this case the Estonian equivalent without the stød would be leht and the Finnish would be lehti.

Another Livonian example would be tie’da ‘to do’. The Estonian equivalent would add the H
here as well – teha. In Finnish tehdä.

Perhaps one can find similar situations when comparing Danish words and equiva-lent words in related standard Swedish or Norwegian which are not highly palata-lized. It appears that palatalization arises from the general movement of a language upward towards tighter mouth and more involvement of the tongue on the palate.

The addition of the H by Estonian suggests the Livonian stød can be seen as an ‘extreme palatalization’. If a culture in general develops a dialect in which they push all vowels upward (which means pushing vowels forward-upward while relaxing the mouth) then we get a general shift that can roughly be described by U>O O>A A>E E>I But what about the I? What is higher than the I ? Obviously it is the “J/Y”or fron-tal “H”. But then what happens with the “H” or “J/Y”? That is when the stød appears. Already silent, where can it go? The only direction it has would be to create a break, a stop. Thus, to continue the shift we would have I > H (tongue in “J” position) and then H,J > stød. If we start with a word like SOMAN it can evolve as the speaker’s tongue grows. Follow the rise in vowels: SOMAN > SAMEN >SEMIN > SIMHN> SIM’N

Thus in general palatalization and upward shifts of vowels are related to the same shift in speech. It follows that highly palatalized languages also display upward shifts of lower vowels too. For example Livonian presents the suffix for agency as – ji while Estonian and Finnish use – ja.It may explain the name Roman historian Tacitus used for the nations along the southeast Baltic coast in the first century – “Aestii”. If these people were ancient Estonians, and the reason Estonians have always been called Eesti, then maybe if the word was highly palatalized, we could rewrite it (imitating Li-vonian) as ESTJI, which when lowered becomes OSTJA of low palatalized Estonian and Finnish, which means ‘buyer’, ie ‘merchant’, which is how surrounding peoples would have viewed the managers of the market port near the Vistula mouth.

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It is never a uniform shift because many other factors are at play as well. A speaker cannot change a word so much it becomes unintelligible. Some crutial features, such as grammatical endings, may resist being changed. The changes will mostly manifest in the word stems.

In Venetic, in the available Venetic inscriptions, this shifting of vowels upward de-scribed above, can explain words in which no vowels are shown between conso-nants where one would expect it. In the body of inscriptions we see vda.n. and mno.s. If the above is true of Venetic then we can expect that earlier vda.n. may have been vhda.n. or v.i.dan and before that vida.n. Similarly mno.s. may originated from m.n.os and before that mino.s. In other words the progressions are v.i.dan > v.d.a.n. > vda.n. and mino.s. > m.n.o.s. > mno.s.

We have possible proof of this in the Venetic inscriptions, where a word written se-veral times as vo.l.tiiomno.i. appears in another dialect . vo.l.tiio.m.minna.i. thus re-vealing the original “I” between M and N.(One of the advantages of Venetic writing is that the scribe actually records actual dialect and in this case,a less palatalized one!) The occurrence of two vowels together as in vda.n. or mno.s. was rare in Venetic as these are the only two occurrences in the body of under 100 complete inscriptions available.

3.7 Solitary Dots

Sometimes dots appeared only once, not around a letter. Solitary dots probably are to be interpreted in the following manner: After a silent consonant they could pro-duce a pause. After a vowel they could lengthen the vowel. We have to use common sense and put ourselves into the mind of the scribe. The writing system has no other way of indicating length or pause.

Sometimes scribes treated each palatalized character with a dot on either side, but if there were two palatalized characterized in a row, often the dot between them was shared.In our arbitrary division of the continuous Venetic writing with spaces to show word boundaries, a shared dot can become separated from one of the adjacent cha-racters using it. Bear this in mind when I break up a continuous Venetic inscription with word boundaries to make our analysis simpler.

4. ANCIENT PHONETIC CONNECTIONS? VENETIC AND DANISH

4.1 Venetic at the South End of the Jutland Amber Route Implications on Danish All in all, from the use of the phonetics of regular words (which we assume were pro-nounced like Latin) plus the additional effects indicated by the dots, we can sense how the Venetic actually sounded –strongly palatalized.

As already mentioned, two languages with strong palatalization and stød is Danish and Livonian. Livonian lies south of Estonia and was dominated by Latvian (an Indo-European language that is a cousin of Slavic languages) and therefore we might propose that Livonian palatalization arose from the influence of Latvian. Another possibility is that Livonian was actually strongly influenced by traders from the west Baltic who spoke in a palatalized way who regularly accessed the trade river known in Livonian as Vaina, but today as Daugava.

But let us look at Danish, because Danish is today spoken by descendants of peoples who lay at the north end of the trade route that reached down to northern Italy where the Venetic inscriptions we are studying have been found. Both ancient historical texts and archeology has demonstrated that the Veneti were agents of amber from the north.

There were two northern sources of amber –the southeast Baltic, and the Jutland Peninsula.

Most of the amber to the Venetic regions at the north end of the Adriatic Sea came from the Jutland Peninsula. The amber from the other source, the southeast Baltic, coming down via the Vistula and Oder, went mostly directly to Greece. With the rise of the Romans, there appears to have been a detour of the Vistula trade path west-ward however, coming down the Piave River Valley. But inscriptions from the Piave Valley and eastward are few,and the body of Venetic inscriptions that archeology has uncovered, mainly represents language of the peoples who recieved amber from the Jutland Peninsula route. Most of the inscriptions, thus, have the high palatalized dia-lect, and it is likely it was also found at the Jutland Peninsula source of amber, which we can perhaps identify with the language of independent peoples Roman identified as “Suebi” who we will here say spoke “Suebic”

As we have already noted archeology is clear about the intimate connection between the Adriatic Veneti in the region of most of the inscriptions, and the Jutland Peninsula. According to Grahame Clark (World Prehistory, Cambridge Univ Press) based on the archeological data, the early amber route went up the Elbe, then made its way south by using both the Saale and upper Elbe to start. But then, … in the se-cond phase of the central European Bronze Age, a distinctive bronze industry, asso-ciated with tumulus burial, arose among descendants of Corded-ware folk [Indo-Eu-ropeans ancestral to the Celts or Germans] occupying the highlands of south-west Germany… These are identifiable in my view with the true Germans – those Tacitus (see his Germania of 98AD) calls Chatti. They were sedentary farming and pastoral peoples and hence customers for traders.

Thus their growth caused the traders from Jutland to develop in their route an additional westward detour or loop to that area.

Then, after that, another center of industry developed east of the Saale River by people of the same Corded-ware origins (Germanic). The growth of the Germanic culture in central Germany is evident, which in turn promoted traders to create mar-kets for them. The impact of this on the traders is that the trader colonies at the ter-minuses in northern Italy and the Jutland Peninsula developed as well. As Clarke in-dicates: Another distinctive industry developed in Northern Italy adjacent to the south end of the overland route,and at its northern end the Danes …were importing bronze manufactures both from central and also from western Europe This information affirms the connection between activity in northern Italy and Jutland Peninsula. The “Danes”were recieving bronze wares in exchange for their supplying amber to the southern civilizations. The ”Danes” at this time were not Germanic. In general, The amber route formed a veritable hub around which the Early Bronze Age industry of much of Europe revolved.

It is thus clear that the Danes of ancient times spoke another language,one that may even have been analogous to Venetic, and there is a distinct possibility that their tra-der peoples were the initiator of Venetic colonies to serve a newly opened up way around 1000BC of carrying Jutland amber south to Mediterranean civilization. Then when the Jutland tribes were conquered by the German-speaking Goths (Chatti, Gö-ta) since Roman times, some centuries later,they adopted the Germanic language of their conquerors, but spoke it in their original highly palatalized fashion. A new lan- guage is initially always spoken in the accent of the old. If one does not experience an environment of ‘correct’ speakers, one will continue to speak it with the accent, and transfer the accent to subsequent generations. Danish can be seen that way – as an accent originating from Suebic of the Roman era, carried down through the generations. Southern Sweden (Skåne) has a highly palatalized dialect as well, and it indicates that the palatalized Suebic language was found also in southern Sweden.

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Little is known about the Suebic language other than from what is implied in ancient writings. According to Tacitus’ Germania, it seems the Suebic language covered vast part of the geographical region of Germania, like a trade language. Some have been tempted to see it as some early form of Germanic, but we cannot forget that the re-gion the Romans called “Germania” was purely a geographic region, and could have contained many languages and dialects.

Tacitus wrote in his Germania that the Aestii were like the Suebi, but their language was ‘closer to’ (not ‘different’!!) to that of native Britain, thus tending to point to a pos-sible interpretation that there were Finnic-like trade languages across the northern seas in the Pre-Roman period. The Finnic languages would have been aboriginal in origins, arising ultimately from the dugout-canoe hunter-gatherers the archeologists have identified as the “Maglemose” culture. It is very believable that before the developments and movements of the farming peoples of continental Europe, the unfarmable marshy and cold Scandinavia and south Baltic was the abode of de-scendants of these aboriginal peoples –except that those towards the south in con-tact with farmers found a role to play for the static farming settlements in professio-nal long distance traders. These trader tribes could also adopt some innovations from the farming cultures, and even change genetically from intermarriage.

Figure 4.1

Amber routes to the Adriatic circa early Roman era with tribe names from Tacitus’work“Germania”, surperimposed.Note Tacitus’ “Chatti” and neighbours would be the true Germanic speakers, the “Goths” and had only begun their military conquests in Tacitus’ time, meaning the expansions of Germanic Goths from the interior of Germany occurred only fromabout 0 AD

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Roman historian Tacitus appeared to have personally approached the south Baltic coast by sea – he also wrote a biography of Agricola, first governor of Roman Britain and could have secured passage on a long distance traders ship. Accordingly in his geography “Germania” Tacitus primarily encountered the boat peoples – the Suebi tribes who interracted with each other via waterways. Once I discovered that if Sue-bic tribe names were assumed to have raised vowels and lowered the vowels, the resulting words were meaningful descriptions via Estonian. For example Suebi as SUO-ABA meant ‘bay, estuary of the marsh’ which might refer to the region at the mouth of the Oder. There was probably a market there. (See elsewhere for the whole analysis of names.)

Thus, after an analysis of Suebic tribe names, it appeared to me that even if the in-terior farmable parts of Germania had Germanic/Indo-European farmers, the unfar-mable coastal areas, lowlands, marshes, still retained descendants of the original “Maglemose” Finnic culture. Thus in conclusion it appeared to me that Suebic was a Finnic language that seemed to have raised vowels and palatalization, and therefore was consistent with the people speaking the same way when in the subsequent ex-pansion of the Göta (Chatti, Goths) they began speaking the Germanic language of their military conquerors in the early centuries AD.

In other words, in the early centuries AD, after being conquered by the Germanic Goths, they spoke the introduced Germanic language with their highly palatalized Suebic accent, and if that is not corrected, it is passed down from generation to ge-neration ultimately resulting in the highly palatalized Danish language of today. We can conclude that the original language of the Jutland Peninsula when it was in close trade contact with northern Italy, was highly palatalized, and that highly palatalized language was carried down to northern Italy.

This suggests that the language in the Venetic inscriptions, as it sounds when the dots are interpreted as palatalization markers, was in fact a dialect of Suebic.

The connections between what is now northern Italy, and the Jutland Peninsula are very significant in arguing that the Veneti colonies were initiated by amber trader tribes  /families attempting to establish an alternative route to access the Mediterra-nean markets. We will not only find evidence of similar palatalization and vowel raising, but also a religious connection in terms of the worship of the goddess Rhea (The subject of a separate paper.) We know now where the strong palatalization in Venetic came from – it came from the Jutland Peninsula. Supporting this is archeo-logical determinations that the north Italic area developed gradually from about 1000BC, from northern influences.

4.2 Two Amber Routes, Two Finnic Dialects from the North.

Traditional thinking has been that the traders at the sources of amber were “Balt” (ie like Lithuanians) or Germanic. And yet, both are rooted in agriculture. Finnic peoples arose from the northern aboriginals. Archeology has found their environment filled with adzes for making dugout canoes and harpooning and fishing gear for harvesting lakes, rivers, and seas. If early trade went by water, then the probability that the sea-traders across the northern seas, and river traders travelling up and down the major river, were derived from these aboriginal boat-using cultures, should be greater than the notion farming peoples took to boats.

There are other coincidences that cannot be ignored – such as the peoples along the southeast Baltic amber coast Tacitus called Aestii, had a name that has endured among Estonians as Eesti, for as long as there has been historical proof of it in Latin texts. It is therefore more probable that the Aestii spoke an ancient Finnic, and that their dialect travelled south with the amber from the southeast Baltic source.

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While most of the inscriptions in our project were found at the south end of the amber route from the Jutland Peninsula, during the rise of Rome, Rome became a consumer of amber, and I believe the eastern amber route that came down from the southeast Baltic, which originally continued south along the east coast of the Adria-tic, turned westward, and descended the Piave River to more easily access Roman markets.

Not very many inscriptions have been found in the Piave River valley, but those that do have a remarkably strong resonance with Estonian. If the Aestii at the southeast Baltic were ancestral to Estonians, this would not be a surprise.

But most of the inscriptions come from the south terminus of the western amber trade route that came from the Jutland Peninsula. The inscriptions at the south ter-minus from the west Baltic area will have the higher vowels and palatalization, and the few inscriptions at the south terminus of the route from the southeast Baltic re-gion will not have the raised vowel dialect nor the strong palatalization. They repre-sent dialectic difference between east and west Baltic. Yet the two trader peoples – east vs west Baltic – are connected by a common way of life. We will later find them to also be connected via the goddess Rhea.

5 FURTHER NOTES ABOUT PHONETICS

5.1 Venetic Alphabet Sounds vs Roman

The previous sections have focused on the mystery of the dots, and we have in do-ing so so far implied the sounds of the Venetic characters through the representation of the Venetic with Roman alphabet characters. For more about these investigations into interpreting the original Venetic character sounds see MLV and LLV. Bear in mind, that these books do not know that the dots marked palatalization, etc. and there may be some misinterpretations. The Roman equivalent to Venetic characters have generally been determined by scholars over the decades, from former interpre- tations of the sounds of the Etruscan alphabet. The Roman alphabet was born from the Etruscan so that Latin phonetics is close too. Since in Roman times some Vene-tic words are given in Roman characters, it is possible to compare the Roman cha-racters with the Venetic in the same words from earlier writing. However one has to be cognizant of a general degeneration of Venetic through Roman times. It seems reasonable to believe that Venetic sounds moved closer to Roman in those times, such as losing the original palatalization. It is one of the reason we do not pay too much attention to the Venetic inscriptions written in Roman times in Roman characters..

While sometimes the Venetic dots produced peculiar sounds, as demonstrated in the example given earlier to assess the sound of an initial .e., it appears from the better Roman alphabet inscriptions that the dots lost their role once the sentences were divided in Roman fashion, explicitly showing word boundaries. As I stated earlier, when a speaker of a language knows the word boundaries in their language, they will naturally apply the phonetic features correctly. The palatalizations, etc, may still be there, but no longer need to be explicitly marked when there are word boundary divisions. But of course the reader must already know the language to place the phonetic features correctly. The following, a long inscription, if not the longest, is one example of how Venetic looks when written in Roman fashion where the dots give word boundaries and the Venetic pronunciation dots are absent, and presumably no longer needed to comprehend the text.

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Figure 5.1 was shown earlier in figure 3.4 and we will speak more about it here. The drawing was made from the original object which is lost. Note the dots, plus a small space between ANDETIC and OBOSECUPETARIS where there must have been a dot. It follows the Roman convention of actually showing word boundaries with dots. I separate the SSELBOI’s arbitrarily. The result, divided into words, is already given in the Roman style original.

Fig 5.1

ENONI. ONTEI . APPIOI . SSELBOI SSELBOI . ANDETIC OBOSECUPETARIS

If written in Venetic script with added dots, it would probably look approximately something like this (This is my own guesswork based on other inscriptions and must not be taken as factual, since no Venetic alphabet version actually exists):

.e.n.oni.o.nte.i.a.p.pio.i.$e.l.bo.i.$e.l.bo.i.a.n.detikobos.e.kupetari.s.

Because the original Venetic writing showed the actual pronunciation,it picked up the actual accents and dialects that were in use in the environment of the writer. In the past, as we see in MLV, when the analysts saw a particular word written in a slightly different way, they presumptuously add a “[sic]” which impliesthe scribe made an error. No, he may not have made an error but phonetically recorded the way people said a particular word in his region. For example vo.l.tiiomno.i. in .e.go vo.l.tiiomno.i. iuva.n.t iio.i [obelisque- MLV-59 LLV-Es4] appears alternatively as vo.l.tiio.m.minna.i. in e.go v.i.u.k.s. siia.i. vo.l.tiio.m.minna.i. [obelisque- MLV-57 LLVEs2]. The latter sentence shows other differences like v.i.u.k.s. and siia.i. It is not wrongly written but records another dialect!!

If a language has not developed literature, has not developed standards, then we cannot presume that there is a particularly universal correct way of writing a Venetic word.If it was a trade language then it had many dialectic versions – different in each significant trade route and region. The situation is not unlike where in one part of the English speaking world Mother sounds like “mah-thah” and an American “mah-thrr”, and it sounds still different in Australia.

Venetic writing is purely phonetic and that will show differences like this explicitly. There could therefore be many written Venetic languages, which are yet the same language spoken with different accents and which are, in actual use, mutually under-standable It would be similar to how an English-speaking person will be able to un-derstand English spoken in an extreme accent (such as Cockney English or Sou-thern drawl of America). Venetic was not like Latin or Greek, which had developed standards of both speaking and writing it. Latin eventually was written more or less the same throughout the Roman Empire because of standardization from widespread and constant use including literature. In practice, there may have been different dialects in different parts of the Roman Empire.

5.2 Implications of the Dot – Palatalization Markers on How Venetic is Transcribed to Roman Alphabet.

I follow the form employed in MLV with modifications as described in the notes given under Figure 1.1 Because the dots now have a significance, I feel it is important not to tamper with them. For example an .i. should not be rewritten as an h. Nor should a later h, be converted back to .i. either. Leave the Venetic way of writing it, as is. These differences could actually reflect, for example a shift from the ‘J’(=’Y’) sound of .i. to a frontal ‘H” that can develop from increased palatalization in the speech.

In the body of Venetic inscriptions we see the introduction of an “H” character. With some words an initial v.i. represented with vh, and then in Roman alphabet as F. But this does not mean .i. = h. It may simply be that the dialect shifted from originally a “VJ” sound written v.i. to saying “F” sound written vh . Leave it as it is written, and don’t arbitrarily change vh to v.i. or even to F. Leave it as written. They could actually reflect small changes in dialect, and they are not necessarily all equivalent.

In addition, I have a disagreement with the assumption that the Venetic character that looks like an M, be interpreted as an “SH” (š).

This character that looks like an M, came with the Etruscan alphabet, so the Veneti did not invent it. But, whoever invented it, it raises the question – why is a character whose sound is in the S-family, written in a fashion that resembles their M-charac-ter? Shouldn’t the “SH” character be derived from the S-character? The following illustrates the problem:

 

= “SH?” = “M” = “S” I = “I”

But perhaps the SH-character was indeed developed from the S-character. The fol-lowing shows how a rough M-like character can be formed by combining the I- and S-characters, tilting the S a little. We have presented it right to left because it was common for Etruscan/Veneti writing to flow from right to left. < < + I If this theory is correct then the sound represented by the M-like character is not “SH” as has been traditionally assumed but “ISS” (not palatalized).

Estonian provides a good example of an intense emphasis of this kind, that rarely occurs. It is in the word issand, an intensification of isand ‘fatherly entity’. The em-phasized form issand is translated in the modern day as ‘lord, master’. This sound is not palatalized, but is like in English hiss. (by contast, the Venetic S with dots –.s. –is palatalized as in English issue) We note that in the Venetic inscriptions the M-like character is also rare, and the most common location is found in apparently votive texts, in a word in front of a seeming goddess “reitia” or “trumusia” which academics have interpreted as Venetic deities. We saw it for example in the inscription given above. Read left to right we rewrite it in Roman alphabet as (M)a.i.nate.i. re.i.tiia.i.

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If the M-like character is to be taken as an ISS-sound (as in English hiss), it would parallel the Estonian traditions of saying ‘Lord’ or ‘Master’ to a lordly figure, using issand. We will discuss this later in interpreting (M)a.i.nate.i. re.i.tiia.i.

To conclude, the M-like character is essentially a very strong plain S with a faint I at front. But the faint I at front probably disappeared with the rise in vowel tone, which caused high vowels to disappear into H’s or sound breaks. ISSA- > SSA- The upward shift of tone is discussed next.

Summary: two forms of “SH”as presented in this study: .s. – palatalized as in English issue or Estonian uss (‘snake’) $ (Venetic M) – NON-palatalized as in English hiss or Estonian issand.

5.3 Systematic Shifts Observed

We have already shown in this chapter on the phonetics of Venetic, some many coincidences in terms palatalizations in Venetic also appearing in Estonian words, about the addition of H for the Estonian parallel when dots surround a consonant, about the addition of a J (=Y) in the Estonian and Livonian parallel when dots surround an initial vowel, and more.

In the final results we discovered remarkable parallels between some Venetic words and Estonian, especially in regards to how Estonian words wrote the locations where the Venetic had dots.

The following table illustrates some Estonian words that are quite parallel to Venetic words, with the Estonian showing an H, in locations where the Venetic shows dots. This repetition of the same pattern is very revealing, and evidence that by the laws of probability these are not likely to be pure coincidences.

Earlier I gave some examples of how palatalization could introduce the J sound (=Y) where otherwise it was too weak to palatalize. Such as between highly palatalized Livonian and mildly palatalized Estonian.

I have bolded the H or J on the Estonian side.

These are a few examples. There are others within the inscriptions studied. Estonian does not mark its normal palatalizations. But if Estonian were written out phonetically we would find the more common palatalization parallels too.

See examples in Table 5.3 where the Estonian palatalizations are not marked, but we point them out by underlining the letter.

Palatalization can be viewed as pushing sounds upward with the tongue. We have already noted that the ancient northern language called Suebic did it as well.

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This upward shifting ofsounds would be a dialectic event, much like someone in English saying “HIV EH HIPPY DEY!” for “have a happy day!” These observations of higher vowels relative to Estonian words that appear similar, of course must be done in conjunction with interpreting the sentences, since we also have to ascertain the meanings of our words first, before we look for parallels in known languages, as discussed in the next chapter.

5.4 How Venetic Sounded

In looking at examples of dots in Venetic as indicators of palatalization, stød, and other effects caused by the forward tongue, we must first find word boundaries in order to relate the Venetic text to our familiar modern word-boundary writing. It is important for us to know the word boundaries, otherwise we cannot even discover similar palatalization in known languages like Livonian or Estonian since palatalization is dependent on location in a word.

Once we have identified the words, we can then obreve oter languages for exemple sounds occurring at the location of the dots. To use an example, let us assume we have separated an inscription into words as follows vda.n. vo.l.tii mno.s. dona.s.to ke la.g.s.to Let us explore how it sounds, when we intepret the sound modifications created by the dots. While the sounds can be found in various languages, we will refer mostly to Estonian for no other reason than that is is familiar to me.

The first word vda.n. shows a palatalization of N at the end. Can we find such palatalization of N in the final position in Estonian? Yes, for example in vann ‘bath’. By comparison – for demonstration of an example other languages – English does not have such palatalization in a final position. French on the other hand has this, as in gagne.

Next, the word vo.l.tii shows palatalization at LT that exists in Estonian. For example tuld ‘fire (Partitive)’. English for example does not have it. Its LT is not palatalized.
Next we see .s. in mno.s. Does Estonian have palatalization situations for a final s? Yes, it occurs. Estonian uss ‘snake’. This palatalization of a final S is not very common in languages. Next we have the .s. inside, preceding a T, in dona.s.to and la.g.s.to. Once again Estonian provides a good sound parallel in hästi ‘well’.

Next we see .g. in la.g.s.to. This presents the dots on a silent consonant, which in actual speech, probably presents itself as stød as described above, and which written in Livonian fashion would appear as LA’GSTO but, – to follow the patterns described here with words like le’t vs leht – with the Estonian adding the H (or Livonian losing the H for a stød) would if expressed in Estonian, sound like LAHGSTO perhaps somewhat like Estonian says lahkust ‘gift’.

These examples and others show that Estonian has phonetics that parallels the phonetics indicated by the dots. Here are my rough suggestions (representing the sounds with Latin and English phonetics)

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WITHOUT DOTS WITH DOTS

(The first interpretation if at start of syllable and second if terminating a syllable) *invented English representations to mimic sound not naturally in English

Table 5.3

These are rough guesses. It is possible for linguistics to study the final results more carefully and with additional comparisons with Danish and Livonian discover precise phonetic rules.

Taulukon selvennys:

****************

WITHOUT DOTS

(The first interpretation if at start of syllable and second if terminating a syllable) *invented English representations to mimic sound not naturally in English

a = “A” as in “father”
e =”E” as in “essence”
i =“I” as in “illness”
o= “O” as in “old”
u=”U” as in “moon”
l= “L” as in “land”
s= “S” as in “see”
$= “ISS” as in “hiss”
r= “R” as in “are”
m= “M” as in “me”
n= “N” as in “no
v= “V” as in “very”
t= “T” as in “too”
p=”P” as in “pat”
k=”K” as in “cut”
d= “D” as in “do”
h= “H” as in “hold”
b= “B” as in “bat”
g= “G” as in “got”

These are relatively accurate Venetic existed into the beginning of Roman alphabet use and there exists Venetic written in the Roman alphabet

WITH DOTS

.a. = “JA” “AH” as in “cough”, “ahk”*
.e. = “JE” “EH, as in “keh”* “ehk”*
.i. = “J”(=”Y”) as in “yes”
.o. = “JO” “OH” as in “joh”* “oh”
.u. = “JU” “UH” as in “you”, “pooh”
.l.= “LJH”, “HL” as in “lyiss”* “apple”
.s.= “SJH” , “HS”, as in “she”, “issue”

Dotted one not found (?)

.r.= “RJH”, “HR”, as in “rough”(trilled)
.m.=“MJH”,“HM”,as in“myih”*“ihm”*
.n.=“NJH”,“HN”,as in “myih”* “ihn”*
.v.= “VJH”, “HV” as in “vyih”* “if”
.t.= “TJH”, “HT”, as in “choo”, “aht”*
.p.= “PJH”, “HP” as in “pyih”* “ahp”*
.k.=”KJH”, “HK” as in “cute”, “ahk”*
.d.= “DJH”, “HD” as in “dew”, “aid”
No dotted – h is derived from .i.
.b.= “BJH”, “HB” as in “byih”* “ahb”*
.g.= “GJH”, “HG” as in “gyih”*”ahg”*

***********************

If we are searching for a known language that is related to Venetic, then a study to find parallels to palatalization, will be very important.

Linguistics also says that grammar changes more slowly than words. This is under-standable – grammar is like the structure of a building. While one can change the cladding of a building easily, it is difficult to change the structure itself. But at this stage we have not identified any grammar which we can compare against the grammar of a known language. We will do it later.

The survival of phonetic and grammatical features should be stronger than lexical features. The reality is that words can be easily changed during usage, or borrowed from other languages, and a language can become filled with foreign words. But grammar –the structure of the language – cannot be borrowed.

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Phonetics is analogous to accent.It is preserved unconsciously and is unconsciously transferred to another language.Others percieve it as a ‘foreign accent’. For example immigrants to North America will speak English with an accent, and if they maintain a community among themselves in which they preserve their original language, they may continue to speak with that accent for several generations. Danish, I believe re-presents the preservation of an accent from their previous language,that was carried over when the people adopted Germanic language; and from that we can conclude that the original language of the Jutland Peninsula was just as palatalized as Danish.

Amazingly, with the dots as phonetic markers we can reasonably easily reproduce how the language sounded. The reader, with reference to the sounds in Danish or Livonian, can explore how Venetic actually sounded. It is a side project best done in a sound medium rather than in
written form

5.5 Conclusions: An Efficient Alternative Writing System

Past thinking about the dots has ranged from ignoring them and considering them as decorative, to viewing them as a syllabic punctuation with mysterious rules requiring scribes to be educated to their use. But both these extremes are ridiculous. There are many Venetic inscriptions on ordinary objects obviously not requiring any priestly scribe.

The Venetic scheme of using dots, is an ingenious way of writing a language phonetically while using only one phonetic marker – a dot.

And it was simple. The writer would have become accustomed to simply throw in a dot wherever the speech pushed the tongue up for whatever reason. This gives us our required simplicity that permitted the dots to be understood and used by anyone. It was so simple and intuitive that there is no evidence of any Venetic writing copying the late Etruscan or early Roman use of word boundaries, until Roman times.

While many inscriptions were made formally for memorials and urns, the body of in-scriptions offers some evidence of ordinary people writing texts when at a sanctuary to the Goddess, or writing text on round river stones, or in some examples on every-day objects like a stick or hunting horn. Venetic writing was not anything restricted to a priestly class. Anyone could master it quickly, and did. One simply sounded out one’s sentence and wrote down the letters, adding dots whenever the tongue pressed up to the palate, for whatever reason.
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R e f e r e n c e s

Andres Pääbo, 2002-2014, THE VENETIC LANGUAGE An Ancient Language from a New Perspective: FINAL* www.paabo.ca
S. Berneco, 2003, A Closer Look at Livonian Stød, Fenno-Ugristica 25, Tartu.
Grahame Clark, World Prehistory, Cambridge Univ Press LLV = G.B. Pellegrini & A.L. Prosdocimi, 1964 La Lingua Venetica, Padova. MLV = M. Lejeune, 1974. Manuel de la Langue Vénète,