Dr. C.S. Lewis-Barrie, Ph.D.

Talk:Venetic_language comment

here [1] is offence to me. I'm not Serbian nationalist or anything similar. Quite opposite. I'm a Croat and because of Serbian nationalism I was a soldier in a bloody war 17 years ago when Serbs attacked my home city and my homeland, I've lost best years of my life, a lot of friends and I've lost my health. Now little "excuse me" from you would be nice and I'll appreciate if you erase that part of your comment, or I'm gonna do it. My comment previous to yours was superficial and quickly written, so obviously misinterpreted by you, my fault. We can discuss about it, but first show some culture according to your title in the nickname - Dr. - you are an academic citizen of the world, aren't you? Zenanarh (talk) 17:13, 8 February 2008 (UTC)

Indeed, sir, I am an academic and I apologize for calling you a Serbian nationalist; I was obviously mistaken. This still doesn't change your lack of cited sources or those of the indefatigable Slavic zealotry rife in the talk page that advocates a link between the Venetic_language and the Southern Slavonic tongue du jour. I understand now your message was made in haste, but I do still ask that you provide some sources for the research backing up your assertions. Also, I shall amend my post in that discussion with a link to ours here. I hope to have fruitful discussions with you in the near future about this topic. Dr. C.S. Lewis-Barrie, Ph.D. (talk) 18:06, 8 February 2008 (UTC)

OK see you soon at the article talk, maybe you'll be disapointed when you find that I didn't really try to link Venetic language to Slavic.Zenanarh (talk) 15:02, 13 February 2008 (UTC)

I am a Slovenian, who has studied the issue of Veneti and their language(s) for several years out of a personal interest. As I have no illusion that the Slavic interpretation will be inserted into the main Veneti article any time soon due to the hegemony of prevailing Italic paradigm, I will reply here on your talk page. I am well aware that most of the ‘studies’ attempting to link Venetic to Slavic are methodologically a complete mess. They are awfully weak and full of spectacular (and sometimes nationalistic) claims that completely oppose the academic views concerning the (Adriatic) Veneti as well as Slavs. The Slavic interpretation of Es 2 inscription on the Veneti talk page is probably just one such example, written out of frustration. It is false both paleographically as well as phonologically, and as it clearly constitutes original research, I agree with you, even if it were by some chance correct, it has no place on wikipedia.

But in all fairness it has to be said – at least the anonymous user has tried hard enough to ‘find’ a verb in his/hers interpretation, while we shall search in vein for one in the “ego Fuksiai Voltiomninai” (I to Fuksia Voltiomnia) interpretation of academic venetologists.

You have asked for sources. Here is one source. I am sure as an academic you are familiar with it, but if not – here is the link [2] This is a work of an Italian academic (and therefore one cannot accuse him of Slavic nationalism), who opposes the traditional view of Slavic settlement in the area south of the Danube in sixth century. His work does not attempt to connect Veneti to Slavs, but it does put Slavs into the neighboring geographical area at the time when Venetic inscriptions were made. Of course his theory concerning the origin of Indo-Europeans – as a relatively new one – is currently on the fringe of academic research, but who knows if this will continue to be the case in, say, 50 years time.

The anonymous user is also legitimately speaking abut the absence of the /f/ phoneme from Venetic. There is no individual letter for /f/ in Venetic script. In Italic interpretation the /f/ is being constructed usually out of the VH digraph, which in the original script is written as Digamma, followed by a ‘dotted Iota’ (interpreted as the Latin H). However, such an interpretation – to the best of my knowledge originally offered by Pauli (1891) – is unfortunately inconsistent, as the ‘dotted Iota’ has been interpreted also as /i/ or the palatal approximant /j/ ever since such a solution was proposed by Sommer (1924). See for example inscription Es 51, where the twenty-first letter is being transcribed as H, while the fourteenth and nineteenth letters are being interpreted as /i/ and /j/, although all three letters are graphically identical [3].

One finds similar cases in plenty of other inscriptions, in fact in most of those coming from Este and Padova. Where is the consistency in such an interpretation? Can an inconsistent interpretation really be considered 100 % credible and valid?

The fact is that the ‘dotted Iota’ is being transcribed as H only in those cases, when it follows the Digamma, while in all other cases it is being interpreted either as /i/ or as /j/. I invite you to find one Venetic inscription on which the ‘dotted Iota’ is being transcribed as H, when it is not following the Digamma and is therefore not part of an effort to construct the /f/ phoneme. This clearly leaves suspicions that such an interpretation is merely in the function of creating the /f/ phoneme in Venetic language and then generates such comments as the one from the anonymous user. Could Venetic be included in the Italic branch of Indo-European languages, without the /f/ phoneme?

Then there is also the issue of the bottom half of the alphabetical tablets from Este and its questionable interpretation as AKEO. Namely, AKEO cannot mean “Alpha and Omega”, and therefore it cannot be an appellation to God, because Venetic O is not an adaptation of Omega, but rather of Omicron, since the Venetic script was adopted from the Etruscan, wherein there is no Omega, but one does find the Omicron on the Masiliana abecedarium.

Reading the bottom part of the alphabetical tablets in the upside-downwards direction (the way all other inscriptions are being read) – instead of the downside-upwards direction of the AKEO interpretation – gives insight into morphology of Venetic language. It is needless to say that this insight completely destroys the reconstructed Venetic morphology in the Italic interpretation.

I understand that academics will defend the paradigm within which they professionally operate. Such is the case in every science. But labeling everyone who disagrees with a certain paradigm or a theory as a nationalist is in my humble opinion very unscientific. Science should be open to new concepts, new theories, new ideas, and should judge them according to their content, instead of a priori dismissing them.

But I do agree with you, as long as credible academic sources for Slavic interpretation are absent, the Italic interpretation of Adriatic Venetic is all we have. However, genuine academic sources, allowing the possibility of a linguistic connection between Baltic and Adriatic Veneti do exist. Hydronyms attributed to the Baltic Veneti show resemblances to those attested in the area of the Adriatic Veneti (Gołąb 1992: 263-268). It is beyond doubt that the language of Baltic Veneti had an influence on proto-Slavic and therefore a genuine connection between South Slavic and Adriatic Venetic may well exist, even if one rejects the claim of Adriatic Venetic being an early form of Slavic language.

Example: Venetic ‘sselboi’, Slovenian ‘s seboj’ (with self, instrumental case)

Kind regards 213.140.113.237 (talk) 18:20, 26 February 2008 (UTC)

The status of Venetic as an Italic language

Hi,

since you seem to be an expert in Venetic language, perhaps you could have a look at this discussion and have your say. 193.77.150.217 (talk) 08:57, 29 February 2008 (UTC)

I've read the discussion page but don't see where any of my feedback would help. There are greater problems with that entry than the character of Venetic. A shame, but nothing I feel I can positively contribute to as yet. Dr. C.S. Lewis-Barrie, Ph.D. (talk) 18:10, 4 March 2008 (UTC)

Yet another similar comment has appeared here: [4]. This seems strange. Does Venetic really have anything to do with Slovenian or other Slavic languages, as this user is suggesting? --193.77.150.217 (talk) 07:59, 10 March 2008 (UTC)

Taking a look at the timelines, Venetic has little to nothing to do with Slovene or any other modern Slavic language: Venetic was spoken from 600 BCE to 100 CE so far as we can tell; Slavic was just breaking into major dialect groups some four hundred years later around 500 CE. While it wouldn't be unrealistic to think that Venetic may have had contact with a Proto-Slavic dialect at some point, positing Venetic as Slavic is washing one's hands of reality before an orgy of nationalistic assaults on logic and research. Dr. C.S. Lewis-Barrie, Ph.D. (talk) 16:49, 10 March 2008 (UTC)

Thank you. Your answer seems much more reasonable. It is nice to see competent linguists cooperating in Wikipedia. --193.77.150.217 (talk) 08:54, 12 March 2008 (UTC)