Venetic is the language of the Iron Age Este culture. There are over 200 inscriptions, though none over ten words long, written from the VI to the I century BC in an Indo-European language. The inscriptions use an Etruscan-like alphabet. Some linguists regard Venetic as an independent Indo-European subgroup which shares some similarities with other West European languages but not enough to link it closely with any particular one.

The most important cities of the Venetics (Latin name Veneti, Greek Ouénetoi or Henetoi)

The Venetic alphabet of Este

A Venetic inscription on a bronze nail, translated here into Latin and English:

English: Egetora gave me to the Good Reitia the Healer
on behalf of Aemus and the children

There is no consensus on where Venetic is exactly situated on the family tree of the Indoeuropean languages. In the eyes of G. Devoto, "Una precisa definizione genealogica dei rapporti tra il Venetico e le altre lingue indoeuropee non ha senso. Il venetico è un resto cristallizzato nella regione di una serie di elementi linguistici indoeuropei" [A precise genealogic definition of the relationship between Venetic and the other Indo-European languages is nonsense. Venetic is a christallized relict of a set of linguistic elements of Indo-European ] (Buti-Devoto: Preistoria e storia delle regioni d'Italia. Sansoni. Firenze, 1974 p. 45). The peculiarities of Venetic include the following:

Venetic preserved the following peculiarities of Indo-European:

• *tl (e.g. Venetic maketlon) which disappeared in Latin;
• final *n (e.g. Venetic zonon, cfr. Latin donum);
• Dat. & Abl. Pl. *-bhos (e.g. Venetic louzerophos, cfr. Latin -ois [= liberis]);
• Medium participle *-mno-, e.g. Venetic Voltiomno "desired, wished, wanted [son]" (personal name)

Other peculiarities worth mentioning are:

• the verbal desinence of the 3PsSg of the praeterite is -to like in Greek (e.g. Venetic zonasto);
• the I-E group *kt (preserved in Osk-Umbrian and Latin) turns into -it-, cfr. the name of the goddess Reitiia (= Latin Rectia);
• the desinence of medium verb is -ar / -er like in Umbrian and Celtic (= Latin -tor)

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