Rhaetic

Rhaetic
Raetic
Bronze plate from Demlfeld, near Ampass (Innsbruck, Austria) written in Sanzeno script. From the turn of the fifth century BC
Native toAncient Rhaetia
RegionEastern Alps, Italy, Austria, Switzerland, Germany, Slovenia
EthnicityRhaetian people
Era6th–1st centuries BC
Language codes
ISO 639-3xrr
Glottolograet1238

Raetic or Rhaetic (/ˈraɪtɪk/), also known as Rhaetian, was a Tyrsenian language spoken in the ancient region of Rhaetia in the eastern Alps in pre-Roman and Roman times. It is documented by around 280 texts dated from the 6th through the 1st century BC, which were found through northern Italy, southern Germany, eastern Switzerland, Slovenia and western Austria, in two variants of the Old Italic scripts. Rhaetic is largely accepted as a non-Indo-European language closely related to Etruscan.

The ancient Rhaetic language is not to be confused with the modern Romance languages of the same Alpine region, known as Rhaeto-Romance.