Umbrian is an extinct Italic language formerly spoken by the Umbri in the ancient Italian region of Umbria. Within the Italic languages it is closely related to the Oscan group and is therefore associated with it in the group of Osco-Umbrian languages, a term generally replaced by Sabellic in modern scholarship. Since that classification was first formulated, a number of other languages in ancient Italy were discovered to be more closely related to Umbrian. Therefore, a group, the Umbrian languages, was devised to contain them.
Corpus
Umbrian is known from about 30 inscriptions dated from the 7th through 1st centuries BC. The largest cache by far is the Iguvine Tablets, seven inscribed bronze tablets found in 1444 near the village of Scheggia or, according to another tradition, in an underground chamber at Gubbio (ancient Iguvium). The seven tablets contain notes on the ceremonies and statutes for priests of the ancient religion in the region. Sometimes they are called the Eugubian tablets after the medieval name of Iguvium/Eugubium. The tablets contain 4000–5000 words.
Other minor inscriptions are from Todi, Assisi and Spoleto.
Alphabet
The Iguvine tablets were written in two alphabets. The older, the Umbrian alphabet, like other Old Italic script, was derived from the Etruscan alphabet, and was written right-to-left, essentially equivalent to the Neo-Etruscan, but using letter shaped like a 'P' from the Archaic Etruscan alphabet for the unique Umbrian sound discussed below. The newer was written in the Latin script. The texts are sometimes called Old Umbrian and New Umbrian. The differences are mainly orthographic. For example, rs in the Latin alphabet is represented by a single character in the native script (generally transcribed as ř; this represents an unknown sound that developed regularly from intervocalic *-d- in most cases). To clearly distinguish them, the native script is generally transcribed in bold, the Latin in italics.
Grammar
Phonology
The exact phonetics of much of what follows are not completely clear.
Consonants
Voiceless plosives: p, t, k; Voiced plosives: b, d, g
Voiceless fricatives: f, <ç>/<ś> (=/ʃ/?), h; Voiced fricative: <ř>/<rs> (=/ʒ/?)
Nasals: m, n; Rhotic: r; Approximants: l, j, w
Vowels
Pure: i, e, a, o, u; ā, ē, ī, ō, ū
Diphthongs: ai, ei, ou
Nouns
Classes of nouns roughly match those in Latin: long a-stems matching Latin first declension, historical o-stems matching Latin second declension, consonant- and i-stems matching Latin third declension, with some more sparse attestation of u-stem (Latin fourth) and long e-stem (Latin fifth) declensions.
There are seven attested cases in the singular: nominative, accusative (along with the nom-acc neuter case), genitive, dative, ablative, locative, and vocative. In the plural, there are only four distinct cases: nominative; accusative; genitive; and dative-and-ablative combined into one form. There are no attested locative or vocative plurals.
Examples from long a-stems (for use of bold versus italic script, see above under "Alphabet"): Singular: Nom. muta/mutu "fine" (related to Latin molta "fine"); Acc. tuta / totam "city, state"; Gen. tutas / totar (the later with rhotacism, on which see below) "of the city" (note that Umbrian continues the PIE case, while Latin innovates here to -ae); Dat. tute "to the city"; Abl. asa "from the altar"; Loc. tote "in the city"; Voc. Prestota "Oh, Prestota" Plural: Nom. fameřias "families"; Acc. porca "pigs"; Gen. pracatarum "of the ramparts"?; Dat.-Abl. plenasier "for the annual festival" (with final rhotacism from -s; thought to be related to Latin plenus "full" with the semantic development > "of the full (year)").
Phonological history
Shared changes
Umbrian shares some phonological changes with its sister language Oscan.
Labialization of *kʷ to p
This change is shared with Umbrian, and so is a common Sabellic change, reminiscent of the k/p split between Goidellic (Irish, etc) and Cymric (Welsh, etc). piře, pirse "what"; Oscan pídum vs Latin quid.