Luthic

Luthic
Lûthica
Flag of the Luthic-speaking Ravenna
Pronunciation	[ˈlu.tʰi.xɐ]
Created by	Lëtzelúcia
Date	2023
Native to	Ravenna; Ferrara and Bologna
Ethnicity	Luths
Native speakers	149,500 (2020)
Language family	Indo-European Italic Latino-Faliscan Italo-Western Gotho-Romance Italo-Luthian Romance Luthic
Writing systems	Latin Braille
Official status
Recognised minority language in	Italy (recognised by the Luthic Community of Ravenna)
Regulated by	Council for the Luthic Language
The areas where Luthic (red and orange) is spoken.

Luthic (/ˈluːθ.ɪk/ LOOTH-ik, less often /ˈlʌθ.ɪk/ LUTH-ik, also Luthish; endonym: Lûthica [ˈlu.tʰi.xɐ] or Rasda Lûthica [ˈʁaz.dɐ ˈlu.tʰi.xɐ]) is an Italic language that is spoken by the Luths, with strong East Germanic influence. Unlike other Romance languages, such as Portuguese, Spanish, Catalan, Occitan and French, Luthic has a large inherited vocabulary from East Germanic, instead of only proper names that survived in historical accounts, and loanwords. About 250,000 people speak Luthic worldwide.

Luthic is the result of a prolonged contact among members of both regions after the Gothic raids towards the Roman Empire began, together with the later West Germanic merchants’ travels to and from the Western Roman Empire. These connections and the conquest by the Germanic tribes of the Roman Empire slowly formed a creole for mutual communication.

As a standard form of the Gotho-Romance language, Luthic has similarities with other Italo-Dalmatian languages, Western Romance languages and Sardinian. The status of Luthic as the regional language of Ravenna and the existence there of a regulatory body have removed Luthic, at least in part, from the domain of Standard Italian, its traditional Dachsprache. It is also related to the Florentine dialect spoken by the Italians in the Italian city of Florence and its immediate surroundings.

Luthic is an inflected fusional language, with four cases for nouns, pronouns, and adjectives (nominative, accusative, genitive, dative); three genders (masculine, feminine, neuter); and two numbers (singular, plural).

Classification

Chart of Romance languages based on structural and comparative criteria, not on socio-functional ones. FP: Franco-Provençal, IR: Istro-Romanian.

Luthic is an Indo-European language that belongs to the Gotho-Romance group of the Italic languages, however Luthic has great Germanic influence; where the Germanic languages are traditionally subdivided into three branches: North Germanic, East Germanic, and West Germanic. The first of these branches survives in modern Danish, Swedish, Norwegian, Elfdalian, Faroese, and Icelandic, all of which are descended from Old Norse. The East Germanic languages are now extinct, and Gothic is the only language in this branch which survives in written texts; Luthic is the only surviving Indo-European language with extensive East Germanic derived vocabulary. The West Germanic languages, however, have undergone extensive dialectal subdivision and are now represented in modern languages such as English, German, Dutch, Yiddish, Afrikaans, and others.

Among the Romance languages, its classification has always been controversial, for example, it is one of the Italo-Dalmatian languages and most closely related to Istriot on the one hand and Tuscan-Italian on the other. Some authors include it among the [[w:Gallo-Italic languages|Gallo-Italic languages], and according to others, it is not related to either one. Although both Ethnologue and Glottolog group Luthic into a new language group, the Gotho-Romance (opere citato) family is still somewhat dubious.

Luthic has been influenced by Italian, Frankish, Gothic and Langobardic since its first attestation, the great influence of these languages on the vocabulary and grammar of Modern Luthic is widely acknowledged. Most specialists in language contact do consider Luthic to be a true mixed language. Luthic is classified as a Romance langauge because it shares innovations with other Romance languages such as Italian, French and Spanish.

History

The Luthic philologist Aþalphonso Silva divided the history of Luthic into a period from 500 AD to 1740 to be "Mediaeval Luthic", which he subdivided into “Gothic Luthic” (500–1100), “Mediaeval Luthic” (1100–1600) and “late Mediaeval Luthic” (1600–1740).

Gothic Luthic

The earliest varieties of a Luthic language, collectively known as Gothic Luthic or “Gotho-Luthic”, evolved from the contact of Latin dialects and East Germanic languages. A considerable amount of East Germanic vocabulary was incorporated into Luthic over some five centuries. Approximately 1,200 uncompounded Luthic words are derived from Gothic and ultimately from Proto-Indo-European. Of these 1,200, 700 are nouns, 300 are verbs and 200 are adjectives. Luthic has also absorbed many loanwords, most of which were borrowed from West Germanic languages of the Early Middle Ages.

Only a few documents in Gothic Luthic have survived – not enough for a complete reconstruction of the language. Most Gothic Luthic-language sources are translations or glosses of other languages (namely, Greek and Latin), so foreign linguistic elements most certainly influenced the texts. Nevertheless, Gothic Luthic was probably very close to Gothic (it is known primarily from the Codex Argenteus, a 6th-century copy of a 4th-century Bible translation, and is the only East Germanic language with a sizeable text corpus). These are the primary sources:

• Codex Luthicus (Ravenna), two parts: 87 leaves

It contains scattered passages from the New Testament (including parts of the gospels and the Epistles), from the Old Testament (Nehemiah), and some commentaries. The text likely had been somewhat modified by copyists. It was written using the Gothic alphabet, an alphabet used for writing the Gothic language. It was developed in the 4th century AD by Ulfilas (or Wulfila), a Gothic preacher of Cappadocian Greek descent, for the purpose of translating the Bible.

Detail of the Codex Luthicus, the word Luþiks is attested, referring to the Luths

• Codex Ravennas (Ravenna), four parts: 140 leaves

A Civil code enacted under Theodoric the Great. The code covered the Ostrogothic Kingdom of Italy, but mainly Ravenna, as Theodoric devoted most of his architectural attention to his capital, Ravenna. Codex Ravennas was also written using the Gothic alphabet. The text likely had been somewhat modified by copyists. Together with four leaves, fragments of Romans 11–15 (a Luthic–Latin diglot).

Mediaeval Luthic

In the mediaeval period, Luthic emerged as a separate language from Gothic. The main written language was Latin, and the few Luthic-language texts preserved from this period are written in the Latin alphabet. From the 7th to the 16th centuries, Mediaeval Luthic gradually transformed through language contact with Old Italian, Langobardic and Frankish. During the Carolingian Empire (773–774), Charles conquered the Lombards and thus included northern Italy in his sphere of influence. He renewed the Vatican donation and the promise to the papacy of continued Frankish protection. Frankish was very strong, until Louis’ eldest surviving son Lothair I became Emperor in name but de facto only the ruler of the Middle Frankish Kingdom.

The first sentence is: “Luthica unsara rasda ist, e scolamos defendere unsarǫ raihtǫ di usare la rasda fremente, l’italiano nogca sarat l’unsara rasda fragca, car gli italiani non unse rispetanno.” English translation: “Luthic is our language, and we must defend our right to use it freely, Italian will never be our language, as the Italians don’t respect us”

Late Mediaeval Luthic

Following the first Bible translation, the development of Luthic as a written language, as a language of religion, administration, and public discourse accelerated. In the second half of the 17th century, grammarians elaborated grammars of Luthic, first among them Þiudareico Bianchi’s 1657 Latin grammar De studio linguæ luthicæ.

De Studio Linguæ Luthicæ

De Studio Linguæ Luthicæ (English: On Study of the Luthic Language) often referred to as simply the Luthicæ (/lʌˈθiˌki, lʌθˈaɪˌki/), is a book by Þiudareico Bianchi that expounds Luthic grammar. The Luthicæ is written in Latin and comprises two volumes, and was first published on 9 September 1657.

Book 1, De grammatica

Book 1, subtitled De grammatica (On grammar) concerns fundamental grammar features present in Luthic. It opens a collection of examples and Luthic–Latin diglot lemmata.

Book 2, De orthographia

Book 2, subtitled De orthographia (On orthography), is an exposition of the many vernacular orthographies Luthic had, and eventual suggestions for a universal orthography.

Remounted cover, at Luthic Community of Ravenna