Old Italic refers to several now extinct
alphabet systems used on the
Italian Peninsula in ancient times for various
Indo-European languages (predominantly
Italic) and non-Indo-European (e.g.
Etruscan) languages. The alphabets derive from the
Euboean Greek Cumaean alphabet, used at
Ischia and
Cumae in the
Bay of Naples in the eighth century BC.
Various Indo-European languages belonging to the Italic branch (Faliscan and members of the Sebellian group, including Oscan, Umbrian, and South Picene, and other Indo-European branches such as Venetic and Messapic) originally used the alphabet. Faliscan, Oscan, Umbrian, North Picene, and South Picene all derive from an Etruscan form of the alphabet.
The Germanic runic alphabet was most likely derived from one of these alphabets in about the 2nd century.[citation needed]
It is not clear whether the process of adaptation from the Greek alphabet took place in Italy from the first colony of Greeks, the city of Cumae, or in Greece/Asia Minor. It was in any case a Western Greek alphabet. In the alphabets of the West, X had the sound value [ks], ? stood for [k?]; in Etruscan X = [s], ? = [k?] or [k?] (Rix 202-209).
