a
From Thesaurus Inscriptionum Raeticarum
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| Phoneme | |
|---|---|
| Type: | vowel |
| IPA (approx.): | [a] |
|
| |
| Graphematic representation: | A (alpha) |
| Attested in: | Words: 2, Morphemes: 0 |
Commentary
Corresponding to Etruscan /a/. /a/ in Archaic Etruscan can be argued to have been rounded ([ɒ]); the phoneme appears to have been lowered and unrounded during the 6th century. A similar development may have taken place in Raetic. While the absence of the letter Omikron in standard Raetic inscriptions implies that a middle back rounded vowel phoneme did not originally exist in the language (just like in Etruscan), [o] or [ɔ] may be expected to have entered Raetic phonetics via loanwords and especially foreign names. These foreign phones would have been written with Upsilon or Alpha depending on the phonetic realisation of /u/ and /a/. See The Raetic language for a discussion.
