How would you say "The Etruscan language died two thousand years ago and nobody understands it." in Etruscan?

Question

What do you think, is "𐌓𐌀𐌔𐌄𐌍𐌀𐌋​⸱​𐌖𐌓𐌔𐌌𐌉𐌍𐌉​⸱​𐌋𐌖𐌐𐌖𐌂𐌄​⸱​𐌇𐌀𐌍𐌕𐌉​⸱​𐌆𐌀𐌈𐌓𐌖𐌌​⸱​𐌅𐌏𐌛​⸱​𐌀𐌅𐌉𐌋𐌀𐌓𐌉​⸱​𐌍𐌀𐌍𐌀𐌕𐌍𐌀𐌌​⸱​𐌉𐌍𐌂​⸱​𐌇𐌀𐌌𐌈𐌉𐌍" (transliterated: "Rasenal ursmini lupuce hanti zaθrum vor avilari nanatnam inc hamθin.") good Etruscan for "The Etruscan language died two thousand (literally, twenty hundreds) years ago and nobody understands it."? Let me explain how I arrived at that translation.

𐌓𐌀𐌔𐌄𐌍𐌀𐌋 - "Rasena" means "Etruscan", as in, "Etruscan person", so, if you add the genitive suffix "-l" to it, so that it reads "Rasenal", it could probably mean "Etruscan" as an adjective.

​𐌖𐌓𐌔𐌌𐌉𐌍𐌉​ - "Ursmini" means "speech" or "sermon", perhaps related to Latin "sermo". The name "Ursminei" is translated to Latin as "Locutia". The word "ursmini" is also often used to mean "military command". I suppose it can be used to mean "language".

𐌋𐌖𐌐𐌖𐌂𐌄 - "Lupu" means "to die", and "-ce" is the past tense marker, so "lupuce" would mean "died".

𐌇𐌀𐌍𐌕𐌉 - "hanti", apparently an Indo-European loanword (or a derivation from "hant", "to stop"), meant "before". I suppose it could also be used to mean "ago", but I am not sure.

𐌆𐌀𐌈𐌓𐌖𐌌⸱𐌅𐌏𐌛 - Now, Etruscan, as far as I know, had no word meaning "thousand". However, we can presume from the gloss that "vorsum" means "centum pedes" (a hundred feet) that "vor" meant "hundred", and we know that "zaθrum" meant "twenty", so I guess "zaθrum vor" would be a proper way of saying "two thousand".

𐌀𐌅𐌉𐌋𐌀𐌓𐌉 - "avilari", I suppose that would be the proper locative plural of "avil" (year).

𐌍𐌀𐌍𐌀𐌕𐌍𐌀𐌌 - "nana-tnam", "nana" meaning "nobody" and "tnam" being the suffix corresponding to Latin "-que".

𐌉𐌍𐌂 - "inc", a pronoun meaning "it".

𐌇𐌀𐌌𐌈𐌉𐌍 - "hamθin" means the same thing as Latin "capere", that is, it can mean both "to understand" and "to catch".

I have put "inc" before "hamθin" because I know Etruscan was an SOV-language, like Latin.

Answer 1

Not an Etruscan expert myself but I have been studying Rex Wallace's Zikh Rasna.

1. We know about 700 words only (the rest are proper nouns, Wallace 2008: 123);

2. We're not even sure about how to say "Etruscan" in Etruscan (see Wallace 2008: 124), raσna could be either "Etruscan" (adj.) or "public; people";

3. years (NOM. PL.) is avilχva (the plural marker for inanimate nouns in Etrsucan is -χva/-cva/-va, Wallace 2008: 50), now you need to speculate how to add a locative marker to this stem, remembering that Etruscan is an agglutinating language, like Finnish or Turkish (probably, unattested avilχve ??). Incidentally, e.g. when avil was used in the funerary inscriptions to denote one's age it was used in the singular (p. 105), e.g. 'seventeen years of age' is avils ciem zaθrms (year.GEN.SG three.NOM/ACC twenty.GEN.SG)

4. not sure at all if there was 'it' (3rd.SG) in Etruscan, perhaps in (?);

5. lupuce is correct, it means 'died'. etc.

A good case in point of how much we understand Etruscan taken from Weiss 2020 (p. 538, Chapter 43 Etrsucan).

For meχ θuta (from the bilingual Pyrgi Tablets) Weiss mentions three interpretations:

• Rix 1981 ‘from his own money’, so meχ could be money;
• Steinbauer meχ ‘queen’
• Wylin 2000 meχ θuta ‘place holy’, so meχ could be ‘place’

Cf. meχ rasnal ‘res publica’

Somebody whose primary area of expertise is Etruscan might help much more but I'm afraid I don't see much sense in making such guesses about a language so poorly attested and understood.

Some useful resources:

Il Dizionario della Lingua Etrusca by Massimo Pittau (2018)

Thesaurus Linguae Etruscae

Re: locative morphology in Etrsucan

The locative ending in Etrsucan was -i. However, it changed to -e in the following cases:

e.g. vowel stems, i.e. ending in -a and -e, except -i

mutna ‘sarcophagus’ – mutne

rasna ‘people, public’ – rasne

meθlum ‘city’ – meθlume (another attested form, methlum-θ ‘in the city’)

cilθcva ‘citadels’ (NOM.PL.) – cilθcve-ti ‘in the citadels’

You can read about it in Wallace 2008: 47-49

Answer 2

What do you guys think, would "Nac avil pulumχva falatul snuiaφ, aca Rasnal amuce ziv, nanatnam ica cnara." be good Etruscan for "The Etruscan language has been dead for years as numerous as the stars of heaven and nobody knows it."?

I got this on an Internet forum here, and it seems very plausible to me: https://www.reddit.com/r/ancientrome/comments/mor62e/comment/i751f9w/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3

Nac - for (time)

avil - year; it goes in singular, as we can see in the phrase 'nac ci avil', 'for three years', attested on Pyrgi Tablets

pulumχva - stars; irregular plural (not with the suffix -ar-), attested also on Pyrgi Tablets

falatul - of the sky (genitive singular of "falatu")

snuiaφ - as numerous; the phrase 'pulumχva snuiaφ' meaning 'as numerous as stars' is attested on Pyrgi Tablets

aca - voice, (perhaps) language

Rasnal - Etruscan

amuce - has been; the perfect of ama (to be)

ziv - dead

nanatnam - see the OP for this

ica - this

cnara - to know