Tuscan and Etruscan: The Problem of Linguistic Substratum Influence in Central Italy

The Italian spoken in most of Tuscany is characterized by a number of peculiar pronunciations which for over half a century Romance scholars have explained by a theory of linguistic substratum influence. This theory postulates that present-day Tuscan pronunciation is a survival of the 'foreign accent' with which the ancient Etruscans must have spoken Latin when Rome first began to extend its power and language over the rest of Italy.

Professor Izzo has undertaken a new and thorough investigation of modern Tuscan pronunciation, disproving this hypothesis and providing a definitive conclusion to the debate. He delineates clearly the errors in reasoning of those who trace the Tuscan pronunciation to an Etruscan influence, and presents his conclusions objectively.

This study will interest Romance linguists, especially historians of the Italian language; but it will also interest historical linguists in general, for by disproving one of the most plausible and best-documented cases of alleged substratum influence, it casts doubt on many other cases where such influence has been claimed with little evidence.

Herbert J. Izzo (1928-2009) was a professor emeritus in the department of linguistics of the University of Calgary. He studied Romance languages and linguistics at the University of Michigan as well as at the University of New Mexico and in Mexico and Italy. He was a Visiting Professor at the University of Michigan, Stanford, and University of Bucharest and completed dialect research in Italy and Spain. He was also a member of the LSA since 1956.