RAETIAN LANGUAGE

also spelled Raetic, language spoken by the ancient Raetians in southern Germany and in the Alpine regions of Italy, Austria, and Switzerland in pre-Roman times. The language is known from a number of inscriptions. Although some scholars believe Raetian to hold an intermediate linguistic position between Celtic and Illyrian (a branch of the Indo-European language family spoken east of the Adriatic Sea), others now believe the language to be non-Indo-European. Late Raetian inscriptions, especially those from northern Italy, seem to have been influenced somewhat by Etruscan.