Venetic language  Venetic language,  a language spoken in
northeastern Italy before the Christian era. Known to modern
scholars from some 200 short inscriptions dating from the 5th
through the 1st century bc, it is written either in Latin
characters or in a native alphabet derived from Etruscan, the
Etruscans having established settlements in the Po Valley in the
6th century bc. Authorities are undecided as to whether Venetic
is related to the Italic languages such as Latin or is an
independent branch of Indo-European.