THE MESSAPIC “ KULTUR
SPRACHE ”
It is certain that since XIX century until
today a lot of important discoveries have been made in Salento. The numerous
archaeological findings have revealed not only the historical chronology of the
Japigian age, but they have also disclosed important aspects of the unknown
origins of the Messapic civilization. Besides, important written documents have
been recovered. They are not as fundamental as the Egyptian Stele of Rosetta
but they can be undoubtedly the basis for a further study of the ancient
language of the Messapians. The philological contributions of great researchers
like Francesco Ribezzo, Vittore Pisani, Oronzo Parlangeli, Ciro Santoro and the
present scholar Maria Teresa La Porta, who teaches Glottology at the University
of Bari, have revealed their interpretations of plenty of semantic nexuses of a
language that, unfortunately, still remains unknown. Of course, it is necessary
to study all the epigraphs in depth to be able to wholly decipher the essential
logical and lexical structures of that ancient language.
Ribrezzo wrote
that the Messapic idiom, as the other dialects of ancient Italy, was not allowed
to compete with the Greek and Latin languages on literal, civil
and political basis; so, he said that it remained a kulture sprache (a
German term to define its characteristically belonging to the culture of a
particular population).
The
ancient Sallentine idiom never reached a very high level of evolution as to be
compared with a cultivated language of that time, but the same Ribezzo affirmed
that even if Messapic was not included among the literary languages spoken by
Ennius from Rudiae (it is known that he fluently spoke Greek, Latin and Osco),
the long writings of civil and political context were nevertheless to be
considered real expressions of the official language of a nation or of a state,
that was certainly the Messapic Confederation.
Famous researchers as Giacomo Devoto, Emidio De Felice, Cesare Marangio and other illustrious researchers have also thrown light on the Roman epigraphic documentations that have been found in the territory of ancient Salento, whose original idiom suffered a real linguistic metamorphosis following numerous phonetic variations and new etymological assumptions.
In fact, after a long period of bilingualism in the late Roman imperial time, Latin became the new official language of all the Messapic area.
In the collection of “Sallentine Linguistic Studies”, Ciro Santoro and Gian Battista Mancarella have expanded their studies on the lexical Messapic glosses and on the late Roman imperial and medieval linguistic results of the Sallentine idiom by that time transformed after centuries of Roman and Bizantine dominations.
