SALAVS – Learn Oscan Online

SALAVS – Learn Oscan Online

Welcome to Salavs – a series of resources for learning the basics of Oscan online.

Oscan is a language spoken and written in central and southern Italy from around 500 BCE to 50 BCE. It is closely related to Latin, but is a language in its own right – they were about as similar as English and Dutch are today. Oscan was in use in many areas that are now of great archaeological importance, including Pompeii and Herculaneum.

This short course includes some help learning the alphabets used to write Oscan, basic vocabulary and grammar, and some exercises for you to complete. This is not a linguistics-heavy introduction – hopefully it should be helpful whether you want to learn Oscan because you are interested in history, archaeology, linguistics, or random ancient languages generally. If you spot any mistakes or have any comments to pass on, please email k.l.mcdonald@exeter.ac.uk.

If you’ve found this useful or fun, please let me know!

Lesson 1 – Writing and alphabets

Lesson 2 – Nouns (first and second declensions)

Lesson 3 –

Lesson 4 –

Lesson 5 –

See AWOL's list of Open Access Textbooks and Language Primers relating to the ancient world