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 (Etruscan alphabet), 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.