Writing, at first ideographic, then syllabic, was introduced in Greece at the end of the II millennium BC. About the end of the II millennium BC the Greeks adopted the alphabetic system thanks to commercial contact with the Phoenicians.
With the Greek colonization of southern Tyrrhenian shores, the Etruscans also adopted the alphabetic writing, adapting it to the needs of their own language, which is considered non-Indo-European. The first references to an Etruscan alphabet are found at the beginning of VII century BC in southern Etruria (Tarquinia, Cerveteri). From here the practice of writing swiftly diffused in all of Etruria, with regional graphic differentiations. Padan Etruria in the half of VII century bears witnesses of north-Etruscan writing, a fact that emphasizes the strong tie that linked the two sides of the Tosco-Emilian Apennines.
The Etruscan alphabet
The usage of writing represents a status symbol, at first reserved only to the aristocratic class. With the emergence of the middle class, in the course of VI century BC, writing is employed on a larger scale and produced on different materials. Our knowledge of Etruscan language is based on brief funerary inscriptions and texts of religious and institutional character found in sanctuaries, nevertheless the grand majority of inscriptions are personal names of individuals.
The inscriptions of Spina
The inscriptions of Spina, engraved or etched, are substantially all vascular, coming from a private sphere, onomastic (personal names), but there are also dedications to divinities and alphabetari (successions of letters, complete or partial).
Venetics, Celts, Italics in Spina: many peoples, one language.
Different ethnic groups living in Spina, other than their own, also used the Etruscan language, a sign of their integration in the lively Adriatic emporium. As a matter of fact numerous onomastic etchings on the vases can be referred to Venetics (Venus Pulius) , central- Italics, Umbri, Piceni and Falisci (Herine, Petru, Pupus, Anta) , Messapii (Caule), and, obviously, Greeks (Tychandros). Celtic presence is witnessed in a later period (Keltie, Mutalu). Most diffused individual names have their roots in the Etruscan language (Perkna, Lariste), and are mostly in genitive (possessive form) accompanied by mi (I), referred to the vase itself, or in genitive alone or in nominative (I am (the vase) of…).
The Greeks in Spina - an international emporium
In Spina, as in other emporiums of the Mediterranean Sea (for example Marseille), Greek becomes a common language, used for relations and trades on a large scale.
The Greek etchings represent about 30 % of the inscriptions found in Spina. They rarely contain dedications and indications of property by the Greek inhabitants of Spina, mostly they contain personal acronyms and trade indications, realized in Greece when they were produced.