Elymian is the

extinct language An extinct language or dead language is a language with no living native speakers. A dormant language is a dead language that still serves as a symbol of ethnic identity to an ethnic group; these languages are often undergoing a process of r ...

of the ancient Elymian people of western

Sicily Sicily (Italian language, Italian and ), officially the Sicilian Region (), is an island in the central Mediterranean Sea, south of the Italian Peninsula in continental Europe and is one of the 20 regions of Italy, regions of Italy. With 4. ...

. Its characteristics are little known because of the extremely limited and fragmentary nature of the surviving texts. The origins of Elymian and its exact relationships with other languages are unclear due to scarcity of data. It is generally assumed to have been an

Indo-European language The Indo-European languages are a language family native to the northern Indian subcontinent, most of Europe, and the Iranian plateau with additional native branches found in regions such as Sri Lanka, the Maldives, parts of Central Asia ( ...

, but its classification within the Indo-European family is disputed. It has been speculated that Elymian was related to either the

Italic languages The Italic languages form a branch of the Indo-European languages, Indo-European language family, whose earliest known members were spoken on the Italian Peninsula in the first millennium BC. The most important of the ancient Italic languages ...

or the Anatolian languages (such as Hittite), although both theories are disputed - with the first as preferred by the scholars. An

Early Iron Age The Iron Age () is the final epoch of the three historical Metal Ages, after the Chalcolithic and Bronze Age. It has also been considered as the final age of the three-age division starting with prehistory (before recorded history) and progr ...

idiom, Elymian seems to have been spoken until the 3rd century BC.

Characteristics

Only a handful of Elymian texts have survived, dating from between the 6th and 4th centuries BC. These comprise a few proper names recorded by non-Elymian sources; inscriptions in the

Greek alphabet The Greek alphabet has been used to write the Greek language since the late 9th or early 8th century BC. It was derived from the earlier Phoenician alphabet, and is the earliest known alphabetic script to systematically write vowels as wel ...

on several coins, which include the names of Elymian cities; and inscriptions in the Greek alphabet on about 170 fragments of pottery (found mostly in a votive deposit at the ruined Elymian city of Segesta). These texts have been identified as Elymian, based on their evidently non-Hellenic characteristics, location and age. The majority of textual artefacts are very short and fragmentary, comprising only a few letters. A small number of longer texts apparently contain a personal name and may have been dedicatory epigraphs. They sometimes appear to resemble Hellenic dedicatory epigraphs, in which an anthroponym in

genitive In grammar, the genitive case ( abbreviated ) is the grammatical case that marks a word, usually a noun, as modifying another word, also usually a noun—thus indicating an attributive relationship of one noun to the other noun. A genitive can ...

form is followed by a verb literally meaning "I am" in order to convey "belonging". A vase found at Montedoro, around 15 km southwest of

Palermo Palermo ( ; ; , locally also or ) is a city in southern Italy, the capital (political), capital of both the autonomous area, autonomous region of Sicily and the Metropolitan City of Palermo, the city's surrounding metropolitan province. The ...

, features one of the few complete inscriptions in Elymian. It has been tentatively translated to read "I he potam giftof Ata Tuka", or "I am giftof Ata of son ofTuka".

Classification

The inclusion of Elymian within the Indo-European language family is generally accepted, but its further affiliation to the established branches of Indo-European is still disputed. Proposed classifications of the Elymian language can be summarized under two main positions. Some

historical linguists Historical linguistics, also known as diachronic linguistics, is the scientific study of how language change, languages change over time. It seeks to understand the nature and causes of linguistic change and to trace the evolution of language ...

agreed that some peculiarities of that language – like non-alphabetic symbols engraved on some dedicatory fragments of pots, and genitive in -''ai'' found in almost all the complete sequences – are suggestive of a connection to the Anatolian languages, and in particular, to Hittite. Other historical linguists classified Elymian as related to the

on the basis of other possible features. Subsequently, the latter thesis found success among the scholars, whose broad consensus recognizes Elymian as an Italic idiom for northwestern Sicily (albeit without the support of overwhelming evidence), although a different italicity from Siculian, spoken further east; instead the Anatolian thesis is no longer supported except by a minority of scholars. However, any resolution of the question of affiliation appears to rely on further archaeological investigations at Elymian settlements in western Sicily.

Characteristics

Classification

References

Further reading