Selonian was an Eastern Baltic language, which was spoken by the

Eastern Baltic The Eastern Baltic languages are a group of languages that along with the extinct Western Baltic languages belong to the branch of the Baltic language family. The Eastern Baltic branch has only two living languages— Latvian and Lithuanian. In s ...

tribe of the

Selonians The Selonians ( lv, sēļi; lt, sėliai, from liv, sälli – "highlanders") were a tribe of Baltic peoples. They lived until the 15th century in Selonia, located in southeastern Latvia and northeastern Lithuania. They eventually merged with ...

, who until the 15th century lived in Selonia, a territory in southeastern

Latvia Latvia ( or ; lv, Latvija ; ltg, Latveja; liv, Leţmō), officially the Republic of Latvia ( lv, Latvijas Republika, links=no, ltg, Latvejas Republika, links=no, liv, Leţmō Vabāmō, links=no), is a country in the Baltic region of ...

and northeastern

Lithuania Lithuania (; lt, Lietuva ), officially the Republic of Lithuania ( lt, Lietuvos Respublika, links=no ), is a country in the Baltic region of Europe. It is one of three Baltic states and lies on the eastern shore of the Baltic Sea. Lithuania ...

History

During the 13th–15th centuries, the Selonians lost their language after being assimilated by the

Lithuanians Lithuanians ( lt, lietuviai) are a Baltic ethnic group. They are native to Lithuania, where they number around 2,378,118 people. Another million or two make up the Lithuanian diaspora, largely found in countries such as the United States, Uni ...

. Traces of the Selonian language can still be found in the territories the Selonians inhabited, especially in the accent and phonetics of the so-called Selonian dialect of the

Latvian language Latvian ( ), also known as Lettish, is an Eastern Baltic language belonging to the Baltic branch of the Indo-European language family, spoken in the Baltic region. It is the language of Latvians and the official language of Latvia as well as ...

. There are some traces of the Selonian language in the northeastern sub-dialects of the Aukštaitian dialect of the

Lithuanian language Lithuanian ( ) is an Eastern Baltic language belonging to the Baltic branch of the Indo-European language family. It is the official language of Lithuania and one of the official languages of the European Union. There are about 2.8 millio ...

, mostly in the lexicon.

Classification

It is considered that the Selonian language retained the Proto-Baltic phonemes *an, *en, *in, *un like the

, but like the

the Proto-Baltic , changed to c, dz, and the Proto-Baltic *š, *ž changed to s, z.

References

East Baltic languages Medieval languages Extinct Baltic languages Extinct languages of Europe Languages of Lithuania Languages of Latvia {{Ie-lang-stub