Mysian was spoken by

Mysians Mysians (; , ''Mysoí'') were the inhabitants of Mysia, a region in northwestern Asia Minor. Origins according to ancient authors Their first mention is by Homer, in his list of Troy, Trojans allies in the Iliad, and according to whom the Mysia ...

inhabiting

Mysia Mysia (UK , US or ; ; ; ) was a region in the northwest of ancient Asia Minor (Anatolia, Asian part of modern Turkey). It was located on the south coast of the Sea of Marmara. It was bounded by Bithynia on the east, Phrygia on the southeast, Lyd ...

in north-west

Anatolia Anatolia (), also known as Asia Minor, is a peninsula in West Asia that makes up the majority of the land area of Turkey. It is the westernmost protrusion of Asia and is geographically bounded by the Mediterranean Sea to the south, the Aegean ...

. Little is known about the Mysian language. Strabo noted that it was, "in a way, a mixture of the Lydian and

Phrygian language The Phrygian language () was the Indo-European language of the Phrygians, spoken in Anatolia (in modern Turkey), during classical antiquity (c. 8th century BCE to 5th century CE). Phrygian ethno-linguistic homogeneity is debatable. Ancient Gre ...

s". As such, the Mysian language could be a language of the Anatolian or Phrygian group. However, a passage in

Athenaeus Athenaeus of Naucratis (, or Nαυκράτιος, ''Athēnaios Naukratitēs'' or ''Naukratios''; ) was an ancient Greek rhetorician and Grammarian (Greco-Roman), grammarian, flourishing about the end of the 2nd and beginning of the 3rd century ...

suggests that the Mysian language was akin to the barely attested

Paeonian language Paeonian, sometimes spelled Paionian, is a poorly attested, extinct language spoken by the ancient Paeonians until late antiquity. Paeonia was located to the north of Macedon, south of Dardania, west of Thrace, and east of the southernmost ...

of Paeonia, north of

Macedon Macedonia ( ; , ), also called Macedon ( ), was an ancient kingdom on the periphery of Archaic and Classical Greece, which later became the dominant state of Hellenistic Greece. The kingdom was founded and initially ruled by the royal ...

Inscription

Only one inscription is known that may be in the Mysian language. It has seven lines of about 20 signs each, written from right to left (sinistroverse), but the first two lines are very incomplete. The inscription dates from between the 5th and 3rd centuries BCE and was found in 1926 by Christopher William Machell Cox and Archibald Cameron in Üyücek village, 15 km due south of Tavşanlı, in the Tavşanlı district of

Kütahya Kütahya (; historically, Cotyaeum or Kotyaion; Ancient Greek, Greek: Κοτύαιον) is a city in western Turkey which lies on the Porsuk River, at 969 metres above sea level. It is the seat of Kütahya Province and Kütahya District. In 19 ...

province, near the outskirts of the classical Phrygian territory. The text seems to include

Indo-European 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 (e. ...

words. The alphabet used resembles the Old-Phrygian alphabet, but some signs are quite different: In the past there has been much confusion concerning the

sibilants Sibilants (from 'hissing') are fricative and affricate consonants of higher amplitude and pitch, made by directing a stream of air with the tongue towards the teeth. Examples of sibilants are the consonants at the beginning of the English word ...

in the alphabet. Initially it was thought that the Mysian Y

sign represented a sibilant, transcribed as ''š'' or ''z'', but since 1969 it is known that it actually denoted a /j/ sound, transcribed as ''y''. The

sign was thought to be a sound not present in the regular Old-Phrygian alphabet and dubbed the "Mysian s", transcribed as ś, but it was in fact the regular ''s''. The Mysian Z

sign was formerly transcribed ''s'', but it is in fact the equivalent of the Phrygian PhrygianZeta R2L

sign, probably denoting a /z/, /zd/, or /ts/ sound. It is uncertain whether the inscription renders a text in the Mysian language or if it is simply a Phrygian dialect from the region of Mysia. Brixhe, discussing the existing literature on the inscription, argues that the language is Phrygian. The seventh line can be read as: :: '' akes braterais patriyioisk ' The words "braterais patriyioisk have been proposed to mean something like "(for) brothers and fathers / relatives": * ''braterais'' is related to Phrygian βρατερε, Greek φρατήρ, Latin ''frater'', English ''brother''; * ''patriyiois'' is related to New-Phrygian ''pat(e)res'' (πατερης, πατρες: 'parents'), Greek πάτριος ('relative of the father'), Latin ''pater'', English ''father''; * and ''-ke'' is a Phrygian suffix meaning ''and'', cf. Greek τε and Latin ''-que'', 'and'. ''Lakes'' (or ''-lakes'', a first sign may be missing; alternatively, according to Friedrich, read ...''likeś'') is most probably a personal name. However, Friedrich indicates that the reading is variable, and writes "instead of k also p or a conceivably, instead of e v is possible, instead of ś maybe i." (translated from the original German)See J. Friedrich (1932), Kleinasiatische Sprachdenkmäler, 142, fn. 7.

Notes

References

External links

Titus texts:"Mysian" inscriptionsPalaeolexicon entry for the word ΠΑΤΡΙΖΙPalaeolexicon entry for the word ΒΡΑΤΕΡΑΙΣ
{{DEFAULTSORT:Mysian Language Mysia Anatolian languages Extinct languages of Asia Extinct languages of Europe Languages extinct in the 1st century BC Unclassified languages of Asia Unclassified Indo-European languages