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Elymian

xly

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The Elymian language is the extinct language of the ancient Elymian people of western Sicily. It is not known whether Elymian was an Indo-European language. The limited and fragmentary nature of the surviving sources makes it very difficult to identify its affinities with other regional languages; it has been speculated that Elymian was related to the Italic languages, though this interpretation is disputed. Only a handful of Elymian texts have survived. These comprise a few placenames and personal names; several coins inscribed in Greek script with the names of Elymian cities; and around 170 fragments of pottery inscribed in Greek script, found in the ruined Elymian city of Segesta. All of the texts date to between the 6th and 4th centuries BC. The majority are very short and fragmentary (only a few characters), with the small number of longer texts apparently containing a name, sometimes followed by I am. A vase found at Montedoro, around 15 km southwest of Palermo, features the only known complete inscription in Elymian. Tentatively translated, it may be read as I [the pot] am [a gift] for/by Ata Tuka. The problem of the identification of Elymian language can be summarized under two main positions. Some historical linguists agree that some peculiarities of that language, like non-alphabetic symbols engraved on some dedicational fragments of pots, and genitive in -ai found in almost all the complete sequences, are aspects of its non-Hellenic Eastern origin. Other historical linguists classify it as Indo-European on the basis of some affinities with Italic languages. At this point, the problem of its linguistic affiliation can receive new light only with the carrying out of archaeological investigations in Elymian settlements in western Sicily. (Antonino Rizzo).
Source : DBpedia

Names (more)

[de] Elymische Sprache
[en] Elymian language
[no] Elymisk
[ru] Элимский язык

Language type : Ancient

Language resources for Elymian

Open Languages Archives


Technical notes

This page is providing structured data for the language Elymian.
Following BCP 47 the recommended tag for this language is xly.

This page is marked up using RDFa, schema.org, and other linked open vocabularies. The raw RDF data can be extracted using the W3C RDFa Distiller.

Freebase search uses the Freebase API, based on ISO 639-3 codes shared by Freebase language records.

ISO 639 Codes

ISO 639-3 : xly

Linked Data URIs

http://lexvo.org/id/iso639-3/xly
http://dbpedia.org/resource/ISO_639:xly

More URIs at sameas.org

Sources

Authority documentation for ISO 639 identifier: xly

Freebase ISO 639-3 : xly
GeoNames.org Country Information

Publications Office of the European Union
Metadata Registry : Countries and Languages