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Meroitic

xmr

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The Meroitic /mɛroʊˈɪtɪk/ language was spoken in Meroë and the Sudan during the Meroitic period (attested from 300 BCE) and went extinct about 400 CE. It was written in two forms of the Meroitic alphabet: Meroitic Cursive, which was written with a stylus and was used for general record-keeping; and Meroitic Hieroglyphic, which was carved in stone or used for royal or religious documents. It is poorly understood owing to the scarcity of bilingual texts. The classification of Meroitic is uncertain due to the scarcity of data and difficulty in interpreting it. Since the alphabet was deciphered in 1909, it has been proposed that Meroitic is related to Nubian and similar languages of the Nilo-Saharan phylum, though no conclusive evidence has ever been produced. Claude Rilly is the most recent proponent of the Nilo-Saharan idea: he proposes that it is Eastern Sudanic, the Nilo-Saharan family that includes Nubian (Rilly 2004, 2007, 2012). However, that conclusion rests on assumed readings of Meroitic words, whereas few of these words have secure translations. Rowan (2006, 2011) notes that the Meroitic sound inventory and phonotactics (the only aspects of the language which are secure) are similar to those of the Afroasiatic languages, and dissimilar from Nilo-Saharan languages. For example, very rarely does one find the sequence CVC, where the consonants (C) are both labials or both velars. This is similar to consonant restrictions found throughout the Afro-Asiatic language family, suggesting that there is a good chance Meroitic was an Afro-Asiatic language like Egyptian, though there is no way at present to tell which branch of Afro-Asiatic it may have been in.
Source : DBpedia

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

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