Lycian language

Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia - Cite This Source

Lycian was an Indo-European language, one of the Anatolian languages, that was spoken in the region of Lycia in Anatolia, present day Turkey during the Iron Age . It is believed by some specialists to be a descendant of Hittite or Luwian or perhaps both. It became extinct around the beginning of the first century BC and was replaced by Greek. The language is known from a few fairly extensive inscriptions. From the inscriptions, scholars have identified at least two dialects. One is considered standard Lycian, the other which is attested on side d of the Letoon trilingual is termed Lycian B or Milyan, separated by its grammatical particularities. Lycian had its own alphabet, which was closely related to the Greek alphabet but included at least one character borrowed from Carian.

Sources

Lycian is known from these sources:

• Personal and place names in Greek
• Inscriptions in the Lycian script (anout 170)
• Coin inscriptions (about 100)
• The Letoon trilingual

Notes

References

• Trevor R. Bryce, The Lycians, Vol. I, Copenhagen : Museum Tusculanum Press, 1986, pp. 68-71 (ISBN 87-7289-023-1)

External links

• The Lycian language
• Lycian Turkey
• Lycian Grammar
• Working group document on encoding the Lycian script in the Universal Character Set.
• Lycian text

Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia © 2001-2006 Wikipedia contributors (Disclaimer)
This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License.
Last updated on Friday March 07, 2008 at 08:19:10 PST (GMT -0800)
View this article at Wikipedia.org - Edit this article at Wikipedia.org - Donate to the Wikimedia Foundation