| Lemnian | |
|---|---|
| Spoken in | Lemnos |
| Extinct | 400 BC |
| Language family | |
| Language codes | |
| ISO 639-3 | xle |
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Location of Lemnos.
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The Lemnian language is a language of the 6th century BC spoken on the island of Lemnos. It is mainly attested by an inscription found on a funerary stele, termed the Lemnos stele, discovered in 1885 near Kaminia. However, fragments of inscriptions on local pottery show that it was spoken there by a community.[1] In 2009, a newly discovered inscription from Efestia was reported.[2] Lemnian is accepted as being closely related to Etruscan. After the Athenians conquered the island in the latter half of that century, Lemnian was replaced by Attic Greek.
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The inscriptions are in an alphabet similar to that used to write the Etruscan language and the older Phrygian inscriptions, all derived from Euboean scripts (Western Greek alphabet, alphabets of Asia Minor).
A relationship between Lemnian, Etruscan, and Raetian as a Tyrsenian language family is widely accepted due to demonstrations of close connections in vocabulary and grammar. For example,
Like Etruscan, the Lemnian language appears to have had a four-vowel system, consisting of "i", "e", "a" and "u". Having a contrast between front and back vowels, it would (unlike Etruscan) appear to lack a high back rounded vowel (written in IPA as /u/) which is curious because this defies the linguistic universal of contrast maximization. Since vowel systems without /u/ are rare (though occurring in languages such as Seneca and Nahuatl), it is likely that what we transliterate as "o" from the symbol omicron was in fact meant to record /u/. This is not unusual considering that different languages may take the same letter to transcribe different sounds. It is rather coincidental that the languages neighbouring this region, namely Hittite and Akkadian, also happen to have the same four-vowel systems lacking "o". This suggests early areal influence.
The stele was found built into a church wall in Kaminia and is now at the National Archaeological Museum of Athens. The 6th century date is based on the fact that in 510 BC the Athenian Miltiades invaded Lemnos and Hellenized it. The stele bears a low-relief bust of a helmeted man and is inscribed in an alphabet similar to the western ("Chalcidian") Greek alphabet. The inscription is in Boustrophedon style, and has been transliterated but had not been successfully translated until serious linguistic analysis based on comparisons with Etruscan, combined with breakthroughs in Etruscan's own translation started to yield fruit.
The inscription consists of 198 characters forming 33 to 40 words, word separation sometimes indicated with one to three dots. The text consists of three parts, two written vertically and one horizontally. Comprehensible is the phrase aviš sialχviš ("aged sixty", B.3), reminiscent of Etruscan avils maχs śealχisc ("and aged sixty-five").
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A novel Lemnian inscription has been found during excavations at Efestia on the island of Lemnos.[3] The inscription consists of 26 letters arranged in two lines of boustrophedal script.
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