South Piken language
| South Pique | ||
|---|---|---|
|
Spoken in |
Picenum (today northeastern Italy ) | |
| speaker | (extinct) | |
| Linguistic classification |
|
|
| Language codes | ||
| ISO 639-3 |
spx |
|
The South Piken language is an extinct language of the Italian branch of the Indo-European languages spoken by the ancient Picenians .
Decipherment
The language is documented by a little more than 20 inscriptions from the period between the sixth and third centuries BC. For a long time the texts were illegible until it was found out in the 1980s that the symbols . and : do not represent punctuation marks, but represent the sounds o and f . In contrast to the North Pikish language spoken in the same region, South Piken can since then be clearly identified as an Indo-European language.
classification
Within the Osco-Umbrian subgroup, the Südpikenische more similarities to the Umbrian than with the Oscan on.
literature
- Benjamin W. Fortson: Indo-European Language and Culture. An Introduction. Blackwell, Oxford 2004.
- Rex E. Wallace: The Sabellic Languages of Ancient Italy. (Languages of the World / Materials 371) LINCOM Europe, Munich 2007. ISBN 978-3-89586-990-7 .