Carian
Sign in to saveAlso known as Carian language
language of the Luwian subgroup of the Anatolian branch of the Indo-European language family
Key facts
- Region
- Ancient southwestern Anatolia and the city of Memphis in Egypt
- Ethnicity
- Carians
- Era
- attested 7th–3rd century BCE
- Language family
- Indo-European Anatolian Luwo - Lydian Luwo - Palaic Luwic Lyco-Carian Carian– Milyan Carian
- Early forms
- Proto-Indo-European Proto-Anatolian
- Writing system
- Carian alphabets
- Iso 639 3
- xcr
- Glottolog
- cari1274
via Wikipedia infobox
Wikidata facts
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Sources (6)
via Wikidata · CC0
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Article
The Carian language is an extinct language of the Luwic subgroup of the Anatolian branch of the Indo-European language family, spoken by the Carians. The known corpus is small, and the majority comes from Egypt. Approximately 170 Carian inscriptions from Egypt are known, while only about 30 are known from Caria itself.
Caria is a region of western Anatolia between the ancient regions of Lycia and Lydia, a name possibly first mentioned in Hittite sources. Carian is closely related to Lycian and Milyan (Lycian B), and both are closely related to, though not direct descendants of, Luwian. Whether the correspondences between Luwian, Carian, and Lycian are due to direct descent (i.e. a language family as represented by a tree model), or are due to the effects of a sprachbund is disputed.