Lydian language
Encyclopedia
Lydian was an Indo-European
language spoken in the region of Lydia
in western Anatolia
(present-day Turkey
). It belongs to the Anatolian
group of the Indo-European language family
.
Within the Anatolian group, however, Lydian occupies a unique and problematic position due, first, to the still very limited evidence and understanding of the language and, second, to a number of features not shared with any other Anatolian language. It is not presently known whether these represent peculiarly pre-Lydian developments in or the retention of archaic features lost in other Anatolian languages. Until more satisfactory knowledge becomes available, the status of Lydian within Anatolian remains a "special" one.
The Lydian language is attested in graffiti and in coin legends from the end of the 8th or the beginning of the 7th century BC down to the 3rd, but well-preserved inscriptions of significant length are presently limited to the 5th and 4th centuries BC, during the period of Persian domination. Lydian texts are thus effectively contemporaneous with those in Lycian
.
Extant Lydian texts now number slightly over one hundred, all but a few having been found in or near the Lydian capital
but fewer than thirty of the inscriptions consist of more than a few words and are reasonably complete. A majority of the inscriptions are on stone, and are sepulchral in content, but several are decrees of one sort or another and some half-dozen texts seem to be in verse, with a stress-based meter and vowel assonance at line end. Tomb
inscriptions include many epitaphs, which typically begin with the words eś wãnaś ("this grave"), as well as short graffiti.
Strabo
mentions that around his time (1st century BC), the Lydian language had become extinct in Lydia proper, but was still being spoken among the multicultural population of Kibyra
(present-day Gölhisar
) in south-west Anatolia by the descendants of the Lydian
colonists who had founded the city.
and to its western Anatolian neighbors, the exact relationship still remaining unclear. The direction of writing in the older texts is either from left to right or right to left. Later texts show exclusively the latter. Use of word-dividers is variable.
Phonology=
Lydian has seven vowels: a, e, i, o, u with in addition two nasal vowels: ã, ẽ, the sound of a vowel before a nasal consonant. In the case of ã it is an. The difference between ã and ẽ is debatable; ẽ does not seem to have been a nasal [e]. e, o, ã, ẽ only occur accented. Y is used rarely to indicate an allophone of i or e, perhaps unstressed. Lydian is notable for its extensive consonant clusters, which resulted from the loss of word-final short vowels together with massive syncope; there may have been unwritten [ə] in such sequences.
/p t k/ were voiced before nasals and apparently before /r/.
–Aramaic, which was among the first thirty-four found in the beginning of the 20th century by American excavators, providing a limited equivalent of the Rosetta Stone
and permitting a first penetration and solidifying understanding of the Lydian language.
The first line of the text was destroyed. The eight lines of the Lydian text are :
- Ora - Month
- Laqrisa - Wall
- - Bira - House
- Qira - Field, Ground, Immovable Property
, the double-axe, a non-Greek word unattested as yet in any Lydian inscription but on the subject of which Plutarch
states: "the Lydians call the axe labrys".
Another loan word from Lydian now used internationally could be "tyrant
" http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=tyrant, first used in ancient Greek sources, without particular negative connotations, for the late 8th-early 7th century BC King Gyges of Lydia
, founder of the Mermnad dynasty. The name possibly came from his native town, called Tyrhha in Classical antiquity
and still as Tire presently .
Yet another could be the word molybdenum
, adopted in international terminology through the Ancient Greek
, meaning lead and this word itself was proposed, under the same meaning, as a loanword
from Anatolian
Luvian and Lydian languages.
Indo-European languages
The Indo-European languages are a family of several hundred related languages and dialects, including most major current languages of Europe, the Iranian plateau, and South Asia and also historically predominant in Anatolia...
language spoken in the region of Lydia
Lydia
Lydia was an Iron Age kingdom of western Asia Minor located generally east of ancient Ionia in the modern Turkish provinces of Manisa and inland İzmir. Its population spoke an Anatolian language known as Lydian....
in western Anatolia
Anatolia
Anatolia is a geographic and historical term denoting the westernmost protrusion of Asia, comprising the majority of the Republic of Turkey...
(present-day Turkey
Turkey
Turkey , known officially as the Republic of Turkey , is a Eurasian country located in Western Asia and in East Thrace in Southeastern Europe...
). It belongs to the Anatolian
Anatolian languages
The Anatolian languages comprise a group of extinct Indo-European languages that were spoken in Asia Minor, the best attested of them being the Hittite language.-Origins:...
group of the Indo-European language family
Language family
A language family is a group of languages related through descent from a common ancestor, called the proto-language of that family. The term 'family' comes from the tree model of language origination in historical linguistics, which makes use of a metaphor comparing languages to people in a...
.
Within the Anatolian group, however, Lydian occupies a unique and problematic position due, first, to the still very limited evidence and understanding of the language and, second, to a number of features not shared with any other Anatolian language. It is not presently known whether these represent peculiarly pre-Lydian developments in or the retention of archaic features lost in other Anatolian languages. Until more satisfactory knowledge becomes available, the status of Lydian within Anatolian remains a "special" one.
The Lydian language is attested in graffiti and in coin legends from the end of the 8th or the beginning of the 7th century BC down to the 3rd, but well-preserved inscriptions of significant length are presently limited to the 5th and 4th centuries BC, during the period of Persian domination. Lydian texts are thus effectively contemporaneous with those in Lycian
Lycian language
Lycian language refers to the inscriptional language of ancient Lycia, populated by Lycians, as well as its presumed spoken counterpart.-The speakers:...
.
Extant Lydian texts now number slightly over one hundred, all but a few having been found in or near the Lydian capital
Sardis
Sardis or Sardes was an ancient city at the location of modern Sart in Turkey's Manisa Province...
but fewer than thirty of the inscriptions consist of more than a few words and are reasonably complete. A majority of the inscriptions are on stone, and are sepulchral in content, but several are decrees of one sort or another and some half-dozen texts seem to be in verse, with a stress-based meter and vowel assonance at line end. Tomb
inscriptions include many epitaphs, which typically begin with the words eś wãnaś ("this grave"), as well as short graffiti.
Strabo
Strabo
Strabo, also written Strabon was a Greek historian, geographer and philosopher.-Life:Strabo was born to an affluent family from Amaseia in Pontus , a city which he said was situated the approximate equivalent of 75 km from the Black Sea...
mentions that around his time (1st century BC), the Lydian language had become extinct in Lydia proper, but was still being spoken among the multicultural population of Kibyra
Kibyra
Kibyra is an ancient city and an archaeological site in south-west Turkey, near the actual town of Gölhisar, depending the province center of Burdur....
(present-day Gölhisar
Gölhisar
Gölhisar is a town and district of Burdur Province in the Mediterranean region of Turkey....
) in south-west Anatolia by the descendants of the Lydian
Lydians
The Lydians were the inhabitants of Lydia, a region in western Anatolia, who spoke the distinctive Lydian language, an Indo-European language of the Anatolian group....
colonists who had founded the city.
Writing system
The Lydian writing system, which is strictly alphabetic, is related to or derived from that of GreekGreek language
Greek is an independent branch of the Indo-European family of languages. Native to the southern Balkans, it has the longest documented history of any Indo-European language, spanning 34 centuries of written records. Its writing system has been the Greek alphabet for the majority of its history;...
and to its western Anatolian neighbors, the exact relationship still remaining unclear. The direction of writing in the older texts is either from left to right or right to left. Later texts show exclusively the latter. Use of word-dividers is variable.
Phonology=
Lydian has seven vowels: a, e, i, o, u with in addition two nasal vowels: ã, ẽ, the sound of a vowel before a nasal consonant. In the case of ã it is an. The difference between ã and ẽ is debatable; ẽ does not seem to have been a nasal [e]. e, o, ã, ẽ only occur accented. Y is used rarely to indicate an allophone of i or e, perhaps unstressed. Lydian is notable for its extensive consonant clusters, which resulted from the loss of word-final short vowels together with massive syncope; there may have been unwritten [ə] in such sequences.
| m | n | ɲ~ŋ? | ||
| p | t | ts~tʃ? | k | kʷ |
| dz~dʒ? | ||||
| f | s | ʃ~ç? | ||
| v | z~ð? | |||
| l r | ʎ | |||
/p t k/ were voiced before nasals and apparently before /r/.
Morphology
Nouns and adjectives distinguish singular and plural forms and occur in two genders, animate and inanimate. Only three cases are securely attested: nominative, accusative, and dative-locative. There may have been other cases that remain unknown due to the paucity of material.Syntax
The basic word order is Subject-Object-Verb, but constituents may be extraposed to the right of the verb. Lydian had at least one postposition. Modifiers of the noun normally precede the noun.Sample text and vocabulary
A notable inscription in LydianLydian alphabet
Lydian script was used to write the Lydian language. That the language preceded the script is indicated by names in Lydian, which must have existed before they were written. Like other scripts of Anatolia in the Iron Age, the Lydian alphabet is a modification of the East Greek alphabet, but it has...
–Aramaic, which was among the first thirty-four found in the beginning of the 20th century by American excavators, providing a limited equivalent of the Rosetta Stone
Rosetta Stone
The Rosetta Stone is an ancient Egyptian granodiorite stele inscribed with a decree issued at Memphis in 196 BC on behalf of King Ptolemy V. The decree appears in three scripts: the upper text is Ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs, the middle portion Demotic script, and the lowest Ancient Greek...
and permitting a first penetration and solidifying understanding of the Lydian language.
The first line of the text was destroyed. The eight lines of the Lydian text are :
- [o]raλ islλ bakillλ est mrud eśśk [wãnaś]
- laqrisak qelak kudkit ist esλ wãn[aλ]
- bλtarwod akad manelid kumlilid silukalid akit n[ãqis]
- esλ mruλ buk esλ wãnaλ buk esνaν
- laqirisaν bukit kud ist esλ wãnaλ bλtarwo[d]
- aktin nãqis qelλk fẽnsλifid fakmλ artimuś
- ibśimsis artimuk kulumsis aaraλ biraλk
- kλidaλ kofuλk qiraλ qelλk bilλ wcbaqẽnt
Examples of words
- Ora - Month - Laqrisa - Wall - - Bira - House - Qira - Field, Ground, Immovable PropertyLydian words still in use
A Lydian word which entered modern international terminology could be labrysLabrys
Labrys is the term for a symmetrical doubleheaded axe originally from Crete in Greece, one of the oldest symbols of Greek civilization; to the Romans, it was known as a bipennis....
, the double-axe, a non-Greek word unattested as yet in any Lydian inscription but on the subject of which Plutarch
Plutarch
Plutarch then named, on his becoming a Roman citizen, Lucius Mestrius Plutarchus , c. 46 – 120 AD, was a Greek historian, biographer, essayist, and Middle Platonist known primarily for his Parallel Lives and Moralia...
states: "the Lydians call the axe labrys".
Another loan word from Lydian now used internationally could be "tyrant
Tyrant
A tyrant was originally one who illegally seized and controlled a governmental power in a polis. Tyrants were a group of individuals who took over many Greek poleis during the uprising of the middle classes in the sixth and seventh centuries BC, ousting the aristocratic governments.Plato and...
" http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=tyrant, first used in ancient Greek sources, without particular negative connotations, for the late 8th-early 7th century BC King Gyges of Lydia
Gyges of Lydia
Gyges was the founder of the third or Mermnad dynasty of Lydian kings and reigned from 716 BC to 678 BC . He was succeeded by his son Ardys II.-Allegorical accounts of Gyges' rise to power:...
, founder of the Mermnad dynasty. The name possibly came from his native town, called Tyrhha in Classical antiquity
Classical antiquity
Classical antiquity is a broad term for a long period of cultural history centered on the Mediterranean Sea, comprising the interlocking civilizations of ancient Greece and ancient Rome, collectively known as the Greco-Roman world...
and still as Tire presently .
Yet another could be the word molybdenum
Molybdenum
Molybdenum , is a Group 6 chemical element with the symbol Mo and atomic number 42. The name is from Neo-Latin Molybdaenum, from Ancient Greek , meaning lead, itself proposed as a loanword from Anatolian Luvian and Lydian languages, since its ores were confused with lead ores...
, adopted in international terminology through the Ancient Greek
Ancient Greek
Ancient Greek is the stage of the Greek language in the periods spanning the times c. 9th–6th centuries BC, , c. 5th–4th centuries BC , and the c. 3rd century BC – 6th century AD of ancient Greece and the ancient world; being predated in the 2nd millennium BC by Mycenaean Greek...
, meaning lead and this word itself was proposed, under the same meaning, as a loanword
Loanword
A loanword is a word borrowed from a donor language and incorporated into a recipient language. By contrast, a calque or loan translation is a related concept where the meaning or idiom is borrowed rather than the lexical item itself. The word loanword is itself a calque of the German Lehnwort,...
from Anatolian
Anatolian languages
The Anatolian languages comprise a group of extinct Indo-European languages that were spoken in Asia Minor, the best attested of them being the Hittite language.-Origins:...
Luvian and Lydian languages.
See also
- LydiaLydiaLydia was an Iron Age kingdom of western Asia Minor located generally east of ancient Ionia in the modern Turkish provinces of Manisa and inland İzmir. Its population spoke an Anatolian language known as Lydian....
- LydiansLydiansThe Lydians were the inhabitants of Lydia, a region in western Anatolia, who spoke the distinctive Lydian language, an Indo-European language of the Anatolian group....
- Lydian script
- Neo-HittiteNeo-HittiteThe states that are called Neo-Hittite, or more recently Syro-Hittite, were Luwian, Aramaic and Phoenician-speaking political entities of the Iron Age northern Syria and southern Anatolia that arose following the collapse of the Hittite Empire around 1180 BC and lasted until roughly 700 BC...
- Craig MelchertCraig MelchertH. Craig Melchert is a linguist known particularly for his work on the Anatolian branch of Indo-European. He received his B.A. in German from Michigan State University in 1967 and his Ph.D. in Linguistics from Harvard University in 1977. From 1968 to 1972 he served in the United States Air Force,...