Selonian language
Selonian was an Eastern Baltic language, which was spoken by the Eastern Baltic tribe of the Selonians, who until the 15th century lived in Selonia, a territory in southeastern Latvia and northeastern Lithuania.
| Selonian | |
|---|---|
| Selian | |
| Native to | Latvia and Lithuania |
| Extinct | 16th century |
| Language codes | |
| ISO 639-3 | sxl |
sxl | |
| Glottolog | None |
History
During the 13th–15th centuries, the Selonians lost their language after being assimilated by the Lithuanians.[1]
Traces of the Selonian language can still be found in the territories the Selonians inhabited, especially in the accent and phonetics of the so-called Selonian dialect of the Latvian language. There are some traces of the Selonian language in the northeastern sub-dialects of the Aukštaitian dialect of the Lithuanian language, mostly in the lexicon.
Classification
It is considered that the Selonian language retained the Proto-Baltic phonemes *an, *en, *in, *un like the Lithuanian language, but like the Latvian language the Proto-Baltic *kʲ, *ɡʲ changed to c, dz, and the Proto-Baltic *š, *ž changed to s, z.[1]