Selonian (Latvian: Sēļu valoda; Lithuanian: Sėlių kalba) was an East Baltic language, which was spoken by the East Baltic tribe of the Selonians, who until the 15th century lived in Selonia, a territory in southeastern Latvia and northeastern Lithuania. The language persisted until the 16th century.[1]
History
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.[citation needed]
Classification
It is considered that the Selonian language retained the Proto-Baltic sonorant diphthongs *an, *en, *in, unlike 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.[2]
References
- ^ Trask, R. L. (2019-08-08). Dictionary of Historical and Comparative Linguistics. Edinburgh University Press. p. 303. ISBN 978-1-4744-7331-6.
- ^ Babaev, Cyril. “Selonian (Selian) language”. tied.verbix.com. Retrieved 2017-06-28.