Messapic language

Messapic
Messapic
Messapian
Region	Apulian region of Italy
Era	attested 6th to 2nd century BC
Language family	Indo-European Albanoid Messapic; ;
Writing system	Messapic alphabet
Language codes
ISO 639-3	cms
Linguist List	cms
Glottolog	mess1244
	Ethnolinguistic map of Italy in the Iron Age, before the Roman expansion and conquest of Italy

Messapic (/mɛˈsæpɪk, mə-, -ˈseɪ-/; also known as Messapian; or as Iapygian) is an extinct Indo-European Paleo-Balkanic language of the southeastern Italian Peninsula, once spoken in Salento by the Iapygian peoples of the region: the Calabri and Salentini (known collectively as the Messapii), the Peucetians and the Daunians.^[6]^[7] Messapic was the pre-Roman, non-Italic language of Apulia. It has been preserved in about 600 inscriptions written in an alphabet derived from a Western Greek model and dating from the mid-6th to at least the 2nd century BC, when it went extinct following the Roman conquest of the region.^[8]^[1]^[2]

^ ^a ^b Matzinger 2015, p. 57.
^ ^a ^b De Simone 2017, pp. 1839–1840.
^ Messapic at MultiTree on the Linguist List
^ Hyllested & Joseph 2022, p. 235; van Driem 2022, pp. 1055–1056; Friedman 2020, p. 388; Majer 2019, p. 258; Trumper 2018, p. 385; Trask 2019, pp. 14, 159, 210; Yntema 2017, p. 337; Mërkuri 2015, pp. 65–67; Ismajli 2015, p. 45; Demiraj 2004, pp. 58–59; Hamp 1996, pp. 89–90.
^ Marchesini 2023a, p. 10.
^ De Simone 2017, p. 1839.
^ Small 2014, p. 18.
^ Marchesini 2009, pp. 80, 141: "L'orizzonte cronologico più antico dell'epigrafia messapica, almeno allo stato attuale della documentazione, è da collocare quindi alla metà circa del VI secolo, stando alla cronologia dei testi più antichi di cui abbiamo parlato sopra. Più difficile è invece formulare ipotesi per quanto riguarda il limite cronologico inferiore. Per il momento l'evidenza ci mostra che non si hanno iscrizioni messapiche databili oltre il II sec. a.C."