The Iberian language was the language of a people identified by Greek and Roman sources who lived in the eastern and southeastern regions of the Iberian peninsula. The ancient Iberians can be identified as a rather nebulous local culture between the 7th century BC and the 1st century BC. The Iberian language, like the rest of the paleohispanic languages, became extinct by the 1st to 2nd centuries AD, after being gradually replaced by Latin. Iberian is speculated to be a language isolate, but while its different scripts have been deciphered to various extents, the language itself remains largely unknown.

Links with other languages have been claimed, especially the Basque language, but they have not been clearly demonstrated to the satisfaction of modern scholarship.

Geographic distribution

The Iberian language spread along the Mediterranean coast of the Iberian Peninsula.

In the north, the Iberian language inscriptions reached the south of France up to the Hérault river. Important written remains have been found in Ensérune, between Narbonne and Béziers in France, in an oppidum with mixed Iberian and Celtic elements. The southern limit would be Porcuna, in Jaén (Spain), where splendid sculptures of Iberian riders have been found. Towards inland the exact distribution of the Iberian language inscriptions is uncertain. It seems that the culture reached the inland through the Ebro river (Iberus in Latin) up to Salduie (Zaragoza) but not farther.

Among the pre-Roman peoples of the Iberian Peninsula the following could have spoken Iberian language: Ausetani (northeastern Catalonia), Ilergetes (Lleida and Huesca up to the Pyrenees), Indigetes (coast of Girona), Laietani (Barcelona), Cassetani (Tarragona), Ilercavones (Murcia and Levante up to Tarragona), Edetani (Valencia, Castellón and Teruel), Contestani (Valencia, Alicante, Cartagena and Albacete), Bastetani (Granada, Almería and Murcia) and Oretani (Jaén, Ciudad Real, Albacete and Cuenca). Turduli and Turdetani are believed to be of Tartessian language.

For some scholars, like Velaza (2006), Iberian could have been the language spoken by the autochthonous population of these territories, while for others, like De Hoz (1993), Iberian could have been more a lingua franca.

History

The origin of the language is unknown. Although Iberian ceased to be written in the 1st century AD, it could have survived in some areas until the visigothic period, according to Menéndez Pidal .

Writing

The oldest Iberian inscriptions date to the 4th century BC or maybe the 5th century BC and the latest ones date from the end of the 1st century BC or maybe the beginning of the 1st century AD. More than two thousand Iberian inscriptions are currently known. Most are short texts on ceramic with personal names, which are usually interpreted as ownership marks. The longest Iberian texts were made on lead plaques; the longest is from Yátova (Valencia) with more than six hundred signs.

Three different scripts have remained for the Iberian language:

• Northeastern Iberian script

• * Dual variant (4th century BC and 3rd century BC)

• * Non-dual variant (2nd century BC and 1st century BC)

• Southeastern Iberian script

• Greco-Iberian alphabet (most of the aforementioned Leads of La Serreta are written in this version).

Northeastern (or Levantine) Iberian script

The northeastern Iberian script is also known as the Iberian script, because it is the Iberian script most frequently used (95% of the extant texts (Untermann 1990)). The northeastern Iberian inscriptions have been found mainly in the northeastern quadrant of the Iberian Peninsula: mainly on the coast from Languedoc-Roussillon to Alicante, but with a deep penetration into the Ebro valley. This script is almost completely deciphered.

All the paleohispanic scripts, with the exception of the Greco-Iberian alphabet, share a common distinctive typological characteristic: they use signs with syllabic value for the occlusives and signs with monophonematic value for the remaining consonants and for vowels. From a writing systems point of view they are neither alphabets nor syllabaries; rather, they are mixed scripts that are normally identified as semi-syllabaries. Regarding its origin there is no agreement among researchers; for some they are linked only to the Phoenician alphabet, while for others the Greek alphabet played a part.

Southeastern (or Meridional) Iberian script

The southeastern Iberian script is a semi-syllabary too, but it is more similar to the Tartessian script than to the northeastern Iberian script. The southeastern Iberian inscriptions have been found mainly in the southeastern quadrant of the Iberian Peninsula: eastern Andalusia, Murcia, Albacete, Alicante and Valencia. This script is not completely deciphered.

Greco-Iberian alphabet

The Greco-Iberian alphabet is a direct adaptation of an Ionic variant of a Greek alphabet to the specificities of the Iberian language. The inscriptions that use the Greco-Iberian alphabet have been found mainly in Alicante and Murcia.

Description

Current extent of linguistic knowledge

Very little is known for certain about Iberian. The investigation of the language is past its initial phase of transcription and compiling of material, and is currently in the phase of identifying grammatical elements in the texts.

The hypotheses currently proposed are unconfirmed, and are likely to remain so unless the discovery of a bilingual text allows linguists to confirm their deductions.

Phonology

Vowels

Iberian appears to have 5 vowels commonly transcribed as a e i o u. Other modern languages on the peninsula such as Basque and Spanish also have such systems. Although 5 vowel systems are extremely common all over the world, it has been suggested that this may point to a Sprachbund amongst the ancient languages of the Iberian peninsula.Trask, R.L. (1997): The History of Basque, London: Routledge, ISBN 0-415-13116-2
The front vowels (a, e, i) appear more frequently than the back vowels. Although there are indications of a nasal vowel (<>), this is thought to be an allophone. Judging by Greek transcriptions, it seems that there were no vowel length distinctions; if this is correct then Iberian uses the long (Greek ) as opposed to the short epsilon (Greek ).

Diphthongs

It seems that the second element of diphthongs was always a closed vowel, as in /ai/ (śaitabi), /ei/ (neitin), and /au/ (lauŕ). Untermann observed that the diphthong /ui/ could only be found in the first cluster.

Semivowels

It is possible that Iberian had the semivowels /j/ (in words such as aiun o iunstir) and /w/ (only in loanwords such as diuiś from Gaulish). The fact that /w/ is lacking in native words casts doubt on whether semivowels really existed in Iberian outside of foreign borrowings and diphthongs.

Consonants

• Vibrants: There are two vibrants /r/ and . Iberian specialists do not agree about the phonetic values assigned to either vibrant. Correa (1994) hypothesized that was an alveolar flap and /r/ was a "compound vibrant", that is, a trill . Later, Rodriguez Ramos (2004) suggested that was an alveolar flap and /r/ is a retroflex flap in line with Ballester (2001) who thought that /r/ represents a uvular fricative . However, Ballester (2005) later changed his hypothesis and took /r/ for an alveolar flap and for the alveolar trill . Neither /r/ and occur word-initially, which is also the case in Basque.

• Sibilants: There are two sibilants /s/ and . The distinction is unclear and there are multiple proposals. Ballester (2001) theorizes that /s/ was an alveolar and was a alveolo-palatal . Rodriguez Ramos (2004) proposes that was alveolar and /s/ was an affricate, either dental or palatal (like English "ch"). This proposal coincides with the observation by Correa on adaptations of Gallic names in Iberian texts.

• Laterals: The lateral /l/ is normally interpreted as . It is extremely rare in final position and it could be that the distribution is on occasion complementary with : .

• Nasals:

• *The /n/ was probably alveolar [n].

• */m/: Researchers studying Iberian do not agree on the kind of nasal represented by this letter. The letter /m/ rarely occurs word-initially. Velaza (1996) hypothesizes it could be an allophone of medial /n/ as shown in the example of iumstir/iunstir. José A. Correa (1999) suggests it may be a geminate or strong nasal. Ballester (2001) considers it to be a labialized nasal in Iberian and in Celtiberian. Rodríguez Ramos (2004) mentions that it could be an allophone of /n/ where it nasalizes the preceding vowel.

• *There is some controversy over the sound . While it's thought to be some type of nasal, there is no certainty as to its value. Several linguists agree on the value [na], based on similarities with texts written in the Greek Alphabet, as there are similarities between the suffixes / -nai, and in the onomastic elements / -nabar-. Another part of this theory seems to contradict itself with the transcription of into Latin as VMARBELES. Correa (1999) proposes that it was a labialized nasal. It is not even clear that the sign is always pronounced in the same form. Rodríguez Ramos (2004) considers it a nasalized vowel, produced by progressive nasalization.

• Plosives: There are five plosives.

Morphology

There are a number of known affixes, especially applied to last names. For the Iberian language these seem to be postpositional, and apparently more agglutinative than fusional.

The best-known are the following.

Lexicon

There are some words for which there has been surmised a more or less probable meaning:

• aŕe take as akin to the Latin formula hic est situs ("here he is") (Untermann 1990, 194) because of a bilingual inscription from Tarragona C.18.6

• eban and ebanen as equivalent to the Latin coeravit ("he cared [to be done]") in tombstones (Untermann 1990, 194), because of a bilingual inscription from Sagunto F.11.8

• iltiŕ and iltun as typical Iberian toponyms for city names, meaning something like "city" / "town"

• ekiar: verb or verbal noun with a meanig as "to do" / "to make" compared with the Basque verb egin (Beltrán 1942 ; Correa 1994, 284). likine-te ekiar usekerte-ku with a meaning akin to "made by Likinos of Osicerda" (Correa 1994, 282)

• seltar and siltar as meaning something like "tomb" on tombstones (Untermann 1990, 194).

• śalir as meaning something like "money" / "coin", because of its use in coins (as iltiŕta-śalir-ban) and its use in lead plaque inscriptions besides numbers and quantities (Untermann 1990, 191).

Personal names

Thanks to the Latin Inscription of the , which includes a list of Iberian cavalry soldiers in the Roman army (the Turma Salluitana), the forms of Iberian proper names have been unraveled. Iberian names are formed mainly by two interchangeable elements, each usually formed of two syllables, which are written together (Untermann 1998). For example, the element "iltiŕ" can be found in the following names: iltiŕaŕker, iltiŕbaś, iltiŕtikeŕ, tursiltiŕ, baiseiltiŕ or bekoniltiŕ. This discovery was a giant step: from this moment it was possible to identify with some kind of confidence the names of persons in the texts. Nevertheless, the list of components of Iberian names varies between researchers. The basic list comes from Untermann (1990) and was recently updated by Rodríguez Ramos (2002b); complementary data and criteria can be found in the Faria papers (the last two: 2007a and 2007b).

The following list includes some of the elements proposed as components of Iberian names: abaŕ, aibe, aile, ain, aitu, aiun, aker, albe, aloŕ, an, anaŕ, aŕbi, aŕki, aŕs, asai, aster, ata, atin, atun, aunin, auŕ, austin, baiser, balaŕ, balke, bartaś, baś, bastok, bekon, belauŕ, beleś, bels, bene, beŕ, beri, beŕon, betan, betin, bikir, bilos, bin, bir, bitu, biuŕ, bolai, boŕ, boś, boton, ekes, ekaŕ, eler, ena, esto, eten, eter, iar, iaun, ibeś, ibeis, ike, ikoŕ, iltiŕ, iltur, inte, iskeŕ, istan, iunstir, iur, kaisur, kakeŕ, kaltuŕ, kani, kaŕes, kaŕko, katu, keŕe, kibaś, kine, kitaŕ, kon, koŕo, koŕś, kuleś, kurtar, lako, lauŕ, leis, lor, lusban, nalbe, neitin, neŕse, nes, niś, nios, oŕtin, sakaŕ, sakin, saltu, śani, śar, seken, selki, sike, sili, sine, sir, situ, soket, sor, sosin, suise, taker, talsku, tan, tanek, taneś, taŕ, tarban, taŕtin, taś, tautin, teita, tekeŕ, tibaś, tikeŕ, tikirs, tikis, tileis, tolor, tuitui, tumar, tuŕś, turkir, tortin, ulti, unin, uŕke, ustain, ḿbaŕ, nḿkei.

In some cases linguists have encountered simple names, with only one element for a suffix: BELES, AGER-DO and BIVR-NO are in the plaque of Ascoli, neitin in Ullastret and lauŕ-to, bartas-ko or śani-ko in other Iberian texts. More rarely there have been indications of an infix, which can be -i-, -ke- or -ta- (Untermann used oto-iltiŕ in front of oto-ke-iltiŕ or with AEN-I-BELES). In rare cases Untermann also encountered an element is- or o- prefacing a proper name (is-betartiker; o-tikiŕtekeŕ; O-ASAI).

In the elements that formed Iberian names it is common to encounter patterns of variation, as in eter/eten/ete with the same variations as in iltur/iltun/iltu; kere/keres as lako/lakos; or alos/alor/alo and bikis/bikir/biki).

Some Iberian onomastic elements have look-alikes in Aquitanian or Basque. This has been explained by Vascologists like MitxelenaMichelena, Luis (1977), pp. 547-548: "[...] cada vez soy más escéptico en cuanto a un parentesco lingüístico ibero-vasco. En el terreno de la onomástica, y en particular de la antroponimia, hay, sin embargo, coincidencias innegables entre ibérico y aquitano y, por consiguiente, entre ibérico y vasco. Como ya he señalado en otros lugares, parece haber habido una especie de pool onomástico, del que varias lenguas, desde el aquitano hasta el idioma de las inscripciones hispánicas en escritura meridional, podían tomar componentes de nombre propios." as an "onomastic pool". However, since the meaning of most Iberian words remains opaque to date, the connection remains speculative except in a very small number of cases. An ancient sprachbund involving these two languages is deemed likely by some linguists. But as Trask Trask, R.L. (1995): «Origin and relatives of the Basque Language: Review of the evidence», Towards a History of the Basque Language, p. 388. notes, Basque has been of no help in translating Iberian inscriptions.

Iberian and Basque

Whether Iberian and Basque are two languages of the same linguistic family is still a much debated question. Many experts on Iberian suspect that there is a relationship of some sort between Iberian and Aquitanian, a precursor of the Basque language. But there is not enough evidence to date to ascertain whether the two languages belong to the same language family or whether the relationship is due to linguistic borrowing. Lexical and onomastic coincidences could be due to borrowing, while the similarities in the phonological structures of the two languages could be due to linguistic areal phenomena (cf. the similarities between Basque and Old Spanish in spite of their being languages of two different families). More scientific studies on Iberian language are needed to shed light on this question.

From an historical perspective, the first features where a relationship between Basque and Iberian was claimed were:

• the suffixes -sken / -ken on Iberian coins (which were compared to the genitive plural on similar ancient coins) with the Basque plural (-k) and genitive (-en) endings

• Iberian town names containing ili (particularly iliberri), where parallels were drawn with Basque hiri ("town") .

Although other pairs have been proposed (such as eban, ars, -ka, -te), the meanings of these Iberian morphs are still controversial. The main arguments today which relate to coinciding surface forms between Basque and Iberian are:

• Phonetics: Proto-Basque phonology, first proposed by Michelena, appears to be very similar to what is known about the Iberian phonological system. It has been claimed that the lack of /m/, common to both Proto-Basque and Iberian, is especially significant ).

• Onomastics: Aquitanian-Latin inscriptions contain personal and deity names which can clearly be related to modern Basque words, but also show structural and lexical resemblances with Iberian personal names. But Iberian influence on the Aquitanian name system, rather than a genetic link, cannot be dismissed either.

• In Iberian iltiŕ and iltur, ili is read "city" . Modern Basque hiri, "city", is derived from the very similar Proto-Basque root *ili

• The Iberian genitive ending -en and maybe the genitive plural-(s)ken, compared to the Basque genitive -en and the reconstructed genitive plural *ag-en.

• An Iberian formula which frequently appears on tombstones, aŕe take, with variants such as aŕe teike, which on a bilingual inscription from Tarragona may be equivalent to the Latin hic situs est ("here is"), as proposed by Hübner . This was compared by Schuchardt (1907) with Basque "(h)ara dago" “there is/stays”.

• The Iberian word ekiar, explained as something akin to “he made”, proposed to be linked with the Basque verb ‘egin’ "make"

• The Iberian word śalir explained as “money”, “coin” or “value”, proposed to be linked to Basque word ‘sari’ (probably Proto-Basque *sali) meaning “value”, “payment”, “reward” .

In 2005 Orduña published a study showing some Iberian compounds that according to contextual data would appear to be Iberian numerals and show striking similarities with Basque numerals. The study was expanded upon by Ferrer (2007) based on terms found on coins, stating their value. The comparison proposes the following:

The basis of this theory is better understood if we compare some of the attested Iberian compounds with Basque complex numbers (the dots denote morpheme boundaries and are not normally written in Basque):

Even so, Orduña does not claim this comparison to be a proof of a family relation between Iberian and Basque, but rather owing to Iberian loanwords in the Basque language.

See also

• Paleohispanic languages

• Iberians

• Iberian scripts

• Paleohispanic scripts

• Celtiberian language