Selonian language

Selonian
Selian
Native to	Latvia and Lithuania
Extinct	16th century
Language family	Indo-European Balto-Slavic Eastern Baltic Selonian
Language codes
ISO 639-3	sxl
Linguist List	sxl
Glottolog	None

Distribution of the Baltic tribes, circa 1200 CE (boundaries are approximate).

Selonian was a Baltic language spoken by the Eastern Baltic tribe of the Selonians, who until the 15th century lived in Selonia, a territory in South Eastern Latvia and North Eastern Lithuania.

History

During the 13th-15th centuries the Selonians lost their language after being assimilated by the Latgalians and partly by the Lithuanians.

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 North Eastern sub-dialects of the Aukštaitian dialect of 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.