Eteocypriot is an extinct pre-Indo-European language that was spoken in Cyprus by the pre-Hellenic population until the Iron Age. The name means "true" or "original Cypriot" parallel to Eteocretan, both of which names are used by modern scholars to mean the pre-Greek languages of those places. Eteocypriot was written in the Cypriot syllabary, a syllabic script derived from Linear A (via the Cypro-Minoan variant Linear C). The language was under pressure from Arcadocypriot Greek from about the 10th century BC and finally became extinct in about the 4th century BC.
The language is as yet unknown except for a small vocabulary attested in bilingual inscriptions. Such topics as syntax and possible inflection or agglutination remain an enigma. Partial translations depend to a large extent on the language or language group assumed by the translator, but there is no consistency. It is conjectured by some linguists to be related to the Etruscan and Lemnian languages, by others to be related to Hurrian, and by some to Northwest Semitic. Those who do not advocate any of those theories often adopt the default of an unknown pre-Greek language. Due to the small number of texts found, there is currently much unproven speculation.
Eteocypriot may be descended from the language of the Cypro-Minoan inscriptions, a collection of poorly-understood inscriptions from Bronze Age Cyprus. Both Cypro-Minoan and Eteocypriot share a common genitive suffix -o-ti.
Several hundred inscriptions written in the Cypriot syllabary (VI-III BC) cannot be interpreted in Greek. While it does not necessarily imply that all of them are non-Greek, there are at least two locations where multiple inscriptions with clearly non-Greek content were found:
Amathus (including a bilingual Eteocypriot-Greek text)
a few short inscriptions from Golgoi (currently Athienou: Markus Egetmeyer suggested that their language (which he calls Golgian resp. Golgisch in German) may be different from those of Amathus).
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thumb|upright=2|Zone approximative de répartition des langues tyrséniennes dans l'Antiquité. Les langues tyrséniennes ou tyrrhéniennes sont une famille de langues hypothétique, proposée en 1998 par le linguiste Helmut Rix. Elles rassembleraient au moins trois langues éteintes dans l'Antiquité et considérées jusque-là comme des isolats : l'étrusque en Italie centrale, notamment en Toscane, Latium, Ombrie, l’est et une partie du sud de la Corse.
The Paleo-European languages, or Old European languages, are the mostly unknown languages that were spoken in Europe prior to the spread of the Indo-European and Uralic families caused by the Bronze Age invasion from the Eurasian steppe of pastoralists whose descendant languages dominate the continent today. Today, the vast majority of European populations speak Indo-European languages, but until the Bronze Age, it was the opposite, with Paleo-European languages of non-Indo-European affiliation dominating the linguistic landscape of Europe.
Le lemnien est une langue du non indo-européenne parlée sur l'île de Lemnos, située dans le nord-ouest de la mer Égée. Certains la rattachent à la famille hypothétique des langues tyrséniennes. L'existence de la langue de Lemnos est principalement attestée par une inscription de trente-trois mots trouvée sur une stèle funéraire dite stèle de Lemnos, découverte en 1885 près de Caminia. Toutefois, des fragments d'inscriptions sur poterie locale retrouvés en 1928 montrent que la langue était parlée et écrite par la communauté vivant sur l'île.