The Liburnian language is an extinct language which was spoken by the ancient Liburnians, who occupied Liburnia in classical times. The Liburnian language is reckoned as an Indo-European language, in the Centum group. Alternative speculations place it on the same Indo-European branch as the Venetic language or on a separate branch.
No writings in Liburnian are known. The only Liburnian linguistic remains are Liburnian toponyms and some family and personal names in Liburnia, in Latinized form from the 1st century AD. Smaller differences found in the archaeological material of narrower regions in Liburnia are in a certain measure reflected also in these scarce linguistic remains. There are three groups of names: one in northern Liburnia structurally similar to those of Histri and Veneti; another linked to the Dalmatae, Iapodes and other Illyrians; and a third group of names common throughout Liburnian territory. Names of local deities also had different regional distributions, while toponyms, in both structure and form, show more diversity and wider dispersion, like Pre-Indo-European (Mediterranean), Indo-European and local features.
This caused many speculations about their language. Due to a certain similarities, Géza Alföldy has concluded that Liburni and Histri belonged to Venetic language area, while Jürgen Untermann has linked only Liburnians at the eastern Istrian coast to Veneti, and R. Katičić included them to the North-Adriatic language area before he has finally stated that they had been separate entirety, ethnically and by language. S. Čače has noted that appurtenance of the Liburnian language to the North-Adriatic area rather than to Iapodes and Dalmatae is hard to prove due to scarce remains.
The Liburnians were essentially different to Histri and Veneti, culturally and ethnically, seen especially in burial tradition, by which they were the closest to Dalmatae. Liburnian language developed on the Indo-European basis, but strong traditions were dragged from the Pre-Indo-European times, which is especially noticed in their social relations, undoubtly related to their separate cultural development, territorial isolation and ethnical integration and features.
The grouping of Liburnian with Venetic is based on a part of the Liburnian onomastics. In particular, some Liburnian anthroponyms show strong Venetic affinities, with common or similar names and a number of common roots, such as Vols-, Volt-, and Host- (
These features set Liburnian and Venetic apart from the Illyrian onomastic province, though this does not preclude the possibility that Venetic-Liburnian and Illyrian may have been closely related, belonging to the same Indo-European branch. In fact, a number of linguists argue that this is the case, based on similar phonetic features and names in common between Venetic-Liburnian on the one hand and Illyrian on the other.
The Liburnians were conquered by the Romans in 35 BC. The Liburnian language eventually was replaced by Latin, undergoing language death probably very early in the Common era.
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