Illyrians - Extinction of Ethnicity and Language

Extinction of Ethnicity and Language

The Illyrians were subject to varying degrees of Celticization, Hellenization, Romanization, and later Slavicization.

Little more can be said of the languages of Illyria than that they were Indo-European. It is not clear whether the Illyrian languages belonged to the centum or the satem group. The vast majority of our knowledge of Illyrian is based on Messapian, if the latter is considered an Illyrian dialect. The non-Messapic testimonies of Illyrian are too fragmentary to allow any conclusions whether Messapian should be considered part of Illyrian proper. Nonetheless, it is widely thought that Messapian was in some way related to Illyrian.

Messapian (also known as Messapic) is an extinct Indo-European language of south-eastern Italy, once spoken in Messapia (modern Salento). It was spoken by the three Iapygian tribes of the region: the Messapians, the Daunii and the Peucetii.

The Illyrian languages were once connected to the Venetic language but this view was later abandoned. Other scholars have linked them with the adjacent Thracian language supposing an intermediate convergence area or dialect continuum, but this view is also not generally supported.

All these languages were likely extinct by the 5th century although the Albanian language is traditionally seen as a descendant of Illyrian dialects that survived in remote areas of the Balkans during the Middle Ages. The ancestor dialects of Albanian would have survived somewhere along the boundary of Latin and Greek linguistic influence (the Jireček Line). An alternative hypothesis favoured by some linguists is that Albanian is descended from Thracian. Not enough is known of the ancient language to completely prove or disprove either hypothesis (see Origin of Albanians).