Iberian language

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.

[citation needed] Among the pre-Roman peoples of the Iberian Peninsula, the following might have spoken the 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).

The presence of non-interpretable elements, such as Iberian anthroponyms amongst inscriptions in this area has not been considered statistically significant.

The longest Iberian texts were made on lead plaques; the most extensive is from Yátova (Valencia) with more than six hundred signs.

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.

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.

Although five-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.

The fact that /w/ is lacking in native words casts doubt on whether semivowels really existed in Iberian outside of foreign borrowings and diphthongs.

The best-known are the following: There are some words for which there has been surmised a more or less probable meaning:[8] Thanks to the Latin Inscription of the plaque of Ascoli, which includes a list of Iberian cavalry soldiers in the Roman army (the Turma Salluitana attested in the Bronze of Ascoli), the forms of Iberian proper names have been unraveled.

For example, the element "iltiŕ" can be found in the following names: iltiŕaŕker, iltiŕbaś, iltiŕtikeŕ, tursiltiŕ, baiseiltiŕ or bekoniltiŕ.

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.

In rare cases Untermann also encountered an element is- or o- prefacing a proper name (is-betartiker; o-tikiŕtekeŕ; O-ASAI).

The study was expanded upon by Joan Ferrer (2007 and 2009) based on terms found on coins, stating their value, and with new combinatorial and contextual data.

In contrast, Ferrer believes that the similarities could be caused due to both the genetic relationship or the loan, but indicates that the loan of the entire system of numerals is rare (but has been known to occur such as the case of Middle Chinese numerals being borrowed wholesale into Vietnamese, Japanese, Korean and Thai).

due to the limited and remote extension of the territory where Iberian was spoken as first language in South-East Spain.

196–198) considers plausible the internal contextual and combinatorial arguments that would support the hypothesis that these Iberian elements could be interpreted as numerals.