The Carian language is an extinct language of the Luwic subgroup of the Anatolian branch of the Indo-European language family, spoken by the Carians. The known corpus is small, and the majority comes from Egypt. Approximately 170 Carian inscriptions from Egypt are known, while only about 30 are known from Caria itself.
Caria is a region of western Anatolia between the ancient regions of Lycia and Lydia, a name possibly first mentioned in Hittite sources. Carian is closely related to Lycian and Milyan (Lycian B), and both are closely related to, though not direct descendants of, Luwian. Whether the correspondences between Luwian, Carian, and Lycian are due to direct descent (i.e. a language family as represented by a tree model), or are due to the effects of a sprachbund is disputed.
Sources
thumb|Map showing locations where Carian inscriptions have been found—in Caria proper, Mainland Greece, and Egypt.
Carian is known from these sources:
- Nearly 40 inscriptions from Caria, including five Carian-Greek bilinguals (however, for only two of them is the connection between the Carian and Greek text evident).
- Two inscriptions from mainland Greece: a bilingual from Athens and a graffito from Thessaloniki.
- 60 funeral inscriptions of the Caromemphites, an ethnic enclave at Memphis, Egypt, five of them bilingual (Carian-Egyptian); two inscriptions from Sais in the Nile delta are also bilingual.
:: (The Caromemphites were descendants of Carian mercenaries who in the first quarter of the sixth century BCE came to Egypt to fight in the Egyptian army, as told by Herodotus, Histories, II.152-154, 163-169.)
- 130 graffiti from Abydos, Thebes, Abu Simbel, and elsewhere in Egypt.
- Coin legends from Mylasa, Kasolaba, Kaunos, and elsewhere in Caria, and Telmessos in Lycia.
- Words stated to be Carian by ancient authors.
- Personal names with a suffix of -ασσις (-assis), -ωλλος (-ōllos), or -ωμος (-ōmos) in Greek records.
Decipherment
Prior to the late 20th century, the language remained a total mystery, even though many characters of the script seemed to be from the Greek alphabet. Using Greek phonetic values of letters, investigators of the 19th and 20th centuries were unable to make headway and erroneously classified the language as non-Indo-European.
A breakthrough was reached in the 1980s, using bilingual funerary inscriptions (Carian-Egyptian) from Egypt (Memphis and Sais). By matching personal names in Carian characters with their counterparts in Egyptian hieroglyphs, John D. Ray, Diether Schürr, and Ignacio J. Adiego were able to unambiguously derive the phonetic value of most Carian signs. It turned out that not a single Carian consonant sign has the same phonetic value as signs of similar shape in the Greek alphabet. By 1993, the so-called "Ray-Schürr-Adiego System" was generally accepted, and its basic correctness was confirmed in 1996 when in Kaunos (Caria), a new Greek-Carian bilingual was discovered, where the Carian names nicely matched their Greek counterparts.
The language turned out to be Indo-European, its vocabulary and grammar closely related to the other Anatolian languages like Lycian, Milyan, or Lydian. A striking feature of Carian is the presence of large consonant clusters, due to a tendency not to write short vowels. Examples:
: {|
|+
|-
| sb || width="10" | || = 'and' || width="10" | || cf. Milyan sebe, 'and'
|-
| ted || || = 'father' || || cf. Lycian tedi-, Lydian taada-, 'father'
|-
| en || || = 'mother' || || cf. Lycian ẽni, Lydian ẽnaś, 'mother'
|-
| Ktmno, k̂tmño || || (Carian personal name) || || Greek Hekatomnos (cf. Hecatomnus of Mylasa)
|-
| Psmaśk, Pismaśk, Pismašk || || (Egyptian personal name) || || Psamtik (cf. Greek Psammetikhos I, II, III, IV)
|-
| Kbid-, Kbd- || || (name of a Carian city) || || cf. Lycian χbide (Greek Kaunos)
|}
The Carian alphabet
The sound values of the Carian alphabetic signs are very different from those in the usual Greek alphabets. Only four vowels signs are the same as in Greek (A = α, H = η, O = ο, Y = υ/ου), but not a single consonant is the same. The reason for this might be that the Carians originally developed an alphabet consisting of consonants only (like the Phoenician and Hieroglyphic alphabets before them), and later added the vowel signs, borrowed from a Greek alphabet.
The Carian alphabet consisted of about 34 characters:
{| class="wikitable"
|+
|-
! transcription !! a !! b !! β !! d !! δ !! e !! γ !! i !! j !! k !! k̂ !! l !! λ !! Í !! m !! n !! ñ !! ŋ !! o !! p !! q !! r !! s !! ś !! š !! t !! τ !! u !! w !! y !! ý !! z !! 18 !! 39
|-
| Carian sign || 𐊠 || Λ,𐊩 || 𐋊 || 𐊢,< || 𐊾 || 𐊺,𐋏 || 𐋀 || 𐊹 || 𐋅 || 𐊼,𐊽 || 𐊴,+ || 𐊣 || 𐊦 || 𐋃 || 𐊪 || 𐊵 || 𐊳 || 𐋄 || 𐊫 || 𐊷 || ʘ,𐊨 || 8px,𐊥 || 𐊰 || 𐊸 || 𐤧,𐤭 || 𐊭 || 𐋇 || 𐊲,V || 𐊿 || 𐊤,𐋈 || 𐊻 || 𐋂 || 𐊱 || 𐋆
|-
| (rare variants) || || 𐊱? || 𐋋,𐋌,<br />𐋍,𐊡 || || || 𐊧 || 𐋁 || || 𐤴 || || || 𐋎? || 𐋏,𐋎 || 𐋉 || || || || || || || || || || || 𐊮,𐊯 || Ρ,𐊬 || 𐊶 || || || 𐋐 || || || ||
|-
| IPA || /a/ || /β/ || /ᵐb/ || /ð/? || /ⁿd/ || /e/ || /ᵑkʷ/? || /i/ || /j/ || /k/ || /c/ || /l~r/ || /l:~d/ || /rʲ/? || /m/ || /n/ || /ɲ/ || /ᵑk/ || /o/ || /p/ || /kʷ/ || /r/ || /s/ || /ç/ || /ʃ/ || /t/ || /tʃ/ || /u/ || /w/ || /y/ || /ɥ/ || /ts/ || ? || ?
|-
| interchangeable? || a←e || || || || || e→a || || colspan="2" align="center" | j→i || || || colspan="3" align="center" | ℓ-variants || colspan="2" align="center" |
|}
Features that help identify the language as Anatolian include the asigmatic nominative (without the Indo-European nominative ending *-s) but -s for a genitive ending: 𐊿𐊸𐊫𐊦 wśoλ, 𐊿𐊸𐊫𐊦𐊰 wśoλ-s.<!--This doesn't seem to make any sense. Both Hittite, Luwian, Palaic and Lydian have sigmatic nominatives.--> The similarity of the basic vocabulary to other Anatolian languages also confirms this e.g. 𐊭𐊺𐊢 ted "father"; 𐊺𐊵 en "mother". A variety of dative singular endings have been proposed, including zero-marked and -i/-e suffixation. No inanimate stem has been securely identified but the suffix -n may be reconstructed based on the inherited pattern. Alternatively, a zero ending may be derived from the historical *-od.
{| class="wikitable"
! rowspan="3" |
! colspan="2" | s(a)- !! colspan="2" | a-
|-
! colspan="2" | Singular || colspan="2" | Singular
|-
! ||
! ||
|-
| Nominative || align="center" | sa || rowspan="2" align="center" | san || align="center" | an (?) || rowspan="2" align="center" | ann (?)
|-
| Accusative || align="center" | snn || align="center" | an (?)
|}
The relative pronoun k̂j, k̂i, originally 'who, that, which', has in Carian usually developed into a particle introducing complements. Example:
: iturowś / kbjomś / k̂i en / mw[d]onś k̂i
: [This is the stele] of Ithoros (Egyptian woman's name, genitive), who [is] the mother (en, nominative) of Kebiomos (genitive), who is 'Myndonian'(?) (inhabitant of the Carian city of Myndos: ethnonym, genitive).
The verb
No undisputable verbal forms have yet been discovered in Carian. If verbal conjugation in Carian resembles the other Anatolian languages, one would expect 3rd person singular or plural forms, in both present and preterite, to end in -t or -d, or a similar sound. A few candidates have been proposed: ýbt, 'he offered', not 'he brings/brought', ait, 'they made', but these are not well established.
In a Carian-Greek bilingual from Kaunos, the first two words in Carian are kbidn uiomλn, corresponding to Greek ἔδοξε Καυνίοις, 'Kaunos decided' (literally: 'it seemed right to the Kaunians'). The first word, kbidn, is Carian for 'Kaunos' (or, 'the Kaunians'), so one would expect the second word, uiomλn, to be the verbal form, 'they decided'. Several more words ending in a nasal are suspected to be verbal forms, for example, mδane, mlane, mλn (cf. uio-mλn), 'they vowed, offered (?)', pisñ, 'they gave (?)'. However, to make such nasal endings fit in with the usual Anatolian verb paradigm (with 3rd person plural preterite endings in -(n)t/-(n)d, from *-onto), one would have to assume a non-trivial evolution in Carian from *-onto into -n, -ñ (and possibly -ne?).
Syntax
Virtually nothing is known of Carian syntax. This is chiefly due to two factors: first, uncertainty as to which words are verbs; second, the longer Carian inscriptions hardly show word dividers. Both factors seriously hamper the analysis of longer Carian texts.
The only texts for which the structure is well understood are funeral inscriptions from Egypt. Their nucleus is the name of the deceased. Personal names in Carian were usually written as "A, [son] of B" (where B is in the genitive, formally recognizable from its genitival ending -ś). For example:
: psmaśk iβrsiś
:: = Psammetikhos [the son] of Imbarsis [was here] (graffito from Buhen)
In funeral inscriptions the father's name is often accompanied by the relative pronoun k̂i, "who, who is":
: irow | pikraś k̂i
:: = [Here lies] Irōw [Egyptian name] who is [the son] of Pigres [Anatolian name] (first part of a funeral inscription from Memphis)
The formula may then be extended by a substantive like 'grave', 'stele', 'monument'; by the name of the grandfather ("A, [son] of B, [son] of C"); other familial relations ("mother of ..., son of ...", etc.); profession ("astrologer, interpreter"); or ethnicity or city of origin. Example:
: arjomś ue, mwsatś k̂i, mwdonś k̂i, tbridbδś k̂i
:: = stele (ue) of Arjom, who is [the son] of Mwsat, who is a Myndonian (born at the city of Myndos), who is [the son] of Tbridbδ (inscription on a funeral stele from Memphis)
Examples
{| class="wikitable" style="text-align:center"
|+Carian glosses attested in Stephanus of Byzantium and Eustathius
|-
!Greek
!Transliterated
!Translation
|-
|
|ala
|horse
|-
|βάνδα
|banda
|victory
|-
|γέλα
|gela
|king
|-
|γίσσα
|gissa
|stone
|-
|κόον
|koon
|sheep
|-
|
|soua(n)
|tomb
|}
{| class="wikitable" style="text-align:center; float:left; margin-right:1em;"
|+Examples of Carian names in Greek
|-
!Greek
!Transliterated
!Carian
|-
|<br />"Hecatomnid"
|Hekatomnō<br />(gen. patronymic)
|𐊴𐊭𐊪𐊳𐊫𐊸 K̂tmñoś
|-
|Καύνιος
|Kaunios
|𐊼𐊬𐊢𐊿𐊵 Kbdwn
|-
|
|Kaunos
|𐊼𐊬𐊹𐊢 Kbid
|-
|Πιγρης
|Pigrēs
|𐊷𐊹𐊼𐊥𐊺 Pikre
|-
|Πονυσσωλλος
|Ponussōllos
|𐊷𐊵𐊲𐊸𐊫𐊦 Pnuśoλ
|-
|Σαρυσσωλλος
|Sarussōllos
|𐊮𐊠𐊥𐊲𐊸𐊫𐊦 Šaruśoλ
|-
|Υλιατος
|Uliatos
|𐊿𐊣𐊹𐊠𐊭 Wliat
|}
{| class="wikitable" style="text-align:center; float:left; margin-right:1em;"
|+Examples of Greek names in Carian
|-
!Greek
!Transliterated
!Carian
|-
|Λυσικλέους (genitive)
|Lysikleous
|𐊣𐊿𐊰𐊹𐊼𐊣𐊠𐊰 Lùsiklas
|-
|Λυσικράτους (genitive)
|Lysikratous
|𐊣𐊿𐊰𐊹𐊼𐊥𐊠𐊭𐊠𐊰 Lùsikratas
|-
| (accusative)
|Athēnaion
|𐊫𐊭𐊫𐊵𐊫𐊰𐊵 Otonosn
|-
|Φίλιππος (nominative)
|Philippos
|𐊷𐊹𐋃𐊹𐊷𐊲𐊰 Pilipus
|}
The Athenian Bilingual Inscription
Greek: Sema tode Tyr — "This is the tomb of Tur...,"<br /> Greek: Karos to Skylakos — "the Carian, the son of Scylax" ()<br /> Carian: Śjas: san Tur[ "This is the tomb of Tur..."<br /> Greek: Aristokles epoie — "Made by Aristocles."
The word 𐊰𐊠𐊵 san is equivalent to τόδε and evidences the Anatolian language assibilation, parallel to Luwian za-, "this".