A language believed to have been Celtic was spoken in ancient times in the Roman province of

Noricum Noricum () is the Latin name for the kingdom or federation of tribes that included most of modern Austria and part of Slovenia. In the first century AD, it became a province of the Roman Empire. Its borders were the Danube to the north, R ...

. This language is referred to as Noric or Eastern Celtic. It was probably a Continental Celtic language but the data is too limited to allow for classification. Its existence is inferred from only two fragmentary inscriptions, one in Grafenstein,

Carinthia Carinthia ( ; ; ) is the southernmost and least densely populated States of Austria, Austrian state, in the Eastern Alps, and is noted for its mountains and lakes. The Lake Wolayer is a mountain lake on the Carinthian side of the Carnic Main ...

Austria Austria, formally the Republic of Austria, is a landlocked country in Central Europe, lying in the Eastern Alps. It is a federation of nine Federal states of Austria, states, of which the capital Vienna is the List of largest cities in Aust ...

, the other in

Ptuj Ptuj (; , ; ) is the List of cities and towns in Slovenia, eighth-largest town of Slovenia, located in the traditional region of Styria (Slovenia), Styria (northeastern Slovenia). It is the seat of the City Municipality of Ptuj, Municipality of Pt ...

Slovenia Slovenia, officially the Republic of Slovenia, is a country in Central Europe. It borders Italy to the west, Austria to the north, Hungary to the northeast, Croatia to the south and southeast, and a short (46.6 km) coastline within the Adriati ...

. These inscriptions provide limited information but it is believed to have been similar to other

Celtic languages The Celtic languages ( ) are a branch of the Indo-European language family, descended from the hypothetical Proto-Celtic language. The term "Celtic" was first used to describe this language group by Edward Lhuyd in 1707, following Paul-Yve ...

near it, such as

Gaulish Gaulish is an extinct Celtic languages, Celtic language spoken in parts of Continental Europe before and during the period of the Roman Empire. In the narrow sense, Gaulish was the language of the Celts of Gaul (now France, Luxembourg, Belgium, ...

. No evidence yet shows when it became extinct.

Ptuj inscription

The Ptuj inscription, discovered in 1894, is written right to left in a northern Italic alphabet and reads: This is interpreted as two personal names: onof . The name may mean " bear penis" (compare Welsh "bear" and Irish "penis"), while may contain the element ''brog-, mrog-'' "country" (compare Welsh "region, country"). Alternatively, the inscription may be interpreted as ade thisfor , with the second name in the

dative case In grammar, the dative case ( abbreviated , or sometimes when it is a core argument) is a grammatical case used in some languages to indicate the recipient or beneficiary of an action, as in "", Latin for "Maria gave Jacob a drink". In this examp ...

Grafenstein inscription

The Grafenstein inscription, on a

tile Tiles are usually thin, square or rectangular coverings manufactured from hard-wearing material such as ceramic, Rock (geology), stone, metal, baked clay, or even glass. They are generally fixed in place in an array to cover roofs, floors, wal ...

from the 2nd century AD that was discovered in a gravel pit in 1977, is incomplete, but the extant part has been transcribed as follows: Here, seems to be a personal name or an abbreviation of one, a Latin abbreviation indicating a weight, a verbal form possibly meaning "you (singular) do not set", perhaps "this amount", and another personal name. The text may therefore be a record of some sort of financial transaction. Other readings of the inscription have also been proposed, including: and

References

{{Celts Continental Celtic languages Extinct Celtic languages Languages of Austria Languages of Slovenia Extinct languages of Europe Languages attested from the 2nd century