Selonian was an East Baltic language, which was spoken by the East Baltic tribe of the Selonians, who until the 15th century lived in

Selonia Selonia (; ), also known as Augšzeme (the "Highland"), is one of the Historical Latvian Lands encompassing the eastern part of the historical region of Semigallia () as well as a portion of northeastern Lithuania. Its main city and cultural ce ...

, a territory in southeastern

Latvia Latvia, officially the Republic of Latvia, is a country in the Baltic region of Northern Europe. It is one of the three Baltic states, along with Estonia to the north and Lithuania to the south. It borders Russia to the east and Belarus to t ...

and northeastern

Lithuania Lithuania, officially the Republic of Lithuania, is a country in the Baltic region of Europe. It is one of three Baltic states and lies on the eastern shore of the Baltic Sea, bordered by Latvia to the north, Belarus to the east and south, P ...

. The language persisted until the 16th century.

History

Traces of the Selonian language can still be found in the territories the Selonians inhabited, especially in the accent and phonetics of the so-called Selonian dialect of the

Latvian language Latvian (, ), also known as Lettish, is an East Baltic languages, East Baltic language belonging to the Indo-European language family. It is spoken in the Baltic region, and is the language of the Latvians. It is the official language of Latvia ...

. There are some traces of the Selonian language in the northeastern sub-dialects of the Aukštaitian dialect of the

Lithuanian language Lithuanian (, ) is an East Baltic languages, East Baltic language belonging to the Baltic languages, Baltic branch of the Indo-European language family. It is the language of Lithuanians and the official language of Lithuania as well as one of t ...

, mostly in the lexicon.

Classification

It is considered that the Selonian language retained the Proto-Baltic sonorant diphthongs *an, *en, *in, *unlike the

, but like the

the Proto-Baltic , changed to c, dz, and the Proto-Baltic *š, *ž changed to s, z.

References

East Baltic languages Medieval languages Extinct Baltic languages Extinct languages of Europe Languages of Lithuania Languages of Latvia {{Ie-lang-stub