Paleohispanic languages

Distribution of toponyms ili- / - Blind. and major inscription findings.
Palae-Hispanic peoples
C1: Galactics / C2b: Cartoons / C3: Cartoons / C4: Astures / C5: Vaccines / C6: Turmois / C7: Cartoons / C8: Cartoons / C9: Beans / C10: Pelendones / C11: Belos / C12: Lusons / C13: Titos / C14

The paleo-Hispanic languages according to the inferred limits of the inscription findings.

Paleo-Hispanic languages or pre-Roman languages are the indigenous languages spoken in the Iberian Peninsula before the arrival of the Romans. The use of the term "indigenous" is controversial, since the origin of some of these languages is not known and others are Indo-European, but it delimits the group of languages treated against Phoenician, Greek and naturally against Latin.

Very likely, most of the Paleohispanic languages disappeared without a trace, but some inscriptions have been preserved in Paleohispanic scripts and in the Latin alphabet dating back to at least the 16th century V a. perhaps from the VII century B.C. C., until the end of the century I a. C. or beginning of the century I a. C. These languages are called ruined or residual languages (in German Restsprachen or Trümmersprachen) such as Etruscan, Paleosardo, Ligurian and Rhaetian among others.

Documented languages

The paleohispanic languages for which written texts are known are:

• The Iberian language, probably the vernacular language of the peoples who inhabited the Iberian territory according to the opinion of most researchers, although for others it would be one lingua franca Ibera area.
• Celtibérico is the only language in the group of Hispanic-Centic languages documented directly by inscriptions in the language itself, however, deonymous and anthropognomous have been found from the galaxy cell contained in Latin inscriptions.
• Lusitano, which can be identified or not as a Hispanic-Celtic language, but is undoubtedly indo-European.
• Lateosic (also known as south-west or south-west sudlusitana), of difficult classification, could not be established with certainty if it was an indo-European or pre-indo-European language.

Indirectly known languages

Others are only known through place names, anthroponyms and theonyms known through Greek and Roman sources or inscriptions in Latin:

• The aquitanus, related to the paleovasco or Basque archaic.
• The old European.
• Celtic languages other than celtium (Eastern hypnic cell), including the galaxy. Other authors argue that the available evidence allows to speak of non- Celtic indo-European languages in the west of the peninsula. Clearly the Lutheran language is of this type, and apparently other groups, like the vetons (vettonsor the galaics (Shut up.), they could also have spoken non-Celtic indo-European languages.

Linguistic diversity

Data on linguistic diversity from other regions of the planet before the formation of centralized States such as ancient Italy or ancient Greece, which are somewhat better documented than the Iberian Peninsula in ancient times, show high linguistic diversity for these regions.

The linguistic diversity of Italy with 23 languages in some 300,000 square kilometers is comparable to the linguistic diversity of the pre-Hispanic indigenous languages of Andean countries, such as Colombia, Ecuador or Peru. If the degree of linguistic diversity in the Iberian Peninsula would have been similar to that of Italy, one would expect between 30 and 45 languages throughout the Peninsula. For that reason, one might wonder to what extent the different varieties of Iberian were mutually intelligible, how many Celtic languages were able to coexist, or whether the inscriptions only represent a small part of the actually existing linguistic variety.