Europe's Extinct Languages Trivia Quiz

Answer:

The Etruscan language was spoken by the Etruscans, pre-Roman inhabitants of Central Italy, with their center of power being modern-day Tuscany. The Etruscan language seems totally unrelated to the neighboring Italic and Celtic languages, meaning it most likely was a language isolate. Yet, numerous borrowings into Etruscan from Greek can be found, some of which found their way into Latin, the language of the Romans (e.g., the Greek word for "face", "prosopo", became "fersu" in Etruscan, giving us Latin "persona").

Elymian was a language spoken in western Sicily. Before systematic written records (which began after the establishment of Greek settlements), Sicily was inhabited by three linguistic communities: the Elymians, the Sicanians and the Sicilians. Only some fragmentary inscriptions of Elymian have been found, making its classification virtually impossible. The ending -ai for the genitive case, however, has been compared to the Hittite language, spoken in Asia Minor. A close analogue could also be the Ionic Greek genitive ending -oio.

Illyrian was a language spoken in the western Balkans in the pre-Roman era. Its classification is a matter of dispute, due to the paucity of evidence. To further complicate the debate, some of the attested Illyrians of pre-Roman antiquity chose to bear Greek names and decorate their coins with Greek monograms. Some scholars reject the very notion of an Illyrian language, arguing that Illyria and its Latin equivalent Illyricum are artificial groupings of various peoples and tribes under a common name by the classical sources.

Gaulish was a Celtic language spoken in Gaul (modern-day France and Belgium) in the pre-Roman and the first centuries of the Roman era. There have been preserved hundreds of Gaulish inscriptions, but no literary texts. It is possible that, despite the Romanization of Gaul after Caesar's conquest, the language remained alive until Late Antiquity, since we hear reports about a monk of Gallic origins who, because of "demonic possession", was unable to speak and, if he ever managed to utter a word, it was in Gaulish.

Pictish was the language of the Picts. Although the term itself is an exonym (from Latin "picti", meaning "the painted ones"), the Picts were the pre-Roman and pre-medieval inhabitants of Scotland. Their language and their enigmatic monumental carved stones are still a matter of much controversy. There are many scholars who argue that the Picts spoke a Celtic language. Yet others reject this idea. A middle position has been espoused by linguist Kenneth Jackson, who argued that Pictish belongs in the Celtic family, but with a substantial non-Celtic lexical substrate.

Dacian was the language of the Dacians, who lived in what is today Romania. Only one partial Dacian inscription has been found and there is speculation about a number of Romanian words as having Dacian roots (a minuscule percentage of Romanian vocabulary, however). Among the few things that can be said with relative certainty about Dacian is that the word for "city" was "dava" or "deva".

The Gothic language belongs to the category of the East Germanic languages (none of which was, however, spoken within the borders of modern Germany). The primordial home of the Goths is a matter of scholarly debate, but the first secure attestations of them have them inhabiting the northwestern shores of the Black Sea. Later, groups of Goths established kingdoms in post-Roman Italy and Spain, but by then the Gothic language was discarded, with a Bible translation being the chief source for it. If we believe Oghislain de Busbeq, a French traveler of the 16th century, some old people in Crimea spoke a form of Gothic and were worshipping the sacred trees of their ancestors.

Jassic was a language spoken in the omonymous Jasz region of Hungary. It's not related to Hungarian, however, but the few items preserved allow us to discern a relationship with the Ossetian language. In Antiquity, an Alanic tribe (Alans were related to the Sarmatians and their language was an old form of Ossetian) known as Jazyges, lived in the region, although their link to the Jassic language is tentative.

Lusitanian was the pre-Roman language spoken in modern-day Portugal, then called Lusitania. For all the scarcity of evidence (six inscriptions) it can be assumed with a degree of safety that Lusitanian was a Celtic language.

Dalmatian is one of the extinct Romance languages, meaning it derives from Latin. It arose in Late Antiquity and the early Middle Ages and, for many centuries, coexisted with the Croatian language, even predominating in the cities of the Dalmatian coast. In the early modern era, it began to be gradually replaced by Croatian, becoming extinct shortly before the dawn of the 20th century.

The other five languages are the official languages of the corresponding European countries: Greek is the official language of Greek, Lithuanian of Lithuania, German of Germany, Ukrainian of Ukraine and Icelandic of Iceland.