Cimmerian is an extinct language spoken by the Cimmerians in the 8th century BC that remains largely unattested.
Classification According to the historian Muhammad Dandamayev and the linguist János Harmatta, Cimmerian was a dialect belonging to the Scythian group of Iranic languages and Cimmerians had the ability to communicate with Scythians proper without needing interpreters. According to Igor Diakonoff, the Cimmerians spoke a Scythian language belonging to the eastern branch of the Iranic language. The Scythologist Askold Ivantchik also considers the Cimmerians to have been linguistically very close to the Scythians.
The Iranologist Ľubomír Novák considers Cimmerian to be a relative of Scythian which exhibited similar features as Scythian, such as the evolution of the sound into and then .
Vocabulary
Proper names The recorded personal names of the Cimmerians were either Iranic, reflecting their origins, or Anatolian, reflecting the cultural influence of the native populations of Asia Minor on them after their migration there. Only a few personal names in the Cimmerian language have survived in Assyrian inscriptions: () or (): According to the linguist János Harmatta, it goes back to Old Iranic , meaning "swelling with strength", although Askold Ivantchik has criticised this proposal on phonetic grounds. Askold Ivantchik instead posits three alternative suggestions for an Old Iranic origin of : "abductor of horses" "abductor dog" "divine dog" or (), and recorded as () and () by Greek authors K. T. Vitchak has proposed that it was derived from an Old Iranic form , meaning "owner of milk-producing sheep." According to the Scythologist , the original form of this name was likely , formed from the word , meaning "milk." Ľubomír Novák has noted that the attestation of this name in the forms and in Akkadian and the forms and in Greek shows that its first consonant had experienced the change of the sound /d/ to /l/, which is consistent with the phonetic changes attested in the Scythian languages. (): this is an Iranic reading of the name, and Manfred Mayrhofer (1981) points out that the name may also be read as . According to János Harmatta, it goes back to Old Iranic "splendid son." Askold Ivantchik derives the name from a compound term consisting of the name of the Anatolian deity , and of the Iranic term .
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