Philistine language

E1003549

The Philistine language was an ancient, now-extinct tongue spoken by the Philistines in the southern Levant, known primarily from a small number of inscriptions and loanwords preserved in neighboring cultures.

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Statements (46)

Predicate Object
instanceOf Northwest Semitic language
ancient language
extinct language
associatedPeople Sea Peoples NERFINISHED
attestedBy inscriptions
loanwords in Hebrew
loanwords in other neighboring languages
personal names
era Iron Age NERFINISHED
extinctionPeriod late Iron Age
extinctionReason language shift to local Semitic languages
glottologCode none
hasLimitedDecipherment true
hasUncertainClassification true
hasUncertainVocabulary true
hasVeryLimitedCorpus true
influenced Biblical Hebrew loanwords
influencedBy Canaanite languages NERFINISHED
Hebrew
Phoenician NERFINISHED
ISO639-3Code none
knownFrom Ekron royal dedicatory inscription
inscriptions from Ashdod
inscriptions from Tell es-Safi
onomastic evidence
languageFamily Northwest Semitic languages NERFINISHED
possibleSubstrate Aegean language NERFINISHED
Indo-European language
primarySources Biblical references to Philistine terms
archaeological inscriptions
region Ashdod NERFINISHED
Ashkelon NERFINISHED
Ekron NERFINISHED
Gath NERFINISHED
Gaza region NERFINISHED
coastal plain of Canaan
researchField Semitic linguistics
epigraphy
historical linguistics
spokenIn Philistia NERFINISHED
southern Levant NERFINISHED
status extinct
timeDepth 1st millennium BCE
usedBy Philistines NERFINISHED
writingSystem Phoenician alphabet NERFINISHED
local Canaanite alphabet

Referenced by (1)

Full triples — surface form annotated when it differs from this entity's canonical label.

Philistia languageUsed Philistine language