Ligurian language (ancient)

The Ligurian language was an ancient Indo-European language spoken by the Ligures, an indigenous people of north-western Italy and south-eastern France in pre-Roman and Roman times. No continuous text in the language survives: Ligurian is known almost entirely through place and river names, tribal and personal names, and a few glosses quoted by Greek and Latin authors. The single most important document is the Polcevera Tablet (117 BCE), a Roman arbitration preserving a series of indigenous place names in Latin transcription; a small group of pre-Roman inscriptions, notably five statue-stelae from Lunigiana, has also been claimed for the language, though their attribution remains disputed.

Because Ligurian is so sparsely attested, its classification and relationship to neighbouring languages has proven difficult, prompting debate among linguists for much of the 20th century.