Khitan
Sign in to saveAlso known as Kitan, Khitan language
extinct language once spoken in Northeast Asia by the Khitan people (4th to 13th century CE)
Key facts
- Native to
- Northeastern China , southeastern Mongolia , eastern Siberia
- Region
- Northern and Eastern Asia
- Extinct
- literary form in 1244 with the death of Yelü Chucai , last person known who could speak and write Khitan
- Language family
- Serbi–Mongolic ? Para-Mongolic ? Xianbei ? Khitanic? Khitan
- Writing system
- Khitan large script and Khitan small script
- Official language in
- Liao dynasty , Qara Khitai
- Iso 639 3
- zkt
- Linguist list
- zkt
- Glottolog
- kita1247
via Wikipedia infobox
~6 min read
Encyclopedic overview
Khitan or Kitan ( in large script or in small, Khitai; Chinese: 契丹語, Qìdānyǔ), also known as Liao, is an extinct language once spoken in Northeast Asia by the Khitan people (4th to 13th century CE). It was the official language of the Liao Empire (907–1125) and the Qara Khitai (1124–1218). Owing to a narrow corpus of known words and a partially undeciphered script, the language has yet to be completely reconstructed.
Classification
Excerpted from Wikipedia’s “Khitan” article, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.