Pictish is the
extinct language, or dialect, spoken by the
Picts, the people of northern and central
Scotland in the
Early Middle Ages. There is virtually no direct attestation of Pictish, short of a limited number of
geographical and
personal names found on monuments and the contemporary records in the area controlled by the Kingdom of the Picts. Such evidence, however, points to the language being closely related to the
Brittonic language spoken prior to
Anglo-Saxon settlement in what is now southern Scotland, England and Wales. A minority view held by a few scholars claims that Pictish was at least partially non-Indo-European or that a non-Indo-European and Brittonic language coexisted.