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Main language areas in Iberia circa 250 BC. The Tartessian sites are indicated with a "+" symbol in the graphic, in areas denoted C20 and I12.

Tartessian script on a gravestone
Museu da Rainha D. Leonor, Beja, Portugal

The Tartessian language is a pre-Roman language once spoken in southern Spain and now extinct. It is seemingly unrelated to all other languages, including the Indo-European and Iberian language families, and it is therefore a language isolate.

The oldest known indigenous texts of Iberia are written in Tartessian and are dated from the 7th to 6th centuries BC. The inscriptions are written in a semi-syllabic writing system and were found in the general area in which Tartessos is supposed to have been located, also in surrounding areas of influence.

Tartessian language texts have been found in parts of Southwestern Spain and Southern Portugal (namely in the Conii areas of the Algarve and southern Alentejo. This variety is often referred as Southwest script).

The name for the Tartessian language has three definitions:

1. The language of the city proper of Tartessos (this is the only one literally correct).
2. the language of the eastern culture below the Guadalquivir between the 6th and 8th centuries BCE (archæologically named Tartessian).
3. The language corresponding to a set of brief inscriptions (the Southwest script) that have been found in the south of Portugal (Algarve and Lower Alentejo), while others have also been encountered in the Middle Guadiana (in Extremadura) and a few in the Lower Guadalquivir.

Given that in the zone of Tartessos proper little documentation is extant, it has been discussed whether this writing corresponds to the Tartessian language or if it is a peripheral language to Tartessos.

Therefore, the discovery of the stela called "Tartessian" do not allow the formation of a certain hypothesis. Many historians have been praised for a giving a different name to these stelae: South Lusitanian. They have pointed out that the texts do not appear in the zone generally considered Tartessian (between Huelva and the valley of the Guadalquivir). On the other hand, the name "South Lusitanian" is inconvenient, as it implies a relation with the Lusitanian language. Other name proposals include Bastulo-Turdetanian, Southeastern, and Algarvan.

The Turdetani of the Roman period are generally considered the heirs of the Tartessian culture and it is possible that the word Turd-etanian is a variant of Tart-essian. Strabo mentions that "…most sects of the Iberians and had historic writing and script in prose and verse and laws in metric form, which claim to go back 6000 years."

It is not known when the Tartessian language appeared on the Iberian peninsula, nor is it known precisely when they started to use writing. The language appeared only in a series of stelae of unclear time period, but that correspond at the least to sometime between the 7th and 5th centuries BCE. While there is a discrepancy about the writing of the mint of Salacia (Alcácer do Sal, Portugal), from around 200 BCE it corresponds with the language of the stela. There is little that can be said, unless by deciphering the mint we might know the meaning of the suffix "-ipon".

Nor is it known when Tartessian ceased to be spoken, but it can be supposed that like with the rest of the peninsula, Romanization took place fairly quickly after the conquest.

Although for years the reading of Manuel Gómez-Moreno predominated, it has been replaced by the deciphering used by Ulrich Schmoll, whose work was completed by José Antonio Correa, it still has not deciphered all the signs and variants of the spoken writing.

• Detailed map of the Pre-Roman Peoples of Iberia (around 200 BC)

• Arganthonios
• Pre-Roman peoples of the Iberian Peninsula