The ancient Carian language was spoken in southwestern Anatolia, in the region known as Caria, primarily during the first millennium BCE. It belonged to the Anatolian branch of the Indo-European language family, making it a distant relative of languages such as Hittite and Luwian. The Carians were known to neighboring civilizations, especially the Greeks and Egyptians, as skilled sailors and mercenaries. Carian-speaking soldiers served abroad in places like Egypt, where inscriptions written in their language have been discovered.

For many years, the Carian script remained one of the great undeciphered writing systems of the ancient Mediterranean. Although its alphabet resembles Greek at first glance, many of the letters represented completely different sounds, which confused early scholars. Significant progress in decipherment was made only in the late twentieth century, especially through bilingual inscriptions and improved understanding of Anatolian linguistics. Today, researchers can read many Carian texts, though the surviving corpus is still relatively small and often fragmentary.

Most surviving Carian inscriptions are short: funerary epitaphs, graffiti, dedications, and ownership marks. These texts have been found both in Caria itself and in Egyptian sites connected to Carian mercenaries. The language shows grammatical features typical of Anatolian Indo-European languages, including distinctive noun endings and verb forms. Because the evidence is limited, however, many aspects of Carian vocabulary and syntax remain uncertain, and scholars continue to debate details of pronunciation and interpretation.