The Gutian language was spoken by the Gutians or Guteans, an ancient people who lived in the territory between the Zagros and the Tigris, present-day Iran, around 2100 BCE, and who briefly ruled over Sumer.

Nothing is known about the language except its existence and a list of Gutian ruler names in the Sumerian king list. The existence is attested by a list of languages spoken in the region, found in a clay tablet from the Middle Babylonian period presumably originating from the city of Imar,^[1]:p.13, which also lists Akkadian, Amorite, Sutean, "Subarean" (Hurrian), and Elamite. There is also record of "an interpreter for the Gutean language" at Adab.^[2][3]

The Gutian king names from the Sumerian list are Inkishush, Zarlagab, Shulme (or Yarlagash), Silulumesh (or Silulu), Inimabakesh (or Duga), Igeshaush (or Ilu-An), Yarlagab, Ibate, Yarla (or Yarlangab), Kurum, Apilkin, La-erabum, Irarum, Ibranum, Hablum, Puzur-Suen, Yarlaganda, Si-um (?), and Tirigan. Based on these names, some scholars claim that the Gutian language was neither Semitic nor Indo-European, and was unrelated to the languages spoken around it.^[1].

However, according to T. Gamkrelidze and V. Ivanov, Gutian language was close to Tocharian languages of the Indo-European family^[4]

The historical Guti have been widely regarded as among the ancestors of the Kurds, including by the modern Kurds themselves.[8] However, in the late 19th-century, Assyriologist Julius Oppert sought to connect the Gutians of remote antiquity with the later Gutones (Goths), whom Ptolemy in 150 AD had known as the Guti, a tribe of Scandia. Oppert's theory on this connection is not shared by many scholars today, in the absence of further evidence.^[5]

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