Dacian language Totally Explained

Everything about The Dacian Language totally explained

The Dacian language was spoken by the ancient inhabitants of Dacia. It belongs to the Indo-European language family.
Dacian is often considered to be a dialect of the same language as Thracian or to be a separate language from Thracian but closely related to it. (See Daco-Thracian.)

Characteristics and sources

Many characteristics of the Dacian language are disputed or unknown. The only extant documents in Dacian are a handful of short inscriptions. What is known about the language derives from:

Toponyms, hydronyms, and proper names (including the names of kings).

The Dacian names of about fifty plants written in Greek and Roman sources (see List of Dacian plant names). Etymologies have been established for only a few of them.

Substratum words found in Romanian, the language that's spoken in most of the places where Dacians lived. These include about 400 words of uncertain origin (such as brânză 'cheese' and balaur 'dragon'). About 160 of these words have cognates in Albanian.

Dacian writings. The longest inscription known is DECEBALUS PER SCORILO. Its meaning is disputed but is generally thought to be 'Decebalus, Scorilo’s son', if indeed it's in Dacian, or 'Decebalus through Scorilo', if it's actually a Latin inscription.

The Roman poet Ovid claimed that he learned the Dacian language after being exiled to Tomis (today Constanţa) in Dacia. In his Tristia and Epistulae ex Ponto he claimed to have composed poems in the language. If this is true, they've not been preserved.

Geographic distribution

Dacian used to be one of the major languages of South-Eastern Europe, spoken from what is now Eastern Hungary to the Black Sea shore. Based on archaeological findings, the origins of the Dacian culture are believed to lie in Moldavia, being identified as an evolution of the Iron Age Basarabi culture.

Sound changes from Proto-Indo-European

Dacian was a satem language. For details of its sound changes, see Proto-Indo-European to Dacian sound changes.

Classification

In the 1950s the Bulgarian linguist Vladimir Georgiev published a work in which he argued that the phonology of Dacian is close to that of Albanian, supporting the theory that Dacian was on the same language branch as the Albanian language, a language branch termed Daco-Moesian (or Daco-Mysian) — Moesian (or Mysian) being thought of as a transitional dialect between Dacian and Thracian.
   There are cognates between Daco-Thracian and Albanian. These cognates may be evidence of a Daco-Thracian-Albanian language affinity.
   The ancient Greek geographer Strabo claimed that the Getae spoke the same language as the Thracians. However, Georgiev argued that Dacian and Thracian are two different languages, with two different phonetic systems, supporting this view with the evidence of placenames, which end in -dava in Dacian and Moesian, as opposed to -para in Thracian placenames., a journal published by the Romanian Communist Party's "Institute of History of the Party".
   The article claims that the Thracian language was a pre-Romance or Latin language using a demonstration which Lucian Boia describes as "a lack of basic professionalism and a straightforward contempt for the truth". Arguments used in the article include the lack of interpreters between the Dacians and the Romans, as depicted on the bas-reliefs of Trajan's column. Together, they issue the magazine Noi, Dacii ("Us Dacians") and organize a yearly "International Congress of Dacology".

Further Information

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