The Thracian language was the Indo-European language spoken in ancient times by the Thracians in South-Eastern Europe.

[edit] Geographic distribution

Thracian language was spoken in substantial numbers in what is now most of Bulgaria, eastern Serbia, eastern Republic of Macedonia, Northern Greece, European Turkey and in parts of Bithynia (North-Western Asiatic Turkey).

Limits of the Thracian linguistic territory according to Ivan Duridanov,1985

Including Dacian-Getian it was spoken in Romania, the region of Dobrudja, north - eastern Serbia, the Republic of Moldova, western-central Ukraine, and eastern Hungary and eastern Slovakia as well. Many Bulgarian Thracologists tend to consider Dacian and Thracian as distinct languages descending from an immediate common ancestor and group them together as Daco-Thracian or Thraco-Dacian.

[edit] Sources

As an extinct language with only a few short inscriptions attributed to it (see below), there is little known about the Thracian language, but a number of features are agreed upon. Some Thracian words can be found cited in ancient texts^[1] (the list below excludes Dacian plant names which however are often included). In addition there are many words and probable words extracted from anthroponyms, toponyms, hydronyms, oronyms and other lexical elements found in the primary sources (see also List of ancient Thracian cities):

Other lexical elements are found in inscriptions (most of them written with Greek script) on buildings, coins, and other artifacts (see inscriptions below). Another source for the Thracian vocabulary are words of unknown or disputed etymology found in Bulgarian (see Bulgarian lexis) as well as Romanian (see Eastern Romance substratum). Albanian is sometimes regarded as a descendant of Dacian or Thracian,^[2] or as a descendant of Illyrian with a Daco-Thracic admixture; thus the Albanian lexis is another source.

Thracian words in the Ancient Greek lexicon are also proposed. Greek lexical elements may derive from Thracian, such as balios ("dappled"; < PIE *bhel-, "to shine"; Pokorny also cites Illyrian as a possible source), bounos, "hill, mound", etc.

[edit] Inscriptions

The golden ring from Ezerovo.

Only four Thracian inscriptions have been found. One is a gold ring found in 1912 in the town of Ezerovo, Bulgaria. The ring was dated to the 5th century BC. On the ring is an inscription written in a Greek script which says:

ΡΟΛΙΣΤΕΝΕΑΣΝ / ΕΡΕΝΕΑΤΙΛ / ΤΕΑΝΗΣΚΟΑ / ΡΑΖΕΑΔΟΜ / ΕΑΝΤΙΛΕΖΥ / ΠΤΑΜΙΗΕ / ΡΑΖ / ΗΛΤΑ

rolisteneasn/ereneatil/teanēskoa/razeadom/eantilezu/ptamiēe/raz/ēlta

The meaning of the inscription is not known, and it bears no resemblance to any known language. Thracologists such as Vladimir I. Georgiev and Dechev have proposed various translations for the inscription but these are just guesses.

A second inscription was found in 1965 near the village of Kyolmen, Preslav district, dating to the 6th century BC. It consists of 56 letters of the Greek alphabet, probably a tomb stele inscription similar to the Phrygian ones:

ΕΒΑΡ. ΖΕΣΑΣΝ ΗΝΕΤΕΣΑ ΙΓΕΚ. Α / ΝΒΛΑΒΑΗΓΝ / ΝΥΑΣΝΛΕΤΕΔΝΥΕΔΝΕΙΝΔΑΚΑΤΡ. Σ

ebar. zesasn ēnetesa igek. a / nblabaēgn / nuasnletednuedneindakatr. s

A third inscription is again on a ring, found in Duvanli, Plovdiv district, next to the left hand of a skeleton. It dates to the 5th century BC. The ring has the image of a horseman with the inscription surrounding the image. It is only partly legible (16 out of the initial 21)

ΗΥΖΙΗ.....ΔΕΛΕ / ΜΕΖΗΝΑΙ

ēuziē.....dele / mezēnai

ΜΕΖΗΝΑΙ likely corresponds to Menzana, the Messapian "horse deity" to which horses were sacrificed, compared also to Albanian mëz, mâz "pony" (preserved into Romanian as mânz "colt"), derived either from PIE *mongw(i)- "virile" or PIE *mend(i)- "to suckle".

These are the longest inscriptions preserved. The remaining ones are mostly single words or names on vessels and other artifacts. In addition, Thracian lexical elements have been drawn from inscriptions in Greek or Latin.

In a Latin inscription from Rome discussing a citizen from the Roman province of Thracia, the phrase Midne potelense is found; this is interpreted as indicating the Thracian's place of origin, midne being seen as the Thracian equivalent of Latin vicus, "village". If this is correct, the Thracian word has a close cognate (Latv. mitne, "a dwelling") in Latvian, a Baltic language.

[edit] Classification

The classification of the Thracian language has long been a matter of contention and uncertainty, and there are widely varying hypotheses regarding the position of Thracian among the Paleo-Balkan languages.^[3] It is not contested however that Thracian was an Indo-European language which had acquired satem characteristics by the time it is attested.

[edit] Extinction

Most of the Thracians were eventually Hellenized (in the province of Thrace) or Romanized (in Moesia, Dacia, etc.), with the last remnants surviving in remote areas until the 5th century.^[4] Some Thracian tribes have probably been Slavicized, after the Slavic re-settlements to the south of the Danube river and eventually merged with the invading Bulgarian and Serbian peoples.

[edit] See also

• Thraco-Illyrian
• Greek language
• Dacian language
• Illyrian languages
• Paionian language
• Phrygian language
• Ancient Macedonian language
• Thraco-Roman

[edit] References

[edit] Further reading

• I.I. Russu, Limba Traco-Dacilor / Die Sprache der Thrako-Daker, Bucharest (1967, 1969).
• Paul Kretschmer, "Glotta", in: Zeitschrift für griechische und lateinische Sprache 7, 1915.
• Keith Massey, "Further Evidence for an "Italic" Substratum in Romanian," in Philologie im Netz 43/2008, pp. 11-16.

[edit] External links

• The Language of the Thracians, an English translation of Ivan Duridanov's 1975 essay Ezikyt na trakite
• Sorin Olteanu's Thraco-Daco-Moesian Languages Project (SoLTDM) (sources, thesaurus, textual criticism, phonetics and morphology, substratum, historical geography a.o.)
• Thracian glossary