Dacian Language

Dagne

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There are a lot of theories regarding Dacian Language. One is about Dacian connecting with Baltic languages and, flowingly, Baltic tribes:
From wiki http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dacian_language

"A number of scholars have pointed to the many close parallels between Dacian and Thracian placenames and those of the Baltic language-zone (Lithuania, Latvia and East Prussia, a region where an extinct but well-documented Baltic language, Old Prussian, was spoken until it was displaced by German during the Middle Ages.[89] These Baltic parallels have enabled linguists to decipher many Dacian and Thracian placenames. Of the 74 Dacian placenames analysed by Duridanov in his 1969 essay, a total of 62 have Baltic cognates, the great majority rated "certain" by Duridanov.[90] To explain this, Duridanov suggests that proto-Dacian- and proto-Thracian- speakers were in close geographical proximity with proto-Baltic-speakers for a prolonged period in prehistory, perhaps during the period 3000-2000 BC.[91] Mayer ventures further, suggesting that Dacian and Thracian were what he terms "southern pre-Baltoidic" languages, presumably meaning either proto-Baltic or close descendants of proto-Baltic.[92] The partially satem characteristics of Thracian and Dacian and their similarities to the Baltic group suggest that an ancestral Thraco-Dacian people was settled in Dacia until part of it migrated into Thrace[93]"

To support this theory I have looked at the list of reconstructed Dacian words and compared them with Lithuanian words (also including dialects and old. Lithuanian words).

As you can see the list of similar words is impressive. Have in mind that I was not checking Latvian words and also Old Prussian. Let see if you can also get other comparisons with Romanian, Albanian or Slavic languages and then we can draw our conclusions.
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I agree with this theory, it makes lot of sense. In past, I was going through some vocabulary of Ilirian, Thracian and Dacian. I found Dacian to be most similar to Slavic. It looks like Dacian, Slavic and Baltic were neighbours for millenia, and might have come from common language 6 thousand years ago.
 
Yes, the most tricky part is to estimate the timing in language development.
It is difficult to judge from those few reconstructed words, but it seems that there more similarities between Dacian and Lithuanian than between Dacian and Slavic languages or even between Lithuanian and the Western Baltic Prussian.

There are more arguments that Dacian is more of East Baltic rather than West Baltic: http://www.network54.com/Forum/5317...uanian+Language-+Genetic+Roots+of+Lithuanians
 
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Yes, the most tricky part is to estimate the timing in language development.
It is difficult to judge from those few reconstructed words, but it seems that there more similarities between Dacian and Lithuanian than between Dacian and Slavic languages or even between Lithuanian and the Western Baltic Prussian.

For comparison, Latvian and Lithuanian split arround 6-7 AD, but the Latvian and Lithuanian vocabularies vary greatly from each other and are not mutually intelligible like Eastern Slavic languages.

So getting down

I doubt this because of the germanic tongue of the bastanae that seperated the finnic/baltic languages from the dacian/thracian ones. Unless the lithuatians had a germanic language from the peucini, then.......

I found these sites
http://web.fu-berlin.de/phin/phin43/p43t2.htm

and also this site below which indicates a latinized base for its language

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_Spezia-Rimini_Line

as you can see it belongs fully with a southern italian linguistic group . Its an eastern latin group
 
I doubt this because of the germanic tongue of the bastanae that seperated the finnic/baltic languages from the dacian/thracian ones. Unless the lithuatians had a germanic language from the peucini, then.......

I found these sites
http://web.fu-berlin.de/phin/phin43/p43t2.htm

and also this site below which indicates a latinized base for its language

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_Spezia-Rimini_Line

as you can see it belongs fully with a southern italian linguistic group . Its an eastern latin group


so still we can determine the language of Thracians, if Daci is original or south Slavic, .
well the ancient scripts never mantion Thracian west of Dinaric Alps,
I believe that must be a basis the cut with razor any Illyrian,
the tribes in Illyria and the tribes of Dardani,
Dardani are mentioned as Illyrothracian, that means could speak or understand both,
Illyrians are never mentioned as Thracians,

the case of Latino-Thracian or Slavo-Thracian hmmmm it is difficult,
if we consider Pomaks of Echinos are original thracians, and not scythians that find to dwell there, then the case is Heavy to Slavic,
if we considered that Daci never invaded by mass slavic but from Romans and in Byzantine time were Latino-speakers that also leads us to Slavic-Thracians,

I believe a key to solve is the different names
Greeks call Thracians the Pannoni the tribaldi the Odrysse, But Getae the Daci, the today area of Crimea and Ucraine
But the archaiological evidence are not showing much connection with Slavic, but mostly with Greek and Latin
The case of Skodra-Skudra, that connects Persian with Thracian seems it is not so strong so Thracians be assimilated by Persian culture,

I believe that the secret is among Vrygians and Bithini in Past, while today ..... isolated Pomaks Gorani and Torbesi?

the case of an East Latin language is connected as many times I said with Pelasgians and Anatolian Languages.

according ancient Geographers Thracians expand east of Dinaric Alps and Getae from Romania to Asia,
the case of a Queen of Getae sends us to North of Persia,
 
What I'm missing here really is sound correspondence.

In my opinion Dacian without a doubt was a Satem language, but the Baltic and Slavic families are closer to each other than they are to Dacian. It might be interesting to look for common Balto-Slavic-Dacian sound laws, however... if such a thing exists.
 
What I'm missing here really is sound correspondence.

In my opinion Dacian without a doubt was a Satem language, but the Baltic and Slavic families are closer to each other than they are to Dacian. It might be interesting to look for common Balto-Slavic-Dacian sound laws, however... if such a thing exists.

Based on the list of reconstructed Dacian words, there are more similarities between those Dacian words and Lithuanian than between Lithuanian and Slavic (ie Russian) equivalents of the same words.

This extreme similarity should be explained somehow. Should Latvian and Prussian words were compared, there would be even more similar words between Dacian and Baltic languages.

One explanation to this similarity can be about timing in comparing languages, which also plays a role - Dacian stoped developed at 4th century, while Slavic languages started developing their differences from that point on, and therefore, there are more similarities betweeen Lithuanian (which is very consevative) and Dacian than between Lithuanian and Slavic at this point of development).

Regarding sound laws - I have posted a reference to some articles (sorry it is a bit longish and complex :sad-2:) where the authors claims that Dacian is an Eastern Baltic language because it underwent sound change typical also for Lithuanian, ks - sk, while Western Baltic languages (Prussian) don't have it.
 
thing is there are not many Dacian and Thracian words preserved.... that makes it hard to map to some concrete people.....

we cannot therefore look Dacians in isolation from what was going on in whole area....
one possible mapping of today tribes to ancient tribes would be like this:

Russian primary chronicle places early Slavs (before spread of Roman empire) in areas around Danube - from Pannonia to /and including Thrace... not in Dacia!!

effectively, this would imply that tribal names were:

Thracians = Raseni (Etruscans) = Russians = R1a people (note also Rascians as alternative medieval name for Serbs)
* note that etruscans call themselves Rassena while Greeks insert Th before that and turn them into Thyrsenians, following that anomaly in spelling names from other languages, real name of Thracians was very likely as well without starting Th...

Thracians being most populous people in Herodotous times, propbably means that there was not much difference between Thracians, Scythians and Sarmatians... that it was culturally and linguistically same people..


Balts would be most north part of Thracians, whose culture is shaped through contact with Finish and Germanic people... they are living mixed with Finish people - thus R1a haplogroup with strong influence of N haplogroup...


Daci = Getea = in my opinion later Goths - germanic people (note also similarity of tribal name Daci and Deutch)... perhaps I2b and I1 people

finally, note that Scordisci are considered Celtic or celticized people, and that Serdi are celtic tribe that settle Thrace and Asia minor from area of Scordisci (roughly Serbia)...Serdi are thracanized Celts... and tribal name Serdi is identical to tribal name Scordisci just written in Greek following thracian pronounciation instead of following Celtic one - Scordisci is same as Scordi if we substract Celtic ending.. Scordi is same as Sordi if we take into account that Greeks also wrote Slavs as Sclaveni.....) ....I will try to deal on another thread with shared vocabulary of Celts and Serbs...

note that Scordisci are thought to have merged with Illyrian tribe Autoriatae
(compare pair Scordisci - Autariatae vs. Serbs-Croats (Croats self-name = Hrvati)

this is all in accordance with Russian primary chronicle that proposes that
Danubian Slavs have moved to north when Romans conquered and settled areas around Danube.... thus, in times preceding return to Balkan, we have so called white Croatia in Slovakia, south Poland and west Ukraine, and white Serbia east of it...
note that Byzantine emperor who records settlements of Serbs and Croats from white Serbia and white Croatia, also denotes that Serbs did also originally dwelt in Bohemia...
this is link to their possibly Celtic origin from Boii via Scordisci/Serdi.. that is in correspondence with theories of possible origin of I2a2 ...
 
Based on the list of reconstructed Dacian words, there are more similarities between those and Lithuanian than between Lithuanian and Slavic (ie Russian) equivalents of the same words.

I'm not talking about the pure similarity of words, but about the similarity of sound laws. For your observation above, the Baltic languages are fairly conservative, and the modern Slavic languages have Slavic sound laws on top of Balto-Slavic sound laws applied, which accounts for the dissimilarity.

(I mean, as we noted a while back even Gaulish and Latvian have similarities, that doesn't mean that Gaulish was a Baltic language, or that Latvian is a Celtic language :LOL: )

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for instance, Gaulish "Touta" and Latvian "Tauta"
 
I'm not talking about the pure similarity of words, but about the similarity of sound laws. For your observation above, the Baltic languages are fairly conservative, and the modern Slavic languages have Slavic sound laws on top of Balto-Slavic sound laws applied, which accounts for the dissimilarity.

this is very interesting remark...

could it be that language of Balts was not affected with arrival of new peoples and languages due to their north most position, while slavic languages were influenced by iranian (sarmatians), germanic (Goths, but also Gepidi, Langobardi...) and turkic (Avars) speakers... would such complex set of influences be able to account for dissimilarity in sound laws and vocabulary....
 
(I mean, as we noted a while back even Gaulish and Latvian have similarities, that doesn't mean that Gaulish was a Baltic language, or that Latvian is a Celtic language :LOL: )


EDIT:

for instance, Gaulish "Touta" and Latvian "Tauta"
and Dacian would say Tauta, too lol

yes, I see what you mean.
 
What I'm missing here really is sound correspondence.
Is this that you mean by sound correspondence? It is a bit too complicated for me to follow:


" Dacian and Thracian -- southeast Baltic. South Baltic because, like Old Prussian, they keep unchanged the diphthongs ei, ai, en, an (north Baltic Lithuanian and Latvian show varying percentages of ei, ai to ie, and en, an to ę, ą (to ē, ā) in Lithuanian, to ie, uo in Latvian). East Baltic because the Dacian word žuvete (now in Rumanian spelled juvete) has ž, not z as in west Baltic, and the Thracian word pušis (the Latin-Greek transcription shows pousis which, I believe, reflects -š-.) with zero grade puš- as in Lithuanian pušìs rather than with e-grade *peuš- as in Prussian peusē. Zero grade in this word is east Baltic, e-grade here is west Baltic, while the other word for “pine, evergreen”, preidē (Prussian and Dacian), priede (Latvian), is marginal in Lithuanian matched by no *peus- in Latvian.
So Dacian and Thracian are south Baltic like Prussian and east Baltic like Lithuanian (but not like Latvian which is west Baltic like Prussian)". http://www.kroraina.com/thrac_lang/h_mayer.html
 
Is this that you mean by sound correspondence? It is a bit too complicated for me to follow:

I could walk it out in detail and come up with a far more awkward explanation, but it's actually explained rather short and detailed in this article.

In particular, the following section is critical, in particular bolded parts:

The comparative method developed out of attempts to reconstruct the proto-language mentioned by Jones, which he did not name, but subsequent linguists named Proto-Indo-European (PIE). The first professional comparison between the Indo-European languages known then was made by the German linguist Franz Bopp in 1816. Though he did not attempt a reconstruction, he demonstrated that Greek, Latin and Sanskrit shared a common structure and a common lexicon.[12] Friedrich Schlegel in 1808 first stated the importance of using the eldest possible form of a language when trying to prove its relationships;[13] in 1818, Rasmus Christian Rask developed the principle of regular sound changes to explain his observations of similarities between individual words in the Germanic languages and their cognates in Greek and Latin.[14] Jacob Grimm - better known for his Fairy Tales - in Deutsche Grammatik (published 1819-37 in four volumes) made use of the comparative method in attempting to show the development of the Germanic languages from a common origin, the first systematic study of diachronic language change.[15]
Both Rask and Grimm were unable to explain apparent exceptions to the sound laws that they had discovered. Although Hermann Grassmann explained one of these anomalies with the publication of Grassmann's law in 1862,[16] it was Karl Verner who in 1875 made a methodological breakthrough when he identified a pattern now known as Verner's law, the first sound law based on comparative evidence showing that a phonological change in one phoneme could depend on other factors within the same word, such as the neighbouring phonemes and the position of the accent,[17] now called conditioning environments.
Similar discoveries made by the Junggrammatiker (usually translated as Neogrammarians) at the University of Leipzig in the late 1800s led them to conclude that all sound changes were ultimately regular, resulting in the famous statement by Karl Brugmann and Hermann Osthoff in 1878 that "sound laws have no exceptions".[18] This idea is fundamental to the modern comparative method, since the method necessarily assumes regular correspondences between sounds in related languages, and consequently regular sound changes from the proto-language. This Neogrammarian Hypothesis led to application of the comparative method to reconstruct Proto-Indo-European, with Indo-European being at that time by far the most well-studied language family. Linguists working with other families soon followed suit, and the comparative method quickly became the established method for uncovering linguistic relationships.[10]

" Dacian and Thracian -- southeast Baltic. South Baltic because, like Old Prussian, they keep unchanged the diphthongs ei, ai, en, an (north Baltic Lithuanian and Latvian show varying percentages of ei, ai to ie, and en, an to ę, ą (to ē, ā) in Lithuanian, to ie, uo in Latvian). East Baltic because the Dacian word žuvete (now in Rumanian spelled juvete) has ž, not z as in west Baltic, and the Thracian word pušis (the Latin-Greek transcription shows pousis which, I believe, reflects -š-.) with zero grade puš- as in Lithuanian pušìs rather than with e-grade *peuš- as in Prussian peusē. Zero grade in this word is east Baltic, e-grade here is west Baltic, while the other word for “pine, evergreen”, preidē (Prussian and Dacian), priede (Latvian), is marginal in Lithuanian matched by no *peus- in Latvian.
So Dacian and Thracian are south Baltic like Prussian and east Baltic like Lithuanian (but not like Latvian which is west Baltic like Prussian)". http://www.kroraina.com/thrac_lang/h_mayer.html

In a nutshell, the poster argues that between Dacian and the Baltic languages, there is a partial match (of common innovations) with South (ie, actually West) Baltic (ie, Old Prussian) and also with East Baltic languages.

If these observed patterns are really the case (ie, partial share of innovations), this casts questions on the relationship of the Baltic languages. Especially because, given the attestation and sprad of Dacian, we have to assume that the split of Baltic was considerably earlier. Of course, this begs the question of how the Slavic languages are related with this.

What popped up sporadically in the past is the observation that some of the Baltic languages (ie, Latvian) actually share common innovations with Slavic absent in the other Baltic languages. This raises the question if the Baltic languages are actually "paraphyletic", basically that the Balto-Slavic languages split up in various Baltic languages along with Proto-Slavic. If this really was the case (I'm not 100% convinced yet), then this would certainly leave the possibility that Dacian was indeed part of Balto-Slavic.

Now, what would be really interesting (to verify this) is identifying common sound laws.
 
In other words, the different sounds in

Touta (Gaulish) - Teuta (Pre-Germanic) - Θiuda (Gothic)- Tauta-(Lith. Dacian)

are because of different sound laws at work which indicate different languages ...
 
Also, this may sound very strange to you, but somehow Dacian words sound fine to me, whereas Thracian totally foreign. In spite that there are also some semantic similarities with Thracian (though less than with Dacian). Could that be of different sound laws in Dacian and Thracian where Dacian is more close to Lithuanian?
 
In other words, the different sounds in

Touta (Gaulish) - Teuta (Pre-Germanic) - Θiuda (Gothic)- Tauta-(Lith. Dacian)

are because of different sound laws at work which indicate different languages ...

Prettymuch. There's also the German word "Deutsch" (or "Dutch" in English :giggle: ), and "totum" ("the whole") in Latin (cognates also exist in the modern Romance languages, such as "tout" in French or "todo" in Spanish)... and so on... (y)

Also, this may sound very strange to you, but somehow Dacian words sound fine to me, whereas Thracian totally foreign. In spite that there are also some semantic similarities with Thracian (though less than with Dacian). Could that be of different sound laws in Dacian and Thracian where Dacian is more close to Lithuanian?

Well, there's the opinion that Dacian and Thracian were not that closely related (for which there's a good case, but which takes longer to elaborate. Both were Satem languages, but apparently may not that close. What should be noted is that the Thracian word for gold "Saldas" is also a cognate with Germanic/Baltic/Slavic.
 
Perhaps there are sound law in such changes?

English Dacian Lithuanian Russian

good geras geras horoshii Dacian Lithuanian "g" to Rusian "h"
mapple klevas klevas klion Dacian Lithuanian "v-(as)" to "n"
dry sausas sausas suhoi Dacian Lithuanian "s" to Russian "h"
cold galtis šaltis holod Dacian "g" to Lith. "š" and Russ. "h"
stone akmon akmuo kamen Dacian "on" to Lith. "uo" Russ "ka"


Both Lith. and Dacian have endings noun endings as/a/is,
adjectives in -us and -as -a
 
I'll have to give this some more thought. Unfortunately, I don't have that much time at the moment.
 
In other words, the different sounds in

Touta (Gaulish) - Teuta (Pre-Germanic) - Θiuda (Gothic)- Tauta-(Lith. Dacian)

are because of different sound laws at work which indicate different languages ...

"ljudi" for people in Slavic languages seems to match Gothic version
btw. there is also word "četa" for military unit, which is of same origin I would say...
 
Also, this may sound very strange to you, but somehow Dacian words sound fine to me, whereas Thracian totally foreign. In spite that there are also some semantic similarities with Thracian (though less than with Dacian). Could that be of different sound laws in Dacian and Thracian where Dacian is more close to Lithuanian?

there is not much dacian and thracian words...mostly name places...

and Dacian sound ok to you because they end on -dava
which is also often the case in Slavic and I suppose in Baltic languages as well due to word for fort "tvrdjava" which is in fact coin word "tvrd" (strong) + dava (?)

though I was also comparing existing words on one of the threads and could find best match with Illyrian words, somewhat worse match with Dacian and almost no match with Thracian...

this would place Slavic people perhaps between Illyrians and Dacians, e.g. as Scordisci and Triballi, while Dacians might be proto-Balts actually... Russian primary chronicle does place early Slavs on Danube in places that do match Triballi and Scordisci and Pannonians ...and medieval Byzantine authors sometimes use name Triballi as alternative name for Serbs...



Perhaps there are sound law in such changes?

English Dacian Lithuanian Russian

good geras geras horoshii Dacian Lithuanian "g" to Rusian "h"
mapple klevas klevas klion Dacian Lithuanian "v-(as)" to "n"
dry sausas sausas suhoi Dacian Lithuanian "s" to Russian "h"
cold galtis šaltis holod Dacian "g" to Lith. "š" and Russ. "h"
stone akmon akmuo kamen Dacian "on" to Lith. "uo" Russ "ka"


Both Lith. and Dacian have endings noun endings as/a/is,
adjectives in -us and -as -a

out of those 5 words, first two have no matches at all in Serbian (although all 5 have matches in Russian), which i guess indicates more far a way area of influence...

good - 'dobro' in Serbian, no match for words above
in fact word "gore" means 'worse' and 'up'

maple - "javor"
"klen" is something else, think kind of fish... sometimes used in pejorative sense to say someone he is stupid...

remaining 3 words
english dacian lithuanian russian | serbian
dry sausas sausas suhoi | suvo (dry), suša (long dry whether) Dacian Lithuanian "s" to Russian "h"
cold galtis šaltis holod | hladno Dacian "g" to Lith. "š" and Russ. "h"
stone akmon akmuo kamen | kamen Dacian "on" to Lith. "uo" Russ "ka"

based on those few examples Lithuanian seems better fit to Dacian than Slavic languages... but that is what i expected as well..... because I did map thraco-Cimmerians and I2a2 to western linear pottery (they all show correlation with spread along Danube and north-northwest of Black sea), while Dacia is east linear pottery...
in fact, origin from Dacians can explain why Balts very rarely have I2a2 unlike Slavs.... think that I2a2 came to Dacia only with early Slavic people...though it probably was present in what is now Moldavia and along Danube...

I2a2 are Serians/Cimmerians.... they mixed with R1a Balto-Slavs to give Slavs, while Balts probably after retreating from Dacia mixed with people of finish origin who lived in Baltic area and thus have lot of haplogroup N besides R1a.... that is why Bavarian geographer says that state of Zeruiani was so big that all Slavs come from it... he doesnot say Slavs are Zeruiani (Serians) and he also doesnot say that all Balto-Slavs come from it, just Slavs...
Seneca mentions Serians in europe as: 1) daring to cross frozen Danube on foot - which sets them as living around danube 2) vex (rule over) scattered Scythians
this directly implies that Scythians were early (Balto)-Slav R1a people, and Serians were I2a who ruled over some of those.... thus, the language of I2a Serians should account for inovations in Slavic that makes it different from Balto-Slavic (and Baltic languages that stayed more or less in form of Balto-Slavic)...


I wonder if language of Serians might have been Celtic, Germanic or Iranian originally...

if you look at west linear pottery, the narrow yellow range in Bulgaria along Danube would later be Triballi
and Scordisci came from upper Danube that is also in yellow...


800px-European_Middle_Neolithic.gif


Thraco-Cimmerian.png


Haplogroup_I2a.gif

(note that south areas like Italy, Spain are I2a1 and not I2a2)
 
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