The Thracian language () is an extinct and poorly attested language, spoken in ancient times in

Southeast Europe Southeast Europe or Southeastern Europe (SEE) is a geographical subregion of Europe, consisting primarily of the Balkans. Sovereign states and territories that are included in the region are Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia (a ...

by the

Thracians The Thracians (; grc, Θρᾷκες ''Thrāikes''; la, Thraci) were an Indo-European speaking people who inhabited large parts of Eastern and Southeastern Europe in ancient history.. "The Thracians were an Indo-European people who occupied ...

. The linguistic affinities of the Thracian language are poorly understood, but it is generally agreed that it was an

Indo-European The Indo-European languages are a language family native to the overwhelming majority of Europe, the Iranian plateau, and the northern Indian subcontinent. Some European languages of this family, English, French, Portuguese, Russian, ...

language with satem features. A contemporary, neighboring language, Dacian is usually regarded as closely related to Thracian. However, there is insufficient evidence with respect to either language to ascertain the nature of this relationship. The point at which Thracian became extinct is a matter of dispute. However, it is generally accepted that Thracian was still in use in the 6th century AD: Antoninus of Piacenza wrote in 570 that there was a monastery in the Sinai, at which the monks spoke

Greek Greek may refer to: Greece Anything of, from, or related to Greece, a country in Southern Europe: *Greeks, an ethnic group. *Greek language, a branch of the Indo-European language family. **Proto-Greek language, the assumed last common ancestor ...

Latin Latin (, or , ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally a dialect spoken in the lower Tiber area (then known as Latium) around present-day Rome, but through the power ...

, Syriac, Egyptian, and Bessian – a Thracian dialect. Other theories about Thracian remain controversial. A classification put forward by some linguists, such as Harvey Mayer, suggests that Thracian (and Dacian) belonged to the Baltic branch of Indo-European, or at least is closer to Baltic than any other Indo-European branch. However, this theory has not achieved the status of a general consensus among linguists. These are among many competing hypotheses regarding the classification and fate of Thracian.

Geographic distribution

The Thracian language or languages were spoken in what is now

Bulgaria Bulgaria (; bg, България, Bǎlgariya), officially the Republic of Bulgaria,, ) is a country in Southeast Europe. It is situated on the eastern flank of the Balkans, and is bordered by Romania to the north, Serbia and North Mac ...

Romania Romania ( ; ro, România ) is a country located at the crossroads of Central, Eastern, and Southeastern Europe. It borders Bulgaria to the south, Ukraine to the north, Hungary to the west, Serbia to the southwest, Moldova to the east, a ...

North Macedonia North Macedonia, ; sq, Maqedonia e Veriut, (Macedonia before February 2019), officially the Republic of North Macedonia,, is a country in Southeast Europe. It gained independence in 1991 as one of the successor states of Socialist Feder ...

Northern Greece Northern Greece ( el, Βόρεια Ελλάδα, Voreia Ellada) is used to refer to the northern parts of Greece, and can have various definitions. Administrative regions of Greece Administrative term The term "Northern Greece" is widely used ...

, European Turkey and in parts of

Bithynia Bithynia (; Koine Greek: , ''Bithynía'') was an ancient region, kingdom and Roman province in the northwest of Asia Minor (present-day Turkey), adjoining the Sea of Marmara, the Bosporus, and the Black Sea. It bordered Mysia to the sout ...

(North-Western Asiatic Turkey). Modern-day Eastern

Serbia Serbia (, ; Serbian: , , ), officially the Republic of Serbia (Serbian: , , ), is a landlocked country in Southeastern and Central Europe, situated at the crossroads of the Pannonian Basin and the Balkans. It shares land borders with Hung ...

is usually considered by paleolinguists to have been a Daco-Moesian language area. Moesian (after Vladimir Georgiev et al.) is grouped with the

Dacian language Dacian is an extinct language, generally believed to be Indo-European, that was spoken in the Carpathian region in antiquity. In the 1st century, it was probably the predominant language of the ancient regions of Dacia and Moesia and possib ...

Remnants of the Thracian language

Little is known for certain about the Thracian languages, since no phrase beyond a few words in length has been satisfactorily deciphered, and the sounder decipherments given for the shorter phrases may not be completely accurate. Some of the longer inscriptions may indeed be Thracian in origin but they may not reflect actual Thracian language sentences, but rather jumbles of names or magical formulas. Enough Thracian lexical items have survived to show that Thracian was a member of the

Indo-European language family The Indo-European languages are a language family native to the overwhelming majority of Europe, the Iranian plateau, and the northern Indian subcontinent. Some European languages of this family, English, French, Portuguese, Russian, ...

and that it was a satemized language by the time it is attested. Besides the aforementioned inscriptions, Thracian is attested through

personal name A personal name, or full name, in onomastic terminology also known as prosoponym (from Ancient Greek πρόσωπον / ''prósōpon'' - person, and ὄνομα / ''onoma'' - name), is the set of names by which an individual person is know ...

s, toponyms, hydronyms, phytonyms, divine names, etc. and by a small number of words cited in Ancient Greek texts as being specifically Thracian. Other ancient Greek lexical items were not specifically identified as Thracian by the ancient Greeks but are hypothesized by paleolinguists as being or probably being of Thracian origin. Other lexical items are hypothesized on the basis of local anthroponyms, toponyms, hydronyms, oronyms, etc. mentioned in primary sources (see also

List of ancient cities in Thrace and Dacia This is a list of ancient cities, towns, villages, and fortresses in and around Thrace and Dacia. A number of these settlements were Dacian and Thracian, but some were Celtic, Greek, Roman, Paeonian, or Persian. A number of cities in Dacia ...

List of Dacian plant names This is a list of plant names in Dacian, surviving from ancient botanical works such as Dioscorides' '' De Materia Medica'' ( abb. MM) and Pseudo-Apuleius' ''Herbarius'' (abb. Herb.). Dacian plant names are one of the primary sources left to us ...

). Below is a table showing both words cited as being Thracian in classical sources, and lexical elements that have been extracted by paleolinguists from Thracian anthroponyms, toponyms, etc. In this table the closest

cognate In historical linguistics, cognates or lexical cognates are sets of words in different languages that have been inherited in direct descent from an etymological ancestor in a common parent language. Because language change can have radical e ...

s are shown, with an emphasis on cognates in Bulgarian, Albanian, Baltic, Slavic,

, and substratum and/or old-layer words in the Eastern Romance languages: Romanian, Aromanian, et cetera. See also the List of reconstructed Dacian words. Significant cognates from any Indo-European language are listed. However, not all lexical items in Thracian are assumed to be from the

Proto-Indo-European language Proto-Indo-European (PIE) is the reconstructed common ancestor of the Indo-European language family. Its proposed features have been derived by linguistic reconstruction from documented Indo-European languages. No direct record of Proto-Indo ...

, some non-IE lexical items in Thracian are to be expected. There are 23 words mentioned by ancient sources considered explicitly of Thracian origin and known meaning. An additional 180 Thracian words have been reconstructed. The proposed Thracian words in the

Ancient Greek Ancient Greek includes the forms of the Greek language used in ancient Greece and the ancient world from around 1500 BC to 300 BC. It is often roughly divided into the following periods: Mycenaean Greek (), Dark Ages (), the Archaic p ...

lexicon are not numerous. They include the ''parth-'' element in

Parthenon The Parthenon (; grc, Παρθενών, , ; ell, Παρθενώνας, , ) is a former temple on the Athenian Acropolis, Greece, that was dedicated to the goddess Athena during the fifth century BC. Its decorative sculptures are conside ...

; ''balios'' ("dappled"; < PIE ''*bhel-'', "to shine", Bul. ''bel/bial'' (бял) "white" or ''bljaskav'' 'bright, shiny'; Pokorny also cites Illyrian as a possible source, the non-Greek origin is argued on phonological grounds), ''bounos'', "hill, mound". The Thracian horseman hero was an important figure in Thracian religion, mythology, and culture. Depictions of the Thracian Horseman are found in numerous archaeological remains and artifacts from Thracian regions. From the Duvanlii ring and from cognates in numerous Indo-European languages, is seen to be a Thracian word for "horse", deriving from PIE ''*mend-''. Another Thracian word for "horse" is hypothesized, but it looks certain, there is no disagreement among Thracologists: , , ''asb-'' (and some other variants; < PIE ''*ekwo'

the Thracian showing a satem form similar to Sanskrit ''áśva-'', "horse",

Avestan Avestan (), or historically Zend, is an umbrella term for two Old Iranian languages: Old Avestan (spoken in the 2nd millennium BCE) and Younger Avestan (spoken in the 1st millennium BCE). They are known only from their conjoined use as the scri ...

''aspa'', "horse", Ossetic ''jäfs'', Prussian ''aswinan'' ‘mare milk’, Lithuanian ''ašvíenis'' ‘stallion’, ašvà, dial. ešvà ‘mare’), from , , an inscription associated with the Thracian horseman. ''Ut-'' based on the PIE root word ''ud-'' (meaning "up") and based on several Thracic items, would have meant "upon", "up", and is theorized to have meant "On horse(back)", parallel to ancient Greek . The early Indo-European languages had more than one word for

horse The horse (''Equus ferus caballus'') is a domesticated, one-toed, hoofed mammal. It belongs to the taxonomic family Equidae and is one of two extant subspecies of ''Equus ferus''. The horse has evolved over the past 45 to 55 million ...

; for example Latin had ''equus'' from PIE ''*ekwo-'' and ''mannus'' ("a pony") from another IE root, later receiving ''cabalus'' as a loanword. In many cases in current

Thracology Thracology ( bg, Тракология, Trakologiya; ro, Tracologie) is the scientific study of Ancient Thrace and Thracian antiquities and is a regional and thematic branch of the larger disciplines of ancient history and archaeology. A practition ...

, there is more than one etymology for a Thracian lexical item. For example, Thracian ''Diana Germetitha'' (''Diana'' is from Latin while the

epithet An epithet (, ), also byname, is a descriptive term (word or phrase) known for accompanying or occurring in place of a name and having entered common usage. It has various shades of meaning when applied to seemingly real or fictitious people, di ...

''Germetitha'' is from Thracian) has two different proposed etymologies, "Diana of the warm bosom" (Olteanu; et al.?) or "Diana of the warm radiance" (Georgiev; et al.?). In other cases, etymologies for the Thracian lexical items may be sound, but some of the proposed cognates are not actually

s, thus confusing the affinity of Thracian.

Inscriptions

The following are the longest inscriptions preserved. The remaining ones are mostly single words or names on vessels and other artifacts.

Ezerovo inscription

Golden_ring_Ezerovo_mound_BG_Ancient_Thrace_period

Only four Thracian inscriptions of any length have been found. The first is a gold ring found in 1912 in the village of Ezerovo (Plovdiv Province of

); the ring was dated to the 5th century BC. On the ring an inscription is found written in a Greek script and consisting of 8 lines, the eighth of which is located on the edge, the rim, of the rotating disk; it reads without any spaces between: as Dimitar Dechev (Germanised as ''D. Detschew'') separates the words thus i.e. proposing the following translation: :''I am Rolisteneas, a descendant of Nereneas; Tilezypta, an Arazian woman, delivered me to the ground''.

Kyolmen inscription

A second inscription, hitherto undeciphered, was found in 1965 near the village of Kyolmen,

Varbitsa Municipality Varbitsa Municipality ( bg, Община Върбица) is a municipality ('' obshtina'') in Shumen Province, Northeastern Bulgaria, located in the vicinity of the northern slopes of the Eastern Stara planina mountain to the area of the so-cal ...

, dating to the sixth century BC. Written in a Greek alphabet variant, it is possibly a tomb stele inscription similar to the Phrygian ones; Peter A. Dimitrov's transcription thereof is: :ΙΛΑΣΝΛΕΤΕΔΝΛΕΔΝΕΝΙΔΑΚΑΤΡΟΣΟWritten from right to left. :ΕΒΑ·ΡΟΖΕΣΑΣΝΗΝΕΤΕΣΑΙΓΕΚΟΑWritten from left to right. :ΝΒΛΑΒΑΗΓΝ i.e. :ilasnletednlednenidakatroso :eba·rozesasnēnetesaigekoa :nblabaēgn

Duvanlii inscription

A third inscription is again on a ring, found in Duvanlii,

Kaloyanovo Municipality Kaloyanovo Municipality () is a municipality in the Plovdiv Province, central Bulgaria and covers an area of 347 km². As of 2006 it has 12,390 inhabitants. The center of the municipality is the village of Kaloyanovo. It is a flat country wi ...

, next to the left hand of a skeleton. It dates to the 5th century BC. The ring has the image of a

horseman Horseman or The Horsemen or ''variation'', may refer to: People *Horseman, a person who practices equestrianism Occupations *Wrangler (profession), in the United States *Stockman (Australia), who works with horses rather than with cattle or shee ...

with the inscription surrounding the image. It is only partly legible (16 out of the initial 21): :ΗΥΖΙΗ.....ΔΕΛΕ / ΜΕΖΗΝΑΙ i.e. :ēuziē.....dele / mezēnai The meaning of the inscription is 'Horseman Eusie protect!' If this reading is correct, the Thracian word ''mezenai'' might be cognate to Illyrian ''Menzanas'' (as in "Juppiter/Jove Menzanas" 'Juppiter of the foals' or 'Juppiter on a horse'); Albanian ''mëz'' 'foal'; Romanian ''mînz'' 'colt, foal';

''mannus'' 'small horse, pony';

Gaulish Gaulish was an ancient Celtic language spoken in parts of Continental Europe before and during the period of the Roman Empire. In the narrow sense, Gaulish was the language of the Celts of Gaul (now France, Luxembourg, Belgium, most of Switzerl ...

''manduos'' 'pony' (as in tribe name '' Viromandui'' 'men who own ponies').

Classification

The Thracian language in linguistic textbooks is usually treated either as its own branch of Indo-European, or is grouped with Dacian, together forming a Daco-Thracian branch of IE. Older textbooks often grouped it also with Illyrian or Phrygian. The belief that Thracian was close to Phrygian is no longer popular and has mostly been discarded. No definite evidence has yet been found that demonstrates that Thracian or Daco-Thracian belonged on the same branch as Albanian or Baltic or Balto-Slavic or Greco-Macedonian or Phrygian or any other IE branch. For this reason textbooks still treat Thracian as its own branch of Indo-European, or as a Daco-Thracian/Thraco-Dacian branch. The generally accepted clades branched from the

are, in alphabetical order, the Proto-Albanian language, Proto-Anatolian language,

Proto-Armenian language Proto-Armenian is the earlier, unattested stage of the Armenian language which has been reconstructed by linguists. As Armenian is the only known language of its branch of the Indo-European languages, the comparative method cannot be used to re ...

Proto-Balto-Slavic language Proto-Balto-Slavic (PBS or PBSl) is a reconstructed hypothetical proto-language descending from Proto-Indo-European (PIE). From Proto-Balto-Slavic, the later Balto-Slavic languages are thought to have developed, composed of sub-branches Baltic ...

Proto-Celtic language Proto-Celtic, or Common Celtic, is the ancestral proto-language of all known Celtic languages, and a descendant of Proto-Indo-European. It is not attested in writing but has been partly reconstructed through the comparative method. Proto-Celtic ...

Proto-Germanic language Proto-Germanic (abbreviated PGmc; also called Common Germanic) is the reconstructed proto-language of the Germanic branch of the Indo-European languages. Proto-Germanic eventually developed from pre-Proto-Germanic into three Germanic bran ...

Proto-Greek language The Proto-Greek language (also known as Proto-Hellenic) is the Indo-European language which was the last common ancestor of all varieties of Greek, including Mycenaean Greek, the subsequent ancient Greek dialects Ancient Greek in classi ...

Proto-Indo-Iranian language Proto-Indo-Iranian, also Proto-Indo-Iranic is the reconstructed proto-language of the Indo-Iranian/Indo-Iranic branch of Indo-European. Its speakers, the hypothetical Proto-Indo-Iranians, are assumed to have lived in the late 3rd millennium ...

Proto-Italic language The Proto-Italic language is the ancestor of the Italic languages, most notably Latin and its descendants, the Romance languages. It is not directly attested in writing, but has been reconstructed to some degree through the comparative method. ...

, and the Proto-Tocharian language. Thracian, Dacian, Phrygian, Illyrian, Venetic, and Paeonian are fragmentarily attested and cannot be reliably categorized. Note: Asterisk indicates reconstructed IE sound. ''M'' is a cover symbol for the row of voiced stops (mediae), ''T'' for unvoiced stops (tenues) and ''TA'' for aspirated stops (tenues aspiratae). ∅ indicates

zero 0 (zero) is a number representing an empty quantity. In place-value notation such as the Hindu–Arabic numeral system, 0 also serves as a placeholder numerical digit, which works by multiplying digits to the left of 0 by the radix, usu ...

, a sound that has been lost. Thraco-Dacian has been hypothesized as forming a branch of Indo-European along with Baltic. For a large proportion of the 300 Thracian geographic names there are cognates within the Baltic toponymy, most similarities between Thracian and Balto-Slavic personal and geographic names were found, especially Baltic. According to Duridinov the "most important impression make the geographic cognates of Baltic and Thracian" "the similarity of these parallels stretching frequently on the main element and the suffix simultaneously, which makes a strong impression". According to him there are occasional similarities between Slavic and Thracian because Slavic is related to Baltic, while almost no lexical similarities within Thracian and Phrygian were found. This significant relatedness show close affinity and kinship of Thracian with Baltic. The following table shows the cognate Thracian and Baltic place names, some Polish and related Lechitic names from the transitional area of the ancient Veneti- Eneti along the Amber Road were added:

Fate of the Thracians and their language

According to Skordelis, when Thracians were subjected by

Alexander the Great Alexander III of Macedon ( grc, Ἀλέξανδρος, Alexandros; 20/21 July 356 BC – 10/11 June 323 BC), commonly known as Alexander the Great, was a king of the ancient Greek kingdom of Macedon. He succeeded his father Philip II to ...

they finally assimilated to Greek culture and became as Greek as Spartans and Athenians, although he considered the Thracian language as a form of Greek. According to Crampton (1997) most Thracians were eventually Hellenized or Romanized, with the last remnants surviving in remote areas until the 5th century. According to Marinov the Thracians were likely completely Romanized and Hellenized after the last contemporary references to them of the 6th century. This theory holds the

Christianization of the Roman Empire The growth of Christianity from its obscure origin 40 AD, with fewer than 1,000 followers, to being the majority religion of the entire Roman Empire by AD 350, has been examined through a wide variety of historiographical approaches. Unt ...

as the main factor of immediate assimilation. A quick extinction would intensely contrast the avoidance of Hellenization at least by Albanian till the present, possibly with the help of isolated mountainous areas. Another author considers that the interior of Thrace have never been Romanized or Hellenized (Trever, 1939). This was followed also by Slavonization. According to Weithmann (1978) when the Slavs migrated, they encountered only a very superficially Romanized Thracian and Dacian population, which had not strongly identified itself with Imperial Rome, while Greek and Roman populations (mostly soldiers, officials, merchants) abandoned the land or were killed. Because Pulpudeva survived as

Plovdiv Plovdiv ( bg, Пловдив, ), is the second-largest city in Bulgaria, standing on the banks of the Maritsa river in the historical region of Thrace. It has a population of 346,893 and 675,000 in the greater metropolitan area. Plovdiv is the c ...

in Slavic languages, not under Philippopolis, some authors suggest that Thracian was not completely obliterated in the 7th century.

Footnotes

References

External links

an English translation of Ivan Duridanov's 1975 essay ''Ezikyt na trakite''
Palaeolexicon – Word study tool of ancient languages (including Thracian dictionary)
{{Thracians Thracian language Paleo-Balkan languages Extinct languages of Europe Languages of ancient Macedonia Languages of ancient Thrace Languages of ancient Anatolia Languages extinct in the 5th century Unclassified Indo-European languages