Dacian Language

The extinct Dacian language developed from Proto-Indo-European (PIE), possibly in the Carpathian region sometime in the period 3000-1500 BC. The language was probably extinct by AD 600. In the 1st century AD, it was probably the predominant language of the ancient regions of Dacia and Moesia and possibly of some surrounding regions.

While there is unanimous agreement among scholars that Dacian was an Indo-European language, there are divergent opinions about its place within the IE family: (1) Dacian was a dialect of the extinct Thracian language, or vice versa e.g. Baldi (1983) and Trask (2000). (2) Dacian was a language distinct from Thracian but related to it, belonging to the same branch of the Indo-European family (a "Thraco-Dacian", or "Daco-Thracian" branch has been theorised by some linguists). (A dated view, now largely rejected, considered the extinct Phrygian language also to belong to the same branch as Dacian and Thracian). (3) Dacian was a language unrelated to either Thracian or Phrygian, each of these languages belonging to different branches of IE e.g. Georgiev (1977) and Duridanov (1985).

The Dacian language is poorly documented. Unlike for Phrygian, which is documented by ca. 200 inscriptions, only one Dacian inscription is believed to have survived. The Dacian names for a number of medicinal plants and herbs may survive in ancient literary texts, including about 60 plant-names in Dioscorides. About 1,150 personal namesand 900 toponyms may also be of Dacian origin. A few hundred words in modern Albanian and Romanian may have originated in ancient Balkan languages such as Dacian (see List of Romanian words of possible Dacian origin). Linguists have reconstructed about 100 Dacian words from placenames using established techniques of comparative linguistics, although only 20-25 such reconstructions had achieved wide acceptance by 1982.