Thracian language
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The Thracian language was the Indo-European language spoken in ancient times by the Thracians.
Contents |
Sources
As an extinct language that has no literature left, there's little known about it, but some Thracian words can be found cited in ancient texts [1]. In addition there are many probable words extracted from names, toponyms, and names of rivers mentioned in ancient sources. A number of possible Thracian words are found in inscriptions (most of them written with Greek script) on buildings, coins, and other artifacts.
Only four Thracian insciptions 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:
- ΡΟΛΙΣΤΕΝΑΣΝ / ΕΡΕΝΕΑΤΙΛ / ΤΕΑΝΗΣΚΟΑ / ΡΑΖΕΑΔΟΜ / ΕΑΝΤΙΛΕΖΥ / ΠΤΑΜΙΗΕ / ΡΑΖ / ΗΛΤΑ
- rolisteneasn /ereneatil / teanēskoa / razeadom / eantilezy / ptamiēe / raz / ēlta
The meaning of the inscription is not known, and it bears no resemblance to any known language. Thracologists such as 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 Kjolmen, 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. ΖΕΣΑ ΑΣΝ ΗΝΕΤΕΣΑ ΙΓΕΚ.Α / ΝΒΛΑΒΑΗΕΓΝ / ΝΘΑΣΝΛΕΤΕΔΝΘΕΔΝΕΙΝΔΑΚΑΤΡ.Σ
- ebar. zesa asn ēnetesa igek. a / nblabaēegn / 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)
- ΗΖΙΗ ..... ΔΕΛΕ / ΜΕΖΗΝΑΙ
- ēziē ..... dele / mezēnai
ΜΕΖΗΝΑΙ likely corresponds to Menzana, the Messapian "horse deity" to which horses were sacrificed, compared also to Albanian mes, mezi and Romanian mɨnz "colt", derived from PIE *mend(i)- "horse".
These are the longest inscriptions preserved. The remaining ones are mostly single words or names on vessels and other artefacts.
Classification
There are enough Thracian examples with characteristic Satem sound-shifts to include Thracian in the Satem group of Indo-European languages. Thracian is often considered to have been on the same language branch as the extinct Dacian language (viewed as a northern dialect of Thracian), though some Thracologists think Dacian may have been on a separate branch. Some scholars see a relation between Thracian and the ancient Macedonian language, or the Phrygian language.
Older models often linked Thracian to the Illyrian language, or to the Armenian language, but recent studies do not make such a connection apparent.
Relationships between Thracian and various living Indo-European languages have been proposed, but these connections are hard to prove, because not enough of the Thracian language has survived.
Connections to Albanian
Many Thracologists suggest that Thracian may be related to the Albanian language, and there are some cognates between Thracian and Albanian, but this may indicate only language interaction between the groups and not language affinity. There have been significant changes in the Albanian language since Thracian times, and a Thracian link is difficult to demonstrate. Still, the possible relation of Thracian to Albanian is given much consideration even today.
There are a restricted number of strong cognates between Thracian and Albanian: the Thracian inscription mezenai on the Duvanli gold ring has been unanimously linked to Albanian mëz (=colt), as well as to Romanian mânz (=colt), and it is agreed that Thracian mezenai meant 'horseman'; Thracian manteia (=blackberry) is agreed to be cognate to Albanian man (=mulberry). It may also be connected to the Slavic mantiya (=cloak). Sorin Paliga, a linguist at the academy of Bucharest, recently linked Romanian buza (=lip) and Albanian buzë (=lip) to the Thracian personal names Buzas, Buzo, Buzes. This word also exists in Macedonian(buza is also a Macedonian word for 'lip'). See Romanian substratum words.
Connections to Slavic and Baltic
In 1960 Vladimir Georgiev published his paper The Genesis of the Balkan peoples that proposed that Dacian and Thracian were on two different Indo-European branches. In 1975 Ivan Duridanov publishes his Ezikyt na trakite ('The Language of the Thracians' essay) in which a number of Thracian words (cited and conjectured) are given Balto-Slavic cognates and possible Balto-Slavic cognates.
Using Duridanov's Ezikyt na trakite essay as his basis, in the late 1980s and 1990s the linguist Harvey E. Mayer claimed that the Thracian language was a Southern Baltoidic language.
The linguist Mario Alinei recently (2003) published a paper that presents the claim that Thracian was much closer to Slavic than Baltic.
There is no agreement on whether Thracian was even very close to Balto-Slavic itself, let alone agreement on which of the two it was closest to. Many Thracologists place Thracian on its own Satem language branch, which may have shared a number of points in common with Balto-Slavic, Albanian, and Phrygian.
Though many cognates between Balto-Slavic and Thracian appear to exist, no conclusive evidence has arisen in support of a very close relation between Thracian and Balto-Slavic, and the longer Thracian inscriptions that are known (if indeed considered as Thracian) are not at all close to Baltic, Slavic, or any other known language [2], and in fact they have not been deciphered aside from perhaps a few words.
Thracian as a Centum language
Recently Sorin Olteanu, a Romanian linguist and thracologist, has proposed that the Thracian (as well as the Dacian) language was a Centum language in its earlier period, and developed Satem features over time [3]. One of the arguments for this idea is that there are many cognates between Thracian and Ancient Greek. There are also substratum words in the Romanian language that are cited as evidence of the genetic relationship of the Thracian language to ancient Greek and the ancient Macedonian language (the extinct language or Greek dialect of Macedon), and perhaps to other Centum language branches.
Geographic distribution
Thracian was spoken in the territory of today's Bulgaria, Romania, Macedonia, Moldova, parts of Serbia and Hungary, Northern Greece and North-Western Turkey.
Vocabulary
The most reliable Thracian words are the words which have been explicitly cited and described as Thracian by the ancient authors. There are not many such cited words. Elements appearing in typical Thracian two-component geographical names (for example, Poltymbria) are another source for the reconstructed vocabulary.
The Thracian vocabulary includes as well many more words whose meanings are conjectured, speculative, or disputed. Indeed, their status as actual words (as opposed to parts of words) is speculative in many cases. Most of the words are definitely of Indo-European origin. Some of the cited Thracian words have been linked to Baltic words. A Thracian noun, brynchos, ('guitar') has been linked to the Romanian noun broancǎ ('stringed instrument') and the Russian infinitive brynchati ('playing on a stringed instrument').
Another source for the Thracian vocabulary are words of unknown or uncertain etymology found in Bulgarian, Romanian, Macedonian, and Aromanian, which may be substratum words inherited from the Thracians.
See also
External links
The following links present a sample of the various hypotheses concerning the nature of the Thracian language.
- The Language of the Thracians, an English translation of Ivan Duridanov's 1975 essay, Ezikyt na trakite
- Thraco-Dacian and its connection to ancient Greek
- choose the Thracian glossary from the list
