Thracian language
The Thracian language is an extinct and poorly attested language, spoken in ancient times in Southeast Europe by the Thracians. The linguistic affinities of the Thracian language are poorly understood, but it is generally agreed that it was an Indo-European language.
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, Latin, Syriac, Egyptian, and Bessian – a Thracian dialect.
A classification put forward by Harvey Mayer, suggests that Thracian 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, Romania, North Macedonia, Northern Greece, European Turkey and in parts of Bithynia.Remnants of the Thracian language
Little is known for certain about the Thracian language, since no text has been satisfactorily deciphered. Some of the longer inscriptions may be Thracian in origin but they may simply reflect 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.
Besides the aforementioned inscriptions, Thracian may be attested through personal names, toponyms, hydronyms, phytonyms, divine names, etc. and by a small number of words cited in Ancient Greek texts as being specifically Thracian.
There are 23 words mentioned by ancient sources considered explicitly of Thracian origin and known meaning. Of the words that are preserved in ancient glossaries, in particular by Hesychius, only three dozen can be considered "Thracian". However, Indo-European scholars have pointed out that "even the notion that what the ancients called "Thracian" was a single entity is unproven." The table below lists potential cognates from Indo-European languages, but most of them have not found general acceptance within Indo-European scholarship. Not all lexical items in Thracian are assumed to be from the Proto-Indo-European language, some non-IE lexical items in Thracian are to be expected.
Inscriptions
The following are the longest inscriptions preserved. The remaining ones are mostly single words or names on vessels and other artifacts. No translation has been accepted by the larger Indo-European community of scholars.Ezerovo inscription
Only four Thracian inscriptions of any length have been found. The first is a gold ring found in 1912 in the village of Ezerovo ; the ring was dated to the 5th century BC. The ring features an inscription in a Greek script consisting of 8 lines, the eighth of which is located on the rim of the rotating disk; it reads without any spaces between:ΡΟΛΙΣΤΕΝΕΑΣΝ / ΕΡΕΝΕΑΤΙΛ / ΤΕΑΝΗΣΚΟΑ / ΡΑΖΕΑΔΟΜ / ΕΑΝΤΙΛΕΖΥ / ΠΤΑΜΙΗΕ / ΡΑΖ // ΗΛΤΑ
Dimitar Dechev separates the words as follows:
Kyolmen inscription
A second inscription, hitherto undeciphered, was found in 1965 near the village of, Varbitsa Municipality, 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:i.e.
Duvanlii inscription
A third inscription is again on a ring, found in, Kaloyanovo Municipality, 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 :The word mezenai is interpreted to mean 'Horseman', and a cognate to Illyrian Menzanas ; Albanian mëz 'foal'; Romanian mînz 'colt, foal'; Latin mannus 'small horse, pony'; Gaulish manduos 'pony'.
Classification
Due to a paucity of evidence required to establish a linguistic connection, the Thracian language, in modern 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 idea that Thracian was close to Phrygian is no longer popular and has mostly been discarded.There is a fringe idea that Thraco-Dacian forms a branch of Indo-European along with Baltic, but a Balto-Slavic linguistic unity is so overwhelmingly accepted by the Indo-European linguistic community that this hypothesis does not pass muster.
Decline of the Thracians and their language
According to the 19th-century Greek educator Vlasios Skordelis, when Thracians were subjugated by Alexander the Great 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 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.Another author believes that the interior of Thrace was never Romanized or Hellenized. This was followed also by Slavonization. According to Weithmann 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 abandoned the land or were killed. Because Pulpudeva survived as Plovdiv in Slavic languages, not under Philippopolis, some authors suggest that Thracian was not completely obliterated in the 7th century.
General references
*Inscriptions
- Accessed July 7, 2021.
- "II. Thracian Inscriptions". In: Sears, Matthew, et al. Ancient Thrace and the Classical World: Treasures from Bulgaria, Romania, and Greece. First Edition ed., Getty Publications, 2025. pp. 129–132. https://muse.jhu.edu/book/124308.
Onomastics
*Lexicon
- Mihaylova, Bilyana; Mircheva, Albena. "The Thracian Glosses Revisited". In: . Volume 2. Sofia: St. Kliment Ohridski University Press, 2022. pp. 209–218..