Thracian language

Thracian
Region	Bulgaria, European Turkey, parts of Southern Serbia, parts of the region of Macedonia (including Paeonia), regions in Northern Greece, parts of Romania, parts of Bithynia in Anatolia. Probably also spoken in parts of Dardania.
Extinct	6th century AD
Language family	Indo-European Daco-Thracian (?) Thracian
Writing system	Greek
Language codes
ISO 639-3	txh
Linguist List	txh
Glottolog	thra1250

The Thracian language (/ˈθreɪʃən/) 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.

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, Latin, 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theory has not achieved the status of a general consensus among linguists, and Mayer's work in that article is largely outdated, unfounded, or racist. 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 (North-Western Asiatic Turkey).

Remnants of the Thracian language

Limits of the (southern) Thracian linguistic territory according to Ivan Duridanov, 1985

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 and that it was a satemized language by the time it is attested.

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.

Word	Meaning	Attested by	Cognates	Notes
ἄσα (asa)	colt’s foot (Bessi)	Dioskurides	Lit. dial. asỹs ‘horse-tail, Equisetum’, Latv. aši, ašas ‘horse-tail, sedge, rush’	The etymology of both Baltic words is unclear and extra-Baltic cognates have yet to be established
βόλινθος (bólinthos)	aurochs, European bison	Aristotle	Proto-Slavic *volъ ("ox"). Per Beekes, Pre-Greek.	See also Gk. βοῦς 'cow', but Latv. govs ' id ' both < PIE *gwṓws. Proto-Slavic *vòlъ has no extra-Slavic cognates.
βρία (bría)	unfortified village	Hesychius, compare the Toponyms Πολτυμβρία, Σηλυ(μ)μβρία, and Βρέα in Thrace.	Compared to Greek ῥίον (ríon; "peak, foothills") and Tocharian A ri, B riye ("town") as if < *urih₁-. Alternatively, compare Proto-Celtic *brix- ("hill").	Gk ῥίον has no clear etymology. The Toch lemmata may be related.
βρίζα (bríza)	rye	Galen	Perhaps of Eastern origin, compare Greek ὄρυζα, Sanskrit vrīhí- ("rice").	The 'rice' words in Gk and IIr are Wandelworts. The Gk word may be borrowed from an Eastern Iranian language.
βρυνχός (brynkhós)	kithara		Compared with Slavic *bręčati "to ring".	The Proto-Slavic lemma is reconstructed based exclusively on Serbo-Croatian brecati 'twang, be insolent, etc.' and consequently may not even be reconstructable to its own proto-language as there are no external or internal comparanda. It may be onomatopoetic in nature. Furthermore, there is a grave issue with the inscription, as Gk /ŋ/ is written with a gamma before a velar, i.e., this word should be written βρυγχός, which it is not.
βρῦτος (brŷtos)	beer of barley	many	Slavic "vriti" (to boil), Germanic *bruþa- ("broth"), Old Irish bruth ("glow"), Latin dē-frŭtum ("must boiled down").
dinupula, si/nupyla	wild melon	Pseudoapuleus	Lithuanian šùnobuolas, lit. ("dog’s apple"), or with Slavic *dynja ("melon"). Per Vladimir Georgiev, derived from *kun-ābōlo- or *kun-ābulo- 'hound's apple'.	Proto-Slavic *dyña (from earlier *kъdyña is most likely borrowed from Gk. κῠδώνῐον via Lat. cydōnia
γέντον (génton)	meat	Herodian., Suid., Hesych	Possibly descended from IE *gʷʰn̥tó- 'strike, kill', cf. Sanskrit hatá- ‘hit, killed’	The adjective *gʷʰn̥tós in the zero-grade has an *-s in the nom.sg., whereas in Thracian the word ends in a nasal, which is a serious issue that requires morphological remodelling in Thracian for it to be posited as the starting point for Thracian γέντον. Furthermore, the e-grade vowel of the Thracian potential avatar remains to be explained as well if from an original PIE *gʷʰn̥tós.
καλαμίνδαρ (kalamíndar)	plane-tree (Edoni)	Hesych.
κη̃μος (kêmos)	a kind of fruit with follicle	Phot. Lex.
κτίσται (ktístai)	Ctistae	Strabo
midne (in a Latin inscription, thus not written with Gk alphabet)	village	inscription from Rome	Latvian mītne 'a place of stay', Avestan maēϑana- 'dwelling'
Πολτυμ(βρία) (poltym-bría)	board fence, a board tower		Old English speld 'wood, log'	The OE lemma is poorly understood and extra-Germanic cognates are few and far between. OE speld may have descended from a PIE root *(s)pley- which is poorly attested and does not seem to be a formal match to the Thracian term.
ῥομφαία (rhomphaía)	broadsword		Compared with Latin rumpō ("to rupture"), Slavic: Russian разрубать, Polish rąbać ("to hack", "to chop", "to slash"), Polish rębajło ("eager swordsman"), Serbo-Croatian ’’rmpalija’’ ("bruiser")	The Slavic terms here must come from a medial *-bh-, whereas Lat. rumpō 'I break' must descend from a medial *-p- and therefore those words aren't even cognate with each other, let alone with the Thracian term.
σκάλμη (skálmē)	knife, sword	Soph. y Pollux, Marcus Anton., Hesych., Phot. L	Albanian shkallmë ("sword"), Old Norse skolmr 'cleft'	The Albanian term is likely a secondary innovation. ON skolmr is unclear and has no extra-Germanic cognates; it is unlikely to be related to the Thracian term.
σκάρκη (skárkē)	a silver coin	Hesych., Phot. Lex.
σπίνος (spínos)	'a kind of stone, which blazes when water touches it' (i.e. 'lime')	Arist.	PIE *k̑witn̥os 'white, whitish', Greek τίτανος (Attic) and κίττανος (Doric) 'gypsum, chalk, lime'. Although from the same PIE root, Albanian shpâ(ni) 'lime, tartar' and Greek σπίνος 'lime' derive from a secondary origin as they were probably borrowed from Thracian due to phonetic reasons
τορέλλη (toréllē)	a refrain of lament mourn song	Hesych.
ζαλμός (zalmós)	animal hide	Porphyr.	Per Georgiev, derived from *kolmo-s. Related to Gothic hilms, German Helm and Old Iranian sárman 'protection'.	Thracian initial ζ- can either be related to PIE *ḱ (as in these 'cognates' and several below) or to *ǵh-/*gh- as in the following entry, but not both. There does not exist an OIr word sárman, but a word śárman does exist in Sanskrit. However, Sanskrit ś- must go back to a PIE *ḱ-, not *k- as Georgiev states.
ζειρά (zeira)	long robe worn by Arabs and Thracians	Hdt., Xen., Hesych.	Per Georgiev, related to Greek χείρ (kheir) and Phrygian ζειρ (zeir) 'hand'.	See above. The meaning of Phrygian ζειρα(ι) is unknown, not 'hand' as Georgiev believes.
ζελᾶ (zelâ), also ζῆλα (zêla), ζηλᾱς (zelās)	wine	many	Compared with Greek χάλις (khális; "unblended wine") and κάλιθος (kálithos; "wine")	See above.
ζετραία (zetraía)	pot	Pollux	Per Georgiev, related to Greek χύτρα (khútra) 'pot'.	See above.
zibythides	the noble, most holy one	Hesych.	Lith. žibùtė ("shining")

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

The Ring of Ezerovo, found in 1912

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 Bulgaria); 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 (Germanised as D. Detschew) separates the words as follows:

ΡΟΛΙΣΤΕΝΕΑΣ

Rolisteneas

ΝΕΡΕΝΕΑ

Nerenea

ΤΙΛΤΕΑΝ

tiltean

ΗΣΚΟ

ēsko

ΑΡΑΖΕΑ

Arazea

ΔΟΜΕΑΝ

domean

ΤΙΛΕΖΥΠΤΑ

Tilezypta

ΜΙΗ

miē

ΕΡΑ

era

ΖΗΛΤΑ

zēlta

ΡΟΛΙΣΤΕΝΕΑΣ ΝΕΡΕΝΕΑ ΤΙΛΤΕΑΝ ΗΣΚΟ ΑΡΑΖΕΑ ΔΟΜΕΑΝ ΤΙΛΕΖΥΠΤΑ ΜΙΗ ΕΡΑ ΖΗΛΤΑ

Rolisteneas Nerenea tiltean ēsko Arazea domean Tilezypta miē era zēlta

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, 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:

ΙΛΑΣΝΛΕΤΕΔΝΛΕΔΝΕΝΙΔΑΚΑΤΡΟΣΟ

ΕΒΑ·ΡΟΖΕΣΑΣΝΗΝΕΤΕΣΑΙΓΕΚΟΑ

ΝΒΛΑΒΑΗΓΝ

i.e.

ilasnletednlednenidakatroso

eba·rozesasnēnetesaigekoa

nblabaēgn

Duvanlii inscription

A third inscription is again on a ring, found in Duvanlii, 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 (16 out of the initial 21):

ΗΥΖΙΗ

ēuziē

.....

.....

ΔΕΛΕ

dele

/

/

ΜΕΖΗΝΑΙ

mezēnai

ΗΥΖΙΗ ..... ΔΕΛΕ / ΜΕΖΗΝΑΙ

ēuziē ..... dele / mezēnai

Classification

Main article: Classification of Thracian

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 belief that Thracian was close to Phrygian is no longer popular and has mostly been discarded.

Much of the information in the following table is either outdated or entirely incorrect and can be contested by looking at a dictionary of any of the languages in question or any of the four major textbooks of Indo-European. Some of the biggest issues: Tocharian collapsed voiceless, voiced, and voices aspirates into voiceless stops; Armenian doesn't have aspirated voiceless stops (but rather ejective);; the anaptyctic vowels of Germanic, Balto-Slavic, and Italic that developed from syllabic resonants are all different (but are shown as being the same because the table is badly constructed and -oR- does not equal -uR-); we know what happened with the dental clusters medially in Hittite and it's -zz-. Furthermore, there are no data or attestations of Pelasgian whatsoever and its inclusion in the table is confusing. Due to these major omissions and errors, this table is unlikely to be used as a datum for Thracian historical phonology.

Language/difference according to Duridanov (1985)

Change	o > a	r > ir, ur (or) l > il, ul (ol)	m > im, um (om) n > in, un (on)	kʷ, gʷ, gʷʰ > k, g (k), g	ḱ, ǵ, ǵʰ > s (p), z (d)	p, t, k > pʰ, tʰ, kʰ	b, d, g > p, t, k	bʰ, dʰ, gʰ > b, d, g	sr > str	tt, dt > st
Thracian	+	+	+	+	+	+	+	+	+	+
Dacian	+	+	+	+	+	-	-	+	+	-
Balto-Slavic	+	+	+	+	+	-	-	+	-/+	+
Pelasgian	+	+	+	+	+	+	+	+	?	?
Albanian	+	+	-	+/-	+/-	-	-	+	-	-
Germanic	+	+	+	-	-	-	+	+	+	-
Indo-Iranian	+	-	-	+/-	+	-	-	+/-	-	+/-
Greek	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	+
Phrygian	-	-	-	-	+	+	+	+	-	?
Armenian	-	-	-	-	+	+	+	-	-	?
Italic	-	+	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-
Celtic	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	+	-	-
Hittite	+	-	-	-	-	-	+	+	?	?
Tocharian	+/-	-	-	-	-	-	+	+	-	?

There is a fringe belief 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.

Fate of the Thracians and their language

According to Skordelis, when Thracians were subjected 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 (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.

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

See also

• Dacian language
• List of reconstructed Dacian words
• Thraco-Illyrian
• Illyrian languages
• Paeonian language
• Phrygian language
• Ancient Macedonian language
• Thraco-Roman
• Paleo-Balkan languages
• Proto-Indo-European language
• Proto-Albanian language
• Proto-Balto-Slavic language
• Proto-Greek language

General references

• Beekes, Robert S. P. (2009). Etymological Dictionary of Greek. Brill Academic Publishers. ISBN 978-90-04-17418-4.

Further reading

• Alexianu, Marius-Tiberius (2008). "Une catégorie d'esclaves thraces: les halônetoi". La fin du statut servile? Affranchissement, libération, abolition. Volume II. Besançon 15-17 décembre 2005. Actes des colloques du Groupe de recherche sur l'esclavage dans l'antiquité (in French). Vol. 30. Besançon: Presses Universitaires de Franche-Comté. pp. 487–492.
• Dana, Dan (2005). "Sur quelques noms fantômes thraces et daces". Zeitschrift für Papyrologie und Epigraphik (in French). 154: 293–298. ISSN 0084-5388. JSTOR 20191011.
• Dana, Dan (2012). "Un lexique des noms thraces: prolégomènes critiques". Revue de philologie, de littérature et d'histoire anciennes (in French). LXXXVI (1): 17–42. doi:10.3917/phil.861.0017. ISSN 0035-1652.
• Dana, Dan (2011-01-01). "Onomasticon Thracicum (Onom Thrac). Répertoire des noms indigènes de Thrace, Macédoine Orientale, Mésies, Dacie et Bithynie". Ancient Civilizations from Scythia to Siberia (in French). 17 (1): 25–45. doi:10.1163/092907711X575313. ISSN 0929-077X.
• Duridanov, Ivan (1969). Die Thrakisch- und Dakisch-Baltischen Sprachbeziehungen [Thracian and Dacian Baltic Language Contacts]. Other. Verlag der Bulgarischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, Sofia.
• Georgiev, Vladimir (July 1966). "The Genesis of the Balkan Peoples". The Slavonic and East European Review. 44 (103): 285–297. ISSN 0037-6795. JSTOR 4205776. Retrieved 31 May 2021.
• Georgiev, V. I. Introduction to the History of the Indo-European Languages. Sofia: 1981.
• Holst, J. H. "Armenische Studien". Wiesbaden: 2009.
• Kretschmer, Paul (1914). "Die Erste Thrakische Inschrift". Glotta (in German). 6 (1): 74–79. JSTOR 40264867. Accessed July 7, 2021.
• Mihaylova, Bilyana; Mircheva, Albena. "The Thracian Glosses Revisited". In: Ancient Thrace: Myth and Reality: Proceedings of the Thirteenth International Congress of Thracology, September 3–7, 2017. Volume 2. Sofia: St. Kliment Ohridski University Press, 2022. pp. 209–218. ISBN 978-954-07-5624-0.
• Krimpas, Panagiotis G. (2022). "Four centuries of theorizing on "Thracian" language(s): A critical new look". Balkanistica. 35: 69–110.
• Orel, Vladimir E. (1997). "The Inscription from Kjolmen". Mediterranean Language Review. 9: 77–82. ISSN 0724-7567. JSTOR 10.13173/medilangrevi.9.1997.0077.
• Paliga, Sorin (1987). "Thracian Terms for 'Township' and 'Fortress', and Related Place-Names". World Archaeology. 19 (1): 23–29. doi:10.1080/00438243.1987.9980021. ISSN 0043-8243. JSTOR 124496. Retrieved October 16, 2020.
• Russu, I. I. Limba Traco-Dacilor / Die Sprache der Thrako-Daker, Bucharest (1967, 1969).
• Sotiroff, George (1963). "A tentative glossary of Thracian words". Canadian Journal of Linguistics. 8 (2): 97–110. doi:10.1017/S000841310000520X. S2CID 148625633.
• Sowa, Wojciech (2020-05-01). "Thracian". Palaeohispanica. Revista sobre lenguas y culturas de la Hispania Antigua (20): 787–817. doi:10.36707/palaeohispanica.v0i20.377. ISSN 1578-5386.
• Witczak, Krzysztof (2012). "Studies in Thracian vocabulary (I-VII)". Studia Indogermanica Lodziensia. VII: 153–168. ISSN 1506-7254. Retrieved 31 May 2021.
• Yanakieva, Svetlana (2018). "The Thracian Language". ORPHEUS: Journal of Indo-European and Thracian Studies. 25: 26–68.

External links

• The Language of the Thracians, an English translation of Ivan Duridanov's 1975 essay Ezikyt na trakite
• Thracian glossary
• Palaeolexicon – Word study tool of ancient languages (including Thracian dictionary)