Talk:Dacian language

According to archaeological work cited by Ralph Hoddinott, the last Dacians held out in the territory corresponding pretty much exactly to what is now Moldavia into the 4th century ad (300-400 ad) at least, but beyond that "dating depends on how far the Carpic culture can be considered a seperate entity after the Gothic arrival". Here again, speaking of the last archaeological layers "whether there is any overall ethnic basis for the horizon or whether it represents a varying amalgam of invaders and a North Thracian (by this he means Dacian as elsewhere in his book) or other substratum, all "barbarians" but in different ways reflecting the influence of the Roman world, it is generally agreed that, at least west of the Dneister (=Moldavia), a Thracian element remained to makes it contribution." Alexander 007 04:53, 5 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Some romanian "lingvist" says that the free dacians remained in small comunities across what is now Romania until the XVII-XVIII century, when they where finnaly asimillated byt the romanians.His argument is the word "curca" (turkey in romanian, the animal not the country), which would have been invented by those "dacian remnants".Preety fantastic this theory for me, but whorth to try at least analizing this word "curca". —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 62.231.84.73 (talk • contribs) 30 Aug 2005.

Unlike the Gaulish language, which is attested, ideas concerning the affiliation of the Dacian language are not in agreement, so as said before, writing/organizing this article presents a challenge. I find it almost impossible to separate the Dacian language from the scholars who have written of it, so I will assemble a ==Bibliography== section in the article (and eventually, a ==References== section). Tomaschek and Hasdeu would be two early figures. Alexander 007 20:36, 30 January 2006 (UTC)

79.167.154.190 (talk) 16:47, 22 August 2013 (UTC) About the bibliography: "According to Georgiev, the likely IE root-word for Axios is *n̥-ks(e)y-no ("dark, black" cf. Avestan axsaena).[125] On the basis of the known rules of formation of IE composite words, Axiopa would break down as axi = "black" and opa or upa = "water" in Dacian; the -polis element is ignored, as it is a Greek suffix meaning "city". The assumption is then validated by examining cognate placenames. There was another Balkan river known in antiquity as Axios, which is today called Crna reka (Slavic for "black river"): although it was in Dardania (Rep. of Macedonia), a mainly Illyrian-speaking region."

"The axi element is also validated by the older Greek name for the Black Sea, Ἄξεινος πόντος – Axeinos pontos, later altered to the euphemism Εὔξεινος πόντος Euxeinos pontos meaning "Hospitable sea". The opa/upa element is validated by the Lithuanian cognate upė, meaning "water").[126] The second component of the town's name *-upolis may be a diminutive of *upa cf. Lithuanian diminutive upelis."

1) This is incorrect. I'm Greek. Greek is my native language. So I know that the "axi" element (does it exist?) is not contained in the greek word "Άξεινος Πόντος" (Axeinos Pontos) because in this word there is only the greek element "a" that has negative meaning and makes any word having the opposite meaning. For example the greek word "κύρος" (kiros) means "glamour, honor, valid" but "άκυρος (ά-κυρος)" (akiros, a-kiros) means "not having glamour, honor, not being valid". Furthermore "ηθικός" (ithikos) means "moral" but "ανήθικος, α-ν.ήθικος' (anithikos, a-n-ithikos) ("n" exist because of the vowel "i" anithikos)means "immoral". So "Ά-ξεινος Πόντος" "A-xeinos Pontos" (α + ξειν, ξειν=ξένος=φιλόξενος=hospitable in English) means "not hospitable sea" but "Εύ-ξεινος Πόντος" (Ef-xeinos Pontos)(Εύ=καλός=good + ξειν=xein=ξένος=φιλόξενος=hospitable) means "Hospitable Sea" (Ef + xein). Finally it must be clear that "α" in greek is exacly what "dis, im, in, un" are in english! Generally "α" and "ef" just determine the word's "xein" meaning! 2) "Polis" (Πόλις) means city in greek. So "upolis" is not slavic, or dacian or something but greek. "Αξιού-πολις" "Axiou-polis" means "the city of Axios" (Axios αξιός is a greek river) 3) "Αξιός", "Axios" isn't dacian or something. It derives from the greek word "άxios", "άξιος" meaning "able, powerful".

SO PLEASE CORRECT THE ARTICLE!

I certainly agree with most of the passage about how the presumed "substratum" words in Romanian don't have a clear or solid link to what we know of Dacian, and how many in the past assigned the words of unknown origin to Dacian by default, which isn't necessarily right. In some cases they may be Albanian borrowings by the proto-Romanians or Vlachs there, depending on which theory one subscribes to, but that's another heated topic that concerns the "origin or Romanians" page more. I also agree there is an underlying effort by many Romanian scholars in the past to heighten or emphasize connections that aren't very strong realistically, and believe Lucian Boia had some points, especially when regarding the fringe theories like the link to proto-Italic with Dacian, making Latin ultimately descended from it, which is complete pseudo-linguistics.

However that being said I think there's got to be a better way to word or organize parts of the following paragraph:

"Despite strenuous efforts by Romanian scholars to prove a Dacian linguistic "substratum" for the modern Romanian language, there is in reality little hard evidence that Romanian is linked to the ancient Dacian language at all. None of the few Dacian words known (mainly plant-names) and none of the Dacian words reconstructed from placenames have specific correspondent words in Romanian (as opposed to general correspondents in several IE languages). Words defined as "autocthonous" (i.e. indigenous) by DEX are assumed by several scholars to be of Dacian origin, but there is no proof that they are. They could, in some cases, be of pre-Indo-European origin (i.e. truly indigenous, from Stone Age Carpathian languages), or, if clearly Indo-European, be of Sarmatian origin. It seems plausible that a few Dacian words may have survived in the speech of Carpathian inhabitants to be imported later into the Romanian language, when the latter became the predominant language in the region. But this incidental connection hardly qualifies as a linguistic substratum. (In contrast, Slavic has a far stronger claim to constitute the substratum of Romanian, since 10-15% of the Romanian lexicon, numerous grammatical features, and a majority of Romanian placenames, are of Slavic origin: see Slavic influence on Romanian). In any case, there is no genetic relationship between ancient Dacian and modern Romanian: Romanian is descended from the Italic branch of IE, through Latin and proto-Romance; the classification of Dacian remains uncertain, but all linguists agree that it did not belong to the Italic branch."

I understand what they're trying to say regarding the technically stronger possible claim that Slavic has to being a substratum in Romanian, but I could see how this could be misleading to people who aren't familiar with these issues at all or the history of the region, who might actually misunderstand it as Slavic having a strong possibility for being the substratum. While this is technically not impossible, historically it does not seem very probable at all for a Slavic people to have been directly Latinized, since the ancient Romans hardly made direct contact with true Slavic people during the classical era (who weren't in Dacia or the Balkans at the time), and Romanian as a Romance language underwent many of the same Late and Vulgar Latin and early proto-Romance transitions and evolutions that were paralleled other Romance languages. It would have been a rather late start for this process if it only began in the 6th century when the first Slavs moved into the Dacia and Balkan region, making it highly improbable. Unless they're hinting that Romanians were a Slavic people who later had an element of Balkan Latin added or forced onto their language, but this doesn't make much sense either and there are numerous problems with that. Sound shifts from Slavic are different from those of Latin, indicating a probably later layer. Additionally, while there are Slavic grammatical influences in Romanian, this doesn't necessarily constitute a substratum, and there are stronger influences from the Balkan sprachbund (which is usually explained as being of Paleo-Balkanic origin, or at least linked with Albanian, rather than being of truly Slavic origin, despite its presence in Bulgarian/Macedonian, some Serbian etc. So while I'm not saying Romanian is linked with Dacian as far as we know, I do believe there is some kind of paleo-Balkanic influence on it) I realize the person who wrote that wasn't trying to suggest or say that it was actually the case that Slavic is a substratum, and simply that it had more of an impact on Romanian than Dacian, but I feel like the way it was worded wasn't necessary.

Also the way some parts of the passage were written seem to be subtle jabs at Romanian academic and scholarly work in the past overall; while I agree there are plenty of problems with it, the tone doesn't seem right here. There are also no citations in that whole section either. And why does that paragraph belong in the Baltic theory section necessarily? Whether or not it has any substratum link to Romanian doesn't seem to have much to do with whether Dacian was possibly originally linked with Baltic languages, unless they're trying to say that Baltic grammar would be more apparent in Romanian if it was the case that Dacian was a substratum for it. Just wanted to check to see if people had any opinions on this before just editing, thanks, Word dewd544 (talk) 21:11, 27 November 2012 (UTC)

A few more things: I don't know if Romanian necessarily even has a substratum that's truly proven really. I don't know why people try to hard to find one or prove it was one language or the other. We're probably looking at mostly later additions to the language that happened to have significant and deep impacts.

Also, there's a part that seems to assume most of the cognates with Albanian words were borrowed from Albanian. It may be true for many or even most of them, but I wouldn't throw them all in that category, and it hasn't been definitively proven in general. Addtitionally, it says the borrowing was one-sided. That's true, but there were also some early Romance words that entered Albanian probably from interaction with proto-Romanians (separate from the larger amount of borrowings Albanian made directly from Latin). Word dewd544 (talk) 17:51, 2 December 2012 (UTC)

After I added a "Citation needed" template to the claim that most Romanian place names are of Slavic origin, somebody removed it and added a link to an article about Slavic influence on Romanian. However, nothing in that article supports the claim, so I have put the template back on. I have no shares in the question but a profound interest in toponymy, so it would be great to see a link to a reliable source. --Thathánka Íyotake (talk) 17:40, 29 November 2012 (UTC) PS: Yes, the article about Slavic influence says that no place names known from Latin sources survived - which is an uncontested fact - but it does not follow that a majority of all place names of Romania are therefore Slavic. For example, East Romance or Romanian names could have been formed at a later stage. So a source would be great. --Thathánka Íyotake (talk) 18:01, 29 November 2012 (UTC)

The majority of Romanian place names are Romanian, they're either a geographical description, like White River or Long Valley or derived from a family name Ciocăneşti = Hammerville, probably from the name of someone known as Ciocan (Hammer). Slavic placenames are found throughout the country, but they're not the majority anywhere. bogdan (talk) 22:37, 29 November 2012 (UTC)

Intersting, thanks. It would be great with a source, though. Unfortunately, Balkan toponomy seems to be utterly neglected by linguists/philologians--Thathánka Íyotake (talk) 05:31, 30 November 2012 (UTC)

Bogdan, the example you have chosen, Ciocanesti, disproves your own argument, since ciocan derives from a Slavonic word meaning "hammer". — Preceding unsigned comment added by 94.175.177.125 (talk) 20:32, 17 April 2013 (UTC) This word was then adopted into Romanian. The point is that most Rom. placenames are based on Slavic words, although in many cases they have been "romanianised" by slightly modifying them, or giving them Rom. endings (e.g. -esti); or alternatively, translating them into Rom. (but the Slavic original appears in 16th/17th century maps)