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.
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.
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.
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
I am Rolisteneas, a descendant of Nereneas; Tilezypta, an Arazian woman, delivered me to the ground.
A second inscription, hitherto undeciphered, was found in 1965 near the village of Kyolmen [bg], 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
.....
.....
ΗΥΖΙΗ ..... ΔΕΛΕ / ΜΕΖΗΝΑΙ
ēuziē ..... dele / mezēnai
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.
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.
Another author believes that the interior of Thrace was never 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.
Fortson 2004, p. 404 - Fortson, B. (2004). Indo-European Language and Culture: an Introduction. p. 404.
Arnold Joseph Toynbee, Some problems of Greek history, Oxford University Press, 1969, p. 56: In the late sixth century there were still Bessian-speaking monks in the monastery at the foot of Mount Sinai (see P. Geyer Itinera Hierosolymitana, Vienna 1898, Templaky, pp. 184; 213.)
Oliver Nicholson as ed., The Oxford Dictionary of Late Antiquity; Oxford University Press, 2018; ISBN 0192562460, p. 234:...The "Piacenza Pilgrim (56) mentioned Bessian-speaking monks on the Sinai Peninsula. ABA J. J. Wilkes, The Illyrians (1992)... /wiki/ISBN_(identifier)
J. P. Mallory, Douglas Q. Adams as ed., Encyclopedia of Indo-European Culture; Taylor & Francis, 1997; ISBN 1884964982, p. 576: The most recently attested Thracian personal names are found in two monasteries in the Near East (the Bessi of Mt Sinai) dating to the sixth century AD. /wiki/ISBN_(identifier)
Bessian is the language of the Bessi, one of the most prominent Thracian tribes. The origin of the monasteries is explained in a mediaeval hagiography written by Symeon the Metaphrast in Vita Sancti Theodosii Coenobiarchae in which he wrote that Saint Theodosius founded on the shore of the Dead Sea a monastery with four churches, in each being spoken a different language, among which Bessian was found. The place at which the monasteries were founded was called "Cutila", which may be a Thracian name. /wiki/Symeon_the_Metaphrast
Mayer, Harvey E. "Dacian and Thracian as Southern Baltoidic Archived 2017-12-16 at the Wayback Machine." In: Lituanus: Lithuanian Quarterly Journal of Arts and Sciences. Volume 38, No. 2 – Summer 1992.. Editor of this issue: Antanas Klimas, University of Rochester. ISSN 0024-5089. 1992 Lituanus Foundation, Inc. http://www.lituanus.org/1992_2/92_2_02.htm
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Archaeology and language: the puzzle of Indo-European origins, Colin Renfrew, CUP Archive, 1990, ISBN 0-521-38675-6, p. 71. https://books.google.com/books?id=R645AAAAIAAJ&pg=PA71
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Duridanov, Ivan. "The Language of the Thracians". Retrieved 2007-01-14. http://members.tripod.com/~Groznijat/thrac/thrac_3.html
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Georgiev, Vladimir I.. "Thrakisch und Dakisch". Band 29/2. Teilband Sprache und Literatur (Sprachen und Schriften [Forts.]), edited by Wolfgang Haase, Berlin, Boston: De Gruyter, 1983. pp. 1151–1153. doi:10.1515/9783110847031-015 /wiki/Doi_(identifier)
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Fraenkel, Ernst (1962). Litauisches Etymologisches Wörterbuch. p. 124.
Beekes 2009, p. 225 - Beekes, Robert S. P. (2009). Etymological Dictionary of Greek. Brill Academic Publishers. ISBN 978-90-04-17418-4.
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Adams, D. (2013). A Dictionary of Tocharian B: Enlarged and Greatly Revised. p. 582.
Beekes 2009, pp. 1112–1113 - Beekes, Robert S. P. (2009). Etymological Dictionary of Greek. Brill Academic Publishers. ISBN 978-90-04-17418-4.
Georgiev, Vladimir I.. "Thrakisch und Dakisch". Band 29/2. Teilband Sprache und Literatur (Sprachen und Schriften [Forts.]), edited by Wolfgang Haase, Berlin, Boston: De Gruyter, 1983. p. 1152. doi:10.1515/9783110847031-015 /wiki/Doi_(identifier)
Georgiev, Vladimir I.. "Thrakisch und Dakisch". Band 29/2. Teilband Sprache und Literatur (Sprachen und Schriften [Forts.]), edited by Wolfgang Haase, Berlin, Boston: De Gruyter, 1983. p. 1152. doi:10.1515/9783110847031-015 /wiki/Doi_(identifier)
Valdés (2017) cites other cognates to the root: Celtic deity Borvo and Latin ferveo "I boil" (from e-grade).[22] /wiki/Borvo
Georgiev, Vladimir I.. "Thrakisch und Dakisch". Band 29/2. Teilband Sprache und Literatur (Sprachen und Schriften [Forts.]), edited by Wolfgang Haase, Berlin, Boston: De Gruyter, 1983. p. 1152. doi:10.1515/9783110847031-015 /wiki/Doi_(identifier)
Vasmer, M. (1973). Этимологический словарь русского языка [Etymological Dictionary of the Russian Language] (in Russian), ed. Oleg Trubačev.
Fortson 2004, p. 404 - Fortson, B. (2004). Indo-European Language and Culture: an Introduction. p. 404.
Georgiev, Vladimir I.. "Thrakisch und Dakisch". Band 29/2. Teilband Sprache und Literatur (Sprachen und Schriften [Forts.]), edited by Wolfgang Haase, Berlin, Boston: De Gruyter, 1983. p. 1152. doi:10.1515/9783110847031-015 /wiki/Doi_(identifier)
Rix, H.; et al. (2001). Lexikon der indogermanischen Verben [Lexicon of Indo-European Verbs] (in German).
de Vries, J. (1977). Altnordisches etymologisches Wörterbuch [Etymological Dictionary of Old Norse] (in German). p. 498.
Witczak, Krzysztof Tomasz (2012). "Studies in Thracian vocabulary (I–VII)". Studia Indogermanica Lodziensia. VII: 153–168. pp. 159–161.
Georgiev, Vladimir I.. "Thrakisch und Dakisch". Band 29/2. Teilband Sprache und Literatur (Sprachen und Schriften [Forts.]), edited by Wolfgang Haase, Berlin, Boston: De Gruyter, 1983. p. 1152. doi:10.1515/9783110847031-015 /wiki/Doi_(identifier)
Bartholomae, C. (1961). Altiranisches Wörterbuch [Old Iranian Dictionary] (in German). pp. 1564–1567.
Georgiev, Vladimir I.. "Thrakisch und Dakisch". Band 29/2. Teilband Sprache und Literatur (Sprachen und Schriften [Forts.]), edited by Wolfgang Haase, Berlin, Boston: De Gruyter, 1983. p. 1152. doi:10.1515/9783110847031-015 /wiki/Doi_(identifier)
Klein et al., edd. (2018) HCHL:1820, chapter XVI.101 'Phrygian' by Ligorio and Lubotsky.
Georgiev, Vladimir I.. "Thrakisch und Dakisch". Band 29/2. Teilband Sprache und Literatur (Sprachen und Schriften [Forts.]), edited by Wolfgang Haase, Berlin, Boston: De Gruyter, 1983. p. 1152. doi:10.1515/9783110847031-015 /wiki/Doi_(identifier)
Klein et al. edd., Jared (2018). "XVI Languages of fragmentary attestation, section 104 by Claude Brixhe". Handbook of Comparative and Historical Indo-European Linguistics. De Gruyter. p. 1851. There are as many interpretations of these as there are investigators; and as a result these monuments have not contributed anything to our knowledge of the language
"Golden ring with Thracian inscription. NAIM-Sofia exhibition". National Archaeological Institute with Museum, Sofia. http://naim.bg/gallery/main.php?g2_itemId=217
Duridanov, Ivan (1985). Die Sprache der Thraker. Bulgarische Sammlung (in German). Vol. 5. Hieronymus Verlag. ISBN 3-88893-031-6. Ich bin Rolisteneas, Sprößling des Nereneas; Tilezypta, Arazerin nach ihrer Heimat, hat mich der Erde übergeben (d.h. begraben). 3-88893-031-6
Russu, Ion I. (1969). Die Sprache der Thrako-Daker (in German). Ed. Ştiinţificā. https://books.google.com/books?id=IgUQAQAAIAAJ&q=Rolisteneas
Dimitrov, Peter A. (2009). "The Kyolmen Stone Inscription". Thracian Language and Greek and Thracian Epigraphy. Cambridge Scholars Publishing. p. 5. ISBN 978-1-4438-1325-9. 978-1-4438-1325-9
Written from right to left.
Written from left to right.
Written from right to left.
Pleket, H.W., and R.S. Stroud, eds. 1994. Supplementum Epigraphicum Graecum. 41–584. Amsterdam. doi:10.1163/1874-6772_seg_a41_584 /wiki/Doi_(identifier)
Orel, Vladimir E. (1986). "On Two Minor Thracian Inscriptions". Glotta. 64 (1/2): 48–49. JSTOR 40266737. Accessed 22 July 2024. /wiki/Vladimir_Orel
Georgiev, Vladimir I. (1981). Introduction to the History of the Indo-European Languages (3rd ed.). Sofia: Bulgarian Academy of Sciences. p. 116. Μεζην = nom.-voc., which is under the figure of the horseman, is the name of the Thracian god-horseman; it corresponds to the name (epithet) of the Messapian god Menzana (Iupiter), to whom horses were offered as a sacrifice. Both names are derived from *mendy-ān 'horseman', a derivative of *mendi(o)- 'horse'; they are related to Alb. mëz- 'stallion' and Rum. (Dac.) mînz 'stallion'. /wiki/Vladimir_I._Georgiev
Orel, Vladimir E. (1986). "On Two Minor Thracian Inscriptions". Glotta. 64 (1/2): 49. JSTOR 40266737. Georgiev (1977, 112) suggested to connect MEZHNAI with Iuppiter Menzana, which seems more plausible, if one remembers of the mounted figure on the ring, Menzana being a deity connected with the horse-cult. (...) The second word mezēnai could be identified with Menzana and treated as a name of a deity. Accessed 22 July 2024. /wiki/Vladimir_Orel
Meudler, Marcel (2003). "Mézence, un théonyme messapien?". Revue des Études Anciennes (in French). 105 (1): 5–6. doi:10.3406/rea.2003.5647. https://www.persee.fr/doc/rea_0035-2004_2003_num_105_1_5647
Oreshko, Rostislav (2020). "The onager kings of Anatolia: Hartapus, Gordis, Muška and the steppe strand in early Phrygian culture" (PDF). Kadmos. 59 (1–2): 118=. doi:10.1515/kadmos-2020-0005. https://hal.sorbonne-universite.fr/hal-03880045/file/Oreshko%20The%20onager%20kings%20of%20Anatolia%20-%20final.pdf
Pax Leonard, Stephen (2021). "Hipponyms in Indo-European: using register to disentangle the etyma". Journal of Language Relationship. 19 (1–2): 4. doi:10.1515/jlr-2021-191-206 (inactive 1 November 2024).{{cite journal}}: CS1 maint: DOI inactive as of November 2024 (link) /wiki/Doi_(identifier)
Kaluzkaja, Irina. "Thracian-Illyrian language parallels: Thrac. MEZENAI – Illyr. Menzanas". In: Thracian World at Crossroad of Civilizations – Proceedings of 7th International Congress of Thracology. Bucharest: 1996. pp. 372–373.
Francisco Marcos-Marin. "Etymology and Semantics: Theoretical Considerations apropos of an Analysis of the Etymological Problem of Spanish mañero, mañeria." In: Historical Semantics—Historical Word-Formation. de Gruyter, 1985. p. 381.
Balmori, C. Hernando. "Notes on the etymology of sp. 'perro'". In: Etudes Celtiques, vol. 4, fascicule 1, 1941. p. 49. DOI: https://doi.org/10.3406/ecelt.1941.1177 https://www.persee.fr/doc/ecelt_0373-1928_1941_num_4_1_1177
Georgiev, Vladimir I.. "Thrakisch und Dakisch". Band 29/2. Teilband Sprache und Literatur (Sprachen und Schriften [Forts.]), edited by Wolfgang Haase, Berlin, Boston: De Gruyter, 1983. p. 1161. doi:10.1515/9783110847031-015 /wiki/Doi_(identifier)
Cazacu, Boris [in Romanian] (1980). "Einige Fragen zur Ausarbeitung eines neuenetymologischen Wörterbuchs der rumänischen Sprache [DISKUSSION AKTUELLER PROBLEME]". Zeitschrift für romanische Philologie. 96 (5–6): 509–510. doi:10.1515/zrph.1980.96.5-6.489. Vl. Georgiev zeigte, daß es dieses Wort auch im Thrakischen gab, wo die Form Mezenai unter dem Bild des thrakischen Ritters auftaucht. [Vl. Georgiev demonstrated that the word existed in Thracian, with the form Mezenai, under the depiction of the Thracian Horseman.] https://ro.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boris_Cazacu
A similarly looking word Mandicae 'to Mandica' is attested in an inscription from Asturia. It has been suggested to mean the name of a goddess related to foals.[48] /wiki/Asturia
Fortson 2004, p. 404 - Fortson, B. (2004). Indo-European Language and Culture: an Introduction. p. 404.
See C. Brixhe – Ancient languages of Asia Minor, Cambridge University Press, 2008 We will dismiss, at least temporarily, the idea of a Thraco-Phrygian unity. Thraco-Dacian (or Thracian and Daco-Mysian) seems to belong to the eastern (satem) group of Indo-European languages and its (their) phonetic system is far less conservative than that of Phrygian (see Brixhe and Panayotou 1994, §§ 3ff.)
Klein et al. edd., J. (2018). "81 'The Phonology of Slavic' by Daniel Petit". Handbook of Comparative and Historical Linguistics. p. 1966.
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