Editing Dacian language (section)

=== The fate of Dacian ===
From the earliest times that they are attested, Dacians lived on both sides of Danube{{sfn|Strabo Geography}}<ref>Dio Cassius LI, 22, 6</ref> and on both sides of the Carpathians, evidenced by the northern Dacian town [[Setidava]]. It is unclear exactly when the Dacian language became extinct, or whether it has a living descendant. The first Roman conquest of part of Dacia did not extinguish the language, as Free Dacian tribes may have continued to speak Dacian in the area north-east of the Carpathians as late as the 6th or 7th century AD.{{Citation needed|date=September 2011}} According to one hypothesis, a branch of Dacian continued as the Albanian language ([[Bogdan Hasdeu|Hasdeu]], 1901). Another hypothesis (Marius A.) considers Albanian to be a Daco-Moesian dialect that split off from Dacian before 300&nbsp;BC and that Dacian itself became extinct.{{Citation needed|date=April 2012}} However, mainstream scholarship considers Albanian to be a descendant of the [[Illyrian language]]{{Citation needed|date=September 2019}} and not a dialect of Dacian.{{sfn|Polomé|1982|p=888}} In this scenario, Albanian/Romanian cognates are either Daco-Moesian loanwords acquired by Albanian, or, more likely, Illyrian loanwords/[[Substrate in Romanian|substrate words]] acquired by Romanian.{{Citation needed|date=April 2012}}

The argument for a split before 300&nbsp;BC is that inherited Albanian words (e.g. Alb ''motër'' 'sister' < Late IE *''ma:ter'' 'mother') show the transformation Late IE /aː/ > Alb /o/, but all the Latin loans in Albanian having an /aː/ show Latin /aː/ > Alb a. This indicates that the transformation PAlb /aː/ > PAlb /o/ happened and ended before the Roman arrival in the Balkans. However, Romanian substratum words shared with Albanian show a Romanian /a/ that corresponds to an Albanian /o/ when the source of both sounds is an original common /aː/ (''mazăre / modhull'' < *''maːdzula'' 'pea', ''rață / rosë'' < *''raːtjaː'' 'duck'), indicating that when these words had the same common form in Pre-Romanian and Proto-Albanian, the transformation PAlb /aː/ > PAlb /o/ had not yet begun.{{citation needed|date=September 2011}} The correlation between these two theories indicates that the hypothetical split between the pre-Roman Dacians, who were later Romanised, and Proto-Albanian happened before the Romans arrived in the Balkans.{{citation needed|date=September 2011}}

==== Extinction ====
According to Georgiev, Daco-Moesian was replaced by Latin as the everyday language in some parts of the two Moesiae during the Roman imperial era, but in others, for instance Dardania in modern-day southern Serbia and northern North Macedonia, Daco-Moesian remained dominant, although heavily influenced by eastern Balkan Latin.{{sfn|Georgiev|1977|p=287}}{{Clarify|reason=So it did not become extinct? Does that mean it became the ancestor of Albanian?|date=October 2012}} The language may have survived in remote areas until the 6th century.{{sfn|Du Nay|1977|p=262}}{{Clarify|reason=So did it become extinct or not?|date=October 2012}} Thracian, also supplanted by Latin, and by Greek in its southern zone, is documented as a living language in approximately 500&nbsp;AD.{{sfn|Jones|1964|p=998}}