Editing Dacian language (section)

=== Relationship with modern languages ===

==== Romanian ====
{{See also|List of Romanian words of possible Dacian origin}}

The mainstream view among scholars is that Daco-Moesian forms the principal linguistic [[Substrata (linguistics)|substratum]] of modern [[Romanian language|Romanian]], a neo-Latin ([[Romance languages|Romance]]) language, which evolved from eastern [[Eastern Romance languages|Eastern Romance]] in the period AD 300–600, according to Georgiev.{{sfn|Georgiev|1977|p=287}} The possible residual influence of Daco-Moesian on modern Romanian is limited to a modest number of words and a few grammatical peculiarities.<ref>cf {{harvnb|Georgiev|1977|p={{Page needed|date=October 2021}}.}}</ref> According to Georgiev (1981), in Romanian there are about 70 words which have exact correspondences in Albanian, but the phonetic form of these Romanian words is so specific that they cannot be explained as Albanian borrowings. Georgiev claimed that these words belong to the Dacian substratum in Romanian, while their Albanian correspondences were inherited from Daco-Moesian.{{sfn|Georgiev|1981|p=142}}{{Clarify|reason=Isn't that a matter of definition? If the words in question were borrowed from Daco-Moesian, and if Albanian is descended from it, then they are still from an ancestral form of Albanian, just one that isn't usually called &quot;Albanian&quot;, just as the ancient form of Romance is usually called Latin or Vulgar Latin.|date=October 2012}}

As in the case of any Romance language, it is argued that Romanian language derived from [[Vulgar Latin]] through a series of internal linguistic changes and because of Dacian or northern Thracian influences on Vulgar Latin in the late Roman era. This influence explains a number of differences between the Romanian-Thracian substrate and the French-Celtic, Spanish-Basque, and Portuguese-Celtic substrates.{{sfn|Appel|Muysken|2006|p={{Page needed|date=October 2021}}}} Romanian has no major dialects, perhaps a reflection of its origin in a small mountain region, which was inaccessible but permitted easy internal communication. The history of Romanian is based on speculation because there are virtually no written records of the area from the time of the withdrawal of the Romans around 300&nbsp;AD until the end of the barbarian invasions around 1300&nbsp;AD.{{sfn|Walters|1988|p=18}}

Many scholars, mostly Romanian, have conducted research into a Dacian linguistic substratum for the modern Romanian language. There is still not enough hard evidence for this. None of the few Dacian words known (mainly plant-names) and none of the [[List of reconstructed Dacian words|Dacian words reconstructed from placenames]] have specific correspondent words in Romanian (as opposed to general correspondents in several IE languages). DEX doesn't mention any Dacian etymology, just a number of terms of unknown origin. Most of these are assumed by several scholars to be of Dacian origin, but there is no strong proof that they are. They could, in some cases, also be of pre-Indo-European origin (i.e. truly indigenous, from [[Stone Age]] Carpathian languages), or, if clearly Indo-European, be of [[Sarmatian]] origin – but there's no proof for this either.
It seems plausible that a few Dacian words may have survived in the speech of the Carpathian inhabitants through successive changes in the region's predominant languages: Dacian/Celtic (to AD 100), Latin/Sarmatian (c. 100–300), Germanic (c. 300–500), Slavic/Turkic (c. 500–1300), up to the Romanian language when the latter became the predominant language in the region.

===== Substratum of Common Romanian =====
{{Main|Substrate in Romanian}}
{{See also|Daco-Romanian|Daco-Romanian continuity|Thraco-Roman}}

[[Image:Romani daci.jpg|upright=1.35|right|thumb|Blue = lands conquered by the [[Roman Empire]].<br />Red = area populated by Free Dacians.<br />Language map based on the range of Dacian toponyms.{{dubious|date=November 2013}}{{citation needed|date=November 2013}}]]

The Romanian language has been denoted "[[Daco-Romanian]]" by some scholars because it derives from late Latin superimposed on a Dacian substratum, and evolved in the Roman colony of Dacia between AD 106 and 275.{{sfn|Campbell|1998|p={{Page needed|date=October 2021}}}} Modern Romanian may contain 160–170 words of Dacian origin. By comparison, modern French, according to Bulei, has approximately 180 words of Celtic origin.{{sfn|Bulei|2005|p=26}} The Celtic origin of the French substratum is certain, as the Celtic languages are abundantly documented, whereas the Dacian origin of Romanian words is in most cases speculative.

It is also argued that the Dacian language may form the substratum of [[Common Romanian]], which developed from the [[Vulgar Latin]] spoken in the Balkans north of the [[Jirecek line]], which roughly divides Latin influence from Greek influence. About 300 words in [[Eastern Romance languages]], [[Daco-Romanian]], [[Aromanian language|Aromanian]], [[Megleno-Romanian language|Megleno-Romanian]], [[Istro-Romanian language|Istro-Romanian]], may derive from Dacian, and many of these show a satem-reflex.{{Citation needed|date=September 2011}} Whether Dacian forms the substratum of Common Romanian is disputed, yet this theory does not rely only on the Romanisation having occurred in Roman Dacia, as Dacian was also spoken in [[Moesia]] and northern [[Dardania (Roman province)|Dardania]]. Moesia was conquered by the Romans more than a century before Dacia, and its Latinity is confirmed by Christian sources.{{sfn|Polomé|1983|p=539}}

[[Image:Language border (Matzinger).png|upright=1.35|left|thumb|The [[Jireček Line]], an imaginary line through the ancient [[Balkans]] that divided the influences of the [[Latin]] (in the north) and [[Greek language|Greek]] (in the south) languages until the 4th century. This line is important in establishing the Romanization area in Balkans]]
The Dacian / Thracian substratum of Romanian is often connected to the words shared between Romanian and Albanian. The correspondences between these languages reflect a common linguistic background.{{sfn|Polomé|1983|p=540}}

==== Albanian ====
{{See also|Origin of the Albanians|Albanian language}}

[[Vladimir I. Georgiev]], although accepting an Illyrian component in Albanian, and even not excluding an Illyrian origin of Albanian, proposed as the ancestor of Albanian a language called "Daco-Mysian" by him, considering it a separate language from Thracian.{{sfn|Rusakov|2017|p=555}}{{sfn|Demiraj|2006|p=78}} Georgiev maintained that "Daco-Mysian tribes gradually migrated to the northern-central part of the Balkan Peninsula, approximately to [[Dardani]]a, probably in the second millennium B.C. (or not later than the first half of the first millennium B.C.), and thence they migrated to the areas of present [[Albania]]".{{sfn|Demiraj|2006|p=78}} However, this theory is rejected by most linguists, who consider Albanian a direct descendant of ancient Illyrian.{{sfn|Lloshi|1999|p=283}} Based on shared innovations between Albanian and Messapic, [[Eric P. Hamp]] has argued that Albanian is closely related to Illyrian and not to Thracian or Daco-Moesian, maintaining that it descended from a language that was sibling of Illyrian and that was once closer to the Danube and in contact with Daco-Moesian.{{sfn|Friedman|2020|p=388}} Due to the paucity of written evidence, what can be said with certainty in current research is that on the one hand a significant group of [[Albanian-Romanian linguistic relationship|shared]] Indo-European non-Romance cognates between Albanian and Romanian indicates at least contact with the 'Daco-Thraco-Moesian complex', and that on the other hand there is some evidence to argue that Albanian is descended from the 'Illyrian complex'.{{sfn|Friedman|2022}} From a "genealogical standpoint", Messapic is the closest at least partially attested language to Albanian. Hyllested & Joseph (2022) label this Albanian-Messapic branch as ''Illyric'' and in agreement with recent bibliography identify Greco-Phrygian as the IE branch closest to the Albanian-Messapic one. These two branches form an areal grouping - which is often called "Balkan IE" - with Armenian.{{sfn|Hyllested|Joseph|2022|p=235}}

==== Baltic languages ====
There is significant evidence of at least a long-term proximity link, and possibly a genetic link, between Dacian and the modern Baltic languages. The Bulgarian linguist [[:bg:Иван Дуриданов|Ivan Duridanov]], in his first publication claimed that Thracian and Dacian are genetically linked to the Baltic languages{{sfn|Duridanov|1969}}{{sfn|Dėl žynio Žalmokšio vardo kilmės}} and in the next one he made the following classification:<blockquote>"The Thracian language formed a close group with the Baltic (resp. Balto-Slavic), the Dacian and the "[[Pelasgian]]" languages. More distant were its relations with the other Indo-European languages, and especially with Greek, the Italic and Celtic languages, which exhibit only isolated phonetic similarities with Thracian; the Tokharian and the Hittite were also distant."{{sfn|Duridanov|1976}}</blockquote>Duridanov's cognates of the [[List of reconstructed Dacian words|reconstructed Dacian words]] are found mostly in the Baltic languages, followed by Albanian without considering Thracian. Parallels have enabled linguists, using the techniques of [[comparative linguistics]], to decipher the meanings of several Dacian and Thracian placenames with, they claim, a high degree of probability. Of 74 Dacian placenames attested in primary sources and considered by Duridanov, a total of 62 have Baltic cognates, most of which were rated "certain" by Duridanov.{{sfn|Duridanov|1969|pp=95–96}} Polomé considers that these parallels are unlikely to be coincidence.{{sfn|Polomé|1982}} Duridanov's explanation is that proto-Dacian and proto-Thracian speakers were in close geographical proximity with [[Proto-Baltic language|proto-Baltic]] speakers for a prolonged period, perhaps during the period 3000–2000 BC.{{sfn|Duridanov|1969|p=100}} A number{{sfn|Vyčinienė|p=122}} of scholars such as the Russian Topоrov{{sfn|Toporov|1973|pp=51–52}} have pointed to the many close parallels between Dacian and Thracian placenames and those of the [[Baltic languages|Baltic]] language-zone&nbsp;– [[Lithuania]], [[Latvia]] and in [[East Prussia]] (where an extinct but well-documented Baltic language, [[Old Prussian]], was spoken until it was displaced by [[German language|German]] during the Middle Ages).{{sfn|Duridanov|1969|pp=9–11}}

After creating a list of names of rivers and personal names with a high number of parallels, the Romanian linguist Mircea M. Radulescu classified the Daco-Moesian and Thracian as Baltic languages of the south and also proposed such classification for [[Illyrian language|Illyrian]].{{sfn|Rădulescu|1987}} The German linguist Schall also attributed a southern Baltic classification to Dacian.<ref name="Schall H. 1974" /> The American linguist Harvey Mayer refers to both Dacian and Thracian as Baltic languages. He claims to have sufficient evidence for classifying them as Baltoidic or at least "Baltic-like," if not exactly, Baltic dialects or languages{{sfn|Mayer|1992}}{{sfn|Mayer|1996}} and classifies [[Dacians]] and [[Thracians]] as "Balts by extension".{{sfn|Mayer|1997}} According to him, [[Albanian language|Albanian]], the descendant of [[Illyrian language|Illyrian]], escaped any heavy Baltic influence of Daco-Thracian.{{sfn|Mayer|1997}} Mayer claims that he extracted an unambiguous evidence for regarding Dacian and Thracian as more tied to Lithuanian than to Latvian.{{sfn|Mayer|1996}}{{sfn|Mayer|1999}} The Czech archaeologist Kristian Turnvvald classified Dacian as [[Danube|Danubian]] Baltic.{{sfn|Turnvvald|1968|p={{Page needed|date=October 2021}}}} The Venezuelan-Lithuanian historian Jurate de Rosales classifies Dacian and Thracian as Baltic languages.{{sfn|de Rosales|2015}}{{sfn|de Rosales|2020}}

It appears from the study of hydronyms (river and lake names) that Baltic languages once predominated much farther eastwards and southwards than their modern confinement to the southeastern shores of the Baltic sea, and included regions that later became predominantly Slavic-speaking. The zone of Baltic hydronyms extends along the Baltic coast from the mouth of the [[Oder]] as far as [[Riga]], eastwards as far as the line [[Yaroslavl]]–[[Moscow]]–[[Kursk]] and southwards as far as the line Oder mouth–[[Warsaw]]–[[Kyiv]]–[[Kursk]]: it thus includes much of northern and eastern [[Poland]], [[Belarus]] and central [[European Russia]].{{sfn|Gimbutas|1963|pp=30–31 (fig. 2)}}{{sfn|Heather|2009|loc=map 16}}