Getae and Dacians? Are they the same? Or is this unknowable?

[diegis]

But I don't agree that any army needs an uniform language. Having bi(poly)lingual commanders is enough.

Oh dear. I hope you really didn't mean that. Without a standard (imposed) language, the Roman troops and cavalries could never have conquered the territories they did. And we wouldn't be discussing these matters on RAT. hock:

Salve Alanus

Well, just a short comment. We cant compare roman army, well established and trained, with a history of centuries at least, and with romans being always the superior ones both military and culturaly when integrated others in their army (and even like that, i dont know how many of the mercenaries/irregulars troops and even auxiliares simple soldiers know very well latin, excepting the military comands), with goths. The germanic part of them wasnt either culturaly or social superior to neither dacians or sarmatians, nor numericaly, so its hard to believe what language was used back then. This conglomerat was made on bases of comon interests of several diferent ethnic groups, formed mostly by "barbarians" (but having a strong roman influence too), and was far from the proces of romanization made in roman empire, and from the level of organization of Roman army. I agree with Rumo, probably some leaders of the groups (germanics, dacians, sarmatians etc.) was bilingual (if not multilingual). Remember that in previous century, sarmatians and bastarnae acted as allies and auxiliares in Dacian army of Decebal, they lived for quite a while beside dacians, and my opinion is that dacian language (dacian being the superior culture) had the more chances to be a kind of "lingua franca" in this conglomerat (at least until goths leaved the Danube area, and probably many dacians remain in Dacia, now "free" again, since romans retreated the army and administration).