11-19-2009, 03:50 PM
Quote: Salut Dragos
Yes, i agree that southern thrancians and dacians from northern areas ( dacians/getae/moesians) speak diferent languages. And, from what i manage to read in your quote (damn, my french is even worse then english :roll:) they had diferent endings for toponyms, "dava" (however with some notable exceptions as the capitol Sarmisegetuza) for dacians and "para" and "bria" for southern thracians, and had diferent names ( king names, or even common people, if i understand correct), which lead the conclusion of that Georgiev that they speak two diferent languages. However, i read the opinion that yes, the dacian and thracian languages are indeed diferent, but they come from an imediatly common ancestor, have common roots in a kind of proto-thracian language (another part split from this being phrygian for ex.).
R?zvan,
Your understanding of that quote was almost correct. The Bulgarian scholar Vladimir Georgiev observed a difference between the "Thracian" languages north and south of Haemus based on toponymy and royal names. In Romanian you can read his "Raporturile dintre limbile dac?, trac? ?i frigian?" published in Studii Clasice 2/1960, 39-58 (basically arguing for Dacian, Thracian and Phrygian to be three related but distinct Indo-European languages), and for a more elaborated and recent version on Thracian and Dacian, if you can read German, check in ANRW II 29.2/1983 "Thrakisch und Dakisch" (p. 1148-94) and "Thrakische und dakische Namenkunde" (p. 1195-1213)
Recently other scholars such as Dan Dana confirmed his theory by analyzing the increasing collection of Dacian names (coming from Roman military diplomas, ostraca, etc.), names which have little in common with those from Thrace or other regions from the Balkans.
I really don't know if Dacian was closest to Thracian and not to some Balto-Slavic or Iranic language. But that's not so important, I guess. Even today we don't consider Swedes and Austrians, Romanians and Portuguese to have the same language and identity, even though we have the concepts of Germanic and Romance languages respectively.
I'll answer later on religion.
Drago?
