page_title: Dacian language
section_title: Anatolia
hierarchical_section_title: Dacian language / Geographical extent / Dacian linguistic zone in the early Roman imperial era (30 BC – AD 100) / Other regions / Anatolia
caption_attribution_description: Deutsch: Karte Kleinasiens in der Antike, von William Robert Shepherd, 1923
context_page_description: Dacian is an extinct language, generally believed to be Indo-European, that was spoken in the Carpathian region in antiquity.
  In the 1st century, it was probably the predominant language of the ancient regions of Dacia and Moesia and possibly of some surrounding regions.
  The language was probably extinct by the 7th century AD.
  While there is general agreement among scholars that Dacian was an Indo-European language, there are divergent opinions about its place within the IE family:
  Dacian was a dialect of the extinct Thracian language, or vice versa, e. g. Baldi and Trask.
  Dacian was a language distinct from Thracian but closely related to it, belonging to the same branch of the Indo-European family.
  Dacian, Thracian, the Baltic languages formed a distinct branch of Indo-European, e.g. Schall, Duridanov, Radulescu and Mayer.
  The theory of Georgiev Daco-Moesian was the ancestor of Albanian, belonging to a branch other than Thracian, but closely related to Thracian and distinct from Illyrian.
  The Dacian language is poorly documented. Unlike for Phrygian, which is documented by c. 200 inscriptions, only one Dacian inscription is believed to have survived.
context_section_description: According to some ancient sources, notably Strabo, the northwestern section of the Anatolian peninsula, namely the ancient regions of Bithynia, Phrygia and Mysia, were occupied by tribes of Thracian or Dacian origin and thus spoke dialects of the Thracian or Dacian languages (which, Strabo claimed, were in turn closely related). However, the link between Dacian and Thracian has been disputed by some scholars, as has the link between these two languages and Phrygian.
  According to Strabo (VII.3.2) and Herodotus, the people of Bithynia in northwest Anatolia originated from two Thracian tribes, the Bithyni and Thyni, which migrated from their original home around the river Strymon in Thrace. Therefore, they spoke the Thracian language. In addition, Strabo (VII.3.2) claims that the neighbouring Phrygians were also descended from a Thracian tribe, the Briges, and spoke a language similar to Thracian. In fact, it has been established that both Bithynians and Phrygians spoke the Phrygian language. Phrygian is better documented than Thracian and Dacian, as some 200 inscriptions in the language survive. Study of these has led mainstream opinion to accept the observation of the ancient Greek philosopher Plato (Cratylus 410a) that Phrygian showed strong affinities to Greek. Georgiev argued in one article that Phrygian originally belonged to the same IE branch as Greek and Ancient Macedonian (which did not include Thracian or Dacian), but later adopted the view that Phrygian constituted a separate branch of Indo-European, (also unrelated to Thracian or Dacian). This position is currently favoured by mainstream scholarship.
  In addition, Strabo (VII.3.2) equates the Moesi people of the Danubian basin with the Mysi (Mysians), neighbours of the Phrygians in NW Anatolia, stating that the two forms were Greek and Latin variants of the same name. The Mysians, he adds, were Moesi who had migrated to Anatolia and also spoke the Dacian language. Georgiev accepts Strabo's statement, dubbing the language of the Moesi "Daco-Mysian". However, there is insufficient evidence about either Dacian or the Mysian language, both of which are virtually undocumented, to verify Strabo's claim. It is possible that Strabo made a false identification based solely on the similarity between the two tribal names, which may have been coincidental.
caption: Map showing the regions of ancient Anatolia, including Bithynia, Phrygia and Mysia
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