Dacian language

Dacian language was an Indo-European language spoken by the ancient people of Dacia and it is a source of dispute about its origin and characteristics.

While there are almost no written documents in Dacian, we can find much about it from:

• the toponyms and the names of the kings written in Greek and Roman sources.
• the substrat found in current Romanian language, the language that is spoken almost in the all the places Dacians lived.

The Roman poet Ovid was exiled to Tomis, Dacia learnt the Dacian language and composed poems in this language, which were unfortunately lost.

Romanian language contains about 200 words with uncertain origin (like brânză=cheese, veveriţă=squirrel etc), a part of which have some cognate in Albanian. It is thought that they are only words left from the Dacian language after the Roman colonization. If this is true, then Dacian must have been in the same language group with Ilyrian languages.

The second hypothesis is that Dacian was in fact a form of Latin, which could explain the quick "romanization" of the Dacians.

See also:

• Dacia
• Origin of Romanians