Talk:Classification of Thracian

Classification of Thracian section given a separate article in 2006 because:
The "Classification of Thracian" section needs to be thought out, expanded, sourced, and rewritten. I felt like a detailed presentation of the speculations of all these linguists should be removed from Thracian language and quarantined in Classification of Thracian until the mess in the section is addressed. Alex 14:04, 28 March 2006 (UTC)


 * I posted the above in March 2006, it is now 5 years later and this Classification of Thracian article still is just an introductory sketch. Soon enough the article has to be expanded and rewritten and then merged into Thracian language. 76.208.174.1 (talk) 17:26, 6 August 2011 (UTC)

User:Eklir's gaff back in 2008 about Thraco-Illyrian being the consensus
I'd support the merging [of Classification of Thracian] with Thraco-Illyrian because it's the classification of Thraco-Illyrian we are really talking about. I revised the article in the sense of clarifying this prior to moving it from Classification of Thracian to Classification of Thraco-Illyrian. Eklir (talk) 22:27, 16 November 2008 (UTC)


 * No, actually User:Eklir, Thraco-Illyrian would only be one section of this article, Classification of Thracian, because Thraco-Illyrian is not the accepted grouping yet, if it ever will be. Eventually I want Classification of Thracian to be merged into the Thracian language article, and it will be a large section of the Thracian language article. Thraco-Illyrian should remain a separate article, but its contents can be mostly repeated in Classification of Thracian, because a lot of it needs to be repeated there. Alex (talk) 11:59, 27 November 2008 (UTC)

Paionian language article
I am going to merge Paionian with Thraco - Illyrian, because it was probably Thracian or Illyrian language. Jingby (talk) 10:47, 27 February 2009 (UTC)


 * I just noticed this post by User:Jingiby from February 2009. I do not support merging Paionian language into Thraco-Illyrian, even if the Thraco-Illyrian article still existed. 76.208.174.1 (talk) 08:24, 6 August 2011 (UTC)


 * Ah good, Thraco-Illyrian still exists as a separate article, as it should for reasons I discussed in another section on this talk page back in April 2009, see Talk:Classification of Thracian. And Paionian language should also stay separate. 76.208.174.1 (talk) 08:26, 6 August 2011 (UTC)

"Thraco-Phrygian"
Sorry, but that new one-sentence section on "Thraco-Phrygian" makes no sense. The whole article is about the fact that we don't know what the relationships are; then you can't just go and simply claim that this particular group existed, as if it was a simple fact. Especially not if you are bringing no source for it at all, and have no further explanations about it than a single sentence. Fut.Perf. ☼ 18:45, 27 February 2009 (UTC)

Illyrian Satem-Centum

 * Wilkes is not a linguist, he is giving a personal opinion which is unsourced. More recent  and more detailed . Both signs of Satem-Centum character. For more technical discussion see Illyrian Satem-Centum paragraph. Aigest (talk) 13:20, 17 April 2009 (UTC)


 * I reverted B'er Rabbit. Illyrian is often regarded as a Centum language (as the older version stated; the older version stated: "often regarded", not: "more often regarded"), but the language used in the article is unfair, because you can say Illyrian is also "often" regarded as Satem; if we take Wilkes' evaluation from the early 1980s to be correct: he leads us to conclude that Illyrian is "more often" regarded as a Centum language by the paleolinguists. However in this case given the state of the evidence and the nature of paleolinguistics (it is now 2009), touting which view is more common is being bullyish, because it appears to be a close "contest" in this case. Alex (talk) 04:47, 18 April 2009 (UTC)


 * OK, fair enough - an explanation is all I was looking for, and that seems like a good one. Removing the ref w.o. explaining had just raised a red flag with me, that's all. Thanks for using the discussion page. B'er Rabbit (Briar Patch) 11:38, 18 April 2009 (UTC)

separate article for Thraco-Illyrian
I'm thinking that it is better to have Thraco-Illyrian as a separate article, because:


 * 1) the editor (not me) who pushed for the merge was under the completely incorrect impression that Thraco-Illyrian was a comsensus;


 * 2) Illyrian and Daco-Thracian while they may have been branches of each other, are to be treated as two (or three) separate problems until new evidence comes up


 * 3) The information in Thraco-Illyrian as much belongs in Illyrian languages as in Thracian language or Classification of Thracian, the information is not just for "Classification of Thracian"


 * 4) the idea behind Thraco-Illyrian is a unique article to discuss the possible close affinity of Thracian & Illyrian; and Thracian/Illyrian language mixing


 * 5)information from Thraco-Illyrian will be repeated in Illyrian languages and Classification of Thracian/Thracian language (the latter two should be merged, even though it would make for a huge & unsightly Thracian language article), however:


 * 6) seeing as how Illyrian is even more unclassified than Thracian, Thraco-Illyrian doesn't tell us much about the classification of Thracian


 * I am going to go ahead and bring back Thraco-Illyrian as a separate article. Any thoughts? Alex (talk) 06:09, 18 April 2009 (UTC)


 * I Agree also maybe we can link it later to Paleo Balkan languages article and even to Balkan Sprachbund article.Aigest (talk) 20:40, 19 April 2009 (UTC)


 * Yes, Thraco-Illyrian used to be linked in the Paleo-Balkan languages article, if it's not anymore. Alex (talk) 04:40, 27 May 2009 (UTC)

Thracian phonetic rules
Can anybody help to create a section with those? Would have been very useful for the article. Aigest (talk) 10:14, 6 May 2009 (UTC)


 * I think Classification of Thracian should be merged into Thracian language, and the Thracian phonetics will eventually be detailed but I don't have the references at hand now, they are scattered. Alex (talk) 04:42, 27 May 2009 (UTC)


 * I checked the article and in answer to your earlier question, I don't see that any information was taken here solely from the Lituanus journal, which years ago I realized was cranky linguistics, with Balto-Germanic preoccupations, anti-Slavism, anti-Albanianism, and some anti-Romanianism I've seen from that linguist (?) Mayer there also. Alex (talk) 04:46, 27 May 2009 (UTC)

The book of Katicic (Ancient languages of the Balkans (Trends in linguistics). The Hague and Paris: Mouton. (1976))is very useful but I have only some translated parts of it mostly related to Albanian and Illyrian. It deals also with Thracian and Macedonian and all PaleoBalkan languages. Also Russu (1964-65?)is another top scholar on this matter(Thracian), but still no books of him online. Aigest (talk) 06:29, 27 May 2009 (UTC)


 * on Meyer- the guy is a crackpot. Argues that the Baltic overlords brought Slavs and Albanians as slaves to the Balkans. I must have missed that history lesson Hxseek (talk) 05:54, 17 February 2011 (UTC)

Beginning to update and clean text
I fixed some errors introduced into the article by User:Eklir back in 2008. He had messed up the Daco-Thracian section by introducing the Thraco-Illyrian debate into that section. I'll link his edits later. Also, I removed a link to Anatolian Mysia, a link that was copy-pasted into this article by User:Deucalionite. Editors must be cautious about identifying Moesians with Anatolian Mysians, though some Thracians or Moesian Thracians may have migrated into Mysia and Strabo may have been partially right. I'll look into that later. 76.208.174.1 (talk) 07:04, 6 August 2011 (UTC)

I'm glad to see some new editors here who are doing good and great work, User:Codrinb and User:Boldwin. 76.208.174.1 (talk) 07:04, 6 August 2011 (UTC)


 * I'm going to begin some actual work on this article, and I'm not going to add any original research, which here at this website contributors should always avoid. However many of the cognates and proposed cognates I will be adding into this article for now (later into Thracian language article) I am adding them from my memory of my past readings---if any of you fellow editors have any questions or objections about an addition or omission, feel free to ask me. 76.208.178.193 (talk) 06:21, 8 August 2011 (UTC)


 * I found a link that shows that though the early versions of this Classification of Thracian article had some errors, it actually was almost the same as this paper from 1972 written by an expert, Gordon M. Messing (Gordon M. Messing, Reviewed work(s): Thrakisch-dakische Studien, I: Die thrakisch- und dakisch-baltischen Sprachbeziehungen by Ivan Duridanov published in Language Vol. 48, No. 4 (Dec., 1972), pp. 960-963 (review consists of 4 pages, Published by: Linguistic Society of America) and found online just now. Both that paper (a review of Ivan Duridanov's work) and this article strove to present a Neutral Point of View overview of Thracian and Daco-Thracian, however some mistakes were made. This Wiki article came close to that paper. But now it is time to really give people more information about Thracian and its relation Albanian, Baltic, Slavic, Greek, etc., the Thracian sound-changes from PIE, Thracian phonology, etc. 76.208.178.193 (talk) 19:23, 8 August 2011 (UTC)

Thracian words for the natural numbers
I'm trying to relocate (I had seen some years ago) the theorized or hypothesized Thracian words for various numbers. I remember from my reading:


 * Ketre- hypothesized to have meant "fourth" (extracted mostly from Thracian the anthroponym Ketriporis, thought to have meant "fourth son"), I saw this one in Duridanov's study and others


 * Tri- "three", from the Thracian tribal name Triballi, "three dragons"


 * Epta-, Epte- (from the Thracian personal names Eptaikenthos, "seventh son"?, Eptala etc.) hypothesized to have meant "seventh"?

76.208.174.102 (talk) 22:40, 9 August 2011 (UTC)


 * Epta I think is usually not considered to be the Thracian word for "seventh": it probably has a different etymology. 76.208.175.91 (talk) 22:33, 18 August 2011 (UTC)

From the article:
Sorin Paliga, a linguist at the academy of Bucharest, recently linked Romanian buză (=lip) and Albanian buzë (=lip) to the Thracian personal names Buzas, Buzo, Buzes''. This word also exists in Bulgarian where it means 'cheek', in Macedonian with the meaning of 'lip', and in Polish buzia where it means 'mouth' or 'lips'.''


 * I removed the above material for two reasons: 1)there are many much better cognates between Thracian and Albanian which have to be mentioned 2) the connection of those Thracian Buz- names to the Albanian, Romanian, Bulgarian, Polish etc. words is as yet unclear and disputed by an alternative etymology. If the link to those words is correct, as per Paliga and others (including myself, I had proposed that etymology before I saw that in Paliga in 2005, but that would be original research), then the connection would probably be: those words for "lip", "lips", and "cheek" and the Thracian names would come from a root meaning "to swell out, bulge" and the Thracian names may have meant "a big guy" (see Paliga's hypothesis, and others). They most likely are not a reference to their lips or cheeks, though those words would come from the same root word with a different meaning. 76.208.175.91 (talk) 22:33, 18 August 2011 (UTC)

Sorin Paliga should be not used. His data are not reliable. His Etymological Lexicon of the Indigenous (Thracian) Elements in Romanian is full of clearly Slavic or Latin words. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 93.153.59.244 (talk) 18:16, 7 February 2016 (UTC)


 * by the way "obraz" which someone added would not be a cognate under either of the two etymologies proposed for those Thracian names. 76.208.175.91 (talk) 22:35, 18 August 2011 (UTC)


 * I would re-add the possible Buz- link into the article after the better cognates between Thracian and Albanian are mentioned. 76.208.175.91 (talk) 22:43, 18 August 2011 (UTC)

Lithuanian
From the article:

Mayer claims that he extracted an unambiguous evidence for regarding Dacian and Thracian as more tied to Lithuanian than to Latvian.

Doesn't that imply that Lithuanian and Latvian should already have been separate by the 6th century BC?

Thracian is securely attested well south of the Danube – in what is now Bulgaria – as early as the 6th/5th centuries BC. It is apparently generally assumed that the language was spoken in Thrace many centuries before that, even in the Bronze Age.

It's very difficult to think of a plausible scenario which makes sense of this. Lithuanian and Latvian are extremely closely related and are even said to have formed a dialect continuum in relatively recent history. Mayer is basically asking us to accept a premise where Lithuanian and Latvian have survived almost unchanged for thousands of years.

On the face of it, the hypothesis which connects Dacian or Thracian or even both specifically to Lithuanian is extremely implausible and I also find his argument and method to be suspect. I think that he is overinterpreting very difficult evidence, and his argument does not convince me at all.

The notion of Thracian or Dacian – or both – as specifically Baltic or even East Baltic languages suffers from geographical and especially chronological implausibility. (There's also the problem regarding Proto-Baltic mentioned below.)

The weaker hypothesis that Thracian or Dacian (or both) are descended from Proto-Balto-Slavic is less outlandish, although I'd like to note that Balto-Slavic shows no trace of the alleged consonant shift in Thracian (although its reality has strongly been doubted by other researchers) and it appears that the sound law PIE *R̥ > *iR cannot be established with any high certainty for Thracian. Moreover, if Dacian is really close to Albanian, as Georgiev thinks, and apparently also Duridanov, then Dacian cannot be Balto-Slavic at the same time.

Ronald I. Kim estimates that Proto-Balto-Slavic broke up in the last centuries BC. Others date the breakup earlier, Kortlandt even into the second millennium BC, but I see no good reasons to think Balto-Slavic is this old (especially if, per recent thought, which I agree with, there was never a Proto-Baltic stage, or there was only a short such stage, and in view of the very Baltic-like phonology of Proto-Slavic c. 600 AD). Sometime in the first millennium BC I can accept as a date for the breakup of Proto-Balto-Slavic – but that makes it difficult to explain the presence of Thracian in Thrace already at that time (with no indication of a recent migration to Thrace).

The chronological problem could only be overcome with the assumption that Proto-Balto-Slavic was spoken in Southeastern Europe, in the Bronze Age or early Iron Age; however, that conflicts with the usual assumption that the Balto-Slavic homeland was somewhere in Eastern Europe, and not very far in the south (also because of the Baltic hydronyms, although I'm not sure they prove much for such a remote period). So this is also difficult.

I can't think of any way to decisively disprove the "Baltic hypothesis", but it's really not particularly plausible at all.

Especially considering that in the framework of the conservative view espoused by Matzinger that Thracian, Albanian and Illyrian – with the question if Dacian was really distinct from Thracian unsolved – are all separate Indo-European languages and also distinct, separate branches of Indo-European, it is certainly possible that Thracian (perhaps including Dacian) was a branch closely related to (but not belonging to) Balto-Slavic and perhaps even geographically neighbouring (especially if Dacian was included), or at least especially similar to or in contact with Balto-Slavic, or both, I find the "Baltic hypothesis" and the weak evidence on which it rests entirely unnecessary and am puzzled by its popularity even among relatively sober linguists. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 02:52, 16 March 2021 (UTC)

Too much emphasis given to two theories
Bulgarian and Lithianian linguists work, should be moved undet section of pseudolinguistic. It needs to be clear that tthis is a pure Soviet propagda with any scoentific value. It is so obvious, just by the fact Bulgarian theory was developed in 1950, under Soviet command. It is more clear when one knows that this is period of unlimted control, and his strange interest and intervention in the language issues (see 1937 arrests and liquidation of Russian lingustic). TRIBALIA212 (talk) 10:36, 1 December 2022 (UTC)