The Dacian Language, and Romania's pre-roman Kingdom

foreign language is an extinct language generally thought to be a new European spoken in the Carpathian Mountain region basically present day Romania a few of the surrounding Birds this has been shuellen that is what we are talking about today [Music] when deciding which video to make for you that I came across the dacian language and what struck me about it was that there's almost nothing on YouTube about it so I thought let's make a video about this now obviously one of the reasons why there's not really anything on YouTube about it there's a bit in Romanian by the way if you speak Limba Romana but in English there's hardly anything and that's because there's hardly anything left of the language as you'll see but what is this dacian language where did it come from where was it and what do we have left of it there are a couple different theories about what the Desi language was it's generally as I said thought to be Indo-European but there's definitely an under layer to present-day Romanian which is spoken where mostly the daisy language was that's not quite like other languages and they thought well this comes from dacian but where did that come from when indo-europeans came in to Europe there was already an ancient culture here the earliest metallurgy was in the Balkan region this was an ancient civilization by the time the indo-europeans had come around the year 4000 BC or so but around 2 000 years 2 500 years ago we think these people emerged out of what was already here in the pre-indo-european Suns taking in some of their elements oh where they see and it would emerge was in this great long Danube River Valley and this was a region of many different cultures going back and forth so there would clearly be many influences upon the dacian language even from its birth but in present day Romanian there are words that are kind of similar between Lithuanian and the North and Albanian and the South and this is what I'm getting at with potassium language this was on an arc some kind of Continuum that we've lost connecting the Baltic languages and Albanian and it was probably the middle Branch between those language groups as far as place it was definitely along the Danube River Valley the lower danu and the dacian Heartland appears to have emerged in the southwest of the Carpathian Mountains going up towards the Abu City mountains we don't have much from the documentation about this language so let's go first into the history of these people so you get a context of who they were when they were and just how much of a fight they put up against Rome just a brief run of their history and the brief change of scenery I needed to clean my kitchen and I feel a lot better now so about the history by about 1 000 BCE the dacian language was established as the most dominant language Northern however between 400 and 250 BC the counts for the last goal Southern Germany they were immigrating expanding into Transylvania where they established a kingdom certainly about 250. and this lasted all the way up until 60 BCE what happened then you had a king a gatic king but a beast who confederated the ghettic and DeSean tribes together and pushed out the Celts from Transylvania when their power collapsed around 60 BCE and from this time the Desi language really begins to prosper and flourish we believe there's an expansion of these place names and there's an emergence of a defensive Network around a capital zone is a getus in this Iron Gate between the Carpathian Mountains and the Abu City it's a very defensive position and they built a network of forts there I mean this is an impregnable region if you have a solid Army and they use this to really expand their power and of course this came into contact and confrontation with the wrong which which they thought three Wars depending on how you look at it the first beginning in 86 of the Common Era lasting for two years and King daughters I think that's how you say it was the king of Dacia and this time but he had a general Touch of all this this guy on the screen now and he defeated two Legions and they elected him as king and he went on to fight two more Wars against Rome one sort of a bad ending stalemate for them and the other one roamed us through everything they had at them and like 150 000 men and you know you weren't going to defeat that I mean come on I mean no matter how Brave and good you are you're a small Kingdom fighting a kingdom that's spanning between Portugal and Iraq I mean that's not fair is it and they lost their independence and certainly by 200 the language the dacian language was marginalized pushed back to the fringes in the mountains you know as the language loses and congratulate those extent it becomes the language of the farming people we see that over and over in history however Rome withdrew in 275 from north of the town of Dick consolidate their borders but Daisy didn't have a chance to reestablish itself they had Goths coming in Germanic peoples by 300 and then two centuries later you had sloths pouring in from the Northeast establishing new kingdoms so if these two waves of mass migrations the dacians didn't really have a chance and by 600 700 of the latest the dacian language had been marginalized out of existence and that's the fate of it but what do we have in terms of documentation oh we don't have any writing in the dacian language and we don't really have much written about the day scene language we have mentions in Latin and Greek one thing we do have which is quite unusual is a grouping of plant names about 60 by a physician an empty escortis a Greek physician who served in the Roman army which was not uncommon at the time and this was in the first century when Rome was really moving into that area slowly in the south of present-day Romania and here are some of those plant names for you we don't have much at all in days soon but here are a few of those words I'm a luster is chamomile like you put in your tea Dragon toss or maybe Dragon Tosh for Rosemary maybe they like lamb that would be tasty Rosemary and lamb for Nettles like stinging nettles you don't have this in the Americas but um it's a type of plant that is a bit annoying if you're wearing shorts and your ankles are exposed you get a little fiery lumps [Music] 18. and for anyone who speaks Welsh this is quite because the word for Nettles and Welsh is the Nadal and it used to be spelled with a y and he used to be denied and Welsh that's Eerie isn't it it doesn't mean that desine was Celtic but it does suggest that Welsh we know is a very conservative language and there was Celtic influence upon Desi and we know that so maybe at some point there was a crossover and then you get Elder Berry that's tasty seba so that's just a few of them we don't have much but there you go we also have about a thousand one hundred and fifty personal names like people's names scattered around through references in Latin and Greek and at least 900 for certain toponyms or place names rivers mountains settlements that are certainly coming from this dacian language when you see the ending dava in Romania today some in Bulgaria some in Moldova which we're not sure if Moldova does come from dacian it might it might be Slaughter but this comes from the word for a settlement of fortification these were seriously thoughtful people in terms of building defensive settlements as you saw from the history they were preparing for a long long confrontation with Rome and well to conquer them took a hundred and fifty thousand people being sent in by the most technologically advanced Empire the world had ever seen these people were hard but the simple matter of fact is we don't even know how to say yes and no I want to ask you a question or to say what day it is in day soon we have no idea [Music] oh you had a language common in the pre-roman era called thracian I mean they run threes and present-day Bulgaria now this was just to the south of the dacian territories and for a long time people have thought this is related to Days Inn but that Davao word I mentioned that's not really existent in this situation regions and there's no there's no substratum cognates really that's pre-slavic between Bulgaria and Romanian or Albanian and there's no evidence to suggest that these two languages although they're both Indo-European we think there's no evidence to suggest that they were Linked In terms of being on the same branch and for a long time people thought that but looking at it myself I'm just learning a bit of Romanian I don't think that these two operations were related oh by the way thracian it went out certainly extinct by about 680. [Music] Celtic now as I mentioned Celtic bit the Celts moved into Transylvania and there was a substantial Kingdom of some kind in present-day Transylvania it was Celtic and Origins culturally and linguistically but if you want a video on that Celts in Transylvania I think that might be cool let me know however this we know is a different culture because the burial costumes were different and there's fewer than a hundred Celtic toponyms or place names in this region but you would expect a lot more if the Celtic presence was spread over the centuries and continuous also you had that fella but a booster he apparently United the dacian peoples and pushed them out this was a conflict between two different cultures what it did do however is leave an imprint upon desiign which in my opinion left an imprint upon present-day Romanian because as a Welsh speaker there's bits of Romanian that are it's a bit deeper of a connection than the Latin it's almost like the way in which the dacians absorbed Latin was similar to the way in which the Welsh absorbed Latin I can't really put it in much more terms than that and this video is not about the Welsh to cut to the chase about the Celts this is not a Celtic language but that has been suggested by a few people what do you think let me know down in the comments below what about the next ancient language that people compare this to illyrian foreign is commonly thought to be the ancestor of present day Albanian my own position on this is that illyrian and dacian were two very very closely related languages and that they were in the process of moving apart when Rome came language that people often looked at is where did this come from is gothic and this is a dramatic language and the dramatic peoples did certainly move into Romania present-day Romania in 600 or so dacian we think was dying off by this point certainly as a living language the timelines just don't add up [Music] firstly Romanian it's really difficult to look at Romanian deeply getting under the stones of where it comes from without thinking that there's something else here that's not quite Latin in origin I mean you have words like bronzer for cheese which is like where does that come from I mean it clearly does not come from a dramatic or Latin root that word but this one on its own wouldn't mean anything you get a word for Dragon Ball this seems like an older Indo-European root we kind of found the way into the Romanian language from the audacian language and there are quite a few words like this across Romanian and it really does make the Romanian language a bit special a bit distant part of what makes it Romanian so beautiful as a language is that there is clearly an under layer of this decent language in it what about comparing dacian to other modern languages well of course I've mentioned Albanian people on YouTube and several videos quite a few comparing Albanian and Romanian just because there are so many cognates or similar words that are related to each other between the two languages there's clearly something there and I'll just give you one like for a fur tree in Romanian Broad and in Albanian breath that's basically the same word and you get that over and over and over again and it's not like these are on the same branch of the Indo-European language it's that and there's something in the under layer of Romanian that is related to Albanian foreign [Music] any videos on YouTube about this subject in English not really much so I wanted to give you one and I hope that however short this is for the lack of videos available about the Desi language here on YouTube thank you for watching to the end of this video I hope that you liked it if you want to support this channel because I need your help please hit that join button and for just a couple pounds a month or a couple dollars you can help support the channel if you would like to donate officially there is my patreon page patreon.com Ben shwellen and you can join me on patreon at different levels of membership I'm trying to set that up and see where we can go but I am moving how soon so it will be a future project as we build the channel and hopefully we can get you some benefits for your patronage and your enjoyment in the future thank you very much for watching we'll see you in the next episode [Music]

Channel: Ben Llywelyn

Views: 116,511

Keywords: roman history, romanian language, dacian wars, history of romania, dacian history, ancient rome, rome dacian wars, ancient europe, celts, Decebalus, Dacian Kings, Apuseni, carpathia, Carpathians, Romania, moldova, ancient history, Dacian language, dacian, dacii liberi, geto-dacii istorie, dacian wars map, Moldolva romania, Romania English, roman empire, istoria dacilor, geto dacia, the dacians, dacia roman, geto dacian, Gold, roman history documentary, carpathian mountains

Id: yaqhbxhRlF8

Length: 17min 54sec (1074 seconds)

Published: Sun Nov 06 2022