Getae and Dacians? Are they the same? Or is this unknowable?

[Rumo]

Now to language and the "three generation principal." You say the "axiom just doesn't work for the known history." Please show me more than one refutiation. Bishop Ulfilas is the perfect example. He descended, third generation, from a Cappadocian core group within the Goths. Yet his name is Gothic, and he wrote his bible in the same language. (And this, in my estimation, was a far bigger accomplishment than anything done by the Roman emperors or historians of his time.) So does it not work? Want a close-up personal evaluation of how the process continues? Then look at me. My grandparents were born in Italy and Scotland, my mother was a first generation American, and I'm the second. I cannot speak a word of Gaelic or Italian, only English, the one language used by the dominent culture that all my grandparents' squeezed into. It was the same with Ulfilas and millions of people absorbed into some greater culture, no matter what culture it was.

Let's start with more recent examples. Romania has a significant Magyar-speaking minority still surviving (and with no signs of an imminent, fast assimilation) after a century, which would account for your three generations. However before that, the Romanian minority survived in the Kingdom of Hungary and then in Austro-Hungarian empire for many centuries. Some Romanians from Transylvania are Catholics because they lived in a Catholic realm, their dialect has a significant share of Magyar or German loanwords, they share Magyar or German cuisine, etc. but their language remained nevertheless a Romance language. If we move our focus to southern Balkans we'll find Aromanians/Vlachs, which were first mentioned in northern Greece in 10th century CE. They are still a minority today in Greece, FYROM and Albania, and even though many of them were assimilated, even though the culture of Vlachs from Greece is in most respects Hellenic (many of them actually view themselves both as Hellenes and as Vlachs) their language still survives. After a millenium!
Let's check the Albanians. Even though their origin is controversial, their Balkanic origin is not disputed. Regardless if their ancestors were Thracians, Illyrians or an unknown population, we have this group surviving for at least two millenia. In the Roman period the dominant culture was undoubtely Roman and to be sure, Latin left a heavy mark on Albanian language, but with all that Albanian is not a Romance language!


Let's move back to Thracians and Getae. In many areas of Thrace, but also north of Haemus, in the lands of the Getae, the Greek culture was dominant and highly influent, and I'm not talking only about the hinterland of the Greek colonies.

Here's a Thracian tomb from north-eastern Bulgaria, with obvious Hellenistic influences:
[attachment=3:3u707jxx]<!-- ia3 sveshtari_tomb.jpg<!-- ia3 [/attachment:3u707jxx]

Another tomb from central Bulgaria:
[attachment=1:3u707jxx]<!-- ia1 kazanluk_tomb.jpg<!-- ia1 [/attachment:3u707jxx]

Here's a Thracian inscription in Greek script:
[attachment=0:3u707jxx]<!-- ia0 ezerovo_ring.jpg<!-- ia0 [/attachment:3u707jxx]

Here's a fragment of a vase found in modern Romania, bearing an inscription in Greek. It belonged to a Getic(?) king:
[attachment=2:3u707jxx]<!-- ia2 thiamarkos.jpg<!-- ia2 [/attachment:3u707jxx]

Were the Thracians and the Getae speaking Greek? Certainly some of them were, but most of them were not. Was Greek the dominant or the most spoken language between Carpathians and Aegean Sea, between central Balkans and the Black Sea coast? No.
And this Hellenic influence lasted many centuries, not just three generations.