--- In cybalist@..., "Piotr Gasiorowski" <gpiotr@...> wrote:
> [Piotr:] The Slavic languages developed rather far inland, and yet
have a common word for 'sea', *morje < PIE *mori (+ *-o-). The Proto-
Albanians may well have been aware of the existence of 'deep water'
not so far away, and if they were part of a continuous chain of Getic
dialects, some of the vocabulary of Black Sea Getic would have
diffused into proto-Albanian.
[Alvin:] The difference is that Slavic *morje stood for 'a body of
water' and not for 'deep' (water). It is of no strange that *morje
was developed inland, because you find bodies of water almost
everywhere you go: lakes, rivers, pools etc.
The deep water is only to be found in sea and deep lakes.
If P. Albanians where not living beside the sea, they must have lived
all around a big deep lake in order to remember and develop the
word 'deep water' <debët> into <det>.
On the other hand the word <det> must have had very deep roots inside
the Proto-Albanian language not to be replaced by another word. It
could have been very easily replaced by the Latin word, as Latin
replaced many other words.
More, if the word <det> was developed somewhere else, then we have a
scenario where all the proto-Albanian tribes have recognized the sea
at once as 'deep water', in other words as the sea "they had heard
about", so they didn´t call it 'pellg, liqen, gjol,lumë' but 'det'.
Isn´t it obvious that if the word <det> didn´t mean that much to most
of the proto-Albanians tribes, but to only a few of them, it would
have dissapeared, replaced ?
>[Piotr:] What is more telling is the absence of developed native
sea-related terminology (fishing, sailing, boat-building), strange
for an ancient sea people.
[Alvin:] If by ancient sea people you are refering to Illyrians I
would say that they probably where sea people, at least Liburns, who
had developed small and speedy vessels using them mostly to commit
acts of piracy which led to Roman-Illyrian war at the time of queen
Teuta. But they were defeated and one of the major conditions of the
capitulation was not to build any more ships, not to develop sailing
vessels, not to be able to sail anymore, and the Illyrians coast was
controlled by the Romans.
It is almost the same thing that is happening today. Instead of acts
of piracy we have speedy boats illegally transporting people from
Albanian coast to the Italian one. And the Albanian coast and waters
as once the Illyrian ones are patroled by guess who, and because we
live in modern times they now have a license from the Albanian
Government.
Romans never lost their grip on Illyrian coast until most of it
became Slavic.
Though most of sea-related terminology, as in any other field, might
be of loanwords mostly Latin, there must also be some native proto-
Albanian ones among those words: anije, lundër, bash, kiç, guackë,
midhje, gaforre, ngjalë, karrem, grep, dallgë, valë, baticë-zbaticë,
vorbull, rërë, stuhi, fllad.
Of course I would need to speak to a sailor for a broader sea-
terminology. This is one of those moments when you wish your
grandfather was alive. His family was of sea people, for generations,
until the Big Powers decided to give the city of Ulqin to Montenegro
and they lost their ships in a sea-war against the French navy. He, a
young man, fled together with the rest of the people who survived the
invasion.
He was able not only to tell family legends about meatings with
gigand sea animals, but also could tell each part of the ship in
details using words I never understood. I also know they used
different words for different kind of winds or sea-weather. Since my
grandfather had no sons and my mother or her sister were not
interested about stories originating from a land outside the today
Albanian borders, he burried his past and his family past with him.
I still think there are ancient Albanian words outthere about which
are not included in vocabularies. The problem with the Albanian
vocabuaries is that they are very young and the linguists (Albanians)
had to work mostly within the Albanian borders, but there are as many
Albanians as in Albania in the site of the border. We are meeting
each after about 50 years of isolation.
Alvin