From: Alvin Ekmekciu
Message: 6289
Date: 2001-03-02
--- In cybalist@..., "Piotr Gasiorowski" <gpiotr@...> wrote:
> ... deriving ancient <Illuroi> or <Illiri> from a modern noun phrase can
hardly be taken seriously.
I understand that, but I am sure that the scholars who brought those
theories have stronger arguments and have gone deeper into the thing. Of
course they would have been able to defend their arguments.
..And still you can not exclude this thing this easy as you are intending
to do..
I wrotte:
> That is why I was mentioning that "the", "tha" doesn´t ocurr to me
to be found in Italian. It must be a pure ancient Albanian word. You
didn´t comment the suggestion (also not mine) that <the>, <tha> (e
thëna = spoken word, á thán = is said) is to be found in <Athene> as
God of Speech.
Piotr:
> Same as above. This is a clear example of folk etymology based on
accidental phonetic similarity.
Me:
Well, it might be an accidental phonetic similarity. But I would ask:
- Do we have a better explanation (or an explanation at all) of <Athena> as
a God of Speech ?
- How often do "phonetic similarities" have to occur in order not to be
"accidental" anymore, and we could try to digg, and probably find the
connections ?
I would like to bring some other similatiries which seems to have <the> =
<spoken> as root:
thesis, theater, theory.
All these words have to do with the "spoken word".
Now, if you have defined something in some words, what you have done is
<thezë> in Albanian, where <-zë>, <-z> is been added to mark that what we
are talking about is smaller than the meaning of the root. In our case it
is not a long meaning, or a speech but only a small meaning <thezë>. I will
not dare to say that it might be the same as <thesis>, but there is another
accidental similarity.
You can find a lot of such "accidental similarities" even in the (some
times still undeciphred) names of ancient Greek Gods, or Greek Mithology.
Coming back to <the>, <tha>, <e thena>, <e thana> - in a script of Aurel
Marcelini (Dardanian, brought as kid to Constantinopel) found in
Constantiponels Library is included an old song about a female God -
belonging to Illyrians - whose name was Thana.
Could it be the same God as Athene ?
"Thana" in Albanian is also the name of a tree, which old Albanians
considered as a God of healthiness, and for which they payed a lot respect.
Piotr:
The sheer time gap between Ancient Greek and Modern Albanian militates
against such connections.
Me:
Again, <the>, <tha> is tought to be as old as the language which later is
called Albanian is.
The time gap might instead bring closer the Albanian pronounciation of "th"
to the old Greek one.
Piotr:
> ...Latin princeps has a perfectly clear etymology (from
contracted primus-capio). I am not sure what the etymology of <prij>
is, but it seems likely that it's ultimately related to Latin primus
via PIE *p(e)r-. This, however, would be distant family relationship,
not the result of borrowing.
Me:
I know that <primus> or <primo> is the "first one", but how the root <pri>
is to be explained in Latin ??
It would be very easy to understad what <primus> stands for if we know that
<pri> is <the lead, the leader, the head>, then <primus> is <the one which
leads the row>, as it is the case of numbers, <primo>=<first>.
<prim>, <primë> in Modern Albanian stands for <lead me>, <show me the way>.
I also wrotte then <pre>, <prej> in Albanian stands for <origin>, <past>,
<from> but even for <to cut> (<prej fjalën> = <cut the word> a positions
from which you can not go back, it cann´t be undone. <Prej shpresat> =
<have no hopes anymore>)
And I told here about how close connected <pre> and <pri> in the sense of
directions (from <-> ahead ) are in Albanian.
Do we find such a thing in Latin ?
Then how is <pre> to be explained in Latin ?
In <prehistory>, <preoccupation> and other <pre> words, <pre> seems to take
the role of the <origin>.
I wrotte:
> > The connenction with <(h)yll> (aslo this is not my thesis) was in
the words HILLIR, HILLIRIA, HILLIRICOS, HILLIRICUM having the root
<HILL> which might have taken the form <HYLL>.
Piotr:
> Again, non-systematic phonetic similarity proves nothing, especially
if the vowels don't match (Albanian <y> in <(h)yll> is from older *u)
and there's no suggestion what the -ir- "suffix" might be.
Me:
I understand you are talking about Geg <y>. Have you tryied the Tosk one ?
I wrotte:
> > Another connetcion of the Illyrian to Albanian is said to be the
name of Illyrian King Bardhylis = Bardhë (H)Ylli (the White Star).
Now, the word <bardhë>(alb.)=<white> is said to be a Thracian one.
Piotr:
> The name is not glossed and the meaning "white star" is just a wild
guess. There are a few Illyrian names with the element <leuk-> -- perhaps a
better candidate for carrying the meaning 'white'.
Me:
Well Bard-hylus was not the first King of Illyrians. There have been
several kings called Hylus.
One is to be found in the XXII century B.C.
I must mention here that one very ancient Albanian name for God is
<Hy>,<Hyj>, <Hyjn>, <Hyjni>.
<Hy> stands even for <enter>.
As what regards the deriving of <Hyll> from <Diell>,<Di-hell>, <Di-hyll>
(Sun) it is not the first time I hear that suggestion but what makes me
wonder is much a philosofical question:
How did these anscient people know that the stars were nothing more but Suns ?
Keeping in mind that this knowledge is very recent and in Middle Ages
nobody would dare to think it.
And another thing I wonder about is:
Has <hyll> or <dihell> survived in any other language but Albanian ??
Piotr:
... while the <i lirë> and <(h)ylli>
hypotheses are (1) highly speculative, (2) mutually exclusive
(obviously, they can't both be right).
Me:
Obviously they cann´t. But the porpose I brought them is not to try to
convince you that Albanians did come from Illyrians but to see what
arguments speak against those theories, and how convinceing those arguments
are.
Piotr:
..we can read Old Greek very well as it is.
Me:
There is a difference between reading and understanding.
Do you understand how ancient people could come to names like Zeus, Athene,
Aphfrodite, Odhyses ??
> > Didn´t you bring in this forum a post written in some journal
about the affinity of Etruscian to Albanian?
>
> Not me, definitely. There's no such affinity.
Then it probably was somebody else. It is a topic called "Etruscan News", I
found only one reply of it with the number 1836.
Parts of the message:
"...The Sydney Morning Herald 06/07/99 report on the discovery reported
But analysts say it brings further knowledge of the grammatical and lexical
structure of Etruscan, which some think resembles modern Albanian. "
Now something quite different.
When people investigate about something (let´s call it phenomenon) people
always take into consideration the probability the thing might be true.
Or you could do mathematics, you could add, you could bring known and
anknown factors together.
We don´t know for sure the origins of Albanians, and just because we know
that there is almost no affinity to any other modern population we have to
look for the origins among dissappeared populations.
The probability is bigger Albanians to have come from the dissapperead
population of Illirians taking in consideration those factors:
- The surface Albanians are spred is included in Illyria.
- There are not facts nor is it mentioned in any documents Albanians to
have moved from somewhere else.
- The population of origin where Albanians come from must have been a big
one, and widespred taking into the considerations that Albanians managed to
survive the assimilations or slavisation.. Thus in our investigation we
should exclude small populations who once lived in the nearby territories.
Illyrian is still the best candidate.
- We can not rely on linguistic forms because no texts in Illyrians is
found this far.
regards
Alvin Ekmekciu