Re: Albanian connection

Dear Piotr !
First of all I would like to thank you once more for paying consideration
(time) to what I writte.
And would like to thank Pete Gray for the message of welcome.

Because of my lack of knowledges in how IE languages were developed I am
not able to comment your explanations, and I intend to accept most of them.
I will invite other Albanians with knowledges in linguistic to participate
in this forum in order to exchange suggestions with the people of this forum.
I hope that those who will respond my invitation will not be diletants like
me.. :)

But what disturbs me a little bit is the tendence to categorically mark
(all) the suggestion I brought here - which are not mine, but theories
brought by Albanologists of different nationalities who of course were able
to explain them etymologicaly or phoneticaly (I am not) - as "superficial" .

This tendence is to be seen even in the case of Bardhylus (when you say
that the Albanian explanation is perfect but against your beliefe) or
Etruscan link to Albanian - you sharply say "there is no such..." at a
time when the news brought in this forum by somebody else clearly showed
that there were many linguists who defend the Albanian connection -
something that I had heard several times before.

I seriously thought that you were instead going to be interested to dig
inside and see why those linguist have come with those thesis... I don´t
mean you to have to accept them.


Some other comments:

Piotr:
Of course if you refuse to obey the normal methods of historical
linguistics you can connect Athe:ne:/Atha:naia: with whatever seems to
resemble it in any language, but you will do so at your peril: such
impressionistic comparison has no scientific value whatsoever.

Me:
But how exact are those normal methods of historical linguistic ??
Yesterday you were convinced "(h)yll" derived from "sun" and you brought it
up to show me how the method of historical language works, but today you
are not convinced anymore about that method and "(h)yll" becomes a mystery.

You speak most of the time about your beliefs - at a time that what others
believe makes no sense to you.
You don´t believe Illyrian connection to Albanians because Messapics must
have been Illyrian, and doesn´t look to have a similarity to Modern
Albanian. There are two "if"-s in this case.
But you don´t take in consideration other factors as the area were
Albanians are spread in comparison to Illirians, that there are no records
Albanians to have moved from other places (being neighbour to two powerful
populations such the Greek and Latin, such a massmovement would not have
passed without being noticed by them and recorded). Then the population
Albanians descended from must have been a big one and widespred in order to
have been able to stay the assimilations and slavonizations, and in order
to develope a rich language (a family of it´s own). There are even some
other mathematical factors which could have been brought.

I think we do not have to go over the sea to prove the origins of Albanians.
A question with just one "if" is:
Would the presence of a (some) important word(s) (forms) of old Greek in
Modern Albanian, (neighbouring exchanging) stress the thesis that Albanians
come from Illyrians ?

Piotr:
The modern Albanian versions of Illyrian placenames are difficult to
recognise, e.g. Aulona > Tosk Vlorë.

Me:
Tosk - Vlora, Geg - Vlona
Now, as far as I know "u" and "v" were many times confused specially in
Latin scripts.
There is no wonder that the script "Aulona" might have been spelled
"Avlona" or even "Vlona" as today.
In these cases today´s Vlona (Geg) is a good preservation if initial name
a-vlona.
Does a population which is settled on another populations ground preverse
the placenames of privious population at all ? And does it preserve them so
well ?

In Tosk there is a tendency of turning "n" into "r". "Ran´" (sand, Geg) <
"Rërë"(Tosk).
"Rand´" (heavy, Geg) < "Rëndë" (Tosk).
I personaly think that in many toponymes, are phrasis where even the verb
which characterized the name is included.
Such a verb is "is"= "është", "âsht´", "â´"
"Bucureste" = "bukur është" = "how beautiful it is" (bukur alb. = beautiful)
"Trieste" = "Tri është" = "It is divided in three parts"
"Apolloni" has survived in "Polloni" (the village near the old city with
the same name) in Albania.
If all this is true why "a" has fallen in Avlona or Apolloni might have
been the reason that people did not have anymore to use the verb which
characterized the name.
"Vlona" is instictively connected to "val-"= "wave" (valë) but much even to
the other meaning of this word "boil"="valë, vlon, vloj, vlim".
Vlona accidentaly has both the characteristics named above. It is a city
near the sea which shares the 'waves' coming from Adriatic and Ionian See,
being the place where those seas meet eachother.
At the same time summer temperatures are so high you would feel yourself
'boiling'..

When I say it is a methodological error to compare Albanian directly with
ancient languages as if nothing has happened in the
meantime, I mean that even the oldest stage of Albanian
known to us is very different from whatever Proto-Albanian looked like
two or three millennia ago


Piotr:
The words <theatron> and <theo:ria> are of different origin; they are
related to the verb theaomai < *tha:w-a-o-mai 'gaze at' (cf. <thauma>
'wonder, marvel'). Etymologically, they have to do with "laying out" (=
"explaining") or "watching" something, but not with "speaking".

Me:

Now something apart from methods of historical linguistic, how could you
have been able at that time to clearly explain something if not through
speaking ?
Then "the", "tha" stands also for "explanation".
"I tha të gjitha" = "he explained everything".


Piotr:
Words meaning "first" are derived from the widely attested IE root
*per(H)-:
...They were inherited independently by the various branches, and Albanian
is by no means unique in having several forms derived from that root.

Me:
Could multiform derivation from that root mean that there were many
Albanian dialects, or the population was very wide spred ?


Piotr:
The diphthong <ie> is the regular development of stressed *e before a
sonorant, not a contraction of *-ihy- or *-ihe-. It looks, then, as if the
"sun" root had already been taken. (As for your question whether <diell>
survives outside Albanian, nearly all words for the sun in the various IE
languages -- sun, Sonne, so:l, soleil, su:rya-, he:lios, haul, saule:,
slUnIce, etc. -- are derived from the same
protoword as <diell>.)

Me:
Observing these forms wakes a question in my mind:
How does "qiell" (sky) in historical linguistic look like ?
I see a great affinity with Italian "celo" but it is not hard to see that
"diell" and "qiell" are very related to each other such seems not "sole"
and "celo" to be.

In a previous post you mentioned "prindër" deriving from "parente",
"parenti", "parents".
I don´t know if the Latin word had the same meaning as today Italian, but
what we call "prindër" (parents), is called "genitori", "genitore" in
Italian. "Parente" is a cousin, or member of the same tribe, family tree.
Now if we put Albanian into East, Latin in center and English in West. How
comes the meaning of "parents" (said to be of Latin origin) is the same in
the East and West and different in the center ? Should we probably move the
center to somewhere else ?
We find some other accidental connections in "prindër"
pri (alb.) - lead
nd- (alb.) - through
"Pri-ndër" = "lead-through"... as is the case of life.
Your parents bring you into life and lead you through it until you are able
to lead youself.


Question:
Do we find in Albanian elements (or words) of non IE origin ?

My best regards
Alvin