Dear Alvin,
By calling those comparisons "superficial"
I mean that you are satisfied with vague phonetic similarity without even
attempting to analyse the forms being compared, historically or morphologically.
This can only lead you astray: real etymological connections are typically
non-obvious, because the operation of language change obscures the form of words
in the long run, and genetic relationships between distantly related
languages can only be sorted out through careful and painstaking
formal analysis. I am afraid there are no short cuts in that field and without
some basic training you simply won't understand what the difference between
spurious lookalikes and real "cousins" consists in. And without this realisation
you are completely in the dark. I can't explain the methods of historical and
comparative linguistics to you in an e-mail posting; I can only recommend good
handbooks if you're interested. If you do know any Albanian linguists, you can
surely learn very interesting things from them. They would also make
valuable Cybalist members.
There are things that can be stated with
100%, and this is why I dare to state them categorically. One of them is the
lack of any special genetic relation between Albanian and Etruscan. Albanian, as
we know since the mid-19th century, is an Indo-European language. This means
that it shares a common linguistic ancestor with other IE groups, such as
Baltic, Slavic, Germanic, Celtic, Italic, Armenian, Greek, Indo-Iranian,
Tocharian and Anatolian. There is agreement among serious historical linguists
that Etruscan is _not_ an IE language, which means, among other
things, that no IE language (including Albanian) can be more
closely related to Etruscan than it is to other IE languages. You can be sure
that if Etruscan were a member of the IE family, competent linguists wouldn't
have missed the fact.
As regards some matters of
detail:
The methods of historical linguistics lead
to very reliable conclusions when we talk about an excellently documented and
thoroughly investigated language like Greek. When I say that <the:-> 'to
place' cannot be related to <atha:naia:>, I'm not talking about my
humble opinions but about very solidly established knowledge. We know as
securely as we can know anything in historical linguistics that Greek the:- <
PIE *dHeh1-. We know very well how Greek developed, and we know, in
particular, that no known historical process within Greek could transform
*dHeh1- into <atha:naia:>, or even *eh1 into <a:>. The permissible
transformations are language-specific and one of the first things
you _must_ learn if you want practise etymology is what exactly happened
(and, importantly, what _didn't_ happen) in the history of each language.
Intuition is not enough. Intuition could tell you that, e.g., English whole
(< OE ha:l) must be related to Greek holos. But careful analysis proves that
this is a false (accidental) resemblance, while the Greek word is _really_
related to Sanskrit sarva- and Albanian gjallë though it looks so
different.
I don't pitch my own beliefs against other
people's beliefs. I'm doing my best to give you well-founded conclusions derived
from my linguistic knowledge and training. I hope most fellow linguists would
tell you very similar stories. But don't blame me for dismissing opinions based
on fanciful speculation -- it's part of a linguist's duty to the public to
denounce _pseudolinguistics_ whenever possible.
I don't say that Illyrian _cannot_ be the
parent of Albanian, or that anybody who says that Albanians are Illyrians is a
fool. I only say that the evidence for that connection is dubious and whatever
little we know about the ancient languages of the Balkans suggests (to me --
well, this _is_ a subjective opinion) a connection between Illyrian and Messapic
on the one hand, and a connection between Albanian and ancient Satem languages
such as Dacian and Thracian on the other hand. I don't intend to repeat all the
linguistic arguments now; they can be found somewhere in the Cybalist archives
if you're interested. There must have been many languages in the region that
were lost in antiquity without leaving any material traces. The question of
Albanian origins will probably remain moot for many decades.
The worst guide in these matters is
national pride and romantic wishful thinking. If you treat "Illyrian" as the
symbol of your nation's heroic past, you will attach political and emotional
significance to what should be an academic question, and you may feel
irrationally offended if somebody questions the Illyrian-Albanian link.
Let me tell you something about my own
nation. Some ten years ago I noticed, to my immense relief, that the
intellectual climate here had changed and that the Polish linguists,
archaeologists and historians of the younger generation no longer regarded it
their patriotic duty to prove to the world that Poland had a glorious past, that
our forefathers had lived in this land since time immemorial, or that
our unique contribution to the history and culture of Europe made us a
chosen nation. To live without this ethnocentric burden is a great psychological
comfort. It shows that you feel secure, are not afraid of your neighbours, and
can evaluate facts in a clear and objective way, without a hidden political
agenda or xenophobic sentiments at the back of your mind. And once we let the
Goths and Vandals in, the history of Poland suddenly became much more
fascinating than before. _Real_ history proves more interesting than romantic
dreams.
I had second thoughts about <yll> not
because "everything goes" but because this word is a particularly hard nut to
crack and scholars give different opinions about it. There are many such cases
in Albanian because of its complicated linguistic prehistory, lack of close
relatives, and short attestation period. We know how it has developed over
the last 500 years or so, but the rest -- the enormous gap between PIE unity and
the 15th century -- has to be reconstructed on rather meagre evidence. Don't
draw from that the hasty conclusion that there will be different opinions about
_every_ Albanian word. No, the state of Albanian studies has advanced
considerably in recent decades and there are fewer mysteries than there used to
be.
In Latin, <parens> (pl.
<parentes>) means 'parent' and is simply the present participle of the
verb <pario:> 'bring forth, produce'. Albanian borrowed this word straight
from Latin, and English fom Latin via Old French, preserving the original
meaning. The word has changed its meaning in Italian and some other Romance
languages ("parents" > "kin"), but that's a more recent development. Your
Albanian "explanation" of the word is naive because it is only based on an
arbitrary association within Modern Albanian and doesn't take into account any
relevant linguistic evidence.
Albanian <qiell> rhymes with
<diell> but is not related to it. It is a Latin loanword, <caelum>
'the heavens', with the same development of the initial consonant that you can
see in Albanian qind < Latin centum (also a loanword).
_Never_ etymologise a placename before you
look into its history. For example, Trieste is the ancient Roman colony of
Tergeste; your "three-is" is a typical "folk-etymology", i.e. an attempt to
intuit the origin of a word without examinig the historical data.
Aulona/Vlona/Vlorë has nothing to do with <valë>... OK, details on demand
only -- this posting is already too long.
Piotr
----- Original Message -----
Sent: Saturday, March 03, 2001 6:12 PM
Subject: [tied] 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