Re: Odp: [tied] Re: Albanian connection

----- Original Message -----

From: DEFAYES MICHEL

To: cybalist@yahoogroups.com

Sent: Wednesday, March 07, 2001 8:36 PM

Subject: Re: Odp: [tied] Re: Albanian connection

One proponent of Illyro-Albanian continuity is Xhevat Lloshi (from the site
http://www.undp.tirana.al/download/pdf/albanian.pdf  you refered to on March 4), and you can hardly say he is ethnocentric. Yes it is quite regrettable that some have written in nationalistic style; they have discredited themselves by doing so. What you're saying is so true.
Not being an Albanologist, I don't want, and I wouldn't be able, to uphold a discussion on the origin of Albanian.

You must have observed, Michel, that in that very article Prof. Lloshi -- who, judging from what he writes, represents very sound scholarship -- lists all the reasonable current hypotheses ("that merit to be mentioned") about the origin of Albanian; and though he says that Albanian linguists generally support the Illyrian Hypothesis, he also mentions a number of eminent Albanologists who disagree (the one hypothesis that he explicitly rejects is that of Pelasgian origins).

(Not directly connected with this message: I'm puzzled by the recent discussions of the group refering to hyll as "sun". All dictionaries define hyll as "star").

Actually, we commented on this semantic problem. The discussion was about the possibility that the PIE "sun" word acquired the meaning "star" in Albanian. The Albanian word for "sun" is <diell>, of course.

Piotr