Dear Piotr,
Yes. Romanian is closed to Dalmatian and shares lexical peculiarities
with Albanian. However, this does not mean that it was formed _only_ in
Southwest of Danube. In my opinion, the unity of today Romanian language
contradicts this scenario. Basically there is _only_ one dialect spoken
by some 30 millions. (OK. Within this dialect there are several accents,
but they are 100% comprehensible) The second most important Romanian
dialect, Aromanian, is spoken probably by one fifth of a million. Other
Romanian dialects are almost dead. So, out of all Romanian speakers,
99.3 % speak only one dialect, mainly on the Romanian territory. In my
opinion, this outcome is very unlikely using the scenario in which the
Romanian cradle was somewhere Southwest of Danube.
Best regards,
Paul Alesu
Paul Alesu wrote:
> 1. The simple fact of Romanian being a romance language is not proving
for this scenario.
Piotr Gasiorowski wrote:
No, but the fact that Romanian is particularly close to Dalmatian and to
the Latin substrate in Albanian suggests a historical connection. Close,
I mean, in terms of shared phonological innovations and lexical
peculiarities. Romanian also shares a number of non-Latin isoglosses
with Albanian. I would say that Romanian appears to be the descendant of
a West Balkan Latin dialect that absorbed a local substrate related to
Dacian, while Albanian is the very same Dacoid language strongly
influenced by West Balkan Latin, but not to the point of losing its
identity. The adstratal influence of South Slavic is strong in both.