From: Andrew Howey
Message: 20066
Date: 2003-03-19
Hello, Piotr, et al:
There are many, many claims on the web that say Albanian is a direct descendant ot Illyrian. All you need to do is do a google search against "albanian illyrian languange" and you will get in excess of 1300 hits. When Cyril, our beloved list leader, WAS maintaining his web site, even he had at least one article about this. What is the general concensus among qualified linguists regarding this claim?
Andy Howey
Piotr Gasiorowski <piotr.gasiorowski@...> wrote:
//snip//
A good question :). What little is known about Venetic does not rule out its close relationship to Italic. "Illyrian" is virtually undocumented, but if the tradition according to which Messapic was an offshoot of Illyrian can be trusted, Illyrian may be another small branch related more closely to Italic (+ Venetic), Celtic and perhaps Lusitanian and Germanic than to the rest of IE.
//snip//
Piotr