Re: [tied] Re: Albanian-Romanian Concordances

----- Original Message -----
From: "alex_lycos" <altamix@...>
To: <cybalist@yahoogroups.com>
Sent: Monday, April 14, 2003 10:47 PM
Subject: Re: [tied] Re: Albanian-Romanian Concordances


> well Piotr, please be a bit patient with a poor soul:-)
> 1) Xavier says "and maybe too (peut etre aussi)" albanian 'sorrë'.
> 2) the Romanian form is with "c^". Would that means that the satemisation process was kind of k^>c^>s ?

The development of *k^ in most positions was into Albanian <th> (voiceless dental fricative), presumably via an affricate of the *c [ts] type. The cluster *k^w, however, developed into Proto-Albanian *c^ [tS], which eventually yielded Modern Albanian <s>. The sound must have been a *c^-like affricate during the time the early Slavic loans entered Albanian, since Slavic *c^ is reflected as <s> in that layer of loanwords. The "Albanoid" substrate words in Romanian preserve the old pronunciation, just like English preserves Old French affricates (rather than Modern French-style fricatives) in words like <chance> or <gentle>.

> 3) this "s" in Alb. "sorrë" is not so regular as expected. In the examples I gave once I showed the corepondence of lot Rom. words with Alb. words where there is the corespondence Alb. "c^"= Rom."ci". I just remember some of them (Rom-Alb).The words followed by an [1] have an extra comment :

> ce=ç/çë (what); ciocan=çokan/çekan/çekiç (hammer), celnic=çelnik (Shepherd's boss)cep=çep(tap), ceatã=çetë(group, band, gang), cicã=çka (so-so),ciomag=çomagë (cudgel), cioban=çoban (shepherd)[1] etc.

These words are a mixed lot (e.g. Romanian <ce> is an inherited Romance word, <celnik> is Slavic, <cioban> is Turkic, ultimately from Iranian, _pace_ your footnote). Some are Balkan wanderworts that have spread in recent times, or at least long after *c^ became <s> in Albanian. A couple of these have made their way even into Polish as military loans: <czata> 'reconnaissance party', <czekan> 'war hammer'. You'll find them also in Hungarian, Ukrainian etc. Whatever their origin, they are too widespread to serve as evidence of exclusive Albanian-Romanian relations dating back to ancient times.

Piotr