>and you have the Albanian "ndër.
>I wonder here why "d" did not became
>woiced then in Albanian as expected.
>Or you thingk that in the Latin "inter"
>was devoiced the "t" in Albanian?
Just forget such relationships, derivations,
influences & speculation for a while.
Just think of phonetics aspects specific to
Romanian (I mean the DR dialect) only.
In such environments, unlike in Albanian
& al. idioms, for Romanian native-speakers
the pronunciation is possible only with the
help of a full vowel - such as î [I].
And if this î- is dropped, then only in
linking of the word with preceding words
ending in vowels. These vowels fills the
place left by the î before the nasal (which
is written "n" or "m"). The last syllable
of the word forms one syllable with the "'n"
or "'m" syllables: "al nostru'mpărat;"
"nu'ntzeleg;" "du-te'n vale," "până'ntr'atât,"
"sarea'n bucate" and myriads of other cases.
(Similar occurrence with the î- pronouns:
"nu-mi, nu-tzi, nu-i pasă," "nu-mi fac,
nu-tzi faci, nu-Si face...")
If in Protoromanian or, say, 13th century
Romanian, such pronunciations without
a clear vowel attached to the nasal was
possible, I don' know -- and why shouldn't I
care! What matters is that a more recent
Romanian has needed the vowel in the case
of the preps and prefs we're talking about
it is the î -- if there are no such links
as above (that serve as... crutches :-).
If you don't pay heed to these basic aspects
of Romanian, *from within* so to speak, all
speculations on derivations from Latin, Dacian,
Slavic, and Kishuaheli :) are to no avail.
So, in Northern Romanian, something like...
'ndranghetta isn't possible without a
preceding something (such as "dute'n...").
George
PS: "nalt" is possible only because users
have forgotten that, once, it was "în+alt."
Hence the frequent error in writing: "înnalt"
-- the same false double n is frequently written
in "înnainte," even stressed in speech, as though
there were în+nalt and în+nainte. (BTW: in
Transylvania, a variant "înante" is in use, i.e.
without that funny [în-a-in...].)