Piotr Gasiorowski wrote:
>> Avlona, today Vlora, attested in Geg Vlona, vlonjat 'inhabitant of
>> the Vlora' through aphaeresis of /a/, etc.
>
> Would the names be any different if the Albanians borrowed them from a
> local variety of Late Latin? As you show yourself, both vowel loss and
> st > sht occur regularly in loans from Latin, which meant that while
> those "soundlaws" are indeed Albanian, their date is post-Roman.
> Actually, if ancient Auló:na were an authentic Proto-Albanian name, it
> would have developed into something like *alé~na > *lênë/*lërë. The
> modern form shows that it was borrowed rather late as [awlona] or
> [avlona] with an entirely non-Albanian reflex of initial /au/.
> Piotr
Regarding Vlore.
the Drom. has a habbit to insert an "a" at the begin of the words ,
Aromanian has it more accentuated. More, the "au" diphtong as Miguel
showed it has been preserved in Rom. "aulona" should have given ( with
rothacism of "l") *aurona in Rom.
The Dalmatian seems to have preserved this "au" too if we think at
"aurum" > "Yaur"; one can of course assume that an another Romance
dialect could make this and this and from a certain phonetical aspect of
the word, Albanian did the rest. But I guess there is no need to
postulate such idea since we are not aware of another Romance dialect
which could do it.
One question here:
-it is known that in X century the epyscope of Vlora changed the liturgy
to the Greek language instead of Slavic language how it was before. Are
there any Greek loans in Albanian church terminology which can be linked
in that period of time?
Alex