Against the theory of 'Albanian Loans in Romanian'

From: alexandru_mg3
Message: 30088
Date: 2004-01-27

Hello Piotr,

Piotr Gasiorowski wrote:
> 1. The development of PIE dorsal stops
> Proto-Albanian loans in Romanian give us some indication of the
> pronunciation of the reflexes of *k' and *g' at the time of the
> borrowing: their Modern Romanian reflexes are /c/ ~ /s/ and /z/ (~
> dialectal /3/).


It is not for the first time when you used this concept of "(proto-)
albanian loans in Romanian" (first time I heard this when we have
discussed on the Bessa word...)

In other words your afirmation said that :

A romance language, Romanian, "borrowed" some words from "proto-
albanian" in a regular manner like we have : Romanian loans from
Slavic, Hungarian, French etc...

Let's take some cases:

Case 1 : rom. brusture - alb. brushtullë -> "burdock"
Based on the latin loans in Albanian we know that the
transformation s->sh was already active in Albanian in
the Romans times. So the romanian 'brusture' should be loaned in
Romanian as "brushture" or "brujture" (see rom. ghiuj - alb.
gjush). As result, if 'brusture' is a loan in Romanian from Albanian,
this should be BEFORE the Latins loans in Albanian. But before this,
there wasn't any Romanian or Romance language in Balkans, and I can
add no Albanian, either, in the modern sense of this word.
There were ONLY three languages in Balkans in the later
Romanized zones, attested by the ancient greeks-latins scholars :
Illyrian, Dacian and Thracian (very possible with less or more
dialects).

We usually talk about Latin loans in Albanian and not Pre-Romanian
loans in Albanian, so we should talk here of an equation of at least
4 Languages : Balkan Romance, one (or more) Balkan Ancient Language
(s) and the modern Romanian and Albanian languages. To talk about
a 'pre-albanian' concept is like to talk about a 'pre-romanian'
concept in place to named it as Latin.


Case 2: Let's take other examples of such words in Romanian :
"brad" / "viezure" / "maz~are"

All three of them have the reflex of <dz> /3/ that arrive in
Romanian as "z" (dz in dialects) and in

Albanian <dh>. Viewing today great difference <dh> versus <z>, we can
easy say that "at the supposed loan

moment" the sound "loaned" by the "romanians" was "dz"

Now, yourself (when we have discussed Beekes list) said that the
Albanian transformation g^(h) -> d(h) is
EALIER (I can say or at least equal regarding its /dz/) than the
Latin loans in Albanian.
If we consider also the romanian transformation from
Latin : 'dies' - romanian : 'dzi', we see that the
'pre-romanians' (to use your concept, and not to say the Dacians)
already have this sound /dz/ when the Romans arrived, so we don't
have to take it from Albanians. (Also I don't remember at all a sound
like /dz/ in Latin).

As result the "loans" "brad" / "viezure" / "maz~are" should be
EARLIER (or at least equal) with the Roman presence in Balkans. But
once again there wasn't any Romanian language before (or during)
Romans presence there, so we have to named a 'pre-romanian' non-latin
language where these words existed before (or at least, following
your theory, where this 'proto-albanian' words were borrowed).

Case 3. I can add here as argument for this language : lat. ct ->
rom. pt, that clearly indicates a previous PIE *ct reduce to -> t
at 'pre-romanians'. And no 'Albanian loans' scenario is implied here.

Case 4. Other words that are against the "loan" theory are :

4.1 rom. zgard~a -alb . shkardhë

4.2 rom. s^ambure - alb. thumbullë

that I will not detail here.


Conclusion :
Viewing the great similarities that we have here a correct
model is to talk about An Ancient Balkan People (and an Ancient
Balkan language). Part of this people was fully Romanized :
Romanians, the other part was only partial Romanized : today
Albanians. (of course we cannot exclude from the beginning that we
have more than one Ancient Balkan Language in this equation)

In place to talk about 'pre-albanian' we should clearly
indicate who this people was in the Ancient Times. We correctly talk
about the Romans and not about the 'pre-romanians' (Also we are not
talking about 'pre-french language', 'pre-english language' etc...)

I cannot understand why the Language of this People : is not
clearly named by you in this equation, when all the evidences clearly
indicate it.

Also regarding your theory of "albanian loans in romanian" as
Hamp said related to this subject :
"the loan situation may easily be more complex than this"


Best Regards,
marius alexandru

P.S. : But the most difficult case on the "supposed albanian loans
in romanian" is regarding c^. I made an albanian-romanian list
regarding c^, during Bessa discussions but with no answer from you
side. I will try to redo this list in the next days.