george knysh wrote:
> *****GK: Anyone who sees "pre-Romanians" in the
> Balkans before the Romans is in some sort of
> trance...And talk about "wishful thinking" Your theory
> about Thermidava is an excellent example thereof.*****
you put the finger on the most sensible point. Actualy we don't know how to
call that. So stupid as it appears to be, we cannot find a denomination ,
one better as PreRomanians. The matter is as follow:
-the people who became romanized ( in my view: getting an huge Latin lexical
data) are not known exactly. They could be Illyrians, Thracians, Dacians,
Peonians, Dardanians, etc etc etc.
These people should be seen as point 0
In the time of the Roman Empire, the people should have used stil their
languages, mixed with Latin, borrowing more and more Latin words, having
that "special Latin" in East of Roman Empire. This is the point 1 where we
can call them just "roman citiziens". These "roman citiziens" are these
which in that part of the world will became in our example, ProtoRomanians.
That is the point 2 on the timeline.
The last point is the arrival of the Slavs, we speak already about Valahs
where the things do not need any explantion more. We have now the level 3.
So, just for better "view:"
0 = PreRomanians
1 = PreRomanians getting latinised in a certain degree
2 = ProtoRomanians
3 = Romanians
Here Marius point to phonetic aspects which fits on the level "0" between
Alb. and Rom. The level 1 and 3 ( Latin and Slavic) are different phonetic
ttreatment in Alb. and Rom. Level 2 appears to be unknown since there are
some lexical correspondances which show more Rom. features ( words which do
contains the "c^" which apparently was unknown in Alb in the time of level 1
since they already should have been changed to "s").
I know by myself the denomination PreRomanians sounds weierd but it seems
the best one one can use without having to take in sentence all the folks
which _could_ be the right one.
Alex
PS. let me tell you a little secret regarding the name "romanians". It is a
mistery to the linguists how is to understand the name "romanus" as meaning
"slave". I am not joking. Despite the actually name for that folk , the word
"rum�n" meant just "slave", A special kind of slave. A peasant without his
own land and which was bounded to the land of his master. So far I know, the
explanation of this meaning was allways avoided. BTW we don't know how the
people called themselves in the XIII-XV century. We know for sure, they
spoked ( wrotte ) about themselved not as "romanians" but after the region
they lived in "munteni, moldoveni, ardeleni" (people from Walachia,
Moldavia, Transylvania).