Re: Albanian origins and much more

In the course of the discussion on Albanian, some participants
mentioned Gottfried Schramm, "Anfänge des albanischen Christentums
Die frühe Bekehrung der Bessen und ihre langen Folgen", Freiburg im
Breisgau: Rombach, 1994.

I read the book ten years ago and made lengthy notes. If the notes
give a correct picture, what is convincing in the book is old and
what is new is not convincing.

The following points struck me as problematic:


(1) Schramm quotes a huge amount of literature, but appears to have
missed some of the most important publications, e.g. Fine's two-
volume critical history of the Balkans, and also Du Nay's 1977 book
on the past of Rumanian (which reaches virtually the same conclusions
as Schramm in his later series of articles in Zeitschrift für
Balkanologie 21-23, 1985-1987).


(2) Schramm is strongly inclined to think that the presence of
language A in an area proves the absence of language B.


(3) More generally Schramm seems unable to grasp the consequences of
Balkan demographics, most particularly of the characteristic wave
movement between mountains and valleys: the low-lying areas are
easily disturbed; if they are, people move to the mountains and take
up mountain pastoralism; as soon as quiet conditions return, excess
population moves from the mountains to the valleys again, where
farmland is available. Most valleys are inhabited by descendants of
people who arrived from the mountains only a small number of
generations ago. (Albanian-speaking Kosovo and Serbian-speaking
Vojvodina are only two of the more spectacular examples.) But they
may be speaking a language that was brought from the valleys into the
mountains at an earlier stage. Rumanian is more or less generally
agreed to reflect a stage during which pastoralism was the principal
occupation of the Rumanian-speaking population, but since it
continues Latin, which was quintessentially urban and agricultural,
the pastoralist stage itself is obviously secondary. Similarly,
Slavic reached the Balkans as the language of peasants, but Neo-
s^tokavian Serbo-Croatian (which is by far the most widespread SCr
dialect type in addition to being the basis of the standard
languages) originated in the mountainous Herzegovina as the dialect
of a pastoralist population which subsequently spread to low-lying
areas. Linguistically the consequence is a very low level of
dialectal differentiation, at least compared with most of western
Europe, where sedentary life has given rise to spectacular dialect
differences.


(4) Schramm writes about the speakers of Albanian: "Rund 800 Jahre
Römerherrschaft und im 7. Jh. n. Chr. die großen Einbrüche der Slawen
haben sie überstanden, ohne jemals ihre Eigenständigkeit als Volk mit
seiner angestammten Sprache zu verlieren, während alle anderen
Barbarenvölker der Antike von der Landkarte Europas weggewischt
wurden. Aber wieso gerade in Albanien soviel ethnische
Beharrungskraft?" (p. 9). This gives evidence of a remarkable lack of
understanding of the history of the area: the Ottoman empire never
penetrated the area either. If anywhere you expect the retention of
what Schramm chooses to call "Barbarensprachen" it is here.


(5) Schramm's identifies the Albanians with the Bessoi in order to
link the obvious fact that Albanian is the language of a population
that knew about Christianity before the collapse of Roman power
structures on the Balkans with the activities of Nicetas of
Remesiana. All crucial sentences in his argument contain the German
word "wohl", expressing the fact that Schramm knows very well himself
that the entire story is speculative. There is nothing compelling
about it. There can be no question that Pre-Albanian was spoken in
the Roman Empire, as is shown also by the degree to which the
vocabulary is shot though with Latin, even for such central concepts
as "far", "friend", "much", etc. (the examples are numerous and
familiar). One expects as a matter of course that they became
acquainted with the State Religion at some stage between the reign of
Constantine the Great (if not earlier) and the collapse of Roman
power structures in what is now Serbia more than a century later. It
should be recalled that the area Zagreb-Belgrade-Nis^/Sofia (notably
the area between Vinkovci and Nis^) played a crucial role in the
Roman Empire from the middle of the third to the middle of the fifth
century. Constantine the Great himself held court for extended
periods in Mitrovica (near Belgrade) and Sofia. Indeed, most emperors
who reigned between 250 (Decius) and 565 (Justinian) were born in the
area. Julian the Apostate declared himself a pagan at Mitrovica
(361). Even the remotest mountain village must have known about
Christianity.


(6) Schramm thinks because of the early Christian vocabulary of
Albanian that pre-Albanian must have been an official church language
on a par with Gothic or Armenian. That does not follow at all. The
Slavs knew about Christianity long before Cyril and Method, as is
shown by the shape of the earliest loans. Schramm is strongly
inclined to exaggerate the influence of books.



Sorry for that,


Willem