From: David Webb
Message: 37511
Date: 2005-05-02
Thanki you for your informative email. Is it the case that all IE languages in Europe borrowed from Neolithic and Palaeolithic languages that are now gone and that this is the reason why PIE words are not the only content of IE languages in Europe? I am thinking of how the British and Irish populations have been shown to be genetically Palaeolithic by means of Y chromosome correspondences with the Basque country. There must be substrata beneath all the IE languages, even if we are not in a position to investigate this? Proto-Albanian may show a Neolithic substratum?
-----Original
Message-----
From: cybalist@yahoogroups.com [mailto:cybalist@yahoogroups.com]
On Behalf Of alexandru_mg3
Sent: 02 May 2005 18:24
To: cybalist@yahoogroups.com
Subject: [tied] Re: Albanian:
length of time in the Balkans
> Is there any
> linguistic proof of the length of time
Albanians have been in the
>Balkans? I
> suppose everyone knows that many Serbs argue
that they came to the
Balkans
> only in the 11th century
Hello,
Of course it is.
1. Albanian has a huge list of about 350-400 Latin
Loans. If we
consider a Proto-Albanian vocabulary of about 1200
title-words this
represent almost 30% of the Total Vocabulary.
So Albanian - Balkan Latin contacts were intense
and take a very long
time. Different Layers of Latin loans can be
detected so the duration
of these contacts took several hundreds years
2. There are Ancient Greeks loans in Albanian
showing Grk a: > Alb o
This trace could be detected too in Romanian
Substratual Words
Common with Albanian (Rom a - Alb o) , but not in
the Latin Loans in
Albanian where Lat a: > Alb a)
So the Albanians contacts with the Ancient
Greek preceed the Roman
arrival in Balkans (Romans occupied Skodra at 169
BC).
In addition based on this linguistic rule
we can say: that the
Romanian Substratum seems to be genetically
linked with Proto-
Albanian one and is older than the Latin main
layer of Romanian.
3. Based on my timeframes (see my previous
message) the Proto-
Romanian and Proto-Albanians contacts
"ended" at least before 600 AC.
The 2 languages share even today about 300
Proto-Albanian words.
In fact the Proto-Romanian Vocabulary
around 500 AC has in common
more than 50% of its words with the
Proto-Albanian. The Proto-
Albanian was in the same situation.
Among this 50%: about 24% represents Common
Proto-Albanian words
and about 30% percent represents Common Latin
Words.
If the Slavs arrival didn't take place for
sure that the Proto-
Romanians and Proto-Albanians would have been now
a single people.
Best Regards,
Marius Alexandru
--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "David
Webb" <djwebb2002@...> wrote:
> Dear all, we know that there is no hard proof
that Albanian is
descended
> from Illyrian, but it would make sense in
other ways. The fact that
some
> Latin loan words are present in Albanian in
heavily disguised form,
does
> that add to the proof that the Albanians have
been in the Balkans
for a long
> time? I am thinking of words like njëqind,
related to centum. Is
there any
> linguistic proof of the length of time
Albanians have been in the
Balkans? I
> suppose everyone knows that many Serbs argue
that they came to the
Balkans
> only in the 11th century, and they also try
to argue for a
connection
> between Albania and the (unrelated) Kingdom
of Albania in the
Caucasus. I
> think linguistics could shed some light on
the surprising emergence
of
> Albanians in the 11th century after many
centuries during which the
> Illyrians were not mentioned.