>Reading again Hamp's article I want to point out that Çabej has
>right: Albanians was in today Albania at least in Roman Times.
This is because Çabej, along with Thunmann, Gustl Meyer &
P. Kretschmer, belongs to a group in favor of the thesis:
Albanians are Illyrians and thus autochtonous. Other
researchers had/have had another opinion: that the A. moved
thither from the East, being of Thracian extraction; e.g. H. Hirt,
G. Weigand, Dim Decev, V. Georgiev &c. Some people had...
mixed feelings :-) e.g. Jokl, Mladenov; these were for a mix, a
Thracian-Illyrian interpretation.
But there is no *direct* and *evident* link between the
Albanian idiom and the ancient Illyrians & Thracians. All
conclusions are mere speculations based on evaluations of
toponyms and anthroponyms. Actually no one knows how
the Illyrian, Thracian, Daco-Moesian idioms were like.
The mentioning of the Albanians by the sources is as
late as that concerning the Vlachs. So... go figure.
Both languages contain almost no traces pertaining to
ancient Illyrian, Thracian, Dacian, Moesian, Scythian
things such as onomastics, religion, mores etc.
One should also pay heed to the fact that the Illyrian population
was the one that was Romanized the earliest. Centuries prior to
the Romanization of the neighboring Thracoid populations.
Albanians are rather a rest of such a Thracoid group that was
too late in the process of Romanization, and accordingly
resisted much more than the population that evolved to Vlachs
i.e. Romanians. Had the Avars cum Slavs arrived, say, 300 years
later, the outcome might very well have been different: Albanians
speaking sort of a Romanian dialect or Romance language,
as different from Romanian as the extinct Dalmatian was.
>2. BUT for sure the Proto-Albanians arrival in Balkans (more
>precisly in +- their today's location):
Also take into consideration Gottfried Schramm's hypothesis
that Albanians are the continuation of the Dacian-Moesian
population of the Bessi; and under which circumstances of
Christianization might have happened that conversion, and
where (closer to the linguistic separation line betw. the
Thracoid and Illyroid realms).
>was before Roman Arrivals in Balkans... and after the
>ending of sk > h.
Might have been. But this is not a must for the Albanians
to have had Illyrian extraction and to have lived 2 thousand
years ago exactly where's today's Shqiperia.
>see Alb. ftuj < PAlb *wet -ulia > Rom. vãtui )
Why not from Lat. vitul(e)us as a variant of vitellus?
George