Re: Italo-Albano-Romanian Parallels (was: Daco-Romanian theory)

From: Richard Wordingham
Message: 37699
Date: 2005-05-07

--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "alexandru_mg3" <alexandru_mg3@...>
wrote:
> > Richard:
> >Strikingly, numbers 1 (as kt > tt), 3, 4, 7, 8, 9, 10, 12, 13 and 14
> >are also shared with Italian.
>
> You are almost right. With a single note here: The phonetism that I
> presented is that one around 300 - 500 AC. At Rome at that time -kt
> for example was still present. I have also some doubts about ns>s in
> Italian. Io penso che 9. -ns- is still present in Italian and seems
> to be an old phonetism (even I'm not 100% sure, please corect me if
> I'm wrong).

-ns- seems to have been eliminated several times - once before the
empire, (e.g. the abbreviation _cos_ for 'consul') and again
throughout Romance. _Penso_ 'think'is a learned re-introduction - the
normal form is _peso_ 'weigh'.
>
> Finally: ok let's say: 10/14 = 71%. Here the result is normal:
> Romanian is a Latin Language. And Italian is the closest Latin
> Language for Romanian.
>
> But on the other side we have: 14/14=100% :) (I know the
> computation contains a little trick but the main ideea is a correct
> one):
>
> Now the Point here is that Albanian is not at all a Latin Language.
> Despite this as I said once to Miguel the Proto-Romanian Phonetism
> was closer to Proto-Albanian one than to Latin.

> Isn't strange to detect such huge similarities between a Latin
> Language and Albanian? Only long contacts ?

Probably not. What's more curious is that some of these features
extend through a belt from Spain to Romania, but do not extend to
Greek Greek (unless you count /kt/ > /xt/). Italian Greek has
assimilated consonant clusters. (I can't speak for the other features.)

Richard.