I've been wanting to make this thread for a while, and now I have some free time. Please, if you have a strong nationalistic bias, don't even bother commenting. If you have a slight bias, be careful of what you say. I don't want to turn this into a stupid 13 year old keyboard warrior convention. Both Yugoslavians and Albanians have a right to call Illyrians their ancestors in my opinion, if they want to that is.
I'm going to try to establish this continuity on a linguistic/historical basis. I'll also look at some counter-arguments as well.
Reason #1 The Tosk-Gheg split
This dialect split predates the slavic migrations in the balkans, and the river Shkumbin (central Albania) acts as the the divisive line. The reason why it predates it, is because both dialects deal differently with foreign borrowings, especially slavic words. (I'll leave it to whoever wants to research it). Illyrian is thought to have gone extinct at the same time this split happened. So one can establish that proto-Albanian and Illyrian were spoken roughly at the same place and time, making it difficult to call them different languages.
Reason #2 Latin Borrowings
A great number of borrowed latin words, PREDATE the christian era. Illyrians were the only tribes in the Balkans to be conquered by the Roman Empire before the year 0. Thracians and Dacians were invaded around 100 AD. The only explanation for these pre 0 AD, words is that they were passed down from the Illyrians when they were first invaded around 3-200 BC.
Reason #3 Greek Borrowings
The same argument goes for borrowings from DORIC greek, which mean Illyrians/Albanians were living near northwestern Greece since times of antiquity. P.S. Remember while Epirus and Macedonia were Greek states, only the ruling class were greek, the rest of the population were of Illyrian/Macedonian stock.(I'm uncertain whether the two had any relationship)
Reason #4 No records of Migrations
The Byzantines documented all significant migrations in the Balkans, none are mentioned regarding Albanians arriving to this modern region.
Arguments against
Let me talk about the main "historian" who contradicts this theory, Georgiev. I wanted to establish his own pro-Bulgarian bias, by quoting from one of his books where he talks about Thracians and Illyrians being these Greco-Germanic tribes who derived from the Pelasgians. Lunatic? Yes, very much so. But I have been searching for an hour and I cant find it. IF SOMEONE CAN, PLEASE POST A LINK! He makes very vague claims and assumptions, and his interpretations in grey areas are definitely biased driven.
#1 - He says Illyrians were coastal people, while Albanians are mountainous since they LACK maritime vocabulary.
First of all, even the word for sea in Albanian is det, which is original, although derived from PIE be it. Second of all, Albania/Southern Illyria is about 70-80% mountains, right next to the coast. You can be a mountainous AND coastal people due to the proximity of the mountains and sea in the Adriatic coast. There's also loads of other sea-animal names completely native to Albanian, such as gaforre (crab) which Leibniz said is related to the word fork.
#2 - Eastern Balkan Romance words
This is definitely from contact with Romanians, although it doesnt make Albanians automatically Dacian, they are simply borrowings. And again there's a lot words in Albanian of Latin origin before the year 0 AD, before the Romans even invaded Dacia and Thracia.
#3 - Centum/Satem Theory
This is quite an interesting one. Albanian is established as Satem, while Illyrian might have been Centum, but there is not enough evidence. First of all, let me start by saying that NO LANGUAGE IS 100% Centum and Satem. All IE languages have features from both, although some an amount of overwhelming more examples than others. For example while one language can have 85% words with Centum features it might also have another 15% with Satem.
Second of all, Tocharian pretty much shattered this theory. Although there is undeniably a shift that has undergone from PIE, no one knows how this shift took place. The best guess would be areal contact, rather than a Proto-Satem Proto-Centum theory, although even that is just a guess. So we can't use this theory, until we know more about this shift to deny that one language is Centum and it cannot be derived from Satem. In French, the word cent is pronounce so, a satem feature derived from a centum language. There's another linguist (too lazy to look him up, its on wiktionary I think) that supports the argument that one cannot use this pseudo-theory to determine if a satem/centum can develop into a centum/satem, since all languages share features from both.
Illyrian has examples of Satem features as well. For example the name Gentius is found in 2 forms, Gentius and Zanatis which both derived from PIE gen.
My fingers are tired of typing, so Ill stop now. Theres also a ton of other arguments, I just chose to adress the main ones. I might add new stuff later. Feel free to disagree/agree with me, BUT PLEASE LEAVE YOUR BIAS OUT THE DOOR. If you have one that is.
I'm going to try to establish this continuity on a linguistic/historical basis. I'll also look at some counter-arguments as well.
Reason #1 The Tosk-Gheg split
This dialect split predates the slavic migrations in the balkans, and the river Shkumbin (central Albania) acts as the the divisive line. The reason why it predates it, is because both dialects deal differently with foreign borrowings, especially slavic words. (I'll leave it to whoever wants to research it). Illyrian is thought to have gone extinct at the same time this split happened. So one can establish that proto-Albanian and Illyrian were spoken roughly at the same place and time, making it difficult to call them different languages.
Reason #2 Latin Borrowings
A great number of borrowed latin words, PREDATE the christian era. Illyrians were the only tribes in the Balkans to be conquered by the Roman Empire before the year 0. Thracians and Dacians were invaded around 100 AD. The only explanation for these pre 0 AD, words is that they were passed down from the Illyrians when they were first invaded around 3-200 BC.
Reason #3 Greek Borrowings
The same argument goes for borrowings from DORIC greek, which mean Illyrians/Albanians were living near northwestern Greece since times of antiquity. P.S. Remember while Epirus and Macedonia were Greek states, only the ruling class were greek, the rest of the population were of Illyrian/Macedonian stock.(I'm uncertain whether the two had any relationship)
Reason #4 No records of Migrations
The Byzantines documented all significant migrations in the Balkans, none are mentioned regarding Albanians arriving to this modern region.
Arguments against
Let me talk about the main "historian" who contradicts this theory, Georgiev. I wanted to establish his own pro-Bulgarian bias, by quoting from one of his books where he talks about Thracians and Illyrians being these Greco-Germanic tribes who derived from the Pelasgians. Lunatic? Yes, very much so. But I have been searching for an hour and I cant find it. IF SOMEONE CAN, PLEASE POST A LINK! He makes very vague claims and assumptions, and his interpretations in grey areas are definitely biased driven.
#1 - He says Illyrians were coastal people, while Albanians are mountainous since they LACK maritime vocabulary.
First of all, even the word for sea in Albanian is det, which is original, although derived from PIE be it. Second of all, Albania/Southern Illyria is about 70-80% mountains, right next to the coast. You can be a mountainous AND coastal people due to the proximity of the mountains and sea in the Adriatic coast. There's also loads of other sea-animal names completely native to Albanian, such as gaforre (crab) which Leibniz said is related to the word fork.
#2 - Eastern Balkan Romance words
This is definitely from contact with Romanians, although it doesnt make Albanians automatically Dacian, they are simply borrowings. And again there's a lot words in Albanian of Latin origin before the year 0 AD, before the Romans even invaded Dacia and Thracia.
#3 - Centum/Satem Theory
This is quite an interesting one. Albanian is established as Satem, while Illyrian might have been Centum, but there is not enough evidence. First of all, let me start by saying that NO LANGUAGE IS 100% Centum and Satem. All IE languages have features from both, although some an amount of overwhelming more examples than others. For example while one language can have 85% words with Centum features it might also have another 15% with Satem.
Second of all, Tocharian pretty much shattered this theory. Although there is undeniably a shift that has undergone from PIE, no one knows how this shift took place. The best guess would be areal contact, rather than a Proto-Satem Proto-Centum theory, although even that is just a guess. So we can't use this theory, until we know more about this shift to deny that one language is Centum and it cannot be derived from Satem. In French, the word cent is pronounce so, a satem feature derived from a centum language. There's another linguist (too lazy to look him up, its on wiktionary I think) that supports the argument that one cannot use this pseudo-theory to determine if a satem/centum can develop into a centum/satem, since all languages share features from both.
Illyrian has examples of Satem features as well. For example the name Gentius is found in 2 forms, Gentius and Zanatis which both derived from PIE gen.
My fingers are tired of typing, so Ill stop now. Theres also a ton of other arguments, I just chose to adress the main ones. I might add new stuff later. Feel free to disagree/agree with me, BUT PLEASE LEAVE YOUR BIAS OUT THE DOOR. If you have one that is.