This is obviously supported by the tmrca of Albanian's biggest branches, which support a demographic expansion in late antiquity, not unlike what we saw in medieval times with expansion of Albanian tribes.
This is also obvious in the Tosk ethnonym of "Arbër" vs Gegë "Arbën/Arban", namely that Tosk comes from the same demographic expansion from Arbanon that Gegë comes from. I.e. Tosk is not native dialect that developed in situ in Epirus.
Tosk was already separated by the 6th century AD but we don?t know and can?t know when exactly.
The only dialect that didn?t develop in situ is Kosovo Albanian that is a late expansion and that is why it?s almost the same all over the country. The biggest difference is the Rugova dialect that came from North West Albania with the Malesor migrations.
Tosk isn?t even an accurate term since there?s Lab (which still retains the nasal characteristics like Gheg), Cham, archaic Southern Epirote with very old and interesting characteristics not found in any other Albanian dialect, and Tosk with it?s separate Myzeqeja and Korca/Kolonja and surroundings varieties, as well as archaic Arvanitika and Arbereshe.
These dialects need literally more than a thousand years to develop in such different directions, unlike the copy-paste Kosovo Albanian, which is just an extension of Malesia Gjakoves variety.
Albanians ?wiped out? and assimilated hundreds of thousands of Romans/Romioi in less than 600 years, but couldn?t assimilate Vlachs, Bulgarians, Gorani, Greeks, Serbs, etc. Double standards and black and white theories all the way.
A bunch of Kosovo-centric pseudo theories that are way too convenient for Ottoman separatists. Reminds me of Rita Ora?s claim recently that Albania and Kosovo are kind of similar or something like that. What do you mean ?kind of the same??
To hell with such people. Now we have to listen to crap how 100% of Illyrians were Romanized (except the brave and legendary Dardanians that founded Troy), Albanians are not Illyrians, Albania didn?t even have Illyrians but ?Adriatic tribesmen?, and the legendary Dardanian shepherds gave us Romanized cowardly slaves the Albanian language.
Scodra is not Albanian because it has Sc-, whereas Scupi (literally the capital of the Dardanians) is still Albanian and not only, it?s Proto-Albanian, Pre-Proto-Albanian, even Pelasgian and Trojan.
Autistic mode ON: The Romans did not live in the vicinity of Rome because Roma is not a Latin word but possibly Etruscans, therefore Romans are neither Romans nor Latins.
Athens is not Greek but rather Pre-Greek?etc. etc. you know the drill.
On the other hand, master Matzinger does not know when Albanian lost sk- but we do know that Skodra/Shkodra as a toponym is way older than Proto-Albanian. Logical people would understand that city names get stuck, they don?t evolve the same way with languages and random words about rivers, foods, animals, etc.
But this anti-Albanian separatist crap is just too much, especially coming from broken Albanian speaking ex-Ottoman citizens with no ethnic consciousness.