1) Scupi, the capital of Dardania, has sk- which became the Albanian Shk-, meaning there were no Proto-Albanians in Dardania. Scupi is a name they learned later on.
2) Proto-Albanians could not possibly assimilate Romans (Romanized Illyrians) and Greeks (Hellenized Illyrians and Epirots) in only 600 years (300-900 AD as Matzinger claims) since Vlachs have been living in Albania for around 1000 years and they�re still Latin speakers to this day. Similarly, Albanians couldn�t even assimilate the Slavs (barbarians, way less urban and civilized than Romans and Greeks), who are still present in Albania. Most of R1a and I2a in Albania are from areas where the Slavic minorities live (together with Vlachs and Greeks).
Conclusion: Albanians historically LACKED the ability to assimilate others but were always assimilated and absorbed by other nations.
Makes sense, likely from the tribal/pastoral anarchical structure of albanian society back in the day.
As for vlachs you also gotta take into account that vlachs often moved, they were semi-nomadic, so it was a hard task to assimilate them: for instance, my father side is vlach, who however came from Macedonia in the 1800s, with their sheeps, in the area of Myzeqeja.
They were always called çoban, whereas locals were referred to as Lale, however locals too might have had a vlach origin, yet what is remarkable is the fact that many city names of villages in my area are slavic:
my town is called Divjake, and a croatian friend told me that Divljak means wild/savage in his tongue, wich is a perfect description of the climate (close to the sea, very wet, very windy, with springs that are rainy, windy, wet and very cold, and summers hot, wet and sunny.
Nearby you have the abandoned fshat of Kular, wich sounds very slavic to me.
Whereas Divjake and Kular are likely western south slavic (serbo-croat), you then have the fshat of Zharnec, wich ends in a tipical -ec bulgarian suffix, and some km away from there you have the fortress of Bashtovo (bulgarian).
Idk where, but in Myzeqeja still you got Orkhovo (bulgarian), whereas Lushnje, the main town of Myzeqeja, seems Jugoslav in terms of toponymy.
Idk what to say tbh, to think Hodxha brainwashed all these slavs into becoming albanian seems sci-fi to me.
Maybe albanians do afterall have some assimilating power, for instance we also have many slavic names/surnames in my area: we as a whole are Orthodox, and our 2 versions for John are Jan (greek) and Jovan (serbian), another example is the surname Janko (other serbian version for John), or Vodo (water in serbian), the local doctor is called Jan Vodo and is very nordic looking (blonde with blue eyes) although he is short and barkaliq xD, also, another very renown family in the area are the Zhuka family, who have many nordic looking members and are a historical family of Divjake + their name, Zhuka, means a sort of herb/bush, but is of likely slavic origin.
Idk man, it's a very complex topic, drawing lines here is like what western coloners did with africa, and we saw the result.
The balkans are a complex topic, that's all i can say.
