Illyrian and Albanian - a linguistic approach

(Image) Albanian is one of the 9 main living branches of the Indo-European languages.
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The Gemini, aka Castor and Pollux (The Dioscuri) appear in the Albanian Songs of the Frontier Warriors. These songs are oral epics centered around the god-like brothers "Mujo and Halili".

Much of their characteristics bear similarities with the god-like warrior twins Castor & Pollux.

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"Eric Hamp, who has been the most careful and conservative of specialists on Albanian dealing with this issue, has decided that the evidence linking Albanian to Messapic, which in turn has been linked to Illyrian, is sufficient to see Albanian as a descendent of a sister-language to Illyrian, if not a descendent of Illyrian itself (reported in Lezo, 2008)"

Victor Friedman,
Oxford Research Encyclopedia
March 2017

LINK: https://oxfordre.com/linguistics/vi...lM6SZ9GMxGP9_gFGVEAuTFtro8wa1G43pYYE4iA6oYKDE
 
Most plausible, Illyrian, Phrygian, Armenian and others, were speakers of a centum IE language during the bronze age. It has changed probably during the iron age not later. I have read that even the Tracian language has changed during the iron age becoming a satem language. Closest Albanian relative of Albanian still spoken probably is Armenian. They differed somewhere no later than 1200 bce. It's the time when proto Armenians moved to Anatolia, along with Phrygians, known with the exonym of eastern Mushki people. The western Mushki were probably the Phrygians. While the Lydians where a mix of Luwians, Eteo Cretans and Proto Illyrians. Armenians and Albanians are related the same as Germanics with Italics.

The position of Lydian language is still not established. It doesn't looks clearly Anatolian.

Proto Armenian , Proto Illyrian and proto Phrygian are probably the same thing

Can we please stop pushing this Balkan myth of Armenian origins? It was always flimsy but it's been largely disproven. There is really no evidence that Armenian came from the Balkans. Genetically Armenians are similar to the EBA inhabitants of Armenia. Linguistically, Armenian is closest to Greek and Indo-Iranian. There is evidence of Indo-European peoples in Armenia and NE Turkey from circa 2000 BCE, if not before (look into Trialeti-Vanadzor, Verin and Nerkin Naver). In fact, the grave complex Nerkin Naver continued to be used for the royal burials of the Armenian nobility well into the first century BCE, if not after. The archaeological record supports the expansion of ceramic culture from Armenia westward around 1200 BCE, as opposed to ceramics from the Balkans moving eastward into Asia Minor. The artifacts left in the Nerkin and Verin Naver graves contain symbols (such as a Star of David) that are still used in Armenian material culture to this day. The burial methods are in accordance with ancient Armenian burial practices that have been passed down in Armenian legends. There are no Armenian legends or myths that suggest Armenians came from the west. Phrygian and Macedonian languages are so poorly attested anyhow that to compare them to Armenian is absurd. Herodotus started the Balkan/Phrygian nonsense (incidentally, he also claimed that Persians and Medes came from the Greeks, but nobody believes that now or talks about this) and it was based solely on similarity in clothing or weapons that Armenians and Phrygians had. The Mushki theory is from Diakonoff, who was building upon Herodotus, and for whatever reason refused to believe that Armenians could be native to the Armenia region.

If Armenian is close to Albanian (again, Albanian isn't even considered the closest relative to Armenian--Greek and Indo-Iranian languages are considered to be closer, and even they aren't that close), it's either because a) Albanians passed through Armenia to get to the Balkans or b) they are both Indo-European languages in general.

I should also add that there isn't even a consensus as to where to Phrygians or Mushki even came from. Some think they came from the Caucasus region.
 
The existence of a Dacian river called Sargetia makes the "Armenian" etymology even more possible.


https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decebalus_Treasure

How does this make "the Armenian etymology" more possible? What Armenian etymology? Do you think Armenians came from Dacia?

It seems more likely, if there are any similarities, that, again, it's either due to Armenians moving to that region (there have been numerous documented waves of migrations of Armenians moving to the Romania area) or because both Armenians and Thracians/Dacians were Indo-Europeans.

A local origin for Armenians seems so much more simple, and has a lot more evidence backing it, than an origin anywhere else.

It seems likely to me that Getica is related to the Gothics, etymologically.

I'd imagine that get (river) in Classical and modern Armenian was something like uet in proto-Armenian. I don't know when the u-->g soundshift occurred, but it happened with some other words.
 
The existence of a Dacian river called Sargetia makes the "Armenian" etymology even more possible.


https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decebalus_Treasure

I should add, the u-->g shift in Armenian occurred sometime after 700s BCE. How do we know this? Because Uelikulki, attested by the Urartians in the general region of Lake Sevan, was likely an Armenian name. It corresponds with the modern province of Gegharunik. The names are related. The root of both uel and gegh is PIE wel ("to see/to know," also "snake"--this is the region of Armenia with the most dragon-stones). As there is no w in Armenian, it was rendered originally as u. It subsequently evolved into g. So PIE w-->Proto-Armenian u-->modern Armenian g. Also, PIE/PArm L corresponds with gh in ModArm. So uel was likely the PArm form and is now gegh in ModArm.

Why does this matter?

If Armenians came from the Balkans/Thrace/Dacia (which I do not believe) sometime around 1200 BCE, if not before, the word would not have evolved into get yet. It would have been some older form, like uet (or maybe ued). Since uel had not evolved into gegh until sometime after the 8th century BCE, it seems likely that get would have followed a similar trajectory in Armenian as gegh did (i.e. PIE wed-->PArm uet-->ModArm get).

How could Armenians have left evidence of a word in a form that wouldn't exist for 500+ years???
 
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Linguist E. Hamp argued that the Greek language originated in the Caucasus due to its Indo-Iranian and Armenian affinities. While Albanian shares a large number of unique words only with Greek, it has negligible relations with Indo-Iranian & Armenian suggesting different origins.

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Linguist E. Hamp argued that the Greek language originated in the Caucasus due to its Indo-Iranian and Armenian affinities. While Albanian shares a large number of unique words only with Greek, it has negligible relations with Indo-Iranian & Armenian suggesting different origins.

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Glad to see you put that link to good use, Johane! Great visuals!

So Albanian is an Apple language? What is apple in Albanian? What's interesting is that Armenian isn't an Apple language (the Armenian word for apple is "khundzor"--thought to be a Hurrio-Urartian loan) but Phrygian is listed as being an Apple language on this map. This further confounds the Armenian-Phrygian connection.

What's interesting is that the burials at Alaca Höyük in central Turkey (near where Hattusha was) are believed to have been Indo-European but there is speculation that they were not Anatolian/Hittite. I wonder if they could have been proto-Greek? The area on your map that that says "proto-Greek" covers the region where Hattusha/Alaca Höyük was located.
 
Glad to see you put that link to good use, Johane! Great visuals!

So Albanian is an Apple language? What is apple in Albanian? What's interesting is that Armenian isn't an Apple language (the Armenian word for apple is "khundzor"--thought to be a Hurrio-Urartian loan) but Phrygian is listed as being an Apple language on this map. This further confounds the Armenian-Phrygian connection.

What's interesting is that the burials at Alaca Höyük in central Turkey (near where Hattusha was) are believed to have been Indo-European but there is speculation that they were not Anatolian/Hittite. I wonder if they could have been proto-Greek? The area on your map that that says "proto-Greek" covers the region where Hattusha/Alaca Höyük was located.

According to Hamp it is.

"Apple" in Albanian is "moll?", a loan word from Ancient Doric Greek according to Schumacher & Matzinger, so the original Alb one was replaced in this scenario.

Yes, Hamp argues that pre-greeks were there before moving south, if those IE graves that are none anatolian/hittite are legitimate then that is a very interesting correspondence.

Also, i have to say i was surprised about Hamps position on phrygian being part of the same branch as italic-celtic, but this comparison to the Galatians shows that a movement from this group is not impossible.

The map is just a prettier visualization of the map on pg 13 of that paper:

http://sino-platonic.org/complete/spp239_indo_european_languages.pdf
 
According to Hamp it is.

"Apple" in Albanian is "moll�", a loan word from Ancient Doric Greek according to Schumacher & Matzinger, so the original Alb one was replaced in this scenario.

Yes, Hamp argues that pre-greeks were there before moving south, if those IE graves that are none anatolian/hittite are legitimate then that is a very interesting correspondence.

Also, i have to say i was surprised about Hamps position on phrygian being part of the same branch as italic-celtic, but this comparison to the Galatians shows that a movement from this group is not impossible.

The map is just a prettier visualization of the map on pg 13 of that paper:

http://sino-platonic.org/complete/spp239_indo_european_languages.pdf


The information about Alaca not being (Proto)Hittite is from the book The Hittites: and Their Contemporaries in Asia Minor by J.G. Macqueen. The edition I have is from the mid-1980s, so I'm not sure if the information or perspective is outdated, but in it, Macqueen argues that the Alaca tombs were clearly Indo-European burials, but the particular style of the graves/kurgans and metal artifacts found within, while similar to other tombs found on the Turkish Black Sea coast and in the Caucasus, were dissimilar from other southern (i.e. Hittite) burials. Macqueen explicitly states that the people buried in Alaca were not proto-Hittites, Luwians, Palaics. If this is true, it leaves three options: they were proto-Greeks, they were proto-Armenians, or they were some other (non-Anatolian family) Indo-European group that have long since died out and left no record.

As for the Phrygians, I've read that it's now believed that they were most similar to the Greeks, but I've also seen them being variously categorized as Thracian-speakers, connected with the Cimmerians, or some other sort of Paleo-Balkanic language.
 
The Illyriciani:

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The information about Alaca not being (Proto)Hittite is from the book The Hittites: and Their Contemporaries in Asia Minor by J.G. Macqueen. The edition I have is from the mid-1980s, so I'm not sure if the information or perspective is outdated, but in it, Macqueen argues that the Alaca tombs were clearly Indo-European burials, but the particular style of the graves/kurgans and metal artifacts found within, while similar to other tombs found on the Turkish Black Sea coast and in the Caucasus, were dissimilar from other southern (i.e. Hittite) burials. Macqueen explicitly states that the people buried in Alaca were not proto-Hittites, Luwians, Palaics. If this is true, it leaves three options: they were proto-Greeks, they were proto-Armenians, or they were some other (non-Anatolian family) Indo-European group that have long since died out and left no record.

As for the Phrygians, I've read that it's now believed that they were most similar to the Greeks, but I've also seen them being variously categorized as Thracian-speakers, connected with the Cimmerians, or some other sort of Paleo-Balkanic language.

Macqueen is erred, palaic if not indigenous anatolians would be a thracian branch same as Bithynians, their western neighbours....we already know tge phrygians are thracians and where still in anatolia circa 500bc fighting against the lydians
 
I always thought Justin and Justinian were Dacian or Thracian given they were from what is now the Republic of North Macedonia.
 
I always thought Justin and Justinian were Dacian or Thracian given they were from what is now the Republic of North Macedonia.

He was born a couple of kilometers from Skopje (Scupi in antiquity) which was a dardanian stronghold if not one of their capitals. He also built justiniana prima and justiniana secunda further west in dardania which along with other details makes me think he was dardanian, which are sometimes considered thracians but are linguistically illyrian
 
I always thought Justin and Justinian were Dacian or Thracian given they were from what is now the Republic of North Macedonia.

Too many of the Eastern Emperors were praetorians of the Imperial Guard or were installed as a result of a coup.
 
PIE "ǵ" became "dh" in Albanian:

PIE. *ǵ?mbʰos [tooth]

Albanian. Dh?mb [tooth]
English. Comb
Ancient Greek. Gomphios (γομφίος) [backtooth]
Sanskrit. Jambha (जम्भ) [tooth]
Norse. Kambaz (ᚲᚨᛗᛒᚨᛉ) [comb]
Slavonic. Zǫbŭ (зѫбъ) [tooth]
Lithuanian. ?am̃bas [sharp edge]
Tocharian A. Kam [tooth]

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The only other IE language that has this evolution of PIE *ǵ is Messapic.

It also gives two reflexes depending on position in word like Albanian (d,dh).

This development alone makes it impossible for Messapic to be a Greek or Italic dialect and connects it perfectly with Albanian.

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