Quote Originally Posted by Taranis View Post
I'm personally somewhat wary of any attempts of racial classification (since the concept of 'race' is in itself rather flawed), but I would like to add something on the origin of the Albanian language: the first and foremost is that Albanian is obviously an Indo-European language and that today, it represents it's own branch amongst the language family. The general consensus is also that Albanian is descended from one of the so-called Paleo-Balkan languages (eg. Illyrian, Dacian, Thracian, etc.), but which of these was the ancestor of Albanian is contested. The problem is that all of these languages are rather scarcely attested, whereas Albanian literature itself is only attested from the 14th century onward. This means it's very difficult to connect Albanian with a specific Paleo Balkan language with absolute certainty.
Linguistically speaking I agree that it is rather difficult to prove an implicit connection between particularly Illyrian language and Albanian language, but if you are interested to read further on this topic I would suggest the works of Eqrem Çabej, who has worked out some very thorough and interesting arguments.