Where does the Albanian language come from? [VIDEO]

[bigsnake49]

Why Western Romania when the most Proto-Albanian sounding words/names are to be found in what was ancient Dardania/Paeonia.

Because you have a lot more eastern Romance loan words (i.e. Proto-Romanian) than you have from ancient or even medieval Greek.

 

[bigsnake49]

As far as I�m concerned, you�re a nobody who doesn�t even speak Albanian and you have only wishful thinking regarding Proto-Albanian because you want yo claim Epirus and the entire modern Northern Greece which is genetically non-Greek.

Instead of �contributing� to the Albanian language with your 0 knowledge on the matter, try to defend the Hellenism of the Vlacho-Albano-Slavic population of Northern Greece.

No I don't speak Alabanian but I was pretty fluent in Arvanitika having grown up in an 90% Arvanite town in Western Thrace. I don't speak it anymore.

We, meaning the Greeks, don't care about "pure Greeks". We have absorbed a lot of refugees from Asia Minor, Eastern Thrace and Northern Thrace (Eastern Rumelia). Heck we are absorbing a lot of Albanians as we speak that want to become citizens of Greece.

 

[Dushman]

Because you have a lot more eastern Romance loan words (i.e. Proto-Romanian) than you have from ancient or even medieval Greek.

Another autistic collection of theories.

Albanian has Latin influence not ?Eastern Romance?. It?s Albanian that influenced Romanian not the other way around.

Albanian doesn?t have enough GrEeK lOaN wOrDs. So? Is that supposed to mean anything smart?

Again, Albanian has Latin influence, the official language of the empire that Albanians belonged to for hundreds of years.

Greeks are not locals because Greek dOeSnT hAvE eNoUgH LaTiN lOaNwOrDs

 

[Dushman]

No I don't speak Alabanian but I was pretty fluent in Arvanitika having grown up in an 90% Arvanite town in Western Thrace. I don't speak it anymore.

We, meaning the Greeks, don't care about "pure Greeks". We have absorbed a lot of refugees from Asia Minor, Eastern Thrace and Northern Thrace (Eastern Rumelia). Heck we are absorbing a lot of Albanians as we speak that want to become citizens of Greece.

I was super fluent in German, Danish, Portuguese, Catalan, and Finnish but I forgot everything. But you still gotta trust me.

 

[bigsnake49]

Another autistic collection of theories.

Albanian has Latin influence not �Eastern Romance�. It�s Albanian that influenced Romanian not the other way around.

Albanian doesn�t have enough GrEeK lOaN wOrDs. So? Is that supposed to mean anything smart?

Again, Albanian has Latin influence, the official language of the empire that Albanians belonged to for hundreds of years.

Greeks are not locals because Greek dOeSnT hAvE eNoUgH LaTiN lOaNwOrDs

Actually Greek was the official language of the Byzantine Empire from 620 CE on, not that it ever went away as one of the languages of the empire. Greek was spoken from 330 BCE on in what is now Turkey, the Balkans and Southern Italy. It was the lingua franca of the Eastern Roman Empire.

BTW, I am not alone in thinking that they came from Western Romania. Romanian linguists and historians think so too.

 

[bigsnake49]

I was super fluent in German, Danish, Portuguese, Catalan, and Finnish but I forgot everything. But you still gotta trust me.

Congratulations, you are a language savant!

 

[Hawk]

Because you have a lot more eastern Romance loan words (i.e. Proto-Romanian) than you have from ancient or even medieval Greek.

Still, it doesn't change anything that Dardania/Paeonia was likely the homeland.

 

[Dushman]

Still, it doesn't change anything that Dardania/Paeonia was likely the homeland.

The homeland of who? Vlachs?

 

[Johane Derite]

As far as the Albanian language is concerned, my theory is that it was originally a local language in the Thracian/Dacian sphere in the mountains of Western Romania. During the great migration the proto-Abanian speaking tribes were pushed southwest by the Slavs and the Avars to what is now Albania and Kossovo where they mixed with local tribes with the local tribes adopting the Albanian language.

You are right in that Albanian has most of its contact with Eastern Balkan Latin, but western Romania is too north east. Most linguists agree that the proto-Romanians were south of the danube in the time when it had intense contacts with proto-Abanian.

The best candidate for this region is again Dardania region.

 

[Johane Derite]

On october 27, 2020, I coloured this image which shows Slavic toponyms in Albania to make it understandable and accesible even for a child's brain.

This map doesn't include data on any etymologies of Albanian toponyms, it is only showing which toponyms have Slavic etymology.

What this suggests, in conjuction with the rest of the data, is that Slavs pushed proto-Albanian speakers into Albania where this blue zone is, where they formed a cohesive enclave of sorts. This region is of course more or less Arbanon , so it also explains why this became part of the Albanian ethnonym.

 

[Johane Derite]

On october 27, 2020, I coloured this image which shows Slavic toponyms in Albania to make it understandable and accesible even for a child's brain.

This map doesn't include data on any etymologies of Albanian toponyms, it is only showing which toponyms have Slavic etymology.

What this suggests, in conjuction with the rest of the data, is that Slavs pushed proto-Albanian speakers pushed into Albania where this blue zone is, where they formed a cohesive enclave of sorts. This region is of course more or less Arbanon , so it also explains why this became part of the Albanian ethnonym.

Linguists like Stadtmuller believed that this blue zone with low slavic toponyms, Mat specifically, was the origin of Proto-Albanians, and an enclave where there were also no Latin toponyms.

This hypothesis was later disproven however, where it was discovered that this zone was full of latin toponyms, Mat included:

 

[Johane Derite]

Linguists like Stadtmuller believed that this blue zone with low slavic toponyms, Mat specifically, was the origin of Proto-Albanians, and an enclave where there were also no Latin toponyms.

This hypothesis was later disproven however, where it was discovered that this zone was full of latin toponyms, Mat included:

The conclusion instead is that this blue zone seems to have been very important for the ethnogenesis of Albanians (Proto-Albanian to Albanian transition), but that it is not the original homeland of Proto-Albanians and where they originally had their intense contacts with proto-Romanians/Vlachs.

Instead, this region was later found to be full of latin placenames, for example, toponyms that proto-Albanians learnt when they migrated into this region from most likely the Dardania region.

Example of this is the latin -ensis suffix which became -esh in Albanian, which appears all over the Arbanon area, this is mentioned as proof of migration into this zone by Wilkes in his book "Illyrians" as well as Schramm :

 

[Johane Derite]

The conclusion instead is that this blue zone seems to have been very important for the ethnogenesis of Albanians (Proto-Albanian to Albanian transition), but that it is not the original homeland of Proto-Albanians and where they originally had their intense contacts with proto-Romanians/Vlachs.

Instead, this region was later found to be full of latin placenames, for example, toponyms that proto-Albanians learnt when they migrated into this region from most likely the Dardania region.

Example of this is the latin -ensis suffix which became -esh in Albanian, which appears all over the Arbanon area, this is mentioned as proof of migration into this zone by Wilkes in his book "Illyrians" as well as Schramm :

This matches with observations remarked on earlier by Matzinger, that North Albania shows older chronnological stages of Albanian phonetic development than South, as he mentioned, Shkodër was learnt before Durrës. What this suggests is proto-Albanian speakers moving southwest from Dardania into North-Albania and the Arbanon and then recooperating there in the medieval ages.

 

[Dushman]

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.

 

[Johane Derite]

This matches with observations remarked on earlier by Matzinger, that North Albania shows older chronnological stages of Albanian phonetic development than South, as he mentioned, Shkodër was learnt before Durrës. What this suggests is proto-Albanian speakers moving southwest from Dardania into North-Albania and the Arbanon and then recooperating there in the medieval ages.

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.

 

[Dushman]

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.

 

[Johane Derite]

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.

This is accepted by most linguists also, including Albanian ones.

 

[Johane Derite]

This is accepted by most linguists also, including Albanian ones.

It is not even up for debate since the 20th century, the christian vocabulary of both Tosk and Gege dialects is the same, and of a northern latin variety, not of the Greek variety. This means proto-Albanian linguistic ancestors of both Gege and Tosk, even the most southern peripheral ones, were christianised in the same region. Epirus is full of Greek inscriptions and Greek variety of Christianity, so it doesn't fit yet again as the origin for where proto-Albanians were christianised.

For example, both Tosk and Gege have the same terms:

Albanian. kryq from Latin. crūx, as opposed to Greek. σταυρός (stauros)
Albanian. shêjntë from Latin. sānctus as opposed to Greek. ἅγιoς (agios)
Etc

The list goes on and on for reasons for why linguists know the linguistic variation between Tosk & Gege dialects does not predate late antiquity.

 

[Hawk]

I do tend to believe that tribes related to Trebeniste Culture spoke Albanoid language, and based on material culture and some personal names Dardanians do seem to be distantly related to Trebeniste Culture.

So Albanoid-like languages were spoken and probably even were part of the Danubian-Aegean Late Bronze Age/Early Iron Age incursors on Greece.

One of the legendary Dorian leaders was Hyllus. Hyllus is an Albanoid word related to sun/star, and precisely these people brought the sun cult. There was a user( Aspar i think) who even suggested that Hellas stems from the same root word as Hyllus.
So, a similar scenario as Turkic Bulgars could be the case, leaving the name to the people but not changing the language of the native people. This can also explain E-V13 appearing in Early Iron Age, if it did intrude during this time in Greece.

Now, as for particular Albanian language, it can come from a brother language of these Albanoid languages, of more northern variants(Dardanian), that's a possibility why not. It can explain a lot of things. But putting simplistic models is not enough.

 

[Nicu]

Because you have a lot more eastern Romance loan words (i.e. Proto-Romanian) than you have from ancient or even medieval Greek.

It's true that much of the Latin lexicon in Albanian was taken from Vulgar Latin rather than directly from Romanian or Eastern Romance (although obviously that evolved from this as well). But it seems Albanian borrowed them earlier than the emergence of individual Vlach languages, or at least it happened simultaneously. A few words are arguably borrowed, but vice-versa was more common: early proto-Romanian speakers did seem to take a lot of vocabulary from proto-Albanian, unless that of course just represented the substrate. A careful linguistic analysis shows certain patterns of sound shifts and correspondences between them. I read a paper on it once but can't seem to find it anymore.

On a separate note, it is interesting the mostly one-way borrowing of Greek into Latin rather than the other way around. There are certain Byzantine/modern Greek terms from Vulgar Latin, but not that many because it was already an established and esteemed prestige language in the region that was never eroded by Latin as other languages were in the empire. Furthermore it became the official language of the Roman empire's continuation.