The oldest contacts between Latin and Proto-Albanian go back to the 2nd century BCE, after the victory of the Romans against the Illyrian king Genthios in 168 BCE, or even the 3rd century BCE, when the Romans first invaded the Illyrian coast in 229 BCE...
Along with now-extinct Dalmatian, Romanian is a possible candidate for Balkan-Latin sources of Albanian borrowings... As for their languages, Mihăescu unlike, for example Çabej sought to reduce common lexical characteristics of Albanian with Romanian. He maintained among other things that Latin reflexes are older in Albanian than in Romanian, for example, faqe 'face' < Lat. facies; Romanian has the younger form faţă < Lat. facia...
In view of the absence of historical documents, the discussion on these questions largely depends on the characteristics of the (reconstructed) languages, which in the case of Albanian even concerns the central question of their Illyrian or Thracian heritage. In addition to some terms going back to a common Balkan or even Mediterranean substrate... the main question is, whether Albanian borrowings from non-classical Latin can be derived from Proto-Romanian (or eastern Balkan Latin) or whether Albanian has common characteristics only with Dalmatian (western Balkan Latin). In any case, possible contacts with Romanians do not concern the oldest layer of Latin influences on Albanian, as they go back to times when only the coast was Romanized and not the central Balkan areas. What is more, Albanian has preserved Latin characteristics that did not survive in any Romance language, that is, from before the regionalization of Latin, or at least may be found elsewhere only in very conservative varieties; see, for example, the preservation of Latin k, g before front vowels Albanian has in common with Sardinian varieties, the conservation of the neuter in Latin borrowings or archaic Latin lexemes like ōs 'mouth' > Alb. vesh 'ear', vetus, veteris > Alb. i vjetër 'old', where Romance languages, including Romanian, show only derivations...
Mihăescu differentiated four categories of common terms of Albanian with Romanian, which in a way contrary to Çabej's opinion also reflects different chronological stages:
1) Latin words of extended circulation, preserved not only in Albanian and Romanian, but also in western Romance languages (including Italian). This is the largest group in Mihăescu's corpus, containing 270 items like altare '(sacrificial) altar' > Alb. Lter, Ro. altar; arena > Alb. rërë (Geg rênë), Ro. arină; aurum > Alb. ar, Ro. aur.
2) Latin words, common to Albanian and western Romance languages (partially also to Dalmatian), but not found in Romanian. Mihăescu counted 151 elements in this groups, for example, amicus 'friend' > Alb. mik; causa 'thing' > Alb. kafshë 'animal, thing'; fides 'belief' > Alb. fe; servire 'to serve' > Alb. shërbenj.
3) Latin words found only in Romanian and Albanian. Mihăescu's corpus contains 39 of them, of which 19 are terms of wider circulation in these languages, like canticum 'song' > Alb. këngë, Ro. cîntec; sessus ‘plain’ > Alb. shesh, Ro. şes. Twelve of them are uncertain because of formal or semantic inconsistencies, for example, hospitium, *hostip(it)ium > Alb. shtëpi 'house', Ro. ospăţ ‘banquet’; dirigere > Alb. dërgonj ‘to send’, Ro. drege ‘to make’. The rest of them consist of local Hellenisms like spodium (> Grk. σπούδιον) > Alb. shpuz ‘embers’, Ro. spuză.
4) Latin loans preserved only in Albanian. In Mihăescu's opinion, the 85 items he counted are especially useful for knowledge of Latin and help determine the territory and the date of the influence of the Roman culture on the ancestors of the Albanians. In referring to Jokl, he remarked that the basic agricultural terminology of the ancient Albanians is clearly Latin, for example, apparamentum 'provision' > parmendë 'plough', *hibernium (cf.. hibernus 'wintery') > vërri 'winter pasture'. Flora and fauna terms in this group according to Mihăescu are mainly Mediterranean or refer at least to humid territories, as, for example, olivaster > ullashtër 'wild olive-tree', catta > gatë 'heron'. Additional information comes from religious terms, which, being partially pre-Christian, turned into Christian ones and followed without interruption the western (Roman) Church, while the ancestors of the Romanians oriented themselves by the Byzantine model, for example, Lat. Saturni dies > Alb. e shtunë 'Saturday' (≠ Ro. sâmbătă), Lat. Christi natale > kërshëndella ‘Christmas’ (≠ Ro. Crăciun, etymology unclear).
In his final summary, Mihăescu listed words from several parts of speech showing that Albanian borrowed from Classical Latin, whereas the corresponding Romanian terms go back to Vulgar Latin. Among the Albanian borrowings he cited alterare > ndërronj ‘to change’, gaudimentum > gazmend ‘joy’, caltha ‘marigold, violet’ > i, e kaltër ‘blue’, ingratus > i, e ngratë ‘pitiable’, showing according to the author that it would be a fallacy to suppose that the Latin elements of Romanian and Albanian have a common “Balkan Latin” source. In his opinion, Roman influence spread on the Balkans along different tracks.
