Where does the Albanian language come from? [VIDEO]

[td120]

Paleo, I found it interesting that is why I looked up the above village names in whatever Ottoman sources I had but could not find anything explicitly pointing to Albanian origin (once again, this is not a concern of mine and I'll report if I find something interesting in this regard).
I must have misinterpreted your attitude, my apologies for this.

...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mazar

https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Search&search=intitle:"Mazar"&ns0=1

 

[PaleoRevenge]

Yes I noticed the toponym mazar, but it is never in the full form mazarek/ch. If the Turkish explanation is valid, the toponym would be recreated in other locals in the vast space of Turkic inhabited lands. So far only two hypothesis can explain it, Romanian or Albanian. Same objection applies to Burrel, where is this toponym used in other Slavic countries, why is the explanation so clouded, it could mean this, it could mean that, maybe, maybe. From experience, having watched Albanians try to explain foreign toponyms through Albanian, I'm used to detecting errors. I understand the local experts meant well and tried to find a solution on this toponyms, personally I'm not sold on them.

The focus on this region is is not my idea. I saw the idea proposed at the Serbian DNA forum, reading the thread through google translator. There is a giant topic on Albanians. One user(NikolaVuk) provided reasonable arguments for this particular region.

I'm just taking it further by looking deeper. I am proposing possible evidence, not declaring anything as certain. The toponyms should be compared to their older recorded forms, I have no objections. And if possible census data from the Middle Ages would be very helpful. Albanians migrated to present day Albania from further inland, this is an attempt to pin down an earlier homeland. Genetic evidence points to this region as well. R1b Z2103 is more varied in the region south of Nish and eastern Macedonia, and the branches are older in this region than the Albanian branch which diversified in 600s AD, a strong hint the Albanian branch is an offshoot from this reservoir.

The toponym Mazarechevo could even be from late middle ages through Albanian mercenaries in the service of the Serbian state, explanations are open. But the matter should be looked at without bias. The opposite view, Albanian linear autochthonous theory is an absolute disaster, and impossible to hold, each pillar is collapsing.

 

[td120]

Yes I get your points but sometimes there are mere coincidences (Brest- France, Brest -Belarus ; Thebes-Greece; Thebes-Egypt )... There may be other similar sounding places but imho "mazar-agac" is just as plausible (note that the "G" is not really pronounced...like in "dogan")
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/ağaç
...it plain sounds like "mazaraach" or "mazarach"...lump in the usual Slavic "-evo" or "-ishte" or "-itsa" or "-ovo" denoting a place...and there is the name. (for example from the turkish çukur we got as toponyms in Bulgaria,Serbia and Romania : Chukurovac,Chukurovo,Chukurite,Chukurkashla etc.). It just might be that the WBalkans one is derived by the familial Mazreku name and the Bulgarian one is just "the tree with the grave" or whatever.
The Turkish toponym is a compound one, I would not expect to find many prominent places in the Turkic world with this name, and then the word mazar being of Arab origin sounds differently all over the Muslim world (to further complicate things many Central-Asian Turkic speaking nations use an Iranian word for tree).

 

[1337]

I am not Slavic, I don't drink or get drunk. Thanks for the concern.

I was not attacking you personally, just pointing out some of those explanations are fishy and forced. I hope you can dig up any census info on the region, preferably from Bulgarian empire times if any exists.

I have seen this type of explanation all my life, it is done by Albanians for all sorts of toponyms, even Slavic ones, forcing meaning with random word combinations such as grave-tree. On the face value alone such explanations are not satisfactory, nor is the fact that is being explained by an alien language(Turkish).

Slavic toponyms are very uniform, they match from Slavic country to Slavic country and the explanations are self evident. There is a anomaly in the Serbian-Bulgarian border region. It might not mean anything for us Albanians, but no one really looked into the matter from the perspective of a possible early Albanian homeland. Albanians for example used to claim Gjakova was a Albanian toponym from an Albanian named Jakov. However this toponym occurs in other Slavic lands. The moral of the story, Slavic toponyms are very recurring and you should be able to find parallel examples in other countries and within your own as well. When you have to do mental gymnastics to come up with a explanation, that's a sign you're going the wrong way.
http://www.fallingrain.com/world/UP/14/Dyakove.html

It is obvious from the word construct that Mazarachevo comes from Mazarach, because evo is just a Slavic suffix that's commonly used. You can go by the Romanian explanation, but the Albanian one is much more closer because of the K sound at the end. In Romania there's 3 settlements, none have the k sound, Mazararul, Mazaroi, Mazararu. I looked at various Turkish countries(Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Turkey, Kyrgyzstan, and Kazakhstan), all have nothing expect Kazakhstan that had one toponym called Mazarka. I'm chuckling because it was obvious as soon as I read grave tree, this was Albanian level clownery.

Here is the Albanian explanation:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mazreku

And this quote during Ottoman expansion into Epirus:
"In 1380, Thomas made an offensive with the help of Turks reaching up to the upper Kalamas River, where however, the Albanians, in particular the tribe of Mazaraki held their defensive position and defeated again Thomas."

Mazaraku the name itself is speculated to come from Albanian Maz for horse/pony and the clans or tribes with such name engaged in horse breeding and riding.

Gjakova is probably not Albanian but it has followed Albanian sound changes and city has been Albanian for the last 400 years probably. Same with Peja and others.

Prizren is not a Slavic toponym as it occurs way before Slavic arrival. Lipjan is also not Slavic but is from Lypenion / Ulpiana . Kacanik is not Slavic. Ohrid, Shkup, Shtip, Nish etc none of these are Slavic , neither is Vushtrri / Vucitern which actually comes from Viciana.

Ferizaj is also not Slavic , Slavs only changed it to Urosevac ... Slavic version would maybe be Ferizovik ?


Also some villages around Prizren like Gur and village in Drenica 'Prekaz' of non-Slavic origin.


What do you think about Botushe ?

 

[1337]

Each region has their own “norm”. Mount123 is interested in putting me against others by portraying me as if I said Kosovars are Ottoman migrants.

Truth is the areas around Gjakova to Prizren fall within North Albania.

Then overall Kosovars have elevated Baltic as well as East Med on Eurgones K13 which is very different from North Albanians and Albanians from Montenegro (whom Peja and surroundings have similarities with).

So overall Kosovars have a both Northern and Eastern shift.

Prizren has been Albanian town since like late 16th century so not sure what you are talking about ?

Lazaro Soranzo, in the late sixteenth century, writing of 'Albanians, who live as Catholics, and observing that Prizren was inhabited ' more by Albanians than by Serbs')

 

[1337]

Noel Malcolm claims Romanian language originated in Kosovo and it's uplands:

It was argued in Chapter 2 that Kosovo and its surrounding upland areas may have been the crucible in which the Vlach and Romanian peoples were originally formed. Nomadic or semi-nomadic Vlachs spread southwards into northern Greece from the tenth century onwards; others stayed longer in contact with Albanian-speakers and spread out northwards and eastwrds, crossing the Danube into Romania in the twelfth century. Many Vlachs remained, however, in the area of Kosovo, Montenegro and Hercegovina.

He also talks about Serbianized Vlachs, Albanized/Islamised Vlachs etc. He talks about Vlachs in Northern Albania and Eastern Albania that became Albanians.


From his book Kosovo: A Short History

Also Ottoman tax paying registers (whatever you wanna call them) in 1480's showed a large Vlach population in Kosove.


Also gypsies were present in Kosove before Ottoman period but only 1 settlement was recorded yet in 1500's hundreds of their settlements were recorded and all Orthodox Christian, indicating they were present there before the Ottoman period.

 

[1337]

Don't quote me on the Gypsy part though, I have to check again regarding their numbers. There were also Circassians that moved in later and some Vlachs later in 19th century or so from other areas, they seem to of had no continuity with the earlier Vlachs who after 1400's seem to entirely disappear out of the records.

 

[1337]

I personally believe Vlach/Aromanian/Romanian language originated somewhere in the West-Central Balkans from Romanized Thracians/Illyrians or they were som kind of proto-Albanian (if that's what you wanna call them) speakers that shifted over to Latin during the Roman period. They might have Roman input too. I always found it interesting how people think history in the Balkans only starts when Slavs arrived or when Ottomans arrived. As if before that all these various tribes and populations were supposedly totally unrelated.
Probably many proto-Albanians that shifted over to Latin or Greek and the ones that didn't, survived into Albanian. Just like people became Muslims/Turkified during Ottoman Empire or people became Slavs.

Sure Y-DNA and subclades should be studied but they can be bottlenecks also or some clades died off or split early or whatever.

Or not maybe not neccessarily proto-Albanians but related tribes and many proto-Albanians shifted over to Latin too.

 

[1337]

Have you noticed how many Latin or pre-Slavic place-names survived in Kosovo, Macedonia, Southern Morava Valley and Albania compared to some other areas. According to some historians, while some Slavs did spread out in these areas, Slavic settlements was weak in the early stages, which is also what caused a linguistic division between Bulgarian-Macedonian and Serbo-Croat , the ring of mountains of these areas and also more Latin refugees also coming from more north would of served as a border between these two Slavic languages in the start.

For example many of these also follow Albanian sound changes like Nish, Shtip, Shkup, Ohrid, Vushtrri, Prizren, Lypenion (Lipjan),

You also have some in Albania like Drisht, Lezha, Durres, Shkodra, Puke etc.

 

[Dibran]

Noel Malcolm claims Romanian language originated in Kosovo and it's uplands:



He also talks about Serbianized Vlachs, Albanized/Islamised Vlachs etc. He talks about Vlachs in Northern Albania and Eastern Albania that became Albanians.


From his book Kosovo: A Short History

Also Ottoman tax paying registers (whatever you wanna call them) in 1480's showed a large Vlach population in Kosove.


Also gypsies were present in Kosove before Ottoman period but only 1 settlement was recorded yet in 1500's hundreds of their settlements were recorded and all Orthodox Christian, indicating they were present there before the Ottoman period.

Which parts of North and East Albania had Vlachs?

While I am sure they existed, their percentage had to have been insignificant in comparison to Southern Albania.

 

[Fustan]

Which parts of North and East Albania had Vlachs?

While I am sure they existed, their percentage had to have been insignificant in comparison to Southern Albania.

Im curious how the percentages of Vlachs in Southern Albania are in comparison to the Slavic neighbors, like Bulgaria, Montenegro and Serbia. Does anyone happen to know if they had more or less Vlachs in relation to the dominant ethnic group than Southern Albania?

 

[Yetos]

Im curious how the percentages of Vlachs in Southern Albania are in comparison to the Slavic neighbors, like Bulgaria, Montenegro and Serbia. Does anyone happen to know if they had more or less Vlachs in relation to the dominant ethnic group than Southern Albania?

the Vlachs of Albania are a seperate group, having nothing to do with other vlachs,

They are known as Arvantovlachs, comparing the Megle, Koutsouk, etc etc.

 

[Dibran]

Im curious how the percentages of Vlachs in Southern Albania are in comparison to the Slavic neighbors, like Bulgaria, Montenegro and Serbia. Does anyone happen to know if they had more or less Vlachs in relation to the dominant ethnic group than Southern Albania?

I am not sure to be honest. All this information I am providing could be wrong/outdated. According to this wiki map, these are hotspots of vlachs today.
Maybe in the early medieval up to the Ottoman era, vlach percentages may have been higher in the north, in comparison to today where it seems completely absent. The second map shows hotspots where they may have at one point been located. Still very little in the north from the looks of it. Maybe 1337 has some sources for North Albania that had Vlachs at one point.

There is also this blog post/article by a Slavic blog (so take it with a grain of salt), that claims Albania has the most Vlachs in comparison to their neighbors. Though, it does not even mention Greece(oddly). It does mention the different sub-groupings and their names which is interesting.

History of Aromanians (Vlachs) in the Balkans and their life with Slavs – Slavorum

Considering Vlach just meant a Latin speaker, I wonder what percentage of Vlachs are "Real" Aromani from late antiquity and not Albanian, Slavic, and Greek speakers who adopted Latin, and assimilated during the Byzantine/Ottoman eras. There are even Muslim Vlachs such as the Megleno-Romanians in North Macedonia. Though I am not sure if all or some of them are Muslim.

 

[1337]

Which parts of North and East Albania had Vlachs?

While I am sure they existed, their percentage had to have been insignificant in comparison to Southern Albania.

I can quote the enire text if you like. He is talking about the early Ottoman period. As far as I know, Vlach was a term for a Romanian/Aromanian speaker which he says split around the ninth century or tenth century or so.

encountered who spoke a strange, usually Latinate, language; the Vlachs’ own name for themselves is ‘Aromanians’ (Aromani). As this name suggests, the Vlachs are closely linked to the Romanians: their two languages (which, with a little practice, are mutually intelligible) diverged only in the ninth or tenth century.
While Romanian historians have tried to argue that the Romanian-speakers have always lived in the territory of Romania (originating, it is claimed, from Romanized Dacian tribes and/or Roman legionaries), there is compelling evidence to show that the Romanian-speakers were originally part of the same population as the Vlachs, whose language and way of life were developed somewhere to the south of the Danube. Only in the twelfth century did the early Romanian-speakers move northwards into Romanian territory.

There were also Vlachs in Montenegro, Hercegovina, Kosovo too together with Albanians.

The Montenegrin highlands are rather neglected in most studies of these issues; but they clearly had a well-established Vlach population by the early fourteenth century, when Vlach place-names are recorded there: see Sufflay, Srbi i Arbanasi, p. 75; Radusinovic, Stanovnistvo, p. 31 (and for Albanian names in Montenegro, see above, n. 24).

traditions of many northern Albanian clans also recalled that there had been Vlachs in the mountains before the coming of the Turks. When the Ottomans compiled detailed tax-registers in the late fifteenth century, they recorded large numbers of Vlach households in Kosovo: in 1488/9 there were 481 in Prizren, 870 in Prishtina and 1,008 in Péc, and two years later another register also referred to a special tax-district for Vlachs near Vucitérn

During the first two Ottoman centuries, however, the Vlachs simply fade out of the records in Kosovo. We know that large numbers of them in Hercegovina, northern Serbia and north-western Bosnia were gradually Slavicized, thanks mainly to the cultural influence of the Serbian Orthodox Church, so it seems reasonable to suppose that this is what happened to most of them in Kosovo. But the Vlachs have always been a very adaptable people, capable of assimilating to any local language or culture: there are a few references to Islamicized Vlachs in the early Ottoman registers for Kosovo, and in Albania many Muslim Albanian families would later preserve traditions of Vlach origins.

More generally, it seems that a wide swathe of Vlach-populated country extended originally from the mountains south of Prizren, through the Debar area and all the way down the eastern side of Albania: while Vlachs retained their language and identity in the southern part of this strip (in the area to the south-west of Lake Ohrid), the ones further north turned either into Slav-speakers (the Mijaci, north of Debar, and perhaps the Gora villagers too) or into Albanian-speakers (in the Debar area). One rather unlikely skill developed by Vlachs in this region was the craft of stone-masonry — unlikely, that is, given their pas- toral-nomadic traditions. Nevertheless, there were Vlach villages whose men specialized in masonry, and travelled far and wide to build houses, bridges and aqueducts. In the Ottoman period these crafts were also practised by Christian Albanians from eastern and central Albania: above all, Debar, Berat and Gjirokastra. All these areas had Vlach populations; whether the stone-building skills passed originally from Albanians to

Vlachs or vice-versa is not clear, but it is possible that many of the Albanians who plied these trades were themselves Albanianized Vlachs.

No doubt there had been occasional influxes of Vlachs into Kosovo before this. Vlach traders would have come to the big annual fairs at Prizren and Prishtina, and pastoral Vlachs from northern Macedonia might also have brought their flocks into the south-eastern corner of Kosovo; a few Macedonian Vlachs had settled in the southern town of Ferizaj.' The popular word for a ‘Vlach’ among the Prizren Albanians was ‘Gog’, which means ‘stone-mason’: this too suggests a tradition of contact with the Vlachs of the Debar region.

Bulgarians also settled Macedonia, Albania, Kosovo etc. in 900 AD.


Some of the defters of 1452 and 1500's for Kosovo show also quite a significant Albanian population especially around Opoja and Prizren.

 

[1337]

(I'm also reading his book Bosnia: A Short History)

So I assume Bulgarian-Macedonians came first into contact with Albanians and Vlachs when they entered the central Balkans in these areas in 900 AD and Albania.

[FONT=&quot] See van Wijk, 'Taalkunde gegevens'; quotation from p. 71. The modern dialect of Serbo-Croat which borders Macedonian and Bulgarian territory, the 'Timok-Prizren' dialect, does have some transitional features; but research has shown that it picked them up only after the medieval expansion of the Serbian state into Kosovo and the Morava valley, which brought its speakers into closer contact with Bulgarian ([/FONT]ibid., pp. 62, 71).

frontier between Albanians and Macedonians. The Macedonians are Slavs whose language is quite distinct from Serbian and closely related to Bulgarian. In the past, populations have spilled over this line of hills in both directions; nineteenth-century travellers found villages inside Kosovo whose people spoke ‘Bulgarian’ (i.e. Macedonian) rather than Serbian, and some linguists (particularly, of course, Bulgarian ones) noticed ‘Bulgarian’ influences on the Serbian speech of southern Kosovo.' Where the political and ethnic frontiers begin seriously to diverge, however, is further to the west, along the Sar mountain range. Here a substantial Albanian population extends well over the range into Macedonia, including the predominantly Albanian town of Tetovo (Alb.: Tetova; Trk.: Kalkandelen) and, further to the south and west, the town of Debar (Alb.: Dibra). These two towns have been linked, for much of their history, with Kosovo. A road over a mountain pass connected Tetovo with the trading centre at Prizren, and another route led from Prizren up a river valley to Debar. The people of Debar and its surrounding villages (which include, almost uniquely among the northern

Here regarding Slavic settlements in Kosovo and Serbo-Croat and Bulgarian-Macedonian language:

Obviously some Slavs did spread through all these areas sooner or later. But there is one intriguing line of argument to suggest that the Slav presence in Kosovo and the southernmost part of the Morava valley may have been quite weak in the first one or two centuries of Slav settlement. If Slavs had been evenly spread across this part of the Balkans, it would be hard to explain why such a clear linguistic division emerged between the Serbo-Croat language and the Bulgarian-Macedonian one.

The scholar who first developed this argument also noted that, in the area dividing the early Serbs from the Bulgarians, many Latin place-names survived long enough to be adapted eventually into Slav ones, from Naissus (Nis), down through the Kosovo town of Lypenion (Lipljan) to Scupi (Skopje): this contrasts strongly with most of northern Serbia, Bosnia and the Dalmatian hinterland, where the old town names were completely swept aside. His conclusion was that the Latin-speaking population, far from withering away immediately, may actually have been strengthened here (and in a western strip of modern Bulgaria), its numbers swelled, no doubt, by refugees from further north. These Latin-speakers would have thus formed ‘a wide border-zone between the Bulgarians and the Serbs’. Kosovo’s protective ring of mountains would have been useful to them; and the Roman mountain- road from Kosovo to the Albanian coast — along which several Latin place-names also survive, such as Puka, from ‘via publica’ — might also have connected them with other parts of the Latin-speaking world. (The hill-top town of Koman, mentioned earlier, is only a few miles from Puka, and may well have had a Latin

 

[broder]

I can quote the enire text if you like. He is talking about the early Ottoman period. As far as I know, Vlach was a term for a Romanian/Aromanian speaker which he says split around the ninth century or tenth century or so.



There were also Vlachs in Montenegro, Hercegovina, Kosovo too together with Albanians.




Bulgarians also settled Macedonia, Albania, Kosovo etc. in 900 AD.


Some of the defters of 1452 and 1500's for Kosovo show also quite a significant Albanian population especially around Opoja and Prizren.

He is wrong about the meaning of ‘Gog’ - it didn’t mean a stone mason. Gog was more or less an Aromanian tribe. They inhabited Diber region (specifically Golloborde), northern Macedonia and were found sporadically in Kosove (Prizren area, Ferizaj and Rahovec). Can be found as a last name today too throughout Albania and Kosove (as Goga).

 

[1337]

He is wrong about the meaning of ‘Gog’ - it didn’t mean a stone mason. Gog was more or less an Aromanian tribe. They inhabited Diber region (specifically Golloborde), northern Macedonia and were found sporadically in Kosove (Prizren area, Ferizaj and Rahovec). Can be found as a last name today too throughout Albania and Kosove (as Goga).

Yeah he says it meant a word for a 'Vlach' . I don't know much about Stone Mason. Though it's easy to check the source he has used for this claim since he provides sources in the last pages of his book

 

[1337]

He is wrong about the meaning of ‘Gog’ - it didn’t mean a stone mason. Gog was more or less an Aromanian tribe. They inhabited Diber region (specifically Golloborde), northern Macedonia and were found sporadically in Kosove (Prizren area, Ferizaj and Rahovec). Can be found as a last name today too throughout Albania and Kosove (as Goga).

Seems very common in Albania and Kosovo indeed and Romania (Compared to some other surrounding countries that is)

https://forebears.io/surnames/goga

 

[1337]

here I found some on Kosovo Albanians and haplotypes , anyone can explain this ?

https://www.researchgate.net/public...haplotypes_in_Albanian_population_from_Kosovo

Any of you guys can explain this ?

Kosovan and Albanian populations have shown a high degree of similarity which was expected considering their common history, language and shared demographics (Belledi et al. 2000;Peričić et al. 2004). Furthermore, when the Kosovan population was removed, Albanian haplotypes were found to cluster with the Greek population (data not shown) which does have certain logical reasoning behind it since Albania and Greece share borders. ...

 

[mount123]

here I found some on Kosovo Albanians and haplotypes , anyone can explain this ?

https://www.researchgate.net/public...haplotypes_in_Albanian_population_from_Kosovo

Any of you guys can explain this ?

This is an outdated laughable pseudo scientific article with non reliable numbers made by Pericic Salihovic who has had and still has an obsession with Slavs being autochthonous in the Balkans.

Also, this thread is about the Albanian language, if you don't like the thread's topic then post somewhere else. You have derailed this thread with off topic stuff multiple times, cut it out.