Map to date, with the results of genetic analyzes of old haplogroups.
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Nobody truly knows, and those who say they do with absolute certainty are best ignored, because they’re probably speaking more out of some kind of agenda than out of sheer historical and linguistic interest.That said, I think it is quite plausible and even likely that the original territory where Proto-Albanian was once spoken also encompassed an area in or close present-day Kosovo (we can’t really be more precise than that considering the scarcity of evidences).
There are several reasons I have read for the hypothesis that Proto-Albanian was spoken generally in area extending roughly from northeastern Albania to south Serbia:
1) much of present-day Albania was mostly located in a part of the Roman Empire where Latin didn’t establish itself as the main lingua franca or even, eventually, mother tongue of a lot of people. However, modern Albanian is clearly a “semi-Romanized” language with a very, very significant influence from Latin since a very early age (some of the borrowings still show traces of the pronunciation of Classical Latin times, not the Late Antiquity or Early Medieval Late Latin). Conversely, for a language that neighbored Greek for such a long time, there are comparably few borrowings from Greek in Albanian. Hence, the most likely homeland of Proto-Albanian, or at least of the specific Proto-Albanian dialect that eventually became more successful and is at the basis of the modern Albanian dialects, was probably a bit more to the north.
2) many of the early Ancient Greek loanwords in Albanian are apparently related to Northwestern Greek dialects, of which Macedonian could have been one, too. That confirms the position of Proto-Albanian north and east of the Aegean coast. There are also clues about the presence of Northwestern Greek dialects in Epirus, including parts of modern southern Albania, so the Proto-Albanian language could’ve neighbored these dialects just to their north, closer to the border with Kosovo.
3) The rich Romance lexicon in Albanian is associated mostly with Eastern Romance (e.g. Romanian, Aromanian, etc.), which was probably initially spoken in a much larger area in the hinterland of the Balkans north of Macedonia, but it also has received a Western Romance influence. It is more likely that Italo-Dalmatian languages of a “western” type were spoken along the coast of the Western Balkans, whereas Eastern Romance developed in the interior, separated from the other Romance groupby the Dinaric Alps, and was the group of Vulgar Latin dialects spoken roughly from Pannonia (Hungary) to Moesia (basically parts of modern Serbia, Kosovo and Bulgaria) and some bits of Dacia, particularly in areas close to the Danube valley. Albanian Romance superstrate is closer to the latter than to the Italo-Dalmatian one spoken in the Dalmatian/Illyrian coast (where they would’ve been much closer to other “western” speakers in the Italian Peninsula, too).
4) In Late Antiquity Proto-Romanian was probably centered a bit to the west of where it is spoken now, around present-day Serbia (that would’ve been before Slavs reduced the reach of Romance), though it could’ve been spoken in the areas around it in modern Romania, Bulgaria and elsewhere, too. It just happens that Latin was never a major language in or very close to Macedonia and Epirus, which is basically around most of present-day Albania. Another thing is that Romanian has a pre-Romance Paleo-Balkan substrate that has several close parallels to Albanian.
Any credible evidence of a massive migration of Dacians from present Romania to Albania is very scant, not to say nonexistant. Likewise, though I have read such hypotheses before, I think it is very unlikely that Eastern Romance arose in or near Epirus, or anywhere south of Macedonia for that matter, and spread with people from there to Romania to become a major force in Wallachia, leaving little to no significant trace of such a profound change.
Instead, I think it is far more plausible to explain the similarity between the Paleo-Balkanic Romanian substrate and Albanian with the hypothesis that the earliest form of Romanian was spoken a bit to the west, and the earliest form of Albanian (or at least an influential early dialect of it) a bit to the northeast, so that the two coexisted side by side.
5) Albanian lacks a rich native vocabulary related to the sea and coastal areas and activities linked to them. Its lexical history points to an original linguistic community living at quite a distance from the coast and not being in regular use by people who relied on the sea for their living, a very common thing in the Mediterranean region. It is possible that a language/dialect similar to Proto-Albanian was spoken in some areas along the shore, but in any case that wouldn’t have been the language variety from which the extant Albanian dialects would’ve evolved.
6) The Slavic names of some Serbian cities, like Nish (Serbia) and Shtip (North Macedonia), follow typically Albanian sound changes from their ancient Latin forms to their modern names in Serbo-Croatian. It is possible that the entire area, where languages broadly related to Proto-Albanian, may have undergone the same sound changes, but it is also possible that simply Kosovo and Southern Serbia still had many people speaking Proto-Albanian in Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages, and the Slavs adopted the names of some local cities with all the quirks of the local people’s pronunciation.
Thus, it is at least plausible that Proto-Albanian was spoken not necessarily only in the territory of Kosovo, but more broadly in an area stretching from North Albania to the western borders of Bulgaria, also encompassing lands in present-day Kosovo, Serbia, Montenegro and North Macedonia. The epicenter of the language would’ve gradually shifted southward as Slavs expanded in the Early Middle Ages and became increasingly dominant.
Incidentally, it’s at least intriguing that that roughly determined location correlates closely to where the Kingdom of Dardania had been before the Roman conquest. Dardania, by the way, is a word that can be made sense of by an Albanian origin pear tree (Proto-Albanian *darda-), which also fits another word the etymology of which can be made sense of with the name of a domesticated animal/plant, Dalmatia (Proto-Albanian *delme, “sheep”). If Dardanians were a population speaking an eastern Illyrian language (it’s honestly unlikely that Illyrian hadn’t split into distinct if similar languages after such a long time), maybe with some Daco-Thracian influence, that could also explain the relatively easy adoption of it by people in the rest of the territory of modern Albania later.
All of this is of course not proven conclusively nor is anything more than a hypothesis, but it is plausible and substantiated enough to be at least worth investigating further.
https://www.quora.com/Can-it-be-tru...uage-first-was-spoken-in-the-Kosovo-territory
I agree with the nearly all of his points, as well as his conclusion. A Proto-Albanian homeland stretching from North Albania, Eastern Montenegro and into Kosovo makes most sense. However he does make some errors.This answer on Quora is one of the best, logical, reasonable answer i have seen on this topic.
What do you guess, in how many years will we have the answer?A very simplified short list of just some of the main theories that have historically been considered. Albanian has to have been at least around the Mati basin since early Roman times, as this place has almost no Roman placenames or linguistic penetration (something also observed in northern albanian mountains)
What do you guess, in how many years will we have the answer?
A very simplified short list of just some of the main theories that have historically been considered. Albanian has to have been at least around the Mati basin since early Roman times, as this place has almost no Roman placenames or linguistic penetration (something also observed in northern albanian mountains)
I'm looking forward.If there isn't total social collapse and civilization reset, within ten years we will know at least within the last 2000 years with fairly high precision where proto-albanian was and wasn't.
I'll go with the Dacian theory but will go with it coming from the lands around the border of Serbia and Romania with the Albanian people a mix of local Illyrians and the romanized Dacian/Slavic tribe above.
I'll go with the Dacian theory but will go with it coming from the lands around the border of Serbia and Romania with the Albanian people a mix of local Illyrians and the romanized Dacian/Slavic tribe above.
We all know why you pick this theory. This theory was picked to appease political appetite of Serbs and Greeks. You will have your blow when ancient DNA from Illyrians are revealed. No matter how much you try to mask, it's pointless.
LOL
we just wait.
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