User:Alcaios/Albanian

Most scholars locate the Urheimat ("original homeland") of the Albanians in the inner Balkans, in an area located somewhere between the western Adriatic coastline, inhabited in ancient times by Illyrian tribes, and the eastern regions of the peninsula, populated by the Thracians.

Several specific locations have been proposed, although none of them has achieved widespread scholarly acceptance: the area stretching between Mat and Niš, the Morava Valley (corresponding to the Roman provinces of Dardania and Dacia Mediterranea), etc.

Historical evidence

According to Radoslav Katičić, the lack of historical mentions of an Albanian migration into the Balkans (as it occurred for the South Slavic migration and the Celtic and Visigothic incursions) suggests that Albanian has been spoken in roughly the same region since at least the Roman period, although Henrik Barić (himself arguing for a pre-Roman demographic movement) has justified the absence of such a historical mention by the political insignificance of migrating shepherds who lived in remote regions limiting contacts with the city life.

Albanians entered written history in the 11th and 12th centuries CE. It is generally assumed that the early Albanian tribes began expanding from their northern mountain homeland during this period, when they gradually took possession of the northern and central Albanian seashore following the collapse of the First Bulgarian Empire in 1018, which had been ruling the region since 851. By the 13th century, Albanian speakers spread southward into what is now southern Albania and western North Macedonia and, by the 14th century, farther south into Greece.

Ethnic and political mentions (1079–1284)

The earliest undisputed reference to the Albanians as a distinct ethnic group can be found in Michael Attaliates' book Historia, written in 1079–1080. Albanoi (Ἀλβαvoὶ) are described as living in the region of Dyrrhachium (Durrës) and as having taken part in a revolt against Constantinople in 1043.

The Principality of Arbanon in 1210. Albanians gradually took control of the Adriatic coastline during the Middle Ages.

The first Albanian state, the semi-autonomous Principality of Arbanon centred around its capital Kruja, lasted from 1190 to 1216. Ruled by the native Progon family, it was located east and northeast of territories controlled by the Republic of Venice. In 1205, the latter captured the city of Durrës from the hands of Constantinople, taking advantage of its pillage during the Fourth Crusade. Seizing the opportunity of the Byzantine retreat, the Principality of Arbanon gained full–though temporary–political independence. In 1257, another Albanian uprising against Constantinople is mentioned by Byzantine historian George Acropolites. A few years later in 1272, the Capetian ruler Charles of Anjou proclaimed himself king of the Regnum Albaniae ("Kingdom of Albania").

Linguistic mentions (1285–1461)

Several written testimonies suggest that Albanian was already a well-established language in several settlements of the Adriatic seashore like Durrës and Dubrovnik during the late 13th and early 14th centuries. According to Robert Elsie, Albanian-speakers had not yet formed the majority of the population within coastal cities of modern Albania throughout the Middle Ages. During this period, Durrës was mostly inhabited by Venetians, Greeks, Jews, and Slavs; Shkodra by Venetians and Slavs; and Vlora by Byzantine Greeks. Alain Ducellier writes that the coasts of Epiros, farther south, were at that time primarily inhabited by Albanians, as was the mountainous area of Pilot rising above the eastern shore of Lake Shkodër. The Dardanian region (modern Kosovo), open to Albania by the Drin river system and standing some way from the Serbian power centres in Raška and Zeta, was also increasingly populated by Albanians.

The Albanian language was first mentioned in 1285 in present-day Dubrovnik, Croatia, where a sizeable Albanian community had been living for some time. A crime witness named Matthew testified that he "heard a voice shouting on the mountainside in the Albanian language". Two decades later in 1308, the Anonymi Descriptio Europae Orientalis, likely written by a French monk of the Dominican order sent to survey the Balkans, described the Albanians as having "a language which is distinct from that of the Latins, Greeks and Slavs such that in no way can they communicate with other peoples". Simon Fitzsimons, an Irish pilgrim of the Franciscan Order who stopped over in the region in 1322 on his way to the Holy Land, likewise depicts Albania as a province "having a language of its own".

A French Dominican monk named Father Brochard (Brocardus monacus) may attest the writing of Albanian as early as 1332: "the Albanians indeed have a language quite different from Latin. However, they use Latin letters in all their books". It is unclear whether the second sentence refers to books written in the Albanian language with the Latin script, or simply to books written in the Latin language.

Linguistic records (1462–1555)

Primary evidence indicate that the Albanian language was first recorded in the Gheg dialect in 1462. The document, known as the formula e pagëzimit ("baptismal formula"), reads: Unte paghesont premenit Atit et birit et spertit senit ("I baptize you in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Ghost"). A small compilation of Gheg Albanian vocabulary (26 single words, 8 phrases, and 12 numerals) was also compiled the German traveler Arnold von Harff in 1497. The earliest book hitherto discovered is Gjon Buzuku's Meshari (Missal), printed in 1555 and written in the Northwest Gheg dialect. With 188 pages, it remains the main source for the study of the earliest stage of the Albanian language.

Linguistic evidence

Evidence from historical linguistics is considered by scholars to be a decisive criterion to determine the origin of the Albanian language and people. Although the Albanian language is not attested before the Middle Ages and the pre-historic location of Albanian speakers remains an ongoing debate, modern linguists generally agree that the ancestral form of Albanian was spoken within the Balkan peninsula in ancient times.

The majority of the modern Albanian vocabulary consists of loanwords. Many of them were adopted into the unattested Proto-Albanian language during the first millennium CE, after intensive contacts with Vulgar Latin (including Proto-Romanian) and South Slavic languages. This phenomenon allows for the reconstruction of an earlier 'Pre-Proto-Albanian' stage of the language via the identification of the inherited (non-borrowed) lexicon. Proto-Albanian itself can be reconstructed by comparing the Tosk and Gheg dialects, which diverged from each other between the 6th and the 11th century CE.

The progressive stages of development in the Albanian language are generally described as followed, with only minor discrepancies in terminology and dating.

• Pre-Proto-Albanian, with an early period (until the 8th century BCE) preceding the first contacts with Ancient Greek, and a late period (7th century–2nd century BCE/1st century CE) before the beginning of an intensive linguistic influence from Latin,
• Proto-Albanian, with an early period (1st–6th century) ending after the first contacts with South Slavic, and a late period (7th–11th century) during the further divergence into the Tosk and Gheg dialects,
• Old Albanian, with an early period (12th–15th century) up until the Ottoman conquest and the subsequent Turkish influence, and a late period (16th–18th century) preceding the Albanian national revival (Rilindja, "rebirth"), which led to the development of the Standard Albanian language from the second part of the 19th century onward.

Position in the Indo-European family

Comparative linguistics shows that at an early stage the Albanian language has been in close contact with other prehistoric Balkan Indo-European languages, including Greek, Phrygian and Armenian, the poorly attested Illyrian (and Messapic), Thracian and Daco-Moesian, and other completely unattested languages.

Paleo-Balkan languages

The main competing theories on the grouping of Albanian among Paleo-Balkanic languages argue for a relation with either Illyrian, Thracian, or an otherwise totally unattested Balkan Indo-European language that was closely related to Illyrian and Messapic.

A number of linguistic cognates shared by Albanian and Illyrian or Messapic are often mentioned in scholarship, such as Illyr. rinós (ῥινός, "cloud, fog") and Alb. re ("cloud"), Messap. bréndos (βρένδος, "deer"), bréntion (βρέντιον, "head of a deer") and Albanian bri ("horns of a deer"), aran and arë ("field"), bilia and bijë ("daughter"), menza- and mëz ("foal"). Numerous onomastic tokens also point to linguistic contacts with the Thracian language. Such lexical data are however insufficient to support a definitive connection between Albanian and any of those languages.

Balto-Slavic and Greek isoglosses

Lexical, phonetic and grammatical isoglosses suggest early connections with Balto-Slavic languages on one side, and with Greek on the other side. While isoglosses simultaneously shared by Germanic, Balto-Slavic and Albanian languages are relatively numerous, separate Germano-Albanian or Italo-Celto-Albanian isoglosses are in contrast fairly rare.

Scholars have developed competing views about the chronological conclusions that should be drawn from the relationship between Albanian and those two linguistic groups. According to linguist Vladimir Orel, the remarkably high degree of proximity with Baltic languages could be explained by a long period of contacts during the pre-Proto-Albanian period. The amount of isoglosses in Greek and Albanian may be due to intense secondary contacts between the two proto-dialects, possibly somewhere in the northern part of the Balkans.

Linguistic reconstruction

Society

Pre-Proto-Albanian speakers were probably cattle-breeders. It is also likely that radical social changes occurred before the first century CE, as the original Indo-European kinship was entirely reshaped, with only the terms related to the parents- and son-in-law being retained. It seems that second degree kinship was irrelevant to Proto-Albanians, as the words for "uncle", "aunt", "niece", or "nephew" have all been borrowed from Latin.

Little to nothing can be said about their political structure since all the political vocabulary is borrowed, mainly from Latin. The social organization was probably centred around the notion of the "house" as the "kin-unifier". Elements of Albanian blood feud culture (Gjakmarrja), which has survived up until the 20th century among northern tribes, may reflect certain archaic Indo-European patterns.

Geography

Nearly all lexemes related to seamanship in the Albanian language are loanwords, which may indicate that speakers of the proto-language did not live on the Adriatic coast or in close proximity to it. A similar argument is the absence of traces of old Dalmatian influence in the Albanian language compared to the noticeable loans from Venetian that occurred after the 11th century, suggesting that Albanians speakers have settled down on the Adriatic seashore at the relatively late period.

Eqrem Çabej has pointed to the presence of some archaic terms that were preserved in Old Albanian and could possibly be related to the maritime lexicon, although Eric P. Hamp has noted that those words may for the most part be applied to any body of waters, or else be easily understood as metaphors. For instance, the Albanian names for the beach (mat) or the wave (valë) are too generic to specifically refer to the sea, while the term for the sea (dēt) itself likely derives from a pre-Proto-Albanian form *deubeta, which originally meant "depth" (cf. Germanic *deupiþō).

Names of trees like the beech (*aksa), the oak (*druška), the pine (*pīsa) and the elm (*wīdza) were inherited from pre-Proto-Albanian, while Latin words borrowed during the Proto-Albanian period include plants historically located in the southern and southeastern areas of the Balkans: the ash (frashër – from Lat. fraxinus), birch (mështekër – masticinus), maple (palnjë – platanus), or willow (shelg – salix).

Nearly all the specific terms related to the mountainous reliefs or to the life in the mountains are borrowed. Based on the reconstructed geographical lexicon, Orel argues that the speakers of Proto-Albanian lived in a swampy area of sparsely grown trees and small rivers rather than in the high mountains of the Balkans: "it is clear that the Proto-Albanians were not acquainted with forests", as the word pyll ("forest") was borrowed from a Romance term for swamp (Lat. palūdem), "presumably when the Proto-Albanians reached the lowlands of the Adriatic shore."

Loanwords

Like Armenian, the Albanian language shows a high amount of lexical borrowings, with only 572 inherited (non-borrowed) tokens listed by linguist Bardhyl Demiraj. During the first millennium CE, the proto-Albanian language underwent major changes that shattered its internal structure via intense contacts with Vulgar Latin and South Slavic dialects. When added to the Greek and Turkish linguistic influences, this phenomenon has made the history of the Albanian language particularly opaque to modern researchers interested in the early stages of the language.

Ancient Greek

The oldest stratum of loanwords comes from Ancient Greek, most notably from the Doric dialect, which likely indicates that the Albanian language was already spoken in the Balkans in ancient times. Most of those words, which are designations of vegetables, spices, fruits, animals, and tools, entered the Albanian language from the 8th century BCE onward, possibly via Greek merchants journeying in the Balkan hinterland or via settlers on the Adriatic coast. Çabej writes that evidence of ancient contacts with a Greek dialect (spoken by Doric-speaking colonists or Northwest Dorians) suggest that pre-Albanian speakers did not live far from Greek-speaking territories, although the precise area where those contacts occurred remains largely uncertain.

A recurrent argument in favour of a northern origin of the Albanian language is the relatively small number of such Ancient Greek loanwords. According to linguist Hermann Ölberg, the modern Albanian lexicon may only include 33 words of Ancient Greek origin. Shaban Demiraj contends that "the relatively small number of Old Greek loanwords in Albanian might be explained more naturally through the gradual disappearance of a part of them in the course of centuries, as it has happened to a considerable number of inherited words of Indo-European origin."

Early Romance

Linguistics contacts between proto-Albanian and Latin began in the aftermath of the conquest of Illyria by Lucius Anicius Gallus in 167 BCE and persisted until the demise of the Western Roman Empire during the 5th century CE. They intensified after the administrative incorporation of the Western Balkans as Roman provinces in the first century CE. Latin influence was indeed rather limited to the Adriatic coast and little felt in the inner regions up until the reign of the first emperor Augustus (27 BCE–14 CE).

The majority of the borrowings belong to the cultural and economic spheres: the city-life, family structure, agriculture, plants and fruits of the plains and marshlands. The influence of Latin on the Albanian lexicon is extensive, ranging from its semantic to its morphological dimension. At least 600 words of Latin origin have been identified, and it is notable that some basic terms like "come" (vij, from venio) or "leg" (këmbë, from *camba) have also been transferred to Proto-Albanian. Given the intensity of those contacts, Wacław Cimochowski has argued that proto-Albanian must have been spoken in an inner region of the Balkans, certainly in a mountainous area where Roman influence was only superficial and the language did not end up absorbed by a Romance language like Dalmatian.

Numerous Albanian-Romanian correspondences are also found in their grammar, lexicon and morphology. Evidence of early Albanian borrowings into Romanian, along with the finding of Romance words exclusively shared by the two languages, point to a long period of intensive contacts between proto-Albanian and proto-Romanian (or another transitional dialect of Vulgar Latin), probably via transhumant shepherds in the inner Balkans during the first millennium CE.

South Slavic

From the 6th century CE, South Slavic tribes started to migrate en masse to the Balkans, reaching Kosovo and Durrës by 548. According to Shaban Demiraj, "the foreign conquerors by their organization and their armies could more easily settle and dominate in the coastal and flat regions, but they could hardly penetrate into the deeply isolated mountainous areas." South Slavs invaded the plains to sustain a farming economy, relegating native Albanians to the more isolated mountain regions where they retained their pastoral way of life, although Albanian and Slavic certainly remained in contact during the first millennium CE.

Based on the widespread presence of settlements bearing Slavic names in the region, some scholars have argued that South Slavs probably came to form the majority population of present-day Albania for several centuries. Others have contended that those Slavic enclaves must have been rather limited in number, since Albanians did not get fully Slavicized, as it later happened in Reka and some other areas of present-day Montenegro. Indeed, and contrary to Latin, the majority of Slavic loanwords are not equally distributed between the various Albanian dialects, which suggests that Slavic influence was only partial on proto-Albanian speakers. According to linguist Xhelal Ylli, only a quarter of some 1000 words of Slavic origin have a more or less pan-Albanian distribution.

Although the general chronology of Slavic borrowings remains unclear, a small group of around 20 loanwords must have entered the Albanian lexicon relatively early before the 10th–11th century. They generally belong to the sphere of dwellings, agriculture, cattle-rearing, and also include some plant names. Since the lexicon related to activities of higher altitude (such as milk) remained Albanian, archeologist John Wilkes has proposed that contacts between the two populations might have taken place in forests located 600–900 metres above sea level, in the context of a seasonal movement of pastural proto-Albanian tribes.

Others

Italian borrowings date back the economic contacts between Italian states and the Dalmatian coast after the 11th century, with many early loans coming from the Venetian dialect of Italian. Middle and Modern Greek borrowings, prevalent in the Arvanitika dialect and, to a lesser extent, in the Tosk dialect, have also occurred since the Middle Ages.

Following the Ottoman conquest of the Balkans in the 14th–15th century, many Turkish terms related to the economic, administrative and spiritual life were borrowed into Albanian. Since the beginning of the Albanian national revival from the mid-19th century onward, many of such Turkish loans either went out of use or shifted to the "sub-standard" language, as they were seen as a symbol of national oppression and undesirable "easternization". Despite these efforts, loans of Turkish origin are still very common in the spoken language.

Linguistic continuity

Pre-Indo-European influence

The languages spoken in the Balkans during the first millennium BCE have probably been influenced by the idioms of assimilated indigenous peoples following their earlier introduction in the region through Indo-European migrations from the Pontic-Caspian steppe. The extent of this linguistic impact cannot be determined with precision for most paleo-Balkan languages due to their scarce attestation, with the exception of the Pre-Greek substrate, clearly noticeable in the considerable number of loanwords in Ancient Greek dialects. Albanian words possibly borrowed from a pre-Indo-European Mediterranean substrate have also been proposed, such as shegë ("pomegranate") or lëpjetë ("orach", cf. Pre-Greek lápathon, λάπαθον, "monk's rhubarb").

Dialects

Modern spread of Albanian dialects (majority or minority position not shown).

The Tosk and Gheg dialects of Albanian, representing southern and northern speech areas nowadays divided by the Shkumbin River, are relatively old and date back at least to the first millennium CE. It is possible that they reflect a spread of the speech area corresponding to the settlement of Albanians in their present location, although linguists such as Shaban Demiraj and Robert Elsie have argued that the Tosk and Gheg already existed in the 6th century, since the dialectal split between the 'r' and 'n' sounds surrounded by two vowels can already be observed in Latin loanwords: arena ("sand") became ranë in Gheg but rërë in Tosk, while vinum ("wine") turned into venë and verë. It has also been noted that this rhotacism does not usually appear in Slavic borrowings. Another phonetic change, the evolution of stressed /a/ to /ë/ in front of nasal consonants (such as in llanë > llërë) are not found in Slavic loanwords either, but rather in the inherited Indo-European lexicon and in Ancient Greek and Latin loanwords. This may indicate that Ghegs and Tosks were located more or less where they are today by the time South Slavs entered the Balkans.

Endonym

The old Albanian ethnic name, formed with the root alb- (and its alternative form arb-), has been in use since at least the 2nd century BCE among Greek, Latin, then Byzantine sources. It appeared later in Old Albanian texts of the Middle Ages as an endonym (Gheg: Arbënesh, Tosk: Arbëresh), which continued to be used as a self-designation by communities of the Albanian diaspora, such as the Arbanasi of Croatia, the Arbëreshë of southern Italy and the Arvanites of Greece. However, the ancient attestation of the name Albanoi is not generally considered a strong evidence in favour or against an ancient continuity within the modern Albanian borders, since there are many historical examples of an ethnic name shifting from one ethnos to another (e.g., the endonym of the Romance-speaking French derives from the Germanic tribe of the Franks. Albanians themselves changed their endonym from arbënesh to shqiptar (first attested in the 16th century) most likely in response to the Ottoman conquest of the Balkans (14th–15th century).

Toponyms

Some local geographic names situated on the modern territory of Albania and attested since ancient times does not coincide with Albanian sound laws, but rather with Dalmatian phonology. For instance, if Scodra was to be considered a Proto-Albanian name, it should have developed into the form **Hadër rather than Shkodër, and the name Dyrrháchium should have evolved into **Dúrrëq rather than Dúrrës.

By contrast, a number of local geographic names situated in present-day Albania can only be derived from their ancient to their current form through Albanian sound changes, most notably Lesh from Lissus, Drisht from Drivastium, Kunavia from Candavia. Some geographic names located in the inner Balkans also show a phonetic development in accordance with Albanian sound laws, most notably Niš from Naissus (Ναισσός), Štip from Astibos (Άστιβος), Sharr from Scardus, or Ohri from Lychnidus.

Historical linguistic considerations suggest that Mat and the adjacent regions, including Mirdita, have retained toponyms showing typical Albanian features, while a great number of toponyms with Slavic features are found in the areas surrounding these regions. This evidence indicates that the Mati region, unlike the surrounding lowlands, has been inhabited for some time by Albanian-speakers, or at least served as a retreat area with possible contacts with the lowlands. This would make the region one of the oldest settlements of the Albanians following their ethnogenesis, which, in this view, is considered to have been completed between the 2nd and the 5th–6th centuries AD.

Hydronyms

A number of local hydronyms situated in the northern areas of present-day Albania and attested since ancient times coincide with Albanian sound laws, most notably Drin from Drinus, Buenë from Barbanna, Mat from Mathis, Ishëm from Isammus and Ohri from Lychnidus. Other local hydronyms does not coincide with Albanian sound changes, but rather with Slavic phonology, most notably Shkumbin from Scampinus, and Vjosë from Aoös (Ἄωος).

References

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