Albanian relations with other indoeuropeen languages

Arbër Zaimi   Tue May 09, 2006 7:09 pm GMT
I read some of the posts in the forums, and i saw that albanian language was considered as strange and difficult. Albanian is an indoeuropeen language, which shares similarities with other languages like dacian (words from today romanian), prehomeric greek and celtic. Of course it has been influenced from classical greek and latin, and this is one of the proofs that the albanians have lived between greece and italy since the historic times. In the other forum regarding albanian i posted something you might find interesting, but i would like to compare my language to other indoeuropeen languages, just to show that it is now strange, it s just unknown to most of you..
Arbër Zaimi   Tue May 09, 2006 7:10 pm GMT
I meant "no strange"
JR   Wed May 10, 2006 7:45 am GMT
Albanian also has it's good share of Latin origin.
Arbër   Wed May 10, 2006 2:30 pm GMT
what Brennus says is true, albanian was discovered to be an indoeuropean language only in the XIX cent. but in my opinion this is only because it was not studied systematically before. i don't know if you have read Eqerem Çabej's work. He was one of the most prominent albanologists of the XX cent. and he also brings some interesting facts regarding the development of albanian. Another author that i can mention is Aristides Colia, which belonged to the greek albanian community (arvanite). He was not a proffesional, but apparently, as I do, he liked ethymology, history etc. In my opinion, even though he was a bit scarse as a historian (he was affected by nationalism), he did a very good job linking modern albanian with homeric greek (preclassic). He stated that comparatively Albanian inherited some words from homeric greek that do not exist in modern greek. I dont know if his opera (albanians and the origin of the greeks) was translated in english, because he was a bit opprimed by the official greek institutions.
Regarding albanian links with other languages, I would say that the languages that are nearer to mine are the archaic greek and the romanian (in its non-latin aspects). But of course it has some coincidences with other IE languages, as all of them do with each other. Regarding to the albanian links with latin, I would say that the roman empire left its imprint in alb. culture, and a significative part of alb. vocabulary is of latin origins. It was also influenced (in order of importance) by the classical and modern greek, by the bulgarian slavic (from the times of bulgarian empire) and from the othoman (turkish+arabian+persian). But it still preserved gramathical differences and synthaxis. I think albanian is one of the archaic languages still surviving in their old form, but unfortunatedly i dont know armenian, georgian or baltic languages so that i can compare.
Albanian is divided in many local subdialectical forms, which generally are grouped in gheg and tosk. A theory could be that this subgroups originate from the divisions between kingdom of illyria and kingdom of epirus. It si known that they were divided by the Shkumbini (latin name Scampa / Scampinus) river, or by the roman via Egnatia. albanian official language was generated mostly by tosk and to pronounce it correctly you should be able to give voice to the 36 sounds, related do the 36 letters of the alphabet. But to pronounce albanian in its dialects you should pronounce more than 70 different sounds. Gheg and tosk, differently to what is writen in some online encyclopaedias (i.e. wikipedia) are mutually intelligible. The difference between the dialects is mostly the pronounciation, because the grammar, the morphology, the synthaxis and everything else remains the same.
a.p.a.m.   Fri May 12, 2006 8:37 pm GMT
What I find amazing and fascinating is that Albania,as a nation, has managed to survive in spite of being overshadowed and bullied by larger, more powerful nations. What I also admire is that the Albanian language (a descendent of Illyrian) has managed to survive as well. Bravo to Albania!
Aldo   Sat May 13, 2006 1:28 am GMT
How would you say these in Albanian and Greek?

--->>>>>>>>>

QUIS ES MARCUS? MARCUS PUER ROMANO EST.

CHI É MARCO? MARCO É UN BAMBINO ROMANO.

QUIEN ES MARCOS? MARCOS ES UN CRIO ROMANO.

WHO IS MARCUS? MARCUS IS A ROMAN BOY.

QUI EST MARC? MARC EST UN GARÇON ROMAN.

QUEM É MARCU? MARCU É UM RAPAZ ROMANO.
Arbër   Sun May 14, 2006 3:13 pm GMT
Brennus can I ask your nationality??
Arbër   Sun May 14, 2006 3:57 pm GMT
Please, can you post the translation of the word "knife" in the languages you know.

Albanian

Thikë/a
Kamë/a

Thank you!
Georgero   Thu Jun 15, 2006 12:02 pm GMT
In Romanian:
knife = cuţit

But there there is another similarity which I find it very interesting.
Romanians have the word "ticălos". "ă" is read exactly like "ë" in Albanian.
Ticălos means a person who is not having degnity, is always having bad behaviour and lack of respect towards others and also able to commit crimes. You might find here some connections with word "thikë", it could have the same root. A person which uses knife towards other person could be named "ticălos".
Georgero   Thu Jun 15, 2006 8:27 pm GMT
Another interesting fact is the evolution of Romanian (possible Dacian or Thracian word) word "copil" (child). I've heard that Albanians have this word too (kopil). But they use it as an insult with the meaning of bastard, non-legitime child... In Romanian it doesn't have any kind of insulting meaning, excepting the situation when someone uses it to address to an adult... calling him an non-mature person or smth like that...
We can only find this word in Albanian and Romanian, so probably could be of prelatin origin... Illyrian, Thracian, Dacian? who knows?
Bianca   Fri Jun 16, 2006 4:21 am GMT
Etrusian Albanain Romanian
ame ama mama -mom
ana anë cana -cup/mug
ape hap hap -interjection
ati at tata (tati) -dad
cal cal cal -horse
carath gardth gard -fence
carus gaw gaură -hole
evnu venë vin -I am coming/to come
matu madh matahalë -thugh
nata natë noapte -night
nuk nuk nu -no
nunu nunë nuna -
ranem rane ranë -wound
sili sjell sili - to do something/to work hard
terg terg târg -Târgovişte -market

The words in the same line are used in the same way and have the same meaning... I got this out of a very interesting book which says that Albanians and Romanian have the same ancestors.. and not only them... There are many words in Romanian that have their origin "unknown" but they most likely come from Geto-Dacian/Thracian... It you ask me I totally support this idea.
Arber Z   Sat Jun 17, 2006 12:13 am GMT
Well, Bianca provided some interesting data. Although, some of the albanian words are misspelled and not translated propperly in English, I notice a certain relation between Romanian and Albanian, which can be explained by the linguistic similarity between illyrian and thracian. But what about ethruscan? I thought that language did not survive, and the writings found havent been deciphered yet, even though they are written in known alphabets.
Bianca   Sat Jun 17, 2006 5:30 am GMT
The few words are based on the reduced lexic we have today from Ethruscan. Which words are misspelled in Albanian?
Guest   Sat Jun 17, 2006 5:50 am GMT
I wrote the last message in the "Albanian-A strange language?" forum and I think I wrote the Albanian words better there. I was in a rush and I'm sorry if I misspelled some of the words. The meanings, well I translated them as well as I could from Romanian, and I realize that don't mean exactly the same thing.
Bianca   Sat Jun 17, 2006 5:51 am GMT
That last message was mine.