donnie
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Post by donnie on Feb 2, 2008 13:46:56 GMT -5
Is the word still in usage among Southern Slavs?
Yes, I thought so. The English words 'garden' and 'yard' seem to fit right there too.
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Post by Arxileas on Feb 2, 2008 13:52:13 GMT -5
I’m starting to notice the words “genetic, geneticists “ etc;
Blood is not related to ethnicity.
I’m simply enjoying the discussion in this thread by all so far.
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Post by c0gnate on Feb 2, 2008 14:12:35 GMT -5
Is the word still in usage among Southern Slavs? The Southern Slavs use it rarely and always to indicate Vlach, or shepherd settlements. Kodër (hill, mountain forest) is another word shared by Albanians and Vlachs/Romanians.
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donnie
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Post by donnie on Feb 2, 2008 14:27:02 GMT -5
Whenever Albanian & Romanian share words that cannot be explained through Latin or Slav, we can safely assume it is of ancient origins i.e. Thraco-Illyrian. Kopil is right there too,
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Post by Arxileas on Feb 2, 2008 14:45:50 GMT -5
Whenever Albanian & Romanian share words that cannot be explained through Latin or Slav, we can safely assume it is of ancient origins i.e. Thraco-Illyrian. Kopil is right there too, What was this Thraco-Illyrian language ? Any records of the Illyrian language ? If it cannot be explained through Latin or Slavic why not through Greek ? So many un-answered questions still up in the air
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Post by c0gnate on Feb 2, 2008 15:17:56 GMT -5
What was this Thraco-Illyrian language ? Any records of the Illyrian language ? If it cannot be explained through Latin or Slavic why not through Greek ? So many un-answered questions still up in the air You are right. For a strong supposition that a word is from the pre-Roman, pre-Slavic substratum one has to rule out ancient Greek, as well as Turkish, Bulgar and Magyar. Aman, on the other hand it is likely that modern Greek has adopted some words from its neighbors.
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Post by areianos on Feb 2, 2008 15:26:16 GMT -5
What was this Thraco-Illyrian language ? Any records of the Illyrian language ? If it cannot be explained through Latin or Slavic why not through Greek ? So many un-answered questions still up in the air You are right. For a strong supposition that a word is from the pre-Roman, pre-Slavic substratum one has to rule out ancient Greek, as well as Turkish, Bulgar and Magyar. Aman, on the other hand it is likely that modern Greek has adopted some words from its neighbors. Absolutely 5-7% of the Greek language has foreign or loan words pre WW2. In 2008 10%-12% is foreign due to the infusion of many English words in the modern Greek language. When have we ever denied it?
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Post by Arxileas on Feb 2, 2008 15:33:55 GMT -5
What was this Thraco-Illyrian language ? Any records of the Illyrian language ? If it cannot be explained through Latin or Slavic why not through Greek ? So many un-answered questions still up in the air You are right. For a strong supposition that a word is from the pre-Roman, pre-Slavic substratum one has to rule out ancient Greek, as well as Turkish, Bulgar and Magyar. Aman, on the other hand it is likely that modern Greek has adopted some words from its neighbors. We have never denied this. We Greeks do not deny of the Slavic invasion or from other neighbors on our lands and yes there would have been many name places renamed back to original Greek names when we reclaimed our lands. All I did was aks a sincere question on my part, is all.
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Kralj Vatra
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Post by Kralj Vatra on Feb 2, 2008 16:20:20 GMT -5
BibleRiot, very useful info. I also think that at least this text of Hammond is full of holes. I mean the Vlachs, with no writing ability, kept their lang till today, while those slavs from 600 AD were hellenized by 1400??? Lets not forget the Serbs had the upper hand back then till 1389. This text of Hammond is easily a piece of crap.
Generally in history and thru the whole Europe there is a big battle between the two dominant races/philosophies of life/languages : The Germanic and the Slavic. From Norway, down to Skopia.
The Germans always thought the Slavs are inferior, while in Slav langs Nemacka (=germany) means the land of the mute! So the slavs considered Germanics as having a less expressive/inferior language.
So i wouldnt take any English/German historian too seriously on that matter.
Plus they had an apparent lack of tools to use. In science we have the theory but also the experiment. Whithout experimental verification, or even worse with experimental negative results, a theory is doomed to be false. So in history the "experiment" is the modern explanation of the application of history. Apparently this Hammond could not have access to setup such an "experiment"
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Post by BibleRiot on Feb 2, 2008 16:37:56 GMT -5
I think Hammond is nearly always right when he talks about ancient history ... and his record of succesful prediction (usually an acceptable way of validating a scientific theory) tends to back up that estimate. How can a historian make a relevant prediction, you may ask? Well, Hammond for instance succesfully predicted the site of the Macedonian royal tombs long before there was any hard evidence and when the orthodoxy of the day put them somewhere else altogether.
However, like many experts, he may be less sound when he ventures out beyond his own field.
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Kanaris
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Post by Kanaris on Feb 2, 2008 16:43:23 GMT -5
Sometimes a theory to be taken a little more seriously, has to have some sort of substance.
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Post by kasso on Feb 2, 2008 16:52:57 GMT -5
Sometimes a theory to be taken a little more seriously, has to have some sort of substance. As in case of the Albanians regarding the Illyrian theory.
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Kanaris
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Post by Kanaris on Feb 2, 2008 16:59:28 GMT -5
I am not talking about Albanians/illyrians in particular....
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Post by c0gnate on Feb 2, 2008 17:21:38 GMT -5
I think Hammond is nearly always right when he talks about ancient history ... and his record of succesful prediction (usually an acceptable way of validating a scientific theory) tends to back up that estimate. "Prediction is very difficult, especially about the future." - Niels Bohr
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Post by Niklianos on Feb 2, 2008 18:38:18 GMT -5
Donnie,
"Furthermore, it is not impossible to find Albanian lands essentially free of Slav toponymy. One example is the mountainous Mirdita district north of Tirana where there is essentially no Slav toponym (all Albanian). Other similiar territories are Mati, Martanesh, Puka, Pulati etc. Slav toponymy follow a certain pattern. Although they penetrated into the highlands as well (to a lesser extent), their main depertation occured in the lowlands, such as south of Shkodër, Vjosa valley and so on. Ironically, there are more Slav toponyms in South Albania than the northern part adjacent to Montenegro. Linguists tend to point out, as you also concluded, that a majority of these toponyms are related to Bulgarian rather than Serbo-Croatian."
Bingo! You have just confirmed what BBB and BibleRiot have already mentioned. The reason there are no Slav toponomys in those areas is due to it being purely Albanian. Since it is purely Albanian then it would also most likely point to being the original homeland of the Albanian peoples.
P.S I have acknowledged that a mountainous 'Illyrian' tribe may be your ancestors.
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Post by Niklianos on Feb 2, 2008 18:44:37 GMT -5
Niklianos, The problem is NOT there are NO words, but there are NOT Enough as to think those people have not lived closed to sea recently!! Or a few words compared to pastorial vocabulary as to assume that Alb. have been living mainly inland than close to the sea recently. Therefore the theory of their having had those words but "have forgotten" them cought my attention. However you draw your conclusion whether the followings are Latin or Greek borrowings; Have Albanians possibly ever lived closed to Romans and Greeks? Or maybe never Or they borrowed these words in 14th century??? peshk - fish (in italian is pesce) anije, vapor, tabor - ship. varke - boat spirance - anchor gji - bay rere, kum, - sand zall, zhavorr - little stones typically found in the rivers or sea krap - a fish in sweet water (don't know it in English) koce - a very delicious fish in salt water peshkaqen-shark mol - in greek is liman ? sardele - sardins etc. I have difficulty to find the word in Enlgish of all fish terminology. So again, the point is not Albanians don't have but they do not have ENOUGH. I understand your point but I don't agree with the 'forgetting' aspect of the argument. What I believe is that those words, if they are of Old Albanian origin, were borrowed through trade with the coastal tribes of the Illyrians or others.
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Post by c0gnate on Feb 2, 2008 19:14:37 GMT -5
For the linguistic argument to stick one has to look at the Albanian language in more detail. It’s misleading to use Latin and Slavic words in Albanian as evidence that proto Albanians didn’t know of the concepts they represent. It may well be that words from these “foreign” tongues replaced older “Albanian” words. Such phenomena in other languages are well documented and are not limited to any particular domain.
So, I’d like to know what fraction of Albanian words is of “foreign” origin? What fraction is Latin, what fraction is Greek, what fraction is Slavic, Turkish and so on. For these “foreign” words, are there “Albanian” synonyms? Do these words tend to cluster by activity or are they uniformly distributed? Are there historic time frames that may be assigned to their entrance into Albanian? And so on and so forth.
Without reliable answers to such questions we can’t reach any conclusions other than those that may well be guided by nationalist motives.
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Kralj Vatra
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Post by Kralj Vatra on Feb 3, 2008 0:58:15 GMT -5
BibleRiot,
what i told you, was that even "good" historians cannot hide their preferences, their passions. If like Hammond says, the toponyms are much older than Stefan Dusan, then simply there should have been a) some sort of Slav rule or b) at least a vast recognition of their noticable presence.
Case a) why is it not recorded Case b) Mr Hammond, you really might like to preceive slavs as inferior, but no slav has ever been started to speak another language with out being the minority. How can e.g. a village start to speak automagically a new language, taking into account the difficulty of the time to travel, the lack of official Byzantine interest which would constitute the Greek Authorities,etc... Mr hammond, at the time there were no schools, no television, only mixed marriages can fix that, but is it natural to happen between the autochthonous "ancient" and the alien newcomer invader?
I mean Serbs in halkidiki, they tend even to change the lang of the TV sets in the hotels. They dont know English, and they hate it. Take a look at Kosovo. No Serb ever started talking albanian even if they now a little of it. In belgrade airport you go to the exchange machine and oops!!! no directions in english, only serbocroatian!
Also Slavs are always keen on agricultur, what where they doing on the mountains?
I repeat it, if an historian wants to deal with a matter he must show both love and intelligence for the matter. If stupidity or hatred show up, then the whole work is crap. And definately traveling helps, doing history from far away (like hammond) is like a car manufacturer that designs an SUV, sends it to production, without ever having tested it at least on asphalt.
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Post by c0gnate on Feb 3, 2008 1:31:17 GMT -5
Kopil is right there too, The terms for butterfly and pigeon are the same too: flutur (Alb.), fluture (Rom.) and pëllumb, porumb. However these words have congates in other languages, such as flutter in English and paloma/o in Spanish. But they differ from the Slavic versions: leptir and golub.
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Post by BibleRiot on Feb 3, 2008 5:41:31 GMT -5
Cognate, I was trying to find out precisely that, the proportion of loan words in Albanian, Greek and Serb, but all I came up with was this rather good article on the Balkan Sprachbund, that constellation of unrelated languages that have rubbed together so much. Tough, but worth reading, or skimming at least. wwwlot.let.uu.nl/GraduateProgram/LotSchools/Summerschool2003/Tomic.pdfPyrros, Hammond's area of expertise was ancient history, up to the Hellenistic period. So when he talks about 6th or 15th century migrations, which he does only very rarely and incidentally, he's not so reliable. But he didn't do his history sitting down far away, he did it on foot, walking all over Epirus and Macedonia. You talk about love: Hammond was a hero of the Greek resistance against the Nazis, decorated with the Order of the Phoenix for his services to Hellas as commander of the Allied Military Mission in Greece, and the man who suggested that the FYROManiacs adopt the name Paeonia if they had to have an ancient name for their Slavic republic. He spoke both Greek and Albanian and found several of the artefacts on which we base our ideas about the ancient history of Epirus. About as far from an armchair historian as you can imagine, in fact. Whatever their view about the actual intensity of Slavic settlement, you won't find any reputable historian who argues that most of the Slav toponyms in Abania and Greece don't date back to the major Bulgar 6th century incursions that brought some Slavic speech to the region, rather than to the brief and inconsequential period of Serb dominance in the 14th. Quite possibly some of the toponyms in Epirus are Serb, I don't know, but it would take real expertise in the history of Slavic languages for you to be certain of the differences back then. You can't rely on your knowledge of differences between Serbian and Bulgarian now.
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