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Post by Anittas on Dec 7, 2011 10:44:09 GMT -5
I don't get it. You live in the mountains with goats. Down in the valley resides civilization. You have two choices: to remain in the mountains with the goats, or, to descend to the valley and embrace culture, sophistication, and all the good that comes with it.
Yet you chose to remain in the mountains. Now, what does that say about you, as a people? Let's make the scenario more contemporary. Say that something goes wrong and all people die except you and a few other groups of people. As it just happens, you find yourselves in the mountains. Down in the valley, several peoples form communities and try to retain the knowledge gained by humanity throughout the millennia.
Do you:
A) Introduce yourself and declare your desire of taking part in the newly founded community, adding your knowledge to expertise to strengthen the community, or;
B) Remain the mountains, playing the flute, and acting like an authentic highlander who retains certain cultural elements that can't be used to build spaceships.
You get my drift?
Now, I'm not saying that remaining in the mountains must be a bad thing. The Romansh of Switzerland did just that and they managed to retain their Romance language. My own people are said to have done the same, but this to seperate ourselves from the barbarian hordes. But why would you want to seperate yourselves from the Romans? They were superior to you. You should've wanted to be Romanized. How difficult could it have been to ask for the nearest centurion, or some other authority figure, introduce yourself and declare your desire to be cultivated? Not very hard, I'd say!
Something like this:
--- Illyrian boor: Servus ... er ... Ave Caesar! I want to learn books (sic).
Roman Centurian: You'll make a nice gladiator! ---
Okay, so maybe not everyone would benefit from civilization, but we all have to make sacrifices! And look at you now, oldest language in the world and all, and no one to share it with except among yourselves. Don't you have any regrets?
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rex362
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Post by rex362 on Dec 7, 2011 11:17:36 GMT -5
those mountains were key to our survival ....
important part is we are here still since Pelasgian times
Hellenic Dreams, Roman Dreams, Byzantine Dreams, ... Panslavic Dreams, and Ottoman Dreams.
After all these nightmares on the backs of Pelasgians, Now we have an Albanian reality...
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Post by Anittas on Dec 7, 2011 11:30:50 GMT -5
You would've survived just as well, if not better, under a Roman identity.
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rex362
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Post by rex362 on Dec 7, 2011 11:36:53 GMT -5
not with mother tongue and customs/traditions intact .....the flute sufficed
we have many many that have assimilated and to far to recoup
most of them we end up fighting here with,and they don't know it (krivo,Pyrros,Karta type)
through every empire/conqueror upon our lands we have lost people and also lost many through assimilation let it be by force or by necessity .....we our fighting /arguing to our own blood in some cases but different history views and mind sets ....with slavs and especially greeks
(the worst example is that Albanian turned vlach turned greek turning serb Pyrros )
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donnie
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Post by donnie on Dec 7, 2011 15:27:17 GMT -5
I don't get it. You live in the mountains with goats. Down in the valley resides civilization. You have two choices: to remain in the mountains with the goats, or, to descend to the valley and embrace culture, sophistication, and all the good that comes with it. Yet you chose to remain in the mountains. Now, what does that say about you, as a people? Let's make the scenario more contemporary. Say that something goes wrong and all people die except you and a few other groups of people. As it just happens, you find yourselves in the mountains. Down in the valley, several peoples form communities and try to retain the knowledge gained by humanity throughout the millennia. Do you: A) Introduce yourself and declare your desire of taking part in the newly founded community, adding your knowledge to expertise to strengthen the community, or; B) Remain the mountains, playing the flute, and acting like an authentic highlander who retains certain cultural elements that can't be used to build spaceships. You get my drift? Now, I'm not saying that remaining in the mountains must be a bad thing. The Romansh of Switzerland did just that and they managed to retain their Romance language. My own people are said to have done the same, but this to seperate ourselves from the barbarian hordes. But why would you want to seperate yourselves from the Romans? They were superior to you. You should've wanted to be Romanized. How difficult could it have been to ask for the nearest centurion, or some other authority figure, introduce yourself and declare your desire to be cultivated? Not very hard, I'd say! Something like this: --- Illyrian boor: Servus ... er ... Ave Caesar! I want to learn books (sic). Roman Centurian: You'll make a nice gladiator! --- Okay, so maybe not everyone would benefit from civilization, but we all have to make sacrifices! And look at you now, oldest language in the world and all, and no one to share it with except among yourselves. Don't you have any regrets? It's difficult to argue why our ancestors made the choice they made, we can never really know, so all we can do is speculate subjectively, because in this analysis we'll add our own prejudices, but I'll try. Why not submit to Roman culture and language? even today you have insufferable savages that refuse to submit to superior Western values and civilization, like the Masai in Africa. Why do they do this? Personally I would argue that our ancestors discovered some level of self-worth. Here they were in the middle of an empire, and all their former brethren around them were turning into cheap copies of a high culture they could never really emulate. Herein also lies your faulty premise which needs revision. Those who submitted to the Romans and took their language did not also adopt their fine high culture, eloquence and manners - in other words, they did not all come to talk like Cicero or have the same philosophical understanding and literary refinement as Marcus Aurelius. Most of them continued to live their lives as hillbilly farmers, the main difference being that they now spoke Latin, albeit with an awkward accent. And there is sufficient Latin words relating to agriculture in Romanian to suggest that your ancestors were precisely that; farmers, and not cultivated city-dwellers .. and it was in the city where true Roman culture, as you probably define it, was to be found. These farmers' only contact with cities was during market days when they sold their agricultural products. Yet even within the city, cultural activity and education, unless you count watching gladiators fighting to their death as culture, was restricted to a privileged class of patricians, whereas most inhabitants lived as mere servants, soldiers, thieves, beggars, etc. I don't see why my ancestors would be eager to choose such a path. So our ancestors had a choice. Either continue live a rough life in the highlands herding goats, but preserving their originality and their unique language: or become cheap copycats with a misplaced sense of grandeur, living in fact even harder lives than the mountain dwellers since being a farmer those days wasn't an easy task. Most studies suggest that pastoral people are almost always as a rule more healthy and stronger than peasants who work the land. Not to mention you had to serve in the Roman army and often die a miserable death at the hand of some screaming Germanic warrior or a Persian arrow. So our ancestors enjoyed better health eating their dairy products and goat meat, not worrying about having to fight on the other end of the empire. And most importantly, their choice left a legacy, a still living language that is unique. Whereas your ancestors, even if they were cultivated and bearers of a high culture during antiquity, eventually lost this and became just as barbarian as the original mountaineers. To add salt to the injury, even your Latin became so distorted that it is now only intelligible amidst Romanians and is often mistaken for Slavic. If you ask me, it was a pretty easy choice!
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rex362
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Post by rex362 on Dec 7, 2011 15:44:30 GMT -5
well said and welcome back Dijedon
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rex362
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Post by rex362 on Dec 7, 2011 16:09:36 GMT -5
we sell/barter the goat cheese for their woman ....
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Post by Anittas on Dec 7, 2011 17:11:48 GMT -5
Rex and Donnie, I disagree with you both. And you both acted amateurishly in this thread.
You shouldn't compare Illyrians with the Daco-Thracian population north and south of Danube. Illyrians were there, next to Italy. They had enough time to form an elite and equalize the level of civilization of that of the Gauls from present-day France. The Gauls, even though they retained elements from their original culture, were also introduced to a higher culture, which they would put touse in their formation of the Frankish kingdom.
If all Illyrians would've been on the same page and if they had developed a high enough culture to that of the French, or even the Spaniards, then they would've retained more lands and resist the Slavic, and even the Greek, ambitions. You could've been the powerhouse of Southeastern Europe. You would've spoken a Romance language with an Illyrian substractum, thus retaining an Illyrian identity. So you see, I speak in your favour, but both of you, being the peasants that you are, decided to get all defensive with me.
Secondly, Donnie, stop talking BS about Romanian sounding Slavic. You said it once, I barely reacted; now you say it twice, and you make yourself sound like a twat! Some Romanian dialects have been influenced by Slavic languages, others have not. You know this very well. In fact, some Italians have affirmed that they understand a lot of what we say. One Italian from Sicily--and Sicilians are not known to sugarcoat things--said that even our words of Slavic origin don't sound Slavic when we pronounce them. And here you come, a self-proclaimed expert, to rule it differently.
About our level of civilization:
1. We do have words for agriculture and yes, we were mostly farmers, but even a short Roman rule gave us some administrative lexicography, such as jur, jura, jurare (Latin: jurare); compare with English juristiction, a cousin of that word.
2. The Daco-Thracian population rose to the highest ranks of Roman rule, including emperors; and at one time, one emperor wanted to rename the Roman Empire to the Dacian Empire. I believe that there was also an Illyrian emperor, so there goes your theory about you not being able to retain a high culture and not, as you contemptuously call them, "cheap copy cats".
Your ancestors chose the wrong path. If they had chosen the right path, Illyria would've been a regional power, having Dalmatia (Bosnia and Croatia), Epirus, KosovA and half of Serbia. You could've resisted the Ottoman Turks and together we could've prospered.
Men, men ... är man dum så är man.
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Post by superalbo on Dec 7, 2011 17:43:55 GMT -5
missanthropology58 - Sorry but your ban order has not been lifted yet.
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Post by missanthropology58 on Dec 7, 2011 18:00:41 GMT -5
Why not tell me on a thread I can/am commenting on then?
=========== I did that already.....
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atdhetar
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Post by atdhetar on Dec 7, 2011 18:19:32 GMT -5
Your ancestors chose the wrong path. If they had chosen the right path, Illyria would've been a regional power, having Dalmatia (Bosnia and Croatia), Epirus, KosovA and half of Serbia. You could've resisted the Ottoman Turks and together we could've prospered. dude you're skipping centuries and ages like you're skipping ad breaks off a movie recorded in tivo, you know how many things transpired between illyrian times and the ottoman invasion? how can we contextualise and judge people, go so far as to question their decisions in a time which we know very little about and a scene we have only a faint idea of...we're not discussing WW2 here, we're talking about glimpses, vague historical accounts, we're constructing a long gone world based on minute detail and information, who the fuck knows their motives? who knows why their did so many things, illyria was not a cohesive unit, they were made of countless of tribes, we know very little of their structures, their clanship, its baffling to me how people get emotional about events that happened over 2 millenia ago.
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Post by Anittas on Dec 7, 2011 18:28:16 GMT -5
I'm not getting emotional over this and I agree that it's anachronistic to judge people by today's standards and values, and to speculate so much on this issue; but it makes it for a fun and interesting discussion, wouldn't you agree?
What I'm saying is that Illyria had all the conditions for developing a higher culture like that found in Hispania and Faul (France). Sure, there were several Illyrian tribes, just like there were different Gallic tribes and various Greek city-states; the important matter is that at one time in the future, they could be united into a single political faction.
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atdhetar
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tonight we dine in hell!
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Post by atdhetar on Dec 7, 2011 18:36:12 GMT -5
i on the other hand believe that illyria never had a chance to flourish because it was caught up between two mamooth civlisations, roman and greek, these two cultures very very established and had monopolised anything around them, how could illyria stand a chance when everyone else around them was being romanised, spaniards, galles, dacians, anglo-saxons, nordic tribes...do you know how many distinct and vibrant cultures were wiped off by the roman quest to standardise everyone?
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Post by Anittas on Dec 7, 2011 19:16:02 GMT -5
That's pretty much what I'm saying, Atd: Illyria had no chance on her own; to go along with Rome was her best shot. The Greeks had a strong culture, but being subdued by Rome, they seized to expand. The Illyrians bordered Pannonia and Dacia, both of which were weakly romanized. If the Illyrians had adopted a Roman identity with an Illyrian background, there would've been a clear line between the Greek speakers to the east; and there's nothing to suggest that the Greeks could assimilate the Roman Illyrians. The Roman identity would've prevailed. In retrospect, the Greeks couldn't even assimilate the Bessi, a Thracian tribe in central Bulgaria.
Those that were defeated and which resisted Rome the most--if they were small--they were severely injured. I'm thinking of the Jews, the Carthaginians, and several Gallic tribes (but obviously not all) in France and Britain. The people that bid their time gained the most. The Gauls, for instance, founded a Gallic Empire from 260 to 274. It didn't last for long, but it shows that more than two centuries after being conquered by Rome, they retained their original identity: something that the Illyrians could've managed the same.
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Post by plisbardhi on Dec 7, 2011 22:13:09 GMT -5
This sounds more to me like you wish you were Albanian.
Also Dinarics are not suited to empires or large kingdoms. The Serb 'Empire' which was built on Dinaric muscle and cunning was short lived and quickly broke into pieces waiting to be swallowed up by a superior entity.
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Post by Anittas on Dec 7, 2011 22:25:58 GMT -5
This sounds more to me like you wish you were Albanian. Also Dinarics are not suited to empires or large kingdoms. The Serb 'Empire' which was built on Dinaric muscle and cunning was short lived and quickly broke into pieces waiting to be swallowed up by a superior entity. What part in that sentence makes you come to that conclusion? I said we, as in you (Albanians) and my people (Romanians), working for a common cause. I would have wanted a good neighbor to our south and it could just as well have been our distant cousins, the Illyrians.
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donnie
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Post by donnie on Dec 8, 2011 5:35:12 GMT -5
Anitta wrote;
Illyrians en masse did actually do precisely that, they became Romanized and provided Rome with some of her best soldiers, generals and emperors. Our ancestors were just a faction of a wider group that chose a different path. There were such pockets of populations resisting assimilation. But the majority of Illyrians of Pannonia, Dalmatia, Dardania etc, did become Romanized. It did not help one bit against the Slavic tsunami.
In fact. most believe that the result of those Romanized Illyrians are you, the Vlachs, but that's a different topic. Suffice to say there is more substance in that theory than some supposed Dacian origins of your ppl.
Didn't say that in this thread. I just said you took a fine language and butchered it into smth unrecognizable. Cicero and Caesar would've been ashamed. You did that without the help of the Babushkas ..
Hmm, interesting, because our words gjykoj, gjykate, gjyq also come from Latin iudicus. If this qualifies for being "cultured" then I guess we had the same thing as you without losing our language.
The Illyrians gave more than one, but that doesn't change the fact that the majority of those who became Romanized remained illiterate half-wits.
Lol, you don't think that's a big jump there from the Roman empire to the Ottoman age? And again, you forget that most of Illyria was Romanized, even our ancestors, had the process continued, would probably have succumbed as the many words of Latin origins in our language testify. They provided the empire with many fine legions and fought the barbarians along the limes, but to no avail. Now it's all a Slavic sea.
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Post by Anittas on Dec 8, 2011 5:51:17 GMT -5
You're such an instigator, Donnie. Really, you are.
"In fact. most believe that the result of those Romanized Illyrians are you, the Vlachs, but that's a different topic."
In fact, "most believe"? I take you looked at all sources and counted those in favour of Illyrian ancestry and those in favour of Thracian? Here's a newsflash for you: the Vlachs of the Balkans hail from the Illyrians and the different Thracian tribes, including the Bessi from which a fraction of their tribe moved north of Danube. Roman as Roman, it makes no difference.
They wouldn't have been ashamed. Yes, we messed up in some parts, but in other parts we preserved the words in their original, or nearly original, formation. Romanian is the only Romance language to have preserved the word Alb for white. Not even you could keep to that word, not even when identifying yourselves! The Spanish and the French use the Germanic word, "blanc" when referring to white.
I can't believe you could turn iudicus into gzgzgyku. But anyway, did the word really derive from Latin, from the Romans, or did you get it via Venetian?
All I'm saying is that if you adopted a Roman identity and (keyword "and) managed to preserve it while in great numbers, you could've founded a second Romanian state south of Danube; then we could've all united and resist foreign enemies. My next thread will explain that in further detail; and I will use Albanian sources!
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donnie
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Post by donnie on Dec 8, 2011 7:11:00 GMT -5
And you are? It does make a difference. You say if the Illyrians had made the choice to become cheap copies of Romans, which the majority did, all would've been OK. But that's not the case, the evil Slavs still prevailed. And no, not Illyrians and Thracians, more like overwhelmingly Illyrian. Most if not all of Thrace was south of the Jirecek line, if anything they were Hellenized, not Romanized. Especially the Bessoi. That's not much to brag about. The Albanian word shullë from latin solanum is not preserved in any Romance language .. big deal, these are fossils. In the greater picture, you butchered what was the essence of Latin. No, not from the Venetians; this is a very old loan word as evidenced from its form, like the loss of the intervocalic consonant which was 'd' in this case. And it's gjykoj, not gzgzgyku. Lol, I thought you would've known our position on a Vlach state south of the Danube by the fact of what Ali pasha did to Moschopole more than two hundred yrs ago. We haven't changed our position since.
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Post by Anittas on Dec 8, 2011 8:47:03 GMT -5
Man, Donnie, you're such a boor. Stop calling them cheap copies. The Romans gave (eventually) all nations equal opportunities, unlike other countries; for instance, the country where we both reside. So please, Donnie, don't be insultive towards that which deserves our admiration.
Dude, the Bessi were not all Hellenized and the Jirecek line doesn't apply to them. They preserved their language until the 9th century, if I'm not mistaken. Afterwards they were partially Romanized and Hellenized. Some moved north of Danube.
Ali Pasha was a complete moron and anyone who finds his acts of cruelty as something to joke about is a Serb. Your position on the Vlachs is misplaced, since you identify the Vlachs with Greek expansion. I'm talking about other things here, I'm talking about higher cultures, I'm talking about having an elite that would withstand enemy incursions.
You trash our language and our state, but remember, where your Romanized ancestors failed, we succeeded. Not to a state of perfection, but good enough. If your Romanized ancestors were more resourceful--for instance, if you had helped them out--they could've preserved their identity and you could've founded a Roman Illyrian state.
P.S. It's Moscopole.
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