…not only cool, also somewhat funny how he’s expressing his great enthusiasm – it’s Albanian, so ancient and unique, a “standalone branch of the Lang-tree” : )
Proto-Albanian Language
Region: Western Balkans
Era: 1000 BCE – 600 CE
Familycolor: Indo-European
Notes: The only survivor of the Albanoid languages of the Paleo-Balkan group
Ancestor: Proto-Indo-European > Ancestor2: Proto-Albanoid
Target: Albanian (dialects) > Proto-Gheg > Proto-Tosk
History
Albanoid and other Paleo-Balkan languages had their formative core in the Balkans after the Indo-European migrations in the region about 3000 to 2500 BCE. They replaced the pre-Indo-European languages, which left traces of the Mediterranean-Balkan substratum. Shortly after they had diverged from one another, Pre-Albanian, Pre-Greek, and Pre-Armenian underwent a longer period of contact, as shown by common correspondences that are irregular for other IE languages. Furthermore, intense Greek–Albanian contacts have continued thereafter.
The precursor of Albanian can be considered a completely formed independent IE language since at least the first millennium BCE, with the beginning of the early Proto-Albanian phase. The precursor of Albanian is often thought to have been an Illyrian language for obvious geographic and historical reasons as well as for some linguistic evidence, or otherwise an unmentioned Balkan Indo-European language that was closely related to Illyrian and Messapic. Messapic, which is grouped in the same IE branch of Albanian, developed in southeast Italy after crossing the Adriatic Sea at least since the Early Iron Age, being attested in about six hundred inscriptions from Iron Age Apulia.
In classical antiquity Proto-Albanian was spoken in the central-western part of the Balkan Peninsula, to the north and west of the Ancient Greeks, as shown by early Doric Greek (West Greek) and Ancient Macedonian loanwords that were treated with characteristic Albanian features, by classical place names exclusively observing Albanian accent and phonetic rules, as well as by several Proto-Albanian items preserved in ancient glossaries.
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Proto-Albanian is the ancestral reconstructed language of Albanian, before the Gheg–Tosk dialectal diversification. Albanoid and other Paleo-Balkan languages had their formative core in the Balkans after the Indo-European migrations in the region. Whether descendants or sister languages of what was called Illyrian by classical sources, Albanian and Messapic, on the basis of shared features and innovations, are grouped together in a common branch in the current phylogenetic classification of the Indo-European language family. The precursor of Albanian can be considered a completely formed independent IE language since at least the first millennium BCE, with the beginning of the early Proto-Albanian phase.
Proto-Albanian is reconstructed by way of the comparative method between the Tosk and Gheg dialects and between Albanian and other Indo-European languages, as well as through contact linguistics studying early loanwords from and into Albanian and structural and phonological convergences with other languages. Loanwords into Albanian treated through its phonetic evolution can be traced back as early as the first contacts with Doric Greek (West Greek) since the 7th century BCE, but the most important of which are those from Latin (dated by De Vaan to the period 167 BCE to 400 CE) and from Slavic (dated from 600 CE onward). The evidence from loanwords allows linguists to construct in great detail the shape of native words at the points of major influxes of loans from well-attested languages.
In historical linguistics Proto-Albanian is broken up into different stages which are usually delimited by the onset of contact with different well-attested languages. Pre-Proto-Albanian is the early stage of the precursor of Albanian during the first millennium BCE, marked by contacts with Ancient Greek, but not yet by contacts with Latin. Proto-Albanian proper is dated to the period of contacts with Latin, starting from the 2nd century BCE after the Roman conquest of the Western Balkans, but the major Latin influence occurred since the first years of the common era when the Western Balkans were eventually incorporated into the Roman Empire.
Common Albanian or its two dialects, Proto-Gheg and Proto-Tosk, experienced the earliest contacts with South Slavic languages since the Slavic migrations to the Balkans in the 6th-7th centuries CE. The rise of Tosk from Proto-Albanian was prompted before Slavic contacts circa 600 CE, as evidenced by the fact that Latin and ancient Greek loanwords are treated like native words with regard to taxonomical differences between Gheg and Tosk, but the same is not true of Slavic loans.
Nusja Shqiptare (Albanian Bride)
Photo: Shkëlzen Rexha – “Nusja Shqiptare” – Albanian Bride (Albanian Flag and Traditional Costumes – Junik, Republic of Kosovo)
Junik, populated with ethnic Albanians, is a municipality and small town in the District of Gjakova. It is located in the west of Kosovo, between Deçan and Gjakova, along Kosovo’s mountainous border with Albania.
(sguraziu – ars poetica, sht 2019)