Old Albanian – Introduction, Part 4
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de Vaan, Michiel
Introduction to the various layers of inherited and borrowed lexicon within Albanian.
 Hello again, welcome to the fourth session of our module on Old Albanian. In this video I will introduce you to the different layers of inherited words and especially loan words that can be found in Albanian. Here is our usual roadmap. First we will look at the words of the Indo-European layer, then at ancient Greek loan words, at Latin loan words, followed by the connection with Romanian, then we will talk about the Slavic loan words, the Turkish loan words and finally Venetian and Italian loan words. First of all it will be good to know that the core vocabulary of Albanian is of clear proto-Indo-European descent and can easily be compared with words in other ancient languages and their reconstructions. For instance, personal pronouns such as Albanian ti and moi, mi, can be derived from proto-Indo-European tuch for you and meme from me. All of the lower numerals also go back to Indo-European such as du for tu and pe for five. The same is true for a good number of basic verbs such as beer to bring from proto-Indo-European ber and öshte is and other forms of to be which reflect the proto-Indo-European root s to be. Other verbs which we may mention here are njeg to know, cognate with English no and thoet to say. A couple of basic adjectives also goes back to proto-Indo-European such as the word mað big compare Greek mega or plot full compare Latin planus and also barth white which is cognate with the English word bright. As to the substantives I merely mentioned a number of the nouns for which the Indo-European descent is obvious. The word thumb tooth which is cognate with the English word cum, dōre for hand, jack for blood. The word natif for night clearly related to English night. Mortar for sister according to a recent explanation by Marek Meijer it meant of the same mother and hence sister and the word uik for wolf. The next language to discuss is Illyrian but all we can really say about it is that it is unknown to us. There are no inscriptions in Illyrian nor would we know if we find unexplained Albanian words whether they stem from Illyrian. It has been claimed that a few old place names in Albanian have been in the Albanian language for 2,000 years but this theory has been refuted. In fact we do not know to what linguistic reality the label Illyrian corresponded at any given time in antiquity. Its connection with proto-albanian therefore remains unknowable. We now turn to ancient Greek the main lingua franca of the Balkans before the Romans conquered it. There are not many ancient Greek loanwords in Albanian and those we find mainly belong to the sphere of technical implements and vegetables, words not belonging to the core vocabulary. Here is a number of ancient Greek loanwords. We have drape, sickle from Greek dripanon, a mokke, millstone from machana, the word lacquer for cabbage from lachanon, the word presh for lique from Greek prason and also tüm smoke from tümos. Note the o in moker, millstone from ancient Greek long a proving the word to be an early borrowing from non-halenistic Greek. The modern town of Vlorë in southern Albania has a name that goes back to Greek avlonas with Tosk rotosism of the inter-vocalic N. Next in line is the Latin influence on Albanian. It probably went beyond the mere borrowing of words and in a way one could say that pre-proto-albanian just escaped becoming a romance language. On the next slide we restrict ourselves to the indication of some categories of borrowed words. In the field of family terms the core terms are mostly inherited but some second-degree relations such as in-law, cousin and aunt all have a Latin pedigree. Among the remaining nouns very central vocabulary has been borrowed such as the words for dog and sky, face, fruit, child, leg, friend and house, Albanian chin, tear, faatje, bem, familie, gumbe, mique, steppe and hundreds of other words. Turning to the adjectives we give the examples of the Latin words for able, yellow, red, free, narrow and old. These ones here which entered into Albanian giving Albanian after, verre the, kuc, lyre, ungust and vieter. There is also a good number of basic verbs which were borrowed from Latin such as come please search, think, serve, heal and sing giving Albanian vien, polkje, kurkon, kuyton, sherbin, sharon and kundon. Among the many phonological changes note the systematic reduction of Latin pretonic full vowels to schwa in Albanian as in polcin from Latin placere or kurkon from kirkare. Our next slide shows a few other word categories which contain Latin loanwords for instance schoum from Latin sumu and park little of you from Latin pauku. The numerals hundred and thousand were also taken from Latin as was the invariant relative particle and explictive conjunction, tjè, that. A few other features of the Latin loanwords are also interesting. We've already pointed out the pretonic vowel reduction here in femille from familia and makat from pekkatu, sin. Next Latin au was regularly manoftongaes to Albanian are as in the word are gold and gas joy. Latin tjè and djè were palatalized to Albanian s and z, a change that also took place in the inherited vocabulary of Albanian. Here we have the examples of Mars for March and again the word gas for joy. Latin s changed to sh in all early loanwords as in shundit for instance or gusht for august and finally k and g before front vowels were palatalized to tjè and djè as in tjét for quiet or djinde for people. This change is of course found in many romance languages but in Albanian it is also it has also affected inherited words and seems to have been an independent change. The Latin vowel o has two different reflexes in Albanian pointing to a vowel change that took place somewhere during the Roman occupation of the Balkans. In the older layer of words number one Latin o has become e as in peime for fruit fruit tree ndéh for honor and termit for earthquake. It shares this fate with inherited words for which we must reconstruct the pre-proto-albanian presence of long o such as tjét for it or bler for green. Probably the long o first became a front rounded vowel e before being unrounded to e. The second group of words this one here shows Albanian o or u a reflex that is much closer to Latin o and hence less time has passed since these words were borrowed. Still they belong to the words borrowed in antiquity as shown by their various other changes. Examples are shendoš healthy from Sanitosus in Latin as well as Albanian courore, crušk and orther. Interestingly the Latin clusters kt and ks sometimes changed their first consonant to become labial resulting in pt and ps. Ultimately we find the Albanian results ft and fs. From pt and ps to ft and fs. The fact that Romanian shares the change of k to p in these these groups suggests that this was a feature of Balkan Latin in general. The clearest examples are the word for battle Latin lupta Romanian lupta Albanian lufta as well as the word for hip Latin coxa Romanian coapsa Albanian cofca and the word for silk Latin mitaksa. This brings us to the Romanian question. Besides phonological parallels between Albanian and Romanian both languages show some other areas of agreement. Grammatically both languages post-pose rather than pre-pose the nominal determiner which turns an indefinite noun into a definite one. For instance Albanian mal mountain a mountain versus mali the mountain mal versus mali. In Romanian the same phenomenon lup a wolf but lupul the wolf. This feature is not exclusive to these two languages however since we also find it in Bulgarian. Dom haus domut the haus. But since neither Latin nor Proto Slavic possessed this feature and nor did Greek chances are that it was the ancestor of Albanian which was the first of the surviving Balkan languages to create these determiners. Another interesting feature is the lexical agreement between Albanian and Romanian as regards a not too large number of words which do not stem from Latin. This means that Romanian must have borrowed them from another language. In Albanian a few of these words can be explained relatively well on the basis of inherited proto-Indo-European leximes. Of the examples given here we've already seen the word baradhe for white which corresponds with the Romanian word for stock, barza, a white bird. The word for badger to name another example can be explained from an original meaning thief from a root for to move. Albanian viezuren. Note that we have given five words all containing th or the in Albanian corresponding with s or z in Romanian. Th or the in Albanian and s or z in Romanian. This correspondence can be explained in the following way. In Albanian th and the have among their sources the earlier palatovila consonants of proto-Indo-European, q and gu. They first became the pre-proto-albanian palatal africans, q and g. Before turning into dental fricatives by the time of proto-albanian. If Romanian borrowed the words in question when they were still the africans q and g we can understand that they became s and z in Romanian. The preceding data imply that Romanian was in contact with an early stage of proto-albanian when these borrowings occur. In theory it could have been another Balkan language which was closely related to Albanian but this would introduce another unknown factor into the equation. In turn the necessary proximity of pre-proto-albanian and early Romanian which the facts review here imply means that Romanian must have originated well south of the Danube and that pre-proto-albanian was not spoken along the Adriatic coast but further inland in the Balkans. From the 6th century Slavic people started to migrate from Eastern Europe south into the Balkans. It is uncertain from exactly which moment the more intense lexical influence of Slavic on Albanian starts. It may have been sometime after 600 AD. In any case the gag toss split and the convergence with Romanian had already taken place before Slavic loanwords started to be adopted into the Albanian system. It is usually thought that the Slavic farmers settled in the plains and valleys whereas the Albanians withdrew to the mountains retaining their earlier pastoral life. That would have been frequent contact but not of the intimate kind which may lead to intense bilingualism. On the next slide we turn to the Slavic loanwords. What we have seen before matches the fact that Slavic loanwords only rarely concern the core lexicon and that we often find different loanwords in different parts of the Albanian territory. Also the Slavic loanwords do not share in the large-scale phonological reduction that characterizes the older Latin loanwords. As you can see on this slide a few examples. Albanian troop for body, zakon for habit or custom, obor for courtyard and plough for plough and there are also many Albanian verbs ending in it which was borrowed from Slavic verbs in iti like porosit to order or grabit to rob. Turkish loanwords are found by their hundreds in Albanian and they started entering the language from the end of the 14th century. Many words concern the fields of household terminology, religion, administration and gastronomy. Here is our slide with the Turkish loanwords. The everyday social function of Turkish is apparent from family terms such as Baba, Jaja and Shift. Found here. From greetings, from exclamations and from phrasal particles such as Tamam precisely. With Turkish vocabulary the Turkish plural suffix Lara Lira has often been retained by Albanian as has the agent suffix G as in Sahaji a watchmaker. As the last of the medieval and early modern layers of donor languages we may mention Italian. Before the advent of the Tuscany based standard language it was especially Venetian the language of the traders who dominated the Adriatic that provided loanwords. Here is our slide with the Italian loanwords. These can sometimes be recognized by their phonology as in lezon to read with a dz rather than dz which you find in standard Italian legere. Especially in the 20th century Italian provided a host of new loanwords for Albanian such as macchina, gazette, pantalona and many others. This concludes our survey on the different loanword layers in Albanian. I thank you for your attention by saying phalamindaret per vermenti into I. Take care and goodbye.
 Hello again, welcome to the fourth session of our module on Old Albanian.  In this video I will introduce you to the different layers of inherited words  and especially loan words that can be found in Albanian. Here is our usual  roadmap. First we will look at the words of the  Indo-European layer, then at ancient Greek loan words, at Latin loan words,  followed by the connection with Romanian, then we will talk about the Slavic  loan words, the Turkish loan words and finally Venetian and Italian loan words.  First of all it will be good to know that the core vocabulary of Albanian is  of clear proto-Indo-European descent and can easily be compared with words in  other ancient languages and their reconstructions. For instance, personal  pronouns such as Albanian ti and moi, mi, can be derived from proto-Indo-European  tuch for you and meme from me. All of the lower numerals also go back to  Indo-European such as du for tu and pe for five. The same is true for a good  number of basic verbs such as beer to bring from proto-Indo-European ber  and öshte is and other forms of to be which reflect the proto-Indo-European  root s to be. Other verbs which we may mention here are njeg to know, cognate  with English no and thoet to say. A couple of basic adjectives also goes back to  proto-Indo-European such as the word mað big compare Greek mega or plot full  compare Latin planus and also barth white which is cognate with the English  word bright. As to the substantives I merely mentioned a number of the nouns  for which the Indo-European descent is obvious. The word thumb tooth which is  cognate with the English word cum, dōre for hand, jack for blood. The word  natif for night clearly related to English night. Mortar for sister according  to a recent explanation by Marek Meijer it meant of the same mother and hence  sister and the word uik for wolf. The next language to discuss is Illyrian but  all we can really say about it is that it is unknown to us. There are no  inscriptions in Illyrian nor would we know if we find unexplained Albanian  words whether they stem from Illyrian. It has been claimed that a few old  place names in Albanian have been in the Albanian language for 2,000 years but  this theory has been refuted. In fact we do not know to what linguistic reality  the label Illyrian corresponded at any given time in antiquity. Its connection  with proto-albanian therefore remains unknowable. We now turn to ancient Greek  the main lingua franca of the Balkans before the Romans conquered it. There  are not many ancient Greek loanwords in Albanian and those we find mainly belong  to the sphere of technical implements and vegetables, words not belonging to the  core vocabulary. Here is a number of ancient Greek loanwords. We have drape,  sickle from Greek dripanon, a mokke, millstone from machana, the word lacquer  for cabbage from lachanon, the word presh for lique from Greek prason and also  tüm smoke from tümos. Note the o in moker, millstone from ancient Greek long  a proving the word to be an early borrowing from non-halenistic Greek. The  modern town of Vlorë in southern Albania has a name that goes back to  Greek avlonas with Tosk rotosism of the inter-vocalic N. Next in line is the  Latin influence on Albanian. It probably went beyond the mere borrowing of words  and in a way one could say that pre-proto-albanian just escaped becoming  a romance language. On the next slide we restrict ourselves to the indication of  some categories of borrowed words. In the field of family terms the core terms are  mostly inherited but some second-degree relations such as in-law, cousin and  aunt all have a Latin pedigree. Among the remaining nouns very central  vocabulary has been borrowed such as the words for dog and sky, face, fruit, child,  leg, friend and house, Albanian chin, tear, faatje, bem, familie, gumbe, mique,  steppe and hundreds of other words. Turning to the adjectives we give the  examples of the Latin words for able, yellow, red, free, narrow and old. These  ones here which entered into Albanian giving Albanian after, verre the,  kuc, lyre, ungust and vieter. There is also a good number of basic verbs which  were borrowed from Latin such as come please search, think, serve, heal and  sing giving Albanian vien, polkje, kurkon, kuyton,  sherbin, sharon and kundon. Among the many phonological changes note the  systematic reduction of Latin pretonic full vowels to schwa in Albanian as in  polcin from Latin placere or kurkon from kirkare. Our next slide shows a few  other word categories which contain Latin loanwords for instance  schoum from Latin sumu and park little of you from Latin pauku. The numerals  hundred and thousand were also taken from Latin as was the invariant relative  particle and explictive conjunction, tjè, that. A few other features of the  Latin loanwords are also interesting. We've already pointed out the pretonic  vowel reduction here in femille from familia and makat from pekkatu, sin.  Next Latin au was regularly manoftongaes to Albanian are as in the word are gold  and gas joy. Latin tjè and djè were palatalized to Albanian s and z, a change  that also took place in the inherited vocabulary of Albanian. Here we have the  examples of Mars for March and again the word gas for joy. Latin s changed to  sh in all early loanwords as in shundit for instance or gusht for august and  finally k and g before front vowels were palatalized to tjè and djè as in  tjét for quiet or djinde for people. This change is of course found in many  romance languages but in Albanian it is also it has also affected inherited  words and seems to have been an independent change. The Latin vowel o has  two different reflexes in Albanian pointing to a vowel change that took  place somewhere during the Roman occupation of the Balkans. In the older  layer of words number one Latin o has become e as in peime for fruit fruit tree  ndéh for honor and termit for earthquake. It shares this fate with  inherited words for which we must reconstruct the pre-proto-albanian  presence of long o such as tjét for it or bler for green. Probably the long o  first became a front rounded vowel e before being unrounded to e. The second  group of words this one here shows Albanian o or u a reflex that is much  closer to Latin o and hence less time has passed since these words were  borrowed. Still they belong to the words borrowed in antiquity as shown by their  various other changes. Examples are shendoš healthy from Sanitosus in Latin  as well as Albanian courore, crušk and orther.  Interestingly the Latin clusters kt and ks sometimes changed their first  consonant to become labial resulting in pt and ps. Ultimately we find the  Albanian results ft and fs.  From pt and ps to ft and fs. The fact that Romanian shares the change of k to p  in these these groups suggests that this was a feature of Balkan  Latin in general. The clearest examples are the word for battle Latin lupta  Romanian lupta Albanian lufta as well as the word for hip Latin coxa Romanian  coapsa Albanian cofca and the word for silk Latin mitaksa. This brings us to  the Romanian question. Besides phonological parallels between Albanian  and Romanian both languages show some other areas of agreement. Grammatically  both languages post-pose rather than pre-pose the nominal determiner which  turns an indefinite noun into a definite one. For instance Albanian mal mountain  a mountain versus mali the mountain mal versus mali. In Romanian the same  phenomenon lup a wolf but lupul the wolf. This feature is not exclusive to  these two languages however since we also find it in Bulgarian. Dom haus  domut the haus. But since neither Latin nor Proto Slavic possessed this feature  and nor did Greek chances are that it was the ancestor of Albanian which was  the first of the surviving Balkan languages to create these determiners.  Another interesting feature is the lexical agreement between Albanian and  Romanian as regards a not too large number of words which do not stem from  Latin. This means that Romanian must have borrowed them from another language. In  Albanian a few of these words can be explained relatively well on the basis  of inherited proto-Indo-European leximes. Of the examples given here we've  already seen the word baradhe for white which corresponds with the Romanian  word for stock, barza, a white bird. The word for badger to name another example  can be explained from an original meaning thief from a root for to move.  Albanian viezuren. Note that we have given five words all  containing th or the in Albanian corresponding with s or z in Romanian.  Th or the in Albanian and s or z in Romanian. This correspondence can be  explained in the following way. In Albanian th and the have among their  sources the earlier palatovila consonants of proto-Indo-European, q and  gu. They first became the pre-proto-albanian palatal  africans, q and g. Before turning into dental fricatives by the time of proto-albanian.  If Romanian borrowed the words in question when they were still the  africans q and g we can understand that they became s and z in Romanian.  The preceding data imply that Romanian was in contact with an early stage of  proto-albanian when these borrowings occur. In theory it could have been another  Balkan language which was closely related to Albanian but this would  introduce another unknown factor into the equation. In turn the necessary  proximity of pre-proto-albanian and early Romanian which the facts review here  imply means that Romanian must have originated well south of the Danube and  that pre-proto-albanian was not spoken along the Adriatic coast but further  inland in the Balkans. From the 6th century Slavic people started to migrate  from Eastern Europe south into the Balkans. It is uncertain from exactly  which moment the more intense lexical influence of Slavic on Albanian starts.  It may have been sometime after 600 AD. In any case the gag toss split and the  convergence with Romanian had already taken place before Slavic loanwords  started to be adopted into the Albanian system. It is usually thought that the  Slavic farmers settled in the plains and valleys whereas the Albanians withdrew  to the mountains retaining their earlier pastoral life. That would have been  frequent contact but not of the intimate kind which may lead to intense  bilingualism. On the next slide we turn to the Slavic loanwords. What we have seen  before matches the fact that Slavic loanwords only rarely concern the  core lexicon and that we often find different loanwords in different parts  of the Albanian territory. Also the Slavic loanwords do not share in the  large-scale phonological reduction that characterizes the older Latin loanwords.  As you can see on this slide a few examples. Albanian troop for body,  zakon for habit or custom, obor for courtyard and plough for plough and  there are also many Albanian verbs ending in it which was borrowed from Slavic  verbs in iti like porosit to order or grabit to rob. Turkish loanwords are  found by their hundreds in Albanian and they started entering the language from  the end of the 14th century. Many words concern the fields of household  terminology, religion, administration and gastronomy. Here is our slide with the  Turkish loanwords. The everyday social function of Turkish is apparent from  family terms such as Baba, Jaja and Shift. Found here. From greetings, from  exclamations and from phrasal particles such as Tamam precisely. With Turkish  vocabulary the Turkish plural suffix Lara Lira has often been retained by  Albanian as has the agent suffix G as in Sahaji a watchmaker. As the last of the  medieval and early modern layers of donor languages we may mention Italian.  Before the advent of the Tuscany based standard language it was especially  Venetian the language of the traders who dominated the Adriatic that provided  loanwords. Here is our slide with the Italian loanwords. These can sometimes be  recognized by their phonology as in lezon to read with a dz rather than dz which  you find in standard Italian legere. Especially in the 20th century Italian  provided a host of new loanwords for Albanian such as macchina, gazette,  pantalona and many others. This concludes our survey on the different loanword  layers in Albanian. I thank you for your attention by saying phalamindaret  per vermenti into I. Take care and goodbye.
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