Albanians like the late Aristidh Kola claim that the Albanian language is Pelasgian. Let's see what linguists say: 'Historical linguists point out that these borrowings from Ancient Greek were in the Doric dialect and penetrated into Illyrian through Corinthian commercial colonies in Corfu, along the Adriatic coast, and through border towns.' (Edwin E. Jacques, the Albanians: an ethnic history from pre-historic times to the present, p 37) ``The Albanian language has borrowed many words from Latin, Greek and Turkish. (Andrew Dalby, Dictionary of Languages: The Definitive Reference to More than 400 languages, p 13) Our knowledge of Albanian, except for a few words, extends back only as far as the fifteenth century of our era, and when we first meet with it, the vocabulary is so mixed with Latin, Greek, Turkish, and Slavonic elements owing to conquests and other causes that it is somewhat difficult to isolate the original Albanian. (Albert C. Baugh, Thomas Cable, A History of the English Language, p 25) ``Proto-Albanian is viewed as a language already possessing several features typical of the Albanian linguistic type. We reconstruct it in two forms: Early Proto-Albanian immediately before the beginning of linguistic contacts with speakers of Latin/Romance (1st century CE), and Late Proto-Albanian following contacts with Proto-Romance and ancient Slavic dialects still close to Proto-Slavic (6th-7th centuries CE). Major changes shattered the structure of Proto-Albanian during this short but eventful period. (Vladimir E. Orel, A Concise Historical Grammar of the Albanian Language, preface xii) ``The majority of Albanian speakers are Muslims: numerous words and names are borrowed from Arabic, language of the Quran. (Andrew Dalby, Dictionary of Languages: The Definitive Reference to More than 400 languages, p 13) ``of the Greek words which appear in Albanian, a few have internal marks, as having been adopted before the corruption of the language; a larger proportion afford the same evidence of having been taken from the Romaic Greek, and there are many also whose forms, being the same both in ancient and modern Greek dialect, are of uncertain date. (Charles Loring Brace , The Races of the Old world: A Manual of Ethnology p 268) ``As to the character of the Albanian, it may be affirmed that more than a third of its primitives are Greek roots reduced to their primitive, barbarous and monosyllabic form; it is equally true that the Greek words in Albanian are more closely allied to those in the Aeolic dialect (Conrad Malte-Brun, Universal Geography, p 109 ) 'Historical linguists point out that these borrowings from Ancient Greek were in the Doric dialect and penetrated into Illyrian through Corinthian commercial colonies in Corfu, along the Adriatic coast, and through border towns.' (Edwin E. Jacques, the Albanians: an ethnic history from pre-historic times to the present, p 37, section 8) ``That Albanian was an Indo-European language was first recognized in 1854 by Franz bopp. Its Indo-European nature has been obscured to early investigators by the heavy lexical borrowing that had taken place in Albanian from Greek, Latin, Slavic and Turkish. (J.P Mallory, Douglas Q. Adams, Encyclopedia of Indo-European Culture, p 9) ``It was in these ages of Bulgarian prowess, that the remains of the Illyrian and Epirotic nations became finally included with the boundaries which they have ever since held. Many Sclavonian words then found their way into the Albanian language. (Charles Loring Brace , The Races of the Old world: A Manual of Ethnology p 268) ``The Byzantine world, mainly through the Orthodox Church, helped spread Greek culture in Albania, as in other Balkan countries. (Albert C. Baugh, Thomas Cable, A History of the English Language, p 6) ``Latin loanwords are of extreme importance for the history of Albanian phonology, especially its vocalism. (Vladimir E. Orel, A Concise Historical Grammar of the Albanian Language, p 23) ``Both Gheg and Tosk dialects are loaded with loan-words. (The Journal of International Relations, p 56) ``On account of the large number of Greek loan-words in its vocabulary, the Albanian was formerly thought to belong to the Hellenic branch of dialects. (New International Encyclopedia, p324) ``Albanian would derive from an ancient admixture of Balkan tongues. (Albert C. Baugh, Thomas Cable, A History of the English Language, p 4) ``Until the 20thcentury, Albanian was always subordinate to some other language. In particular, since the territory was ruled by Rome for some five centuries, lexis and word-formation were deeply marked by Latin. (Albert C. Baugh, Thomas Cable, A History of the English Language, p 4)

• published: 27 Oct 2008
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