The Romanian-Albanian Connection
A good amount of the non-Latin features present in Romanian language have their correspondence in Albanian, not only concerning lexicon but also structure, phraseology and idioms. These characteristics belong to two linguistic periods: the substratum, that is the language spoken by the Vlach before their Romanization ‒which may be the same of Albanian or a similar language‒, and the subsequent close contact between both peoples throughout a long period, mainly regarding their common life-style as shepherds.
Since the controversy about the origin of Albanians is presented by two main theories, one proposing the Illyrian stem and the other the Thracian stem, the advocates of the Daco-Roman myth vehemently support the second possibility, as they cannot deny the strong links between the Vlach and the Albanian peoples in early times. It is not our task to discuss about the origin of Albanians here, and in any case it is irrelevant whether one or the other theory is the right one, because the whole complex of proofs point out in a definitive manner to the area of present-day Albania and surrounding territory as the birthplace of the early Romanians and not the eastern side of the Balkans ‒ even if the Albanians would not be autochthonous but coming from any other place, it is in the area they live today where both peoples met and not elsewhere. A further factor is that there is not any historical record attesting any hypothetic migration of Albanians from Dacia (and there is not any vestige of their presence in that land), while there are many documents proving that the Vlach people lived since the early centuries by the southern Adriatic coastland ‒even before the Roman occupation of Dacia!‒ and as a matter of fact, there are still historic Romanian communities (Aromanians) living there.
Linguistic research has determined that most of the words shared by Romanian and Albanian are not loans from one tongue to the other but have a common origin in the substratum, before than these two languages began to be distinguished from each other. Romanian terms that are similar to Albanian mainly regard primary elements like body parts, names of animals and plants, and words specifically related with the pastoral life. It is significant that such vocabulary in Romanian is not found in Slavic or any other language spoken in the Balkans but only in Albanian. Another interesting fact concerns the very name of the capital city of Romania: Bucureşti, a word that is similar to the Albanian term "bukurisht", having the same meaning.
While the Vlach people were thoroughly Latinized, Albanian language has also received the influence of Latin since early times. A common territory and life-style shared by both peoples have produced the same semantic changes in both languages: a considerable number of Latin terms have undergone identical changes of meaning without parallel in any other tongue, and they cannot have happened just by chance or by any logical reason except because both peoples were living in a common environment and in the same territory.
Among the unusual features present in Romanian that are explainable by a comparison with Albanian we find also the definite article, that in Classic Latin precedes the noun but is enclitic in Romanian and follows the same patterns as in Albanian, and the personal pronoun in accusative case, that contains the suffix ~ne, exactly like in Albanian.
http://www.imninalu.net/myths-Vlach.htm
- - - Aktualisiert - - -
[h=2]Rumänen und Albaner[/h] Auf Gemeinsamkeiten zwischen dem Rumänischen und
Albanischen aufbauend, entwickelte
Gottfried Schramm eine Theorie der gemeinsamen Entstehung von
Albanern und Rumänen im Gebiet zwischen
Niš,
Sofija und
Skopje: die Rumänen seien von dort aus nach Norden, die Albaner nach Süden/Südwesten gewandert. Mit Albanien befasste Wissenschaftler weisen diese Theorie jedoch überwiegend als zu spekulativ zurück[SUP]
[2][/SUP]. Die walachische Kultur des Süd- und Westbalkans ist ursprünglich eng mit der Wanderviehzucht (
Transhumanz) assoziiert. Die Wanderungen der balkanischen Viehzüchter vollzogen sich jedoch meist über kurze Distanzen und zwischen stationären Weideplätzen[SUP]
[3][/SUP]. Die umstrittenen Gebiete Rumäniens sind vom Zentral- und Südbalkan ziemlich weit entfernt, dies spräche gegen eine Einwanderung der Rumänen aus dieser Region. Andererseits zeigt die einst und zum Teil noch heute vorfindbare weite Verbreitung sowohl rumänisch- als auch albanischsprachiger Bevölkerungsgruppen, dass durchaus auch weiträumige Wanderungen der Rumänen und Albaner stattgefunden haben. So finden sich rumänische Bevölkerungen von Nordgriechenland bis in die Südukraine (also auch weit außerhalb des historischen Dakiens), Albaner siedelten hingegen nachweislich bis in das Gebiet von
Attika.
[h=2]Dakische Wörter in der rumänischen Sprache[/h] Aus dem Thrakischen (Dakischen), der Sprache der von den Römern eroberten
Daker vermuten die Anhänger der
Dako-romanischen Kontinuitätstheorie in der
rumänischen Sprache ungefähr 160 lexikale Vererbungen (von denen man ca. 90 Begriffe auch in der
albanischen Sprache vorfindet). Diese Begriffe werden als das dakische
Substrat des rumänischen Wortschatzes angesehen.