Politics aside, how plausible does it seem to you the notion that Albanians are linguistic descendants of the Illyrians? Looking at the ancient names of places, that notion does not seem particularly plausible to me, and this meme is but one example as to why.

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Particular-Region939@reddit

"Illyrians" are a huge conglomerate of different tribes of the peninsula all with their own culture, dialects or even whole different languages. They were all simply named that by the Romans who didn't know more, and didn't really care to

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FlatAssembler@reddit (OP)

even whole different languages

So, how do you explain the patterns in the Croatian toponyms such as the k-r pattern in the hydronyms? Krka, Krapina, Kravarščica, Krbavica, Korana, and two rivers named Karašica? Repetition of the same or similar elements in some meaning is the only conceivable evidence that toponyms come from the same language, do we agree? Do you think it's due to chance? Well, I think basic information theory says that the p-value of that pattern is somewhere between 1/300 and 1/17. I published a paper about that in Valpovački Godišnjak in the year 2022, it's called "Etimologija Karašica". I've recently made a video about it in Latin with English slides: https://youtu.be/2VRH4e-Us_w

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Particular-Region939@reddit

I meant the large swath of the peninsula that would become Illyiricum upon conquest. Romans back couldn't differentiate all the different tribes, nor did they need to. Even today, centuries later, if the average tourist went to different Italian cities today and talked to people in them, he probably would think they're all just Italians speaking Italian, not recognizing the many different accents and dialects and cultural differences among Italy's historically divided population.

I do believe us "south slavs" have the least to do with the ones east and north, genetically speaking. But then again, we're talking about thousands of years of migrations back and forth, so genetics are pretty much different for everybody.

I will check out your work though, you've got me intrigued. Linguistics and etymology are really the only footprints we have of our ancient past. The Romans excelled at annihilating the identity of tribes, no? Forced migration, and so on.

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subooot@reddit

The Illyrians were romanised 2000 years ago, after the Illyrian wars with Rome. Albanians are first mentioned around the year 1000, in the Roman records of Michael Attaliates. So we have a thousand years of non-mention of Albanians in the context of Illyrians by neither the Greeks nor the Latins, they were not even mentioned as Albanians, let alone Illyrians. Although I understand the strong desire to identify politically with the ancestors of Europe, there is no valid evidence. Especially because the Illyrians didn't call themselves Illyrians at all, that's what the Greeks called them. They want to be something that no one knows what it was called.

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Substratas@reddit

Albanians are first mentioned around the year 1000, in the Roman records of Michael Attaliates.

This is false. Albanians were first mentioned around the year 150 by Ptolemy.

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subooot@reddit

Even Wikipedia say "possibly".

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Substratas@reddit

Even Wikipedia say "possibly".

You sure know how to read.

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subooot@reddit

Dude there is no proof that where original Albanians.

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shockwave_1D@reddit

Then what are albanians? We know for sure that we are paleo balkan and been here way before the slavic migration

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subooot@reddit

As far as I know, in these areas we are all a mixture of each other genetically. Maybe you were here but you weren't called Albanian, the problem is with the claim that you are Illyrians, no one can prove that yet, the Illyrians were illiterate. That it is possible that you were partly Illyrian, ABSOLUTELY, but to claim that you are exclusively descended from them is nonsense.

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nevrmindmusic@reddit

"It was never gonna be you. So for you to be crazy and delusional like that, that is ridiculous"

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shockwave_1D@reddit

We call ourselves shqiptar only recently that doesn't matter.

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Basilacis@reddit

Albanians might be descendants of Illyrians, but their language is definitely not. Albanian has too many Latin, Turkish and Greek loanwords, no maritime terminology, and a history of being oppressed and erased by various rulers of the area that wanted to de-albanise the region. I speak with Albanians today and they tell me themselves how much their language is lost, and it does not help their national identity that their modern language has so many loanwords and a Latin based alphabet. Nonetheless, I personally believe Albanians are at least partially descendants from Illyrians and the group of people with the largest percentage of Illyrian ancestry.

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OkCheesecake5894@reddit

Bla bla bla, language this, language that.

Do modern albanians have the closest dna today to that of the people found in the graves of former Illyria? If yes, end of subject, the albanians are right, and we can discuss further if we ever find true, proven, written text in ancient Illyrian.

Language, religion, forms of state came and went depending on several factors, what is most relevant from a "moral right pov" IN MY OPINION is if the heirs of the Illyrians are the albanians.

And even if we prove that, I bet we can find that all nations of the balkans can claim a good chunk of Illyrian, greek, thracian, dacian, maybe even celtic heritage (including the ones that speak a slavic language)

My point is, we all belong to this peninsula and using linguistic heritage as a way to empower a people amongst equally right people is stupid and divisive. All the people migrated here a thousand, ten thousand or a hundred thousand of years ago.

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Additional-Shine5748@reddit

Best comment so far

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PlayfulMountain6@reddit

The main reason Albanian is considered a possible descendant of Illyrian, but Serbo-Croatian is not, comes down to linguistic ancestry and population continuity. Albanian is an Indo-European language in its own isolated branch — meaning it’s not closely related to Slavic, Romance, or Greek, but it may have evolved from an ancient Balkan tongue.

Serbo-Croatian is a South Slavic language.

Slavic languages entered the Balkans much later, around the 6th–7th century AD, long after Illyrian had already disappeared as a living language.

The ancestors of modern Serbs and Croats came from areas north of the Danube (today’s Ukraine/Poland/Belarus region), not from Illyrian-speaking territory.

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xperio28@reddit

There are a lot of Slavic words in Homeric Greek, if you look you'll see them everywhere. Proto-Slavic (dated 2000 BC to 600 AD) is Thraco-Dacian-Illyrian (dated 2000 BC to 600 AD).

It's baffling how ilinguists admit Indo-European entered the Balkans (forming Thracian, Dacian, Greek) from Ukraine/Romania, but they ignore the only satem Indo-European languages spoken at the time - Balto-Slavic and Indo-Iranian. Literally no other satem language groups exist, Armenian and Albanian are very late weird developments.

Recently they tried to push Thraco-Dacian as a Baltic language, but all the features they associated with Baltic are features shared with Slavic and not the small % of stuff in Baltic that's not in Slavic.

Check out this table of phonological development from Proto-Indo-European for relevant langauges.

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Iapetus404@reddit

oh god...here we go again!

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Observe_Report_@reddit

Croats and Serbs are not descended from invaders?

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xperio28@reddit

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Miserable_Sense6950@reddit

The subclades of i2a and r1a in the Balkans arrived with the Slavs in the Middle Ages. There's s reason these subclades haven't been found before the Middle Ages.

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xperio28@reddit

You're unedcuated. I even clarified, that R1a of the Balkans associated with medieval arrivals is not differentiated on this map from the R1a subclade from 3000 BC Crete, that many Balkan people have.

I2a1 formed in Ukraine yes, but as I clarified the root haplogroup I split from IJ inside the Balkans, hence Balkan people carry both I2a1 but also I* (I root), which is wayyyyy older, that't why scientists consider it the second ever to reach Europe and the haplogroup of the Mesolithic Iron Gates culture located between Serbia, Romania and Bulgaria on the Danube.

There's nothing that can disprove that Thraco-Dacian-Illyrian is a satem langue, and the only satem languages in the entire world are those derived from Balto-Slavic and Indo-Iranian. It literally can't be anything outside these 2, and Slavic is by far the most plausible geographically.

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Miserable_Sense6950@reddit

I'm sorry but you calling me uneducated is very funny. Your knowledge of haplogroups is at the level of a typical Balkan nationalist that has no idea what he's talking about.

You can go on YFull and see for yourself about the r1a subclades and Balkans Slavs. Where did you see that r1a was found in 3000 BC in Crete? Even if so, it would be unrelated to the r1a that Slavs brought. Same with i2a. Almost no one in the Balkans actually has the native i2a that was here before Slavs arrived. Also Balkan people do not carry basal I.

There are no academics that agree with what you're saying. You are making huge claims with no good evidence.

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xperio28@reddit

I prefer focusing on autosomal DNA, do you wanna see the genetic distance between Bronze Age inhabitants of Yugoslavia compared to modern Serbs and Croats and Albanians.

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Miserable_Sense6950@reddit

Even if you compare autosomal DNA of genuine Illyrians, not just anyone from Bronze Age Yugoslavia, with people in the Balkans, Albanians are the closest to them.

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xperio28@reddit

A second ago you were saying Montenegrins are not related to Illyrians, now you're saying that Serbs from Montenegro are actually secretley Albanian. You do realize that your claims point towards Albanians being assimilated Montenegrins right? Because their Genetics are the most conservative to what you define as Illyrian ancestry.

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Miserable_Sense6950@reddit

A second ago you were saying that Montenegrins are not related to Illyrians, now you're saying that Serbs from Montenegro are actually secretly Albanian. You do realize that your claims point towards Albanians being assimilated Montenegrins right? Because their genetics are the most conservative to what you define as Illyrian ancestry.

I never said that. I said Montenegrins are closer to Illyrians than other Slavs because of the ones that descend from Albanians. If you look at YFull for Illyrian haplogroups, like r1b-z2103 https://www.yfull.com/tree/R-Y23373/ You will see it's almost entirely made up of Albanians in every branch, and in the earliest branches. Montenegrins are all downstream of Albanian branches. This diversity of branches in Albanians compared to others means it's been in Albanians for far longer than other ethnic groups. And when you look at other Illyrian haplogroups, J2b-l283 and r1b-pf7563, Montenegrins have almost none.

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xperio28@reddit

This is results from Balkan people carrying I* (I-M170)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genetic_studies_on_Bulgarians#:\~:text=M61%20(L)%2C-,I%2DM170%20(I*),-%2C%20E%2DM96

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00450618.2024.2359424#d1e398:\~:text=with%20three%20dominant%20haplogroups%3A%20I%2DM170%2C%20E%2DP170%20and%20R%2DM198%2C%20with%20I2a1%20the%20most%20dominant%20within%20all%20three%20analysed%20regions%3A%20present%2Dday%20Serbia%2C%20the%20region%20of%20Old%20Herzegovina%20and%20the%20region%20of%20Kosovo%20and%20Metohia%2C%20with%20the%20following%20frequencies%3A%2038%25%2C%2045%25%20and%2032%25%20respectively

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Miserable_Sense6950@reddit

I-M170 is just the wider haplogroup... You need to actually look at what subclades Balkan Slavs have, which is I2a1b-M423.

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xperio28@reddit

You're confusing them.

These are the most common derivates of I2 in the Balkans:

I-M170 is Paleo-Balkan in origin and it spred to the Nordics after the Glacers had melted. I-M170 is the main subclade of I2 found in the Balkans. See distribution here: https://discover.familytreedna.com/y-dna/I-M170/frequency

The other one is I2-M438, this is what Wikipedia says: "Haplogroup I2-M438, previously I1b, may have originated in southern Europe – it is now found at its highest frequencies in the western Balkans and Sardinia – some 15,000–17,000 years ago and developed into three main subgroups : I2-M438*, I2a-L460, I2b-L415 and I2c-L596."

The one perceived as Slavic is I2a1b-M423, and it derives from I2-M438 which arose in the Balkans. https://discover.familytreedna.com/y-dna/I-M423/frequency . It's not even Slavic, it's Thracian Scythian ancestry, the Scythians were comprised of multiple ethnicities and some of them were Balkan in origin, literally living in North Romania for the longest time,

Also why are you accusing me of nationalism, this has more to do with Croats, Serbs, Bosniaks, and Montenigrans. Bulgarians are more Mediterranian, it's a gradient.

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Miserable_Sense6950@reddit

I'm not confusing them. I-M438 is a subclade of I-M170 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haplogroup_I-M438

Almost all of these subclades arrived with Slavs to the Balkans.

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xperio28@reddit

I'm referring to R1a1a, a subclade of R1a present in Europe long before the Slavic migrations:

https://scite.ai/reports/differential-y-chromosome-anatolian-influences-on-QPg1LJ#:\~:text=%E2%80%9C%E2%80%A6,Supplementary%20Table%20S4).%E2%80%A6%E2%80%9D

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haplogroup_R1a#:\~:text=The%20Balkans%20shows%20wide%20variation%20between%20areas%20with%20significant%20levels%20of%20R1a1a%2C%20for%20example

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41559-022-01952-3#:\~:text=the%20end%20of%20the%20Neolithic%20period%20and%20the%20following%20Early%20Bronze%20Age%20were%20marked%20by%20%E2%80%98eastern%E2%80%99%20gene%20flow%2C%20which%20was%20predominantly%20of%20Anatolian%20origin%20in%20Crete

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41559-022-01952-3#:\~:text=the%20large%2Dscale%20gene%20flow%20associated%20with%20the%20Eurasian%20Steppe%20during%20the%20BA%20resulted%20in%20the%20prevalence%20of%20the%20Y%20chromosome%20R1a%20and%20R1b%20haplogroups

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Miserable_Sense6950@reddit

But Balkan Slavs are not descended from these subclades. They're descended from ones that arrived with Slavic migrations.

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xperio28@reddit

Repeating it doesn't make it true. The Balkans are the crossroads of the Old World. The population of the Balkans simultaneously carried local and neighbouring subclades of the same haplogroup, that entered Europe through the Balkans.

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FlatAssembler@reddit (OP)

You know, it's a bit politically sensitive to use the term Serbo-Croatian to describe our language after the Yugoslav Wars. In fact, it has always been a politically charged statement, not the least because of the Bosnians and Montenegrians.

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Red-Rocketeer46@reddit

Aj ne seri

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FlatAssembler@reddit (OP)

I would be interested in hearing what you think about my video about Croatian river names in the Latin language with English slides.

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Bright_Ad8923@reddit

We can claim also that Kosova has their own language but this doesn't mean is true. Is still albanian. The Croatian is an evolution of slavic language, dont have te make it political issue.

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xperio28@reddit

Surprised that Americans haven't thought of this for their identity politics - they still speak English and not American even after the collapse of the British Empire.

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StamatisTzantopoulos@reddit

Along with Frygian it is actually closely related to Greek according to a theory

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Eraserguy@reddit

I don't think anyone is saying serbo Croatian is their descendent.

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MLukaCro@reddit

And how do we know that Curicum was truly the Illyrian name for the island?

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cybran3@reddit

It’s a Latin (Roman) name. This guy looks like a troll. Also Illirians were illiterate so we have no ancient texts written by them so we’ll never know what their original language looked like or sounded like.

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OkGrade1686@reddit

Illyrians weren't an omogenous people. You could find adiacent tribes speaking really similar languages, but with more differing cultures. Or with very similar cultures, but speaking different languages.

It was an area with a mix of people that were very individualistic and were not fond of centralisation.

What made them come together somewhat, was the celtic migration. Both as a pressure, and as of mixing together. It was something coming together from multiple places, with no direction, but as some sort of survival instinct. There were Greek and Roman influences too, as those were the ones being taken as models.

That's my take on those few sources a stumbled upon. Something similar I think happened with the cossakcks and similar ilk, that cut ties with their centralized eastern europeans (Russians).

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FlatAssembler@reddit (OP)

Illyrians weren't an omogenous people. You could find adiacent tribes speaking really similar languages, but with more differing cultures. Or with very similar cultures, but speaking different languages.

Then good luck explaining away the patterns in the toponyms such as the k-r pattern in the Croatian river names (Krka, Korana, Krapina, Krbavica, Kravarščica, and two rivers named Karašica). Repetition of the same or similar elements in some meaning is evidence that toponyms come from the same language. And that pattern is statistically significant, because basic information theory tells us that the p-value of it is somewhere between 1/300 and 1/17. I've published a paper about it called "Etimologija Karašica" in Valpovački Godišnjak in 2022.

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loleenceee@reddit

Wait, Illirians being illiterate is maybe the strongest indicator that they might actually be Albanians

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Dragonslayer101101@reddit

HAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHA i really don't understand why we Albanians like to be associated with them they were just brutes i feel like us being Thracians would be cooler (with the preconception that we come from a Paleo-Balkanic population ofc which is pretty well established)

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L0raz-Thou-R0c0n0@reddit

I mean Dardanians were basically hybrids of Illyrians and Thracians. They were also badass for being the longest lasting illyrian kingdom, averted several celtic and gothic raids by themselves and were staunch rivals of the macedonians.

They’re also the most likely the ancestors of albanians.

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teoden10@reddit

Sure.I also heard a theory that albo's come from the Mars.

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Dragonslayer101101@reddit

yeah Dardanians were badass and the Thracian part helps that's why Kosovo has the highest E-V13 occurrence

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blodskaal@reddit

Lmao

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Legal_Lettuce6233@reddit

Bruh I'm in a meeting I almost pissed myself laughing

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-Koltira-@reddit

Im stealing this

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Beneficial_Roof212@reddit

Me too

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RubiksCodeNMZ@reddit

Dead

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ippleing@reddit

As an albanian THIS IS FUNNY!

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Diligent_Breath_643@reddit

Coming from a Serbian whoos language is Bulgarian Cyrillic ,,at least good or bad we have our own one,, happy

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AcaHyperblau@reddit

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Diligent_Breath_643@reddit

I don't fucking know what you are trying to say with this picture,,,,but you could have said in ,,,your motherhood language,,Serbs Macedonian and Montenegrin,, which is Bulgarian,,,

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deviendrais@reddit

Well, one thing’s for sure: you don’t have English

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DifferentEntrance338@reddit

I am Albanian, but i like you 😃

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FunnyHyena_Attack@reddit

Lol albanians are larping as descendants of cavemen

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dallyan@reddit

Diabolical.

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LumpenPrecariat@reddit

Screenshot worthy comment.

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Affectionate-Arm-405@reddit

Winner winner

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finesalesman@reddit

Fuck me, this made me spit my drink laughing.

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brickne3@reddit

I know, I was like... Well they're not wrong, are they.

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StamatisTzantopoulos@reddit

We have some proper names and words from Roman texts but it's indeed very little.

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FlatAssembler@reddit (OP)

Hardly anybody knows this, but most likely there were some inscriptions in the Illyrian language. In the south of Italy, in the Greek alphabet, if we consider Messapian to have been a dialect of Illyrian. And the words we know from there strongly suggest Messapian belonged to the centum branch of Indo-European languages.

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StamatisTzantopoulos@reddit

EVERYBODY who's interested in Indoeuropean linguistics is familiar with Messapian. There's no consensus on the relationship between Messapian and Illyrian, never mind that the former is a dialect of the latter. It's possible that they are linked, but again, we don't know because there's no flipping Illyrian vocabulary. Maybe in the future if archaelogoy helps.

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TickED69@reddit

wait... so how do we know Albanians were decendants of Illyrians then? If these Illyrian tribes never wrote anything down and we have no other way to reconstruct their language... then how can you prove Albanians have anything to do with them?

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BitMuch5286@reddit

While there's no direct evidence, large-scale complete population changes in an area are really uncommon in general (Even generally accepted ones like the Anglo-Saxon migrations into Britain are becoming increasingly disputed due to DNA evidence).

Logically, someone has to have continued living in the Albanian part of Illyria from antiquity until now. I believe that autosomal DNA tests on modern and ancient populations from the region support this assumption, as the results closely link modern Albanians to ancient Illyrian DNA found at archaeological dig sites, as well as to nearby modern populations like southern Montenegrians, Greeks and southern Italians, groups which occupy areas which are also thought to have been Illyrian or closely related.

From the cultural side of things, the Albanian language has its own branch on the IE language family tree because it doesn't really have any close living relatives. Although there is a lot of imported vocabulary, I believe a lot of linguists regard that as a feature of Albania's location near the geographical centre of the ancient Mediterranean trading networks and its long history of being conquered/surrounded by large empires, rather than evidence that the language is unrelated to the Illyrian languages.

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tenebrigakdo@reddit

These days one usually uses DNA evidence from graves (which are connected to a certain nation/culture based on stuff found in it). I haven't checked if anyone did it already but that would be probably the strongest indication.

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HelloThereItsMeAndMe@reddit

Well the albanians must have come from Somewhere. They're either illyrians or thracians. Personally i actually find the thracian origin more convincing. While the most illyrian descend seems to be concentrated in Montenegro and south bosnia.

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Bright_Ad8923@reddit

Because we have been around these territories for 8000 years and there is no proof that we ever move or came here in recent times, cant say the same for serbians.

Also the traditions and culture match the illyrian customs.

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cybran3@reddit

So what are they then?

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FlatAssembler@reddit (OP)

You are right, they are switching the burden of proof. And discarding the evidence, such as all the evidence I presented in this video.

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FlatAssembler@reddit (OP)

As far as I know, most historical linguists consider Messapian to have been a dialect of Illyrian, and Messapian was written in the Greek alphabet. It's just poorly understood. Read it up on Britannica, for example: https://www.britannica.com/topic/Illyrian-language

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FlatAssembler@reddit (OP)

Why wouldn't it be? It seems like the simplest explanation.

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MLukaCro@reddit

You can't answer my question with "Why wouldn't it be". The only records of Illyrian words we have are from Roman and Greek sources.

How do we know that they truly wrote the correct name for the island they were told? How do we know that they didnt make the word more Greek/Latin? How do we know how compatible the Illyrian language was with the Latin/Greek script?

Heck, how do we know the word is truly of Illyrian origin? Illyrians werent the first people there. Maybe they picked it up from somebody else.

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JRJenss@reddit

Exactly. Besides this to me sounds more like a latinized version of a Greek name - not to mention that the islands especially but also many coastal cities from Montenegro and even Albania all the way to the northern Adriatic, were originally established as Greek colonies. They had nothing to do with Illyrians who for the most part inhabited the hinterland.

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FlatAssembler@reddit (OP)

How do we know that they didnt make the word more Greek/Latin?

They perhaps changed the suffix, but I see no reason why they would write Curicum if it was something closer to *Suricum.

How do we know how compatible the Illyrian language was with the Latin/Greek script?

If there was some sound between 'k' and 'g' in "Curicum", then we would expect some attestations to spell it with 'c' and some attestations to spell with with 'g', right?

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brickne3@reddit

Well clearly you don't know shit about linguistics. Do you think if this were as cut and dry as you believe it is nobody bothered to publish it the career-making paper on it that would exist if it had any merit to it?

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FlatAssembler@reddit (OP)

I've published a paper making, among other things, that argument... in two peer-reviewed (well, nominally peer-reviewed, at least) journals: Valpovački Godišnjak and Regionalne Studije. That paper is called Etimologija Karašica, published in 2022.

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Leshkarenzi@reddit

Couldn't find anything under that title to check your source, but either way, you're doxxing yourself, so i'll remove that comment.

If you reply to this and want your comment reinstated, i'll do it, this is just a reminder to be wary on how much you share about yourself on the internet.

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FlatAssembler@reddit (OP)

OK, here is the list of texts published in Valpovački Godišnjak in 2022: https://www.matica.hr/ogranci/ogranak-matice-hrvatske-u-valpovu/knjiga/valpovacki-godisnjak-2022-581/

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Leshkarenzi@reddit

It seems like you didn't understand my point...

Are you sure you want to doxx your real name on reddit just for some upvotes?? Yes or No?

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FlatAssembler@reddit (OP)

I must say I don't understand the problem. It's no secret that I published, under my own name, a paper in which I claimed, among other things, that Illyrian was a centum language. What is the danger in somebody here coming to know who I am?

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Leshkarenzi@reddit

There are sick individuals on the internet. People who disagree with your opinion and won't hesitate to be harmful in any way towards you in your real life.

You're free to your own opinion, such is the way and the right of everyone in modern civilization, yet be wary of consequences, especially on the internet.

Globalism has connected everyone, sadly bad people aswell.

You're free to share your personal information wherever you please, i just thought of it as my responsibility to warn you that reddit might not be the best place to do so.

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FlatAssembler@reddit (OP)

Well, all one needs to do to find out who I am is to look at my top posts. In one of my pinned posts (about how I made a compiler for my programming language targetting WebAssembly), I linked to my GitHub profile. And in some of my other top posts, I am linking to my YouTube videos about computer science in Latin. It's not hard to find out who I am anyway. Maybe it's a good idea to try to be anonymous, but since I was not doing that since the beginning... it's too late now.

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EastNYCertified85@reddit

Some people with opposing viewpoints may harass, bully, or publicly shame you on social media and if your real name is found out then that can lead to phone calls on your private number, swatting if they find out your address etc.

The mod was just warning you of that since it is an issue that becoming more and more prevalent.

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FlatAssembler@reddit (OP)

Well, like I've said, I don't think it is politically sensitive. Or, if it is, then it shouldn't be. Should we not reference the papers we've written about Special Relativity just because some hard-core Neo-Nazis might find them offensive? Should we not reference the papers we've written about Darwinian Evolution because the Republicans and perhaps hard-core communists (who still believe in Lysenkoism) might find them offensive? Science is already distorted by politics, no need to make it even more so out of some irrational fear that your neighbour will attack you.

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MLukaCro@reddit

But what is the actual source of this name? Was it just one Greek/Roman guy? Did he speak Illyrian?

Like, if you told me a name for a random Albanian hill and then I wrote it down, I am sure that my writing is going to be miles off the actual word.

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FlatAssembler@reddit (OP)

Well, I believe it was written as "Curicum" in Lucan's Pharsalia and as "Kurikon" in Ptolemy's Geography.

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brickne3@reddit

Oh, so a Latin guy and a Greek guy.

You still don't understand the problem here?

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FlatAssembler@reddit (OP)

No, I do not understand the problem.

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itisiminekikurac@reddit

Not plausible, historically unproven, but it's the typical hermeneutic problem of Greece and Ancient Greece. Even if you are a descendant of a particular people, which in case of Greece is at least been somewhat proven, there are almost no links surviving other than cultural residue.

While being a big fan of learning all you can about your history and culture through it, it recently became a collective grand religious-like delusion, especially for post-socialist period in the right wing public sphere.

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FlatAssembler@reddit (OP)

collective grand religious-like delusion

But what if it is not? What if it is actually more-or-less a mathematical puzzle, rather than a delusion?

Think of it this way: What does the name "Karašica", the name of the two rivers in Croatia, mean?

Well, consider this: plenty of river names in Croatia start with the consonants 'k' and 'r' (sometimes separated by a vowel): Krka, Korana, Krapina, Kravarščica, Korana, and two rivers named Karašica. Don't you think it is at least possible, if not probable, that there was a verb karr~kurr meaning "to flow" in Illyrian? That Karašica comes from Illyrian Kurr-urr-issia (flow-water-suffix), borrowed into Proto-Slavic as Kъrъrьsьja, which turned into Karrasja after the Havlik's Law, and then into *Karaša after the iotation and the loss of geminates?

Oh, you think that k-r pattern is due to chance? But don't you think that the basic information theory (birthday paradox and collision entropy) teaches us that the p-value is between 1/300 and 1/17? You have the calculation in my paper "Etimologija Karašica", published in Valpovački Godišnjak in the year 2022.

And where would that verb karr~kurr come from? If you assume Illyrian was a centum language, there is an obvious answer: it comes from kjers (to run).

Or do you think that is a delusion as well?

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itisiminekikurac@reddit

By the same reasoning you apply, it'd be plausible that Proto-slavic languages are derived from Sanskrit, which is consistently met with epistemological failure.

Or take Byzantine empire, our culture was greatly influenced, they helped form our languages, a religion and same political hierarchy, does that mean that when you see 4S you can make a claim that our ancestry leada to Byzantine?

It's Serbs and Romanians claiming Vinča culture, one of the oldest neolithic civilizations, around 7500 years old, that puts things into perspective. It's revealing that a modern Greek man is by any marker, closer to a modern Turkish man, than to a member of his family in Ancient Greece, 3250 years and 130 generations ago.

What I'm saying is, yes there might be links and markers, that proves influence, anything beyond is harder to prove, and even if it's, allbeit unlikely to prove, it is all but a logical fallacy to assume familiarity, as it breeds what is commonly known as a racial theory. Best case we can do is, if it is ever discovered, to prove a sttong historical link between two cultures, and it still leaves so much open space.

Or we can simply do the easiest thing, assuming link between me and my ancestors some 5000 years ago, and their ancestors, up to about 300000 years ago, all Slavs are neolithic Ukranian, with roots in tribal animism and a 6 vowel language system, and modern day Ukraine/Belarus/Poland is our promised land.

Assuming anything more than a cultutal influence is a delusion, It is a great, religious-like, nationalistic delusion that leads to ethnocentrism and racial ideology.

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FlatAssembler@reddit (OP)

I don't understand your analogy. Where is any math there, much less information theory?

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itisiminekikurac@reddit

There is no math in cultural and linguistic influence. You should stop relativizing history and language. Let historians and anthropologists deal with it, in order to stop creating nazism out of thin air.

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FlatAssembler@reddit (OP)

There is no math in cultural and linguistic influence.

My friend, every field of science sooner or later becomes math-heavy. That's because mathematics is an incredibly useful tool for telling apart reasonable explanations from ad-hoc hypotheses. If you are not doing math, you probably cannot detect even the most blatant ad-hoc hypotheses. What the Occam's Razor is essentially saying is that hypotheses which allow you to easily do math are more likely to be true. It took me long to realize that.

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itisiminekikurac@reddit

Again you're relativizing. Yes we use statistics and scientific methodology in every science, no we do not subject cultural and linguistic similarity to simple division and addition.

Stop relativizing history, and glorifying artificial ties, it is literally a pipeline to nazism.

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FlatAssembler@reddit (OP)

Again you're relativizing.

I don't understand what you mean by that. Nothing I said here can be even vaguely interpreted as supporting linguistic relativity (the idea that the language we speak determines the way we think). I am just saying that I think that toponomastic evidence does not really support the notion that Illyrian was a satem language, much less that it was close to modern Albanian. I think there are a few toponyms which are a lot easier to explain if you assume Illyrian was some centum language. An example of such a toponym is Curicum.

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itisiminekikurac@reddit

Relativizing linguistic and cultural history is not linguistic relativity. Stop using AI to understand concepts you are not familiar with. Also Satem/Centum reduction is a very specific division that proves nothing in itself, as you should've learned long before this post. Especially doesn't help that it lost a battle with relevance in modern time.

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FlatAssembler@reddit (OP)

Also Satem/Centum reduction is a very specific division that proves nothing in itself, as you should've learned long before this post.

If Illyrian was centum, it couldn't have evolved into a satem language because of one of the basic principles of historical linguistics: the assumption that sound change has no memory. Once kj and k merge, there cannot be a sound change only affecting the original kj.

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Miserable_Sense6950@reddit

This is based off of faulty logic because Albanian is neither satem or centrum.

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FlatAssembler@reddit (OP)

But the problem with that response is that, once you look at the actual sound changes that occurred in Albanian, it seems **less** like Albanian came from Illyrian, rather than more. One of the sound changes most specific to Albanian is the change from 's' to 'gj'. One of the Illyrian words for "to flow" was "ser", as is attested in the ancient name for the river Bednja, Ser-ap-ia. That arguably comes from Indo-European \*ser, and there is no trace of 's' becoming 'gj'. Also, if we assume Messapian was Illyrian, the Messapian name for the salt marsh Salpi in Apulia was Sal-ap-ia, "sal" arguably coming from \*seh2l. Again, no trace of the change of 's' to 'gj'.

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FlatAssembler@reddit (OP)

Can somebody explain to me why the downvotes?

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StamatisTzantopoulos@reddit

Just leave linguistics to linguists mate.

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FlatAssembler@reddit (OP)

I certainly know more about Croatian toponyms than most linguists. In 2022, I published a paper called "Etimologija Karašica" in two peer-reviewed journals: Valpovački Godišnjak and Regionalne Studije. And it's arguably one of the most rigorous papers about Croatian toponyms ever published, as almost no paper about toponyms is as mathy as that one. It's about the idea that basic information theory (collision entropy and birthday paradox) teaches us that the p-value of that k-r pattern in the Croatian river names (Krka, Korana, Krapina, Krbavica, Kravarščica, and two rivers named Karašica) is somewhere between 1/300 and 1/17. And about how it follows from that that there was probably a verb *karr\~kurr in Illyrian meaning "to flow". That the river name Karašica comes from Illyrian *Kurr-urr-issia (flow-water-suffix), borrowed into Proto-Slavic as *Kъrъrьsьja, which gave *Karrasja after the Havlik's Law and then *Karaša after iotation and the loss of geminates, to which Croatians added their suffix -ica. You can see more about it in this video in Latin: https://youtu.be/2VRH4e-Us_w

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StamatisTzantopoulos@reddit

What makes you think that toponyms have anything to do with maths? Do you have any training in linguistics whatsoever??

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FlatAssembler@reddit (OP)

What makes you think that toponyms have anything to do with maths?

My friend, every field of science sooner or later becomes math-heavy.

Do you have any training in linguistics whatsoever?

No, nor do I consider it important here. Listen, there is a huge difference between training in engineering, training in hard science, and "training" in some science without mathematics. People who are not engineers have never had to deliver a product that actually works, so they cannot be trusted to have good bullshit detectors. And "training" in some science without mathematics is more of an indoctrination than education.

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StamatisTzantopoulos@reddit

Look, I will be honest with you cause you sound well-meaning enough (although perhaps on the spectrum). You sound like a smart kid who discovered a science, in this case linguistics, and you think that you have understood everything and you know better than people who have been studying it for their whole lives and have PhDs. No, training in linguistics is absolutely important if you wanna talk about linguistics. And yes, maths is importants for some branches of linguistics, but it's just a tool, if you don't have any training in the other stuff you are pretty much clueless. In any case, 'Ask Balkans' is not the right sub to discuss all that. There is a sub for lingustics and another one for Indo-European studies where you can present your findings and get knowledgeable comments from professional linguists.

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FlatAssembler@reddit (OP)

although perhaps on the spectrum

Well, I do have psychosis, if that's what you mean. I am taking Risperidone, Biperiden, and Alprazolam. And I have gained a lot of weight, so I need to take blood pressure medication.

You sound like a smart kid who discovered a science, in this case linguistics, and you think that you have understood everything and you know better than people who have been studying it for their whole lives

Well, I have been studying Croatian names of places for almost a decade by now. I am probably as qualified as anybody is to tell you that Croatian toponyms suggest, if anything, that Illyrian was a centum language.

and have PhDs

Well, I've contacted a few PhD linguists specializing in names of places before publishing that paper, and their responses were very far from impressive. One linguist commented on my paper that she thinks that the name Karašica dates from the 17th century and that there are no obstacles to it being from Latin fish name "carassius" borrowed into Croatian. Just taking a look at the early attestations of the name Karašica (the 13th-century Karassou) makes it obvious that's not the case.

But, more importantly, to math you should ideally respond with math. That's not what linguists are even trying to do. They are insisting that this k-r pattern in the Croatian river names is a coincidence, but they are not providing any computer model of the language which would suggest there is a high probability of something like that occurring by chance. Basic information theory suggests the probability is somewhere between 1/300 and 1/17, and a few of my professors have checked my math.

No, training in linguistics is absolutely important if you wanna talk about linguistics.

Look, friend, linguistics is useful in reconstructing proto-languages because there is a method for that, and that method is both mathematically justified and which is based on how languages really work. Linguistics is not particularly useful in dealing with names of places because the mainstream methodology used for that (the Mayer's methodology which assumes that etymologies from languages we know a lot about are for some reason more probable than etymologies from languages we know little about) doesn't even work on paper. What is the mathematical justification for it? I don't see it, as a computer engineer. The Krahe's methodology (based on the assumption that the repetition of the same or similar elements in some meaning is evidence that the names of places come from the same language), or something very similar to it which I used in my paper, at least works on paper: it appears to be justified by basic information theory. So it at least could be right, do we agree?

And yes, maths (esp statistics) is important for some branches of linguistics, but it's just a tool, if you don't have any training in the other stuff you are pretty much clueless.

The problem is that linguists studying toponyms almost always admit they know nothing or almost nothing about information theory.

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StamatisTzantopoulos@reddit

I am sorry but you are confusing different sciences. Linguists are not responding with math because it's irrelevant. There is a method to it, and maths is a part of it, but it's not exclusively that. I suggest doing a Master's in Linguistics since you are genuinely interested in it. In any case, good luck with everything :)

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FlatAssembler@reddit (OP)

Linguists are not responding with math or computer science because it's irrelevant.

Well, to me it seems relevant. Information theory appears to provide a way to estimate the p-values of those patterns in the toponyms. And modern science is based on p-values, for a good reason.

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teoden10@reddit

Simple.Albo's are not in any way,shape or form connected with any nation on Balkan!End.Of.Story!

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LoresVro@reddit

Illyrian is barely attested. Theres so little of the language available.

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xperio28@reddit

The left island Chersos can be explained with Slavic Cherno (Black) and Curicum in satem being Suricum can be explained with Slavic Sur (Gray, Ash) + Chuma (Plague, Black Death). So the islands are the Black and the Gray Death, specifically Ash Colored Death.

Without knowing about the location, I presume forest fires were/are common there.

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FlatAssembler@reddit (OP)

Look, I am not really a guy who subscribes to scientism, but this is so far from mainstream that I am not taking this seriously.

"Mantia" is obviously not an Illyrian word, it comes from German "Mantel". If it had been an Illyrian word back then, and it was borrowed into Proto-Slavic, it would have changed into something like *muć in Croatian, because nasal 'a' turns into 'u' (Like the Fruška Gora mountain was named after the Germanic tribe Franks, or Supetar comes from Sanpetro. Or, if you think ancient toponyms are all made up, look into the Balto-Slavic cognates such as Lithuanian "ranka" and Croatian "ruka".).

The word "vrba" never meant anything like "to cry", it has always been something related to plants or a plant name. We have cognates to it in Baltic languages, so we know that.

I've looked up the word "gavra" and I cannot find it in any dictionary.

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xperio28@reddit

Fascism and Scientific Racism was mainstream in 1920, how accepted a thing is by the general public, has no effect on what did or did not happen 2000 years ago and on what is true.

If you do take interest in linuistics, you would be surprised to know that Germanic volcabulary is very simillar to Slavic, because the Goths interacted extensively. For example the Gothic bible, which by the way was written in North Bulgaria in the 4th century has slavic loans, while the rest of the vocabulary is Indo-European words that are also understood in slavic. Some shifts in Croatian and Serbian are late medieval developments. In the 8th century all South Slavs spoke the same language, now recognized by all as Old Church Slavonic.

In the case of "mantia" it's attested in Old Church Slavonic as "мантиꙗ" (mantiya), and it does not use any of the slavic nasals. I'm not sure why you think it should be nasal, the Indo-European form is not nasala it's *menH-. You're probably confusing it with on (nasal) which I will explain now.

Old Church Slavonic has two main pronunciation versions, West and East (South Slavic). The example you gave with "ranka" indeed contains a nasal, but it's still pronounced "ranka" by conservative speakers in North and Greek Macedonia, because the "an" correspondes to the Slavic Ѫ. It's pronounced "on" (nasal n) in the South-West, and "a" in the North-East (Moesian, Bulgarian speech).

This exact same feature with select sounds that vary (conservative and shifted) is seen exactly the same in Thracian and Dacian.

In Thracian place names end in -deva while in Dacian they end in -dava. Ancient greeks write that it meant "place" in the Thracian language. This is the slavic word "dyava" (to place), which in the East (Moesia) is pronounced "dyava" like the Dacian (-dava), while to the west in west Bulgaria, Serbia, Macedonia, they say "deva". This sound is represented with Ѣ in Old Church Slavonic. There's a third such sound (Ѧ) which corresponds to West: en (nasal) and East: e.

Check out this table concerning the phonological development from Indo-European attested for Thracian and Dacian, comapred to other languages. Slavic often has 2 options listed which are the west and east Church slavonic speech, they neatly correspond to Thracian and Dacian speech.

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FlatAssembler@reddit (OP)

In the 8th century all South Slavs spoke the same language, now recognized by all as Old Church Slavonic.

No, Croatian has a few sound changes that are incompatible with the sound changes in OCS. See, for instance, what happened to the words such as "svijeća". It became "svěšta" in OCS.

I'm not sure why you think it should be nasal

Because of the Law of Open Syllables, of course. This is obviously a relatively recent borrowing, rather than an Illyrian word.

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xperio28@reddit

It was Old Church Slavonic, this feature was just a dialect at the time, it's really not ancient.

The origin Indo-European root of mantia does not contain a nasal, you're making a mistake or just confusing it with another root: https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/mantum#Latin

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FlatAssembler@reddit (OP)

The origin Indo-European root of mantia does not contain a nasal

Of course, given that Proto-Indo-European did not have nasal vowels in the first place.

Besides, the Roman Empire did not exist during the time of the (V)Odomanti, so it could not have been borrowed from Latin.

I don't know what "Vodomanti" meant, and you don't need to know the right answer to recognize a wrong one. What you are doing is basically tantamount to saying that Salona (the ancient name for Solin) meant "giant hall" in Illyrian only because "sala" means "hall" in Croatian, nevermind it's of Germanic origin and nevermind the 'a' would need to turn into 'a' in the 9th century.

Honestly, though, I cannot tell whether you are being serious or not here. Poe's Law is strong.

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xperio28@reddit

Proto-Indo-European (PIE) did have nasal sounds but that's not the point, what i'm referring to is that the origin of nasals are transcribed as *m̥, *n̥ not as am/om/en/an. This is how linguists avoid confusion with regular am/om/en/an.

What are you talking about? Salon is a modern French loan, ultimately from Germanic origin in this form.

The Slavic version of the word is "selo" (village). Thessalus, means "open village of Thes", most likely a colony of

Wiktionary: Θεσσαλός (Thessalos)
"From Proto-Hellenic *kʷʰeťťalós, likely from Pre-Greek. But compare *kʷoiwéō (“to make, produce, invent”), from Proto-Indo-European *kʷoywós, from *kʷey- (“pile, stow, to gather”)"

"According to the Dutch linguist Robert S. P. Beekes, the name predates Greek presence in the region and could come from the Pre-Greek form reconstructed as *Kʷʰeťťal-. The Greek linguist Georgios Babiniotis also assigns the origin of the name of the Thessalians to pre-Greek times, although he does not try to explain its etymology"

It can't be explain with Greek and it's designated as Pre-Greek substrate aka the Thracian substrate. It can be understood in Slavic.

Thessaly like many other places in Greece is named after Pre-Greek heroes, in this case that's Thessalus. (Absolutely doesn't mean salon lol)

*Kʷʰeťťal - Thracian like slavic dropped the aspiration -> *Kʷeťťal -> Thracian pronounces k, Dacian pronounces č, Conservative South Slavic pronounces k (Rhdope and Macedonia), Moesian South Slavic prnounces č
-> keťťal/čeťťal, ťť is unattested in PIE, it's the Greeks trying to transcribe a foreign phoneme, a Pelasgian/Thracian/Slavic one.

In this case it seems evident to me that σσ/ss/ťť is an effort to transliterate the cluster "st" -> Kestal/Čestal, which is the Slavic word Čestъ ("honor"). The PIE reconstruction on Wiktionary given for Čestъ is *(s)kʷit-tis, and it confirms my suspicion in σσ/ss/ťť as "st".

The second part -al, is the Slavic suffix -ъlъ, which adds the meaning "having the quality of", in PIE it is *-lós and in Latin it became -ulus.

Thessalus, originally Kestalus, means "honorable one".

It's easily understood in it's uncorrupted form.

Look at the table again, you can use it to decipher any pre-Greek word of Indo-European origin. Only the clusters aren't listed yet but I have written them down personally.

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xperio28@reddit

Albanoi (Ἀλβανοί) / Arbanoi (Ἀρβανοί) - Illryan tribe the same as Abroi

- In some dialects of Greek L is pronounced as R and vice versa but perceived as the same hence the two versions. Arbanoi -> Garvanoi is reminiscent of Slavic garvan (mokcing bird, crow) which is derived from gavra itself.

-> This fuller form points towards original form Garvanoi, shortened to Gavroi - the crows, probably associated with a distinct war cry, unique to the tribe.

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starshootersupreme@reddit

I rhink we should enforce dnk research of all the balkans and all the graveyards and finish with this once for all

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FlatAssembler@reddit (OP)

Oh, but, you know, languages spread a lot faster than genes. Genes and languages are barely correlated.

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starshootersupreme@reddit

Yeah but there is so many writinga and tablets in balkans they dont even know what it means and which language is that

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Nitronical38@reddit

Of course Albanians are the descendants of the "Illyrians" of back in the day. Who else would they be? Unless you unironically believe that they were transplanted there en masse from the eastern caucasuss by the ottoman's lol. Albanians are the survivors of the slavicization process who were in the hills. Their cousins were absorbed by the slavics (serbs, croats, bosnians, montenegrins, macedonians)

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Lord_Hector_of_Ostia@reddit

The proofs of Illyrian-Albanian linguistic continuity are a lot. The most important one is the connection of Albanian with Messapic language.

Messapic was the language spoken by Messapian people which inhabited today's south eastern Italy (Puglia) even before Roman Empire. Messapians were originally from south of Albania and were considered Illyrian. From most of Messapic words which have come to our days it's important to note that majority of them connect with Albanian language, 26 out of 29 words found connect only with Albanian language. The photo shows some of them.

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Eraserguy@reddit

These really arnt that damming like at all? Half arnt similar and the other half is similar because they're both indo european. An actual linguistic analysis of entire lexicons would be much more informative

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Lord_Hector_of_Ostia@reddit

Okay if this is not enough for you have a look on this one. The linguistic connection between Albanian language and Romanian is special. Albanian and Romanian share a lot of Paleo-Balkanic lexicon. In the same time Albanian language shares Ancient Greek loanwords indicating a people living nearby with ancient Romanians and close to Greeks.

Something to note is that Albanian is a half-Latinized language, knowing that all coastal Illyria was Latinized the ancestors of Albanians lived in interior of the territory and the language survived favoriozed from the mountainous terrain.

All we understand here is that Albanian language was spoken in the Balkans before Romans came, it was spoken close to ancestors of Romanians and close even to Greeks, after the Romans came language was half-Latinized but survived in the interior of territory and came to our days. This is like a puzzle, bringing together some facts here and some there and you create a history for the topic. There are even more facts and lexicon from Illyrian to Albanian but it never ends.

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Eraserguy@reddit

Yea I agree that Albanians are a pre Roman society and that Albanians obviously has alot of paleo balkan influence but so does every language in the balkan sprachbund. This is at best a suggestion that albanian is a descendent of illyrian but not a definitive example. Even if Albanians were direct descendents it wouldn't really mean much, albanian nationalists like to use it as an excuse and reason behind their irridentism but it makes about as much sense as a French person claiming they're roman

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Lord_Hector_of_Ostia@reddit

"... but so does every language in the balkan sprachbund." NOO, this is not true, how you can compare Albanian or Romanian Paleo-Balkanic lexicon with other Slavic languages of the Balkans. It's completely hilarious and nonsense.
"This is at best a suggestion that Albanian is a descendent of Illyrian..." Seriously?!! This is a suggestion and not facts?! Then what do you call facts, you want a video or documentary from ancient Illyrian speaking in their language?!!
"Even if Albanians were direct descendents it wouldn't really mean much..." For you as a Serb yes, for us Albanians it means a lot. It is a pride that beyond any invasion, wars and struggles our regions and lands have suffered we still are here, speaking the language of our ancient forefathers as Greeks do. It's our identity, blood, culture, history. IT REALLY MEANS A LOT.
"... it makes about as much sense as a French person claiming they're roman" Completely nonsense comparison. Roman Empire consisted on many peoples with different languages, cultures and origins. Roman was a civilisation, Roman was a status and you could be a Roman if you could raise up in empire social systems with administrative or military positions. While Illyrian was a specific identity , ethnicity and culture.

Interesting fact for you, when Stalin asked Milovan Djilas on their personal conversation if Albanians were Slavs he replied to him that Albanians are the most ancient Balkan people older than the Slavs and Greeks. I think as a Serb you should know who Djilas was and his background.

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drugosrbijanac@reddit

Half of these words are also in Serbian language...

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3DGSMAX@reddit

Serbian is Slavic. I can understand about 30% of Serbian as a Pole. I can understanding noting or almost nothing of Albanian

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drugosrbijanac@reddit

Lots of these words in the list either from Mesapic / Albanian have similar slang words in Serbian. I don't know why people think Slavs didn't acquire some of the locals languages.

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SnooSuggestions4926@reddit

Exactly! You acquired somethings but mean jack shit in your native language while our native vocabulary exists only to us and its linked to old paelo-balkan words and has explantions such as names, colors, animals etc which is why we are a language isolate often linked with dead languages. Your language is part of a huge branch of existing languages.

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Lord_Hector_of_Ostia@reddit

Linguistic Eric Hamp notes that "the evidence linking Albanian to Messapic, which in turn has been linked to Illyrian, is sufficient to see Albanian as a descendent of a sister-language Illyrian, if not a descendent of Illyrian itself."

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HumanMan00@reddit

Lol i have two things to say.

Is Caurus related to the Turkish Kaurin meaning non-muslim?

Skjehveros sounds as if u mashed Sever (North in South Slavic) and added a Greek suffix to it.

As far as if it is Illyrian or not I have no idea.

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FlatAssembler@reddit (OP)

Skjehveros sounds as if u mashed Sever (North in South Slavic) and added a Greek suffix to it.

Well, yes, the Slavic word for north is descended from it.

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FlatAssembler@reddit (OP)

Is Caurus related to the Turkish Kaurin meaning non-muslim?

No, it comes from a Persian word for Zoroastrian, گبر .

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Judestadt@reddit

Well Albanians prob aint really much related to the "Illyrians" from modern day Croatia, Bosnia, but they could've evolved from some small mountainous tribes between Alb,NM,Srb

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Wild-Push-8447@reddit

Albanian being a descendant of Illyrian is far more accepted than the centum/satem division of Indo-European (especially after the discovery of Tocharian). Since the Illyrian-Albanian connection is far stronger, it should be considered before the centum/satem hypothesis. It's still possible that Illyrian and Albanian evolved separately from PIE, but it definitely isn't proven by an old Roman name for a Croatian island.

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FlatAssembler@reddit (OP)

It's still possible that Illyrian and Albanian evolved separately from PIE, but it definitely isn't proven by an old Roman name for a Croatian island.

Why not? I mean, the main evidence linguists have for Illyrian being satem are the toponyms such as Birziminium (supposedly meaning fortress and cognate to German "Burg") and Osseriatis (supposedly meaning lake and cognate to Croatian "jezero"). Excuse me, but that seems to be ignoring all the toponyms which are easier to explain if you assume Illyrian is centum, including, but not limited to, Curicum.

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xperio28@reddit

Check out Illyrian (South Slavic)

Until 150 years ago, all Serbs and Croats knew themselves as descended of Illyrians (at least since 13th century AD, before Albanians were ever mentioned).

What I've seen from modern linguistics relating to Albanian is absolutely not convincing to prove or disprove, the historical notion that the Western South Slavs are the descendants of Illyrians.

90% of Illyria is in Yugoslavia, and the Illyrian autosomal DNA and paternal ancestry has most in common with modern inhabitants of Montenegro.

If you're interested in linguistics I can source you details, it's just that it's taboo to even presume Illyrian is not Albanian and rather part of the Thraco-Dacian language family. DM if you;re interested.

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Miserable_Sense6950@reddit

A historical misnaming is not proof for Serbs and Croats being Illyrians. Albanians in the Middle Ages also called themselves Epirotes (Skanderbeg, Marin Barleti), doesn't mean they actually were.

90% of Illyria is in Yugoslavia, and the Illyrian autosomal DNA and paternal ancestry has most in common with the modern inhabitants of Montenegro.

No they do not. Albanians do: https://imgur.com/D4Q3Uyi

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xperio28@reddit

You can't jsut call a minimum 700 year old tradition, misnaming. If it were wrong it would've stopped, but the thing that removed the notion was nationalism, specifically Croats and Serbians wanting to be distinct and to form their own countries, while Albanians took this legacy that the Serbs, Croats and Bosniaks stopped referring to. Educated Germans, French and English all researched the linguistics and agreed that West South Slavs are indeed Illyrians. Only afterwards it was "re-reviewed" for politicla reasons. You can travel to 1850s Western universities, they will tell you Illyrian is Slavic.

Besides do you realize that the second mention of Albanians ever made is by these 14th centiry Dalmatians who called themselves Illyrians in the very same text? So how would you explain a devout Illyrian writing about Albanians (according to you Illyrian) but saying they don't speak Illyrian.

Look at the map of Illyria again, because I guess you don't see that the vast majority is the territories inhabited by Serbs, Croats, Bosniaks and Montenegrins, barely touching Albania and only a small part of it. I suggest you redo your genetic research, Montenegrins are the ones considered closest to Illyrians. They have more Levantine (E1b1b) (Thraco-Illyrian) paternal ancestry than Albanians who have more Anatolian Greek (J2) and much less Mesolithic European (I2) which was also carried by Illyrians.

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Miserable_Sense6950@reddit

You can't jsut call a minimum 700 year old tradition, misnaming. If it were wrong it would've stopped, but the thing that removed the notion was nationalism, specifically Croats and Serbians wanting to be distinct and to form their own countries after the unifying agenda didn't work out, while Albanians took this legacy that the Serbs, Croats and Bosniaks stopped referring to.

Yes, you can. Your argument is literally "Some Croats called themselves that, so it must be true". Some Albanians in the Middle Ages called themselves Epirotes, so it must be true as well according to you. There are plenty of examples of people calling themselves, or being called by others, ancient people that they have nothing to do with. Serbs used to be called Triballians by the Byzantines for the same reason. Complete nonsense to say that it's true just because they called them that.

Educated Germans, French and English all researched the linguistics and agreed that West South Slavic is indeed Illyrian. Only afterwards it was "re-reviewed" for political reasons. If you could travel to 1850s Western universities, they would tell you Illyrian is Slavic according to their linguistic studies.

What? 1850s Western universities knew nothing about linguistics compared to now. You can't cite hundreds of years old science to prove your point. It is obvious Slavic has nothing to do with Illyrian. The closest language we have to Illyrian is Messapic. We have plenty of inscriptions of Messapic. It's related to Albanian.

Besides do you realize that the second mention of Albanians ever made is by these 14th centiry Dalmatians who called themselves Illyrians in the very same text? So how would you explain a devout Illyrian writing about Albanians (according to you Illyrian) but saying they don't speak Illyrian.

Illyrians didn't even collectively refer to themselves as Illyrian as far as we know. This goes against your point. It literally shows Slavs just started using the term because others called it Illyria, not because they descend from them. They belonged to different tribes with their own names. By the way, one of these tribes, the Albanoi, is where the original term for Albanians came from, which Albanians used to use in the Middle Ages (Arbereshe, still used in Italy by Albanian migrants from the Middle Ages).

Look at the map of Illyria again, because I guess you don't see that the vast majority is the territories inhabited by Serbs, Croats, Bosniaks and Montenegrins (who are genetically majority Paleo-Balkan), barely including Albania and only a small part of it. I suggest you redo your genetic research, Montenegrins are the ones considered closest to Illyrians. They have more Levantine (E1b1b) (Thraco-Illyrian) paternal ancestry than Albanians who have more Anatolian Greek (J2) and much less Mesolithic European (I2) which was also carried by Illyrians.

Firstly, they are not genetically majority Paleo-Balkan. Serbs are around 50%, a bit less most likely. Bosniaks and Croats have even less. Montenegrins have less because they have more Albanian admixture.

Look at my image and the sources. Illyrians have only been found with r1b-z2103, j2b-L283 and r1b-pf7563. It's all cited there. I2a was not carried by Illyrians. J2b-L283 is not "Anatolian Greek". It arrived with the Yamnaya as per the latest research, where a few Yamnaya with J2b-L283 have been found.

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xperio28@reddit

- Dismiss the century old self-identificiation if you'd like. I stand on linguistics and genetics, not claims. By the way the Triballi are a Thracian tribe not a regional subgroup like the Illyri, Thraci and Daci. And it's read Trivalli, the same as the name of the second Bulgarian king variously called Trivellius and Terbeli s.

- Messapic is not a satem language, and it didn't exist at all during the Bronze and Iron Age. Messapic originated in the southeastern region of Italy, specifically in Apulia, during the pre-Roman period. It is believed to have emerged around the 6th century BC, way too late.

- "As far as we know" It literally can be either way. From what I know about the Thraci, the names given in Greek are exonyms sure, but they are modified names of the biggest/most influencial tribe or the one that the Greeks encountered first. In the case of the Thraci, that was likely the Thrausi of Aegean Thracia.

- If you really care about the real names just know that Greek uses ' and '' in the original transcriptions to indicate diagama (F), a dropped sound that's V or H or G, and the H is sometimes a Z isntead because satem. For example Ἰλλυριός has it, so it's either Villuri/Gilluri/Hilluri, but I'm not gonna go deeper into this now because you still aren't convinced that we should look to Proto-Slavic. And because I'm still not sure what double λλ is trying to transliterate. To show you that I'm not making stuff up this is an example of diagama identification - Ἑρμῆς - Hermes. English presumes that the dropped sound is H. Anyways.

- Another clear example that the Thraci, Daci and Illyri are all Proto-Slavs are the tribe names, which all natively end with the plural form -i, this plural suffix is only in Slavic. It's not observed in Albanian, Latin and Greek.

- I'm pretty sure Serbs and Croats are above 50% Paleo-Balkan, whether R1a1 and I-M170 are intentionally grouped with the late arrival subclades. They certainly are above this figure based on autosomal DNA.

- When I say Anatolian Greek I don't mean ethnic Greek, just that it comes from the East, doesn't really matter if it's from North or South of the Black Sea.

- The haplogroups you listed are inadequately associated with the Illyrians. Just look how they're concentrated in Turkey and Armenia, to the point it looks foreign to the Balkans. However I may be misunderstanding because it shows that Montenigrans have multiple times more of R1b-z2103 than Albanians, which tracks with my research the Montenigrans are the most Illyrian like.

Check out their foreign looking distribution here:

J2b-L283

R1b-z2103

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Greekmon07@reddit

I, personally, believe that modern day albanian is a descendant of Dardanian and other Mountainous Illyrian languages, instead of the coastal variations.

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Any-Consideration470@reddit

Yeah if I remember correctly most of our linguistics that has to do with sea was borrowed from latin and some other languages or some shit like that

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Mustafa312@reddit

Because most of the coastal areas assimilated to Romans. Not because we weren’t there. Same goes with most of the major towns. But to say we weren’t near coasts is ridiculous.

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prvoklasnimrzitelj@reddit

Or, stay with me now, there is no sea in the Caucasus mountains?

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Mustafa312@reddit

Black Sea and Caspian Sea…one for each side. Baffles me how something as simple as that gets overlooked by people like you

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Any-Consideration470@reddit

Why would we be from the Caucuses when we are more Paleo Balkan than you slavs?

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prvoklasnimrzitelj@reddit

Language isolate doesn't make sense, and even if it did we can't prove it anyway. Best to just joke about stuff like that then actually get into arguments, best of luck to you.

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Any-Consideration470@reddit

Language isolation can be proven by…. Linguists. Seems to me that you’re coping right now, besides when did I ever argue with you in the first place?? Best of luck to you as well.

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Miserable_Sense6950@reddit

No, it's proven by both genetics and linguistics that Albanians are from the Balkans. "We don't really know guys, it could be ANYTHING" is a sly way Serbs like you try to deny the evidence while trying to sound reasonable. Instead of outright denying it you try to say it's unknowable.

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Observe_Report_@reddit

This sounds about right, hiding in the mountains and herding for the most part.

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Warlord10@reddit

I also believe this. I believe that a significant portion of Dardanians then moved Eastward and absorbed what was left of the coastal Illyrians.

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SnooSuggestions4926@reddit

idk but historians and linguisticians think so but our neighbors are more focused on theories why we are not so it already feels like a politically influenced question

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Dardan_Gashi@reddit

The only thing that really makes sense (or makes you scratch your head) is that albanians are very unique, they have 0 connection to anyone, and they are mentioned in centuries after the perishing of Illyria. Another coincidence is that we don't know may graveyards of illyrians to get to know their dna, so they are in the same haplogroups with greeks, guess whose dna is in the same haplogroups with greeks? I get it all of you guys being suspicious, but the best you can do is shush because no other theory could explain albanian ancestry

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panzgap@reddit

Isn’t calling anything Illyrian by itself already flawed at its core? Wasn’t it a Greco-Roman generalisation of the people roughly in the Western Balkans? Wouldn’t a way better hypothesis be tracing Paleo-Balkan ancestry, and not just grouping every tribe deemed Illyrian as such and then forcing that identity into modern nationhood like late 19th century intellectuals? The so called Illyrians gain and lose a tribe every decade at this point, I don’t get why clinging on to them is considered relevant in a scholarly context at all now.

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FlatAssembler@reddit (OP)

Look, there was an Indo-European language spoken in modern-day Croatia before the Romans. That language is, rightly or wrongly, called Illyrian. The question is whether it belonged to the centum or the satem branch of Indo-European languages. Most linguists think it was a satem language and that the toponyms such as Osseriatis (supposedly meaning "lake", the same root as Croatian "jezero") and Birziminium (supposedly meaning "fortress", from the same root as German "Burg") prove that. I think that notion is false and that there are at least as many toponyms which are convincingly explained only under the assumption that Illyrian was centum. "Curicum" is, in my opinion, the most convincing example of such a toponym.

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panzgap@reddit

We don’t know if it was a single language or many.

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FlatAssembler@reddit (OP)

Good question, actually. I think we know it was a single language because of the repetition of same or similar elements in some meaning. More specifically, the k-r pattern in the Croatian river names. Krka, Korana, Krapina, Kravarščica, Krbavica, and two rivers named Karašica. Basic information theory teaches us that the p-value of that pattern is somewhere between 1/300 and 1/17. That pattern is statistically significant, so the Illyrian language was most likely a single language. See this video in Latin with English slides for more information: https://youtu.be/2VRH4e-Us_w

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zotiponce@reddit

“How plausible does it seem to you the notion that albanians are linguistic descendants of illyrians?”

I don’t know know ask the historians, linguists, and archaeologists

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Eraserguy@reddit

Yeah except that basically only Albanians ones support it. Linguistically they didn't speak albanian, genetically they weren't albanian, and culturally they weren't albanian. If you have any actual resources to the contrary then please do share

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Observe_Report_@reddit

Just say it! Say it loud! Caucasian Albania!

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Realistic-Fish942@reddit

But isnt word Albania only ever registered on caucasus? There is region called albania there even today

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Observe_Report_@reddit

Oh please! Ridiculous!

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Normal-Avocado99@reddit

Ragebaiting is equal to attentionwhoring

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TickED69@reddit

Authority can be wrong though, especially when this has strong political importance today.

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FlatAssembler@reddit (OP)

I mean, it should not have political importance. Genocide is not justified by anything, much less by something that happened more than a thousand years ago.

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saturdaybinge@reddit

I don’t know know ask the historians, linguists, and archaeologists

Don’t worry, this sub is full of those. Especially after a drink

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Royal_Association750@reddit

We are originally from south east Europe we are natives of these lands except the Greeks all of y’all are (recent)migrants simple as that I don’t know why y’all always have these complexes trying to put us down this entire sub is such a slav circle je*k it’s unbelievable. We are natives of these lands and that’s that and hopefully we’ll find out more and more in the future so these stupid post can finally stop

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DardanianGOD@reddit

This topic comes every other minute. Logically, if not us, then who? Slavs? They arrived in the balkans a minute ago in historical terms. Sit this down.

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HeyVeddy@reddit

"If not us, then who?" Is not the way this is done

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Mertiri@reddit

But OP post is? Highest serb IQ.

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Klarkinsov@reddit

OP is a Croat btw.

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FlatAssembler@reddit (OP)

Why does it matter, though?

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Klarkinsov@reddit

It doesn't. The previous commentator thought that the OP was a Serb so I corrected him.

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FlatAssembler@reddit (OP)

I said, "Politics aside". Besides, how is using arguments similar to those which are used in actual historical linguistic circles a sign of a low IQ?

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brickne3@reddit

You're dreaming if you think historical linguisrixs looks anything like this ridiculous post.

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FlatAssembler@reddit (OP)

No, I am not. I am not only reading papers about historical linguistics, I am also publishing them. The most recent one is "Etimologija Karašica", published in 2022 in Valpovački Godišnjak and Regionalne Studije.

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HeyVeddy@reddit

No lol, op isn't either unfortunately lmao

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Eraserguy@reddit

What a stupid thing to say lol. I find it hard to belive an intelligent human typed that and thought it made sense

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AcaHyperblau@reddit

"If not us then who?"

No one, Illyrians were fully assimilated into the Roman Empire around the 3rd century BC, way before Serbs were mentioned and way, way before Albanians were mentioned. It is way more complicated than just a "If it ain't the Slavs, then it must be us!!!"

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R9281@reddit

So your best explanation is that we teleported there then. Good job. 👍🏻

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AcaHyperblau@reddit

Wait till bro hears about migrations.

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nevrmindmusic@reddit

It's called being fashionably late 😎

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iheartloud420@reddit

How is 1400 years a minute ago in historical terms lmao, youre saying it as if we came in 19th century. And you also have to consider that just because you live there doesnt mean youre related to people that lived there thousands of years ago, for which there are many examples all around the world

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Unable_Might_5097@reddit

I respect you for accepting that your people came 1400 years ago but why do so many serbs not accept that and always say they are native to these lands. Is the slavic migration taught in schools in Serbia or are these people just dumb nationalists? Always wondered

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iheartloud420@reddit

Yes slavic migration is taught but you also have to consider that serbs arent pure slavs either, we are mixed between slavs and whatever people inhabited balkans before slavs came as it is pretty clear from our dna and even appearance when you compare us to other slavs

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iheartloud420@reddit

Yes slavic migration is taught but some people believe anything taught in schools about how slavs came here is propaganda and similar. Some even say serbs arent slavs but slavs are serbs lol. But you also have to consider that serbs arent pure slavs either, we are mixed between slavs and whatever people inhabited balkans before slavs came as it is pretty clear from our dna and even appearance when you compare us to other slavs.

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Mysterious_Contact_2@reddit

Like the turks to anatolia yesterda right?

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Lord_TachankaCro@reddit

We'll never know because Illyrians didn't write

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FlatAssembler@reddit (OP)

Most likely, they did. That is, they did if you consider Messapian to be a dialect of Illyrian. There are around 300 inscriptions in the Messapian language in southern Italy. They are written in the Greek alphabet. And, while we don't understand them fully, the only evidence we have suggests that it was a centum language. "Klauhi" probably meant (and is cognate to) "listen", coming from *kjlew.

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StamatisTzantopoulos@reddit

They named the island 'Krk'? What did vowels ever did to them??

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FlatAssembler@reddit (OP)

Well, I don't know. The expected reflex of "Curicum" in modern Croatian is either *Krak or *Krac, right? *Krak if you assume the Third Slavic Palatalization occurred before the 7th century (when Croatians got to their current homeland), and *Krac if you assume it occurred after the 7th century. There is no consensus on when the Third Slavic Palatalization occurred.

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Fear_mor@reddit

Albanian isn’t satem though, it has a triple reflex of the PIE velar consonants

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FlatAssembler@reddit (OP)

But like I've said elsewhere, once you look at the actual sound changes in Albanian, it seems less like Albanian is descended from Illyrian, rather than more. One of the most prominent sound changes in Albanian is the change from 's' to 'gj'. There is no trace of that in the toponyms. Plenty of Croatian toponyms come from the root *ser (to flow) without that change. The ancient name for the river Bednja, for example, was Ser-ap-ia. And if we consider Messapian to be Illyrian, the ancient name for the salt marsh Salpi in Apulia was no less than Sal-ap-ia. "Sal", of course, coming from the root *seh2l (salt).

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nevrmindmusic@reddit

And which other languages have that?

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MMortein@reddit

Krk was inhabited by Liburni tribe, which was most likely a seperate ethnic group from the Illirians surrounding them

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HerrKaiserton@reddit

Are Albanians by DNA much closer to other Indo-Europeans,like the Thracians or Dacians {and their descendants} than others? If so,not likely. If not? Almost definitely not

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bleta_punetore@reddit

Well, let's put it like this. Wherever Albanians come from, all sane enough historians, linguists and archeologists do agree that Albanians (and Albanian as a language) are a Paleo Balkan people, and were not catapulted on the shores of the western part of the peninsula by some kind of magic, or a helicopter.

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Observe_Report_@reddit

That’s it, thanks. All this obsession with Illyrians is strange. Illyrians didn’t even know they were Illyrian in many cases. I’m certain some Albanians alive today are descendants of Illyrian’s, but I guarantee many southern Albanians are descendants of Greeks and vice versa. Just stop it, Albanians have been around in the Balkans for a long time, they didn’t come from the Caucuses.

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Fine-Ear-8103@reddit

Centum and satem argument doesnt mean much considering that albanian language is most likely a heavily satemized centum language.

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DekadentniTehnolog@reddit

I have few minutes left before leaving to work. I see Illyrians like Indians. They were people some related some not in the roman province of Illyria. Now you see unified modern india is also a federation of states unified over a religion and customs/tradition but each state has different language. Also some are related some are not. Also migration of people is bot a new thing. Just like we have minorities in our modern states it is bot unlikely that some different tribes migrated to Illyria and had diverse linguistic pockets.

Just the other day I asked on this sub some albanians about latin words in their language. Since roman presence was here for so long it is much more plausible explanation that they are descendants of illyrians where full assimilation did not take place like it did in vlachs/aromanians and population of dalmatian cities.

For the OP the last speaker of latin dalamtian language has lived on Krk.

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vukgav@reddit

I always wonder what the purpose of this kind of speculation is. To prove or disprove that someone was here before or after someone else? Why does it matter?

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ippleing@reddit

For real, who gives a f#ck?

These trolls are the kindling keeping the fire of division stoked.

If these fools would go away, we would be 1 step closer to a unified balkan zone.

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FlatAssembler@reddit (OP)

Because, in minds of some war-mongerers, one who has been there for longer has exclusive right to that territory.

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vukgav@reddit

Precisely. And this type of post does nothing but fuel the fires of nationalism.

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FlatAssembler@reddit (OP)

Listen, I don't think the discussion of whether Illyrian was centum or satem is actually politically sensitive. Or, if it is, then it shouldn't be. We should not be preventing discussions about evolution because creationists or Lysenkoists might find them offensive.

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vukgav@reddit

In principle, I agree with you. But I don't think anyone is "offended" by theory of evolution or by Balkan linguistics.

However, I think your post is done in bad faith.

First of all, you post something you call "a meme" when you should know what a meme is, since you're on Reddit - that is clearly not a meme.

Secondly, you start by saying "politics aside", when you damn well know this type of question is very much politically charged. Linguistics in the Balkans is not neutral, and far too often it gets weaponized by nationalists. You're aware of that, and yet you decide to make a post that, objectively speaking, contributes in absolutely no constructive way to what might otherwise be an interesting debate. You're either very naive, or just trolling.

And thirdly, most importantly, for someone who seems to have an interest in ancient languages judging by your post history, you should very well know that any connection between ancient Illyrians and Albanians is complex, nuanced, and in this chain of possible ties between the two the linguistic aspect is the weakest. Not because it isn't plausible or possible, but because so little of the ancient Illyrian language remains that the evidence is inconclusive. It is, essentially, impossible to give a "yes" or "no" answer.

So yeah, you're basically asking "do you think this is possible?", framing it as a yes/no question and based on a single fragment of cherry-picked evidence. This makes me question your motives: no matter how much you try to disguise them behind intellectualism, I don't think they boil down to actual intellectual honesty.

If your aim was genuine inquiry, you wouldn't remove all the context, frame it in a binary "yes/ no" way, cherry-pick evidence, and call it a "meme". That's not how you handle topics where the evidence is fragmentary, nuanced, the subject matter complex and broad, and the research is generally loaded with political nationalism and bias of all kinds...

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FlatAssembler@reddit (OP)

Look, maybe I am a bit naive, but hasn't it occurred to you that perhaps there is a scientifically rigorous answer as to whether Illyrian was centum or satem, it's just that our biases (nationalistic...) prevent us from seeing that answer? In my paper "Etimologija Karašica", I am arguing that it can be calculated using basic information theory (collision entropy and birthday paradox) that the p-value of this k-r pattern in the Croatian river names (Krka, Korana, Krapina, Krbavica, Kravarščica, and two rivers named Karašica) is somewhere between 1/300 and 1/17. That probably means there was a word *karr~kurr in Illyrian meaning "to flow", and it probably comes from *kjers (to run/horse).

What if something close to that is correct, but we just aren't seeing it because, well, political and other biases?

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DaliVinciBey@reddit

oh shit you're that guy from the linguistics discord. lmao. dude you've already been proven wrong stop pushing your weird theory lmao

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FlatAssembler@reddit (OP)

Objectively speaking, trying to make a science without mathematics is what's weird. To somebody from hard sciences, my theory will sound a lot less weird than mainstream onomastics.

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Eraserguy@reddit

Its kinda the basis behind Albanian nationalism

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IAMTHAT9@reddit

Nothing indeed, just bs propaganda and agenda pushing from these trolls.

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FlatAssembler@reddit (OP)

Excuse me. I say "If Illyrian was a centum language, 'Curicum' can perhaps be read as 'northern wind'.", and you say "Shame on you! You are spreading nationalist propaganda! You are pushing an agenda!". How does that make sense? To somebody unfamiliar with Balkan politics, you sound absolutely crazy. To somebody familiar with it, you sound like somebody engaging in tribalistic thinking at its worst.

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Substratas@reddit

Illyrians were speaking different languages.

The one extinct language Albanian appears to share a many similarities with the Messapic language. The rest idk.

Messapians, despite being from what is now Italy, migrated to Salento from the Western Balkans between 1700-1400 B.C.

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DaliVinciBey@reddit

centum-satem isn't a real thing anymore, some languages are mixed and there's nothing stopping a language from becoming satem in an estimated 3000-ish years of unrecorded history.

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FlatAssembler@reddit (OP)

Actually there is something stoppibg a centum language from becoming satem: the fact that the sound change has no memory.

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DaliVinciBey@reddit

?

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FlatAssembler@reddit (OP)

Sound change has no memory: Sound change does not discriminate between the sources of a sound. If a previous sound change causes X,Y > Y (features X and Y merge as Y), a new one cannot affect only an original X.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sound_change

In centum languages, 'kj' and 'k' already merged, so a centum language cannot become a satem language. There can be no sound change only affecting original 'kj'.

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Shone_Shvaboslovac@reddit

Look, I'm not even Albanian, but... what the fuck else is Albanian supposed to be? It's not even remotely close to Greek or Slavic, and the admittedly massive Latin elements are obviously borrowings and it's filled with, so the only logical possibility for its origin is some kind of Paleobalkanic remnant, and Illyrian is a heck of a lot closer, geographically speaking than Dacian or Thracian, or even Phrygian, and we'd expect a descendent of Phrygian to be a lot more akin to Greek, at any rate.

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AdelphicHitter4514@reddit

Cur means ass in Romanian, so...

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xperio28@reddit

It means dick in Bulgarian, we truly are homies

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shadowdance55@reddit

The problem here is that it would not have been named in Illyrian; the native language of that area was Liburnian, which was quite different.

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cosmic_joke420@reddit

I am 85% sure Illyrian language is centum.

Since ot originates from Yamnaya. Greek is centum language and Armenian is satem, but with centum archaic expressions; so its started as centum, but it had satemization from Indo-Aryans like Persians and Medes.

What do u guys think?

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IAMTHAT9@reddit

Just ask fukin chatgpd or something with these dumb bait questions 🤡

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FlatAssembler@reddit (OP)

Why is it dumb? Those are the types of arguments usually used in historical linguistics, aren't they?

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brickne3@reddit

No. They're actually not. Like... maybe actually take a class on historical linguistics because... this is not even close.

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Admirable-Bit-9051@reddit

Burned! LOL

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FlatAssembler@reddit (OP)

maybe actually take a class on historical linguistics

I've done something better. I've published a paper in two peer-reviewed journals: Regionalne Studije and Valpovački Godišnjak. The paper is called "Etimologija Karašica", and it was published in 2022. I've also recently made a YouTube video in Latin about it: https://youtu.be/2VRH4e-Us_w

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Fear_mor@reddit

Bacas biserje pred svinje brate, reddit lingvisti hobisti znaju sve jel nisi cuo?

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FlatAssembler@reddit (OP)

I am also a hobbyist, I am actually a computer engineer. Anyway, what do you think about my video?

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MSenpai206@reddit

Albanians have no connection to the Illyrians, the Illyrians left no text or any linguistic mark anywhere, the only reason the Albanians claim to be them is to cope with their lack of national identity.

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DescriptionLow5071@reddit

I rather think that the Albanians are Thracs. The Illyrians have merged into the Yugoslavs. The Illyrians were a large people. I think they inherited the language. Genetically they are rather not. Genetics and language are not the same. The Swiss are also the descendants of the Celts, but they speak a Germanic language only as an example.

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DK_Aconpli_Town_54@reddit

>Genetically they are rather not

Why do you think this?

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DescriptionLow5071@reddit

Because it has now been proven that they are more likely to listen to the Thracian substrate than the Illyrian. On the other hand, the Croats and Bosniaks are rather Illyrian from a Bethic point of view.

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NoInfluence5747@reddit

Here's a study that contradicts you:

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/371376439_Ancient_DNA_reveals_the_origins_of_the_Albanians

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NoInfluence5747@reddit

Most scholars actually agree that Albanian is either part of the same language family as Illyrian or a descendant of it. Modern scholarly work also shows Albanians are genetically closest to Illyrians.

Example: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/371376439_Ancient_DNA_reveals_the_origins_of_the_Albanians

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NoInfluence5747@reddit

The problem with your logic is that there are no Illyrian words documented. All Illyrian words are just core Albanian words reconstructed back to PIE. So when you're trying to explain a toponym with a meaningful Illyrian word, you've already presupossed its Albanian nature, as the word is just a PIE reconstruction of Albanian.

If a place name doesn't match with a proto-Albanian satem (sometimes called Illyrian) then it's just not Illyrian.

So it's much more probable that the name of the place is not Illyrian.

Scholars are not sure if Messapic (part of the Albanian langauge group) was centum or satem either, same with Illyrian which was either part of the group or the ancestor of the two

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Maxsmart52@reddit

I think Shakespeare intended the illyrians to be fictional

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SolivagantWalker@reddit

I mean some genetic markers show predominance that they lean more to Illyrian type then us.. Other theories about the history/linguistics are not really concrete, to be exact 'proof' is only speculated, after all illiarians are from the bronze-age .... There are some correlation with Messapic language(On Italy) that is grouped together with Albanian, that is known as some kind of dialect of indo-european/paleo-balkan that comes before Latin. Maybe few words do overlap, maybe more then few. There is no certainty regarding the true "origins" of Albanian. If scholars and historians would 100% agree with it world-wide this convo./discussion would be over long time ago...

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ovomijepetiprofilotp@reddit

I really think that genuinely no other nation/people other than albanians believe/teach/learn that albanians are illyrians.