Albanian is known within historical linguistics as a case of a survival language through many periods of foreign rule who desperately tried to suppress it, especially during the Ottoman rule. However now, some wild theories, are suggesting that Albanian lost more than 90% of its original vocabulary in favour of the Latin, Greek, Slavic, Italian and Turkish loanwords. In other words, these theories [which have an obscure origin and malicious intentions fueled from the hate towards distinct Albanian culture, which many have tried to erase from the face of earth] claim Albanian language to be just a mechanical mixture of the foreign loanwords. How is this really objectively possible, should be answered by the authors of this theory, because no language could work as a whole, if its lexicon patches on here and there to the original one, presumably replacing it completely. A language is like a living organism, it breathes through the original lexicon, which could replace few of its lexes with loanwords, but not on its vital elements, which make the whole organism functioning.
Some of the critical presumed loanwords, are the “ maritime terms “ like “fish”, “ship” and “boat”, a thesis presented by the Bulgarian linguist Georgiev, intending “to prove” that the original home of the Albanians, was not the Adriatic and Ionian Sea. So, according this logics, Albanian was missing a word like “fish”, and had to borrow it from latin “piscis”, basically assuming that fishes can grow only in Adriatic and Ionian Sea, and this territory was designated only for the Latin and Greek speakers.
The Adriatic coast was not part of the primitive home of the Albanians, because the maritime terminology of Albanian is not their own, but is borrowed from different languages.
By saying this Georgiev, wants to impose the idea that somehow, Albanians when they first appeared in the Adriatic coast, had to borrow the word “fish”, not from the Illyrians and Epirotes, who logically must have had their own expression for this word, but from Latins, cancelling the logical connection Albanians normally must have had with the original known old inhabitants of their land, Illyrians and Epirotes.
But to accept such a thesis, you have to accept events happening to the limits of the impossibility. To accept this, you have to accept, Albanian must have been missing some basic terminologies, ( such as fish, ship or boat,) which means their fathers and their forefathers, and going back to the Proto-Albanian, were unaware about these things, because otherwise they had no reason to replace their own terminology, with that of some strangers. It seems like, entire generations of Albanians, since they were secluded from the other cultures, were willingly to put themselves on hold to name the “fish”, expecting to borrow something of a foreign. Even if they had a name for the fish, just waiting, to dump it away and borrow a new word, from the “people near the sea”, who just happened to be not the Illyrians and Epirotes(assuming they were not the Albanians themselves) but the Latins. To accept this, you have to assume, Albanians, from wherever they started(The Carpathians?) the journey towards the Adriatic Sea, were jumping, some vast distance, from one hill peak to another hill peak, or from a mountain peak to another mountain peak, almost willingly avoiding any hydro source, like lakes, ponds and rivers, which naturally contain fishes in abundance, which we all know are proven to be one of the main food sources for the entire humanity, regardless of the terrain, mountainous or seacoast. If this journey really had occurred, Albanians certainly couldn’t avoid intersecting their path to the numerous rivers, flowing all over the earth, and originating especially at the mountains. Also it’s very reasonable to assume, they were using them, to traverse the difficult mountainous terrain, put forward by this theory to be the very home of the Albanian people, possibly since the Proto-Albanian. Saying this, it’s an absurdity, we are forced to assume also, fishes found in those waters, were missed somehow from the Albanian attention, or if not, which seems a better plausible scenario, not considering a food source, and therefore ignoring to name them, until the moment they decided to enter to a contact with Latins the Greeks or Slavic people. To accept such a thesis, not only you are obliged to accept, the Albanian lexicon, was containing some big holes, or at least flabbily, in terms of established terminology like “fish”(which as a matter of facts, can easily be found even at the most mountainous places), or for object like boats, which evidently have been used, by even the most primitive people, since the beginning of time, you must accept, that Albanians selectively borrowed these terminology, from cultures which belong to historical periods, so different in time, for not only decades but centuries and millennia, separate them from each-other. Even if we accept, old Albanians were coming from Carpathian Mountains, and for some reason, they had never seen a boat or a fish in their lifetime or previous generations, we have to accept another not convincing idea, that Albanians met the Latins, Greeks and Slavics before meeting the Illyrians who are a well-known seaman people. But this hypothesis, would force us to accept, the process of establishment of Albanians, in the Illyrian’s land, must have had an end result a quick displacement of the Illyrians and Epirotans, which means a quick disappearance for them and replacement of them from Albanians. But this event would have had an un-ignorable impact in the history, especially into the attentive chronicans eyes, of Latin, Greek and Slavic, from whom Albanians presumably borrowed these terminologies. It would have been immediately registered, in their chronicles such event where, Albanians quickly replaced the Illyrians, evidently by exterminating them. But apparently that was not the case, and this means only 3 possible scenarios:
1.
Albanians
gradually replaced the Illyrians and Epirotes
This assumption would have dropped the theory entirely in the first place, because if Albanians for some reasons have had no maritime lexicon built in on their language, they easily could have had that acquired from Illyrian and Epirotes, which were still among them, before they contacting on their path toward the seacoast, “strangers” like Latins, Greeks or Slavics who generally speaking had not liked that much the mountains where Albanians approached from. The next possible scenario was:
2.
Albanians have replaced an intermediate
post-Illyrian population.
not only the history doesn’t recognise a mysterious people like this, but like in the Illyrian case, it’s nowhere to be found an event of that dramatic proportion, which is the immediate displacement and replacement of whatever nation by another nation, in our case Albanians
Until that evidence is found, there is only one apparent possibility:
3.
ALBANIANS
TO BE THE DESCENDANDS OF the ILLYRIAN AND EPIROTES
A thesis, to a range of a fact, which describes in every possible way, the “silent” and “traceless” disappearance of the iliro-epirotic people. Truth to be told, the name Epirotic, is the very name, which accompanies the Albanians along their known history, since their name firstly been mentioned. That name is the synonym for the name Alban-ian, and as ironically as it could sound, in vicinity of the Adriatic –Ionian Sea.
The theory, that Albanians have a poor vocabulary, in regards to maritime terminology, is poor itself, especially since it is based on the fact that only 3 words of Albanian language, are similar to those cognates in Latin, Greek or Slavic, and seems to be quite impossible as we fairly have reasoned above. Would be quite reasonable, to accept that all 3 languages, Latin Greek and Slavic, are shown unequivocally to be cultivated language, which disperse in Mediterranean for liturgical, trade and education reasons, to have borrowed, a big deal of loanwords, from the only non-religious big nation, of all Mediterranean, during pre-historic times, a period of time, which is hidden from our eyes, for political reasons.
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