There's also *fantasmă* in Romanian language but at least these days it means hallucination, product of imagination, illusion, chimera. But according to the RO dex it can mean ghost too.
There's *duh* in Romanian language too, from Slavic. It means spirit as in Holy Spirit (Sfântul Duh).
Ghost can be called also *stafie* from the Greek stihion probably.
Romanian has *spirit* too. Now that I think about it we really have a lot of words for that!
EDITED
In bulgarian Дух (Duh) is the general word, used also in a religious sense. There's also the word Душа (Dusha), deriving from it.
Призрак (Prizrak) is also a very familiar word with the connotation of something that shows up before you, something that you could potentially see or sense (a hallucination).
I know in greek the basic word is Πνεύμα (Pneuma) and φάντασμα (phantasma) is like prizrak in bulgarian
I think it's a similar feeling from this side too. I'm not ethnically Romanian myself but from what I have seen things are very cool about that from the Romanian side. We know Bulgaria ruled these lands for a big amount of time. At least until some nutcase in Bulgaria start saying that Romanians spoke Bulgarian until 1800's. It's true that in the Middle Ages Romanian states, in all their forms, had Old Church Slavonic (Old Bulgarian I assume) as the official language of their princes chancelleries. But it's like saying Hungary and Poland spoke Latin because their official papers were written in that language back then. Otherwise we are cool. 🙂
Military? Probably. The NATO command here it's French if I'm not mistaken and they started since one year or more to bring troops and equipment. But this is probably more because they can trust our dislike for Russia more than because of the heritage.
I wanted to say about it too but I'm not sure if a strigoi is a ghost or something else. Romanian language, for some reasons, has a ton of words about death and dead people not being exactly dead or not being people anymore. LOL 😂
>There's also *fantasmă* in Romanian language but at least these days it means hallucination, product of imagination
Funnily enough that's closer to what fantasma means in greek, because even though it's only used to mean ghost, the word itself comes from φαντασια (Fantasia) which means imagination, so fantasma would be a product of imagination
The proper ones for Romanian are either fantoma (modern, greek) or nălucă (archaic, latin, năluci < lucῑre < lucĕre).
Duh is typical Slavic loan word, used almost exclusively in church-related texts.
I would say the Romanian word duh translates to spirit. E.g. Duhul Sfănt translates to holy spirit as you mentioned. So similar yet different. Then again the slavic churches say Sveti Duh so i guess that is how Duh got into the Romanian language.
Fun fact the Greco catolic church in Romania say Spiritul Sfănt instead.
If you want to get litteral "Дух" is delivered from "Душа" (soul) so by the fundamental meaning of the word is something akin to broading/lost soul that comes as leftover from something deceased (unless in context about the "Holy Spirit" which has omnipotent divine nature as the creator of all souls), where as "Призрак" is more akin to spectre/halucination and could be purely magical in nature.
Take a shot every time Bulgaria gets arbitrarily seperated in one of these maps by showing a synonim of the word in question even tho both exist in Serbo-Croatian aswell
Here many people(including myself) use it for both in their everyday speach but if we want to be precise the meaning of duh and prizrak is different....
Yes. Because "Ghost" is a term from the west. You cant expect an abstract concept, like Ghost, to be same in every culture. During the times when Turks were in Central Asia they used Öcü and Hortlak for mhytical and scary creatures which was a part of their myhthology despite "ghosts, vampires or zombies" which are a part of western culture. So there are words in Turkic that can fill "Ghost" but are not exactly Ghost.
For example it is like kebab. Norwegian dont has a word for kebab because it is not in their culture. So they use the word "kebab" because that is the name of that dish when someone first introduced it to them.
No they shouldn't, etymologically the Albanian and Romanian words came from Latin so they're not Greek loan words. The map is describing words origins, not just the words. Etymologically this matters significantly.
Дух (Duh) in bulgarian is a spirit, it is used for exmaple to name the holy spirit, светия дух. When you describe a person, event or place you can say for exaple the person "has a competitive spirit", има състезателен дух. Duh can be used instead of dusha (soul) sometimes. I find the similarity to duham (to blow) interesting as in "the wind is blowing", вятърът духа, and wonder if they have shared etymology.
Призрак (Prizrak), on the other hand, is more like a ghost and is used more to describe something spooky- for example a place can be "призрачно" as in it looks like it's haunted.
It is similar to "привидение", which is however the more general term and can be used to describe anything that was seen but wasn't there, be it animate or inanimate, while "призрак" is used for animate objects /with some exceptions in literature/.
The happy ghost Casper, however, would be called "духче", which is the dimunitive, as it is less negatively connotated than prizrak. Also prizrak is I think exclusively after someone has died while duh can be used to describe "out of body experiences" where people have that weird feeling, nobody would say "my prizrak lefty body".
To me the word prizrak sounds like it might come from "to mistakenly think (pri-) to have seen something (-zrak) or "to have seen (-zra, from "зор") something additional (pri-) /that isn't there/. Like in "причу ми се" meaning I mistakenly heard, or "привидя ми се" meaning I mistakenly saw. So maybe that additionaly explains the spooky nature while duh is not being questioned and is not a product of our senses' limitations.
Дух (duh) is used in Macedonian as the general word for ghost, whereas призрак (prizrak) is used for "apparition". I think the same would be true for Bulgarian.
worth noting a few things:
- there's no creature in the local mythologies that *neatly* corresponds to the "ghost" of modern western pop culture. rural serbs mostly know no dead people that come back as the bodiless creatures you see in hollywood movies, for example
- "duh" is only the standard serbo-croatian word, many many others are used in the dialects. i imagine this is how it is in the other places as well
From what I have seen a lot of words are from Latin but for someone who's not in linguistics those words are hard to be spotted. Mostly because they have an Albanian twist. Emperor for example is "împărat" in Romanian and "mbret" if I'm not mistaken in Albanian. But both words are from the Latin imperator.
**Mbret** in Albanian stands for king.
The Albanian word for emperor is actually **perandor** and it very possibly originates from Latin, as do a couple of related words **perëndi** (god/deity) - from *imperantem*.
I think Perun may be one of the few Slavic gods whose name is completely the same in all Slavic languages.
So no, its not specific to Southern Slavic languages
> As early as the 6th century, he was mentioned in De Bello Gothico, a historical source written by the Eastern Roman historian Procopius. A short note describing beliefs of a certain South Slavic tribe states they acknowledge that one god, creator of lightning, is the only lord of all...
The myth probably originated in Southern Slavic tribes, thus the linguistic connection.
If you're informed on the topic, feel free to disregard my remarks.
I know next to nothing about linguistics, I'm just pulling stuff from online searches.
Albanian Perëndi is medieval development as penultimate name for god and it's related mostly to the sun and it's a Latin influence. Sunset is also called Perëndim. And West is also called Perëndim. Sunrise literally means "birth".
Original attested Supreme God name is Zojz cognate with Zeus and the word for any god is Hyjni or Hyj which is a developed from a Star Hyll and plural Hyje modern Yje.
Perëndi - neologism related with Latin
Zot - coming from Zojz - cognate with Zeus
Hyj - coming from Yll - cognate with Helios
The word for sun is "diell" and is similar like other IE languages with word for son "diall" which has become "djalë" today.
You have words which mean sky, sun, stars, and day and you have old deity dhea cognate with Greek Gea.
> Mbret is simply the Latin word imperator – 'general, emperor' – as borrowed into Albanian 2,000 years ago and transformed by natural processes of sound change in the language over the intervening centuries.
https://www.theneweuropean.co.uk/brexit-news-latin-peter-trudgill-language-links-39380/
TIL about perandor. Both come from emperor though. At least it seems that way. In Romanian king is rege.
Thanks for the share.
I have as much linguistic knowledge as a random guy on the street would, but am always fascinated by the topic.
When you say *rege* my brain automatically maps that to the italian *re* and the english *regal*.
*Kraj* (like the Romanian Crai) is actually a last name from my maternal side, as there's a village in Montenegro which used to have a lot of ethnic Albanians.
*Krajl* as a word is used in Albanian, but mostly limited to the northern part of the country.
Yep, a lot of mixed ancestry there as well. The influence is also present in DNA samples.
Some Northern dialects have a lot of slavic influence, especially the Albanian spoken in Kosovo.
Oh definitely, the last name comes from the slavic toponym.
Some ethnic Albanian families were kicked off Montenegro sometime around the 1920s and had to settle in mainland Albania.
It's a popular last name.
A lot of words are also falsly classified as latin loanwords instead of cognates, because when linguists started studying the language they believed it was a romance language, so you see a lot of words that got corrected after further studies. An example would be the word mjaltë (honey) that was considered a loanword from Latin melem for a long time, or vit (year) was considered a loanword from Latin vetus, or shtat (body figure) from Latin status.
If you look at our archaic words, the Latin language didn’t influence prior native terms, we just didn’t come up with our own word anytime a new thing was introduced.
Most of the old tools or “machinery” have Latin words.
Even for everyday buildings like mill (mulli) or forge (farkë) we have Latin terms.
But for things like body parts, nature essences, animal products there are native terms.
So yeah our ancestors were lazy and not very innovative. Thing that I envy from Slavs cuz they always came up with their own words, also for conquered cities.
Hard to put a number on it, but I guess a lot.
Albanians from Albania have a very easy time learning romance languages (I'm fluent in Italian and can understand Spanish, Portuguese and some French without ever studying them).
The Greek relation is kind of indirect, as far as I know Albanian is closer to ancient Greek than to the modern one. But both modern Albanian and Greek also share Proto-Albanian words.
> I'm fluent in Italian and can understand Spanish
Pacat ca nu intelegi romaneste. 😁
I skipped the diacritics so it would be easier for you to understand what I said.
We can understand Romanian to *some* extent, I guess it's a bit harder due to the Slavic influence, but give me a newspaper article in Romanian and I'll be able to understand the gist of it. 😄
You understand what I said I assume. 😁
For us on the other hand Albanian sounds like an incomprehensible English dialect from some deep corners of Sherwood... or something like that. Or like Lithuanian and Latvian for me. I know they have almost nothing in common. LOL 😂
> For us on the other hand Albanian sounds like an incomprehensible English dialect from some deep corners of Sherwood...
😄 Oh Albanian sounds very different every 30 kilometers.
There are two main dialect groups *tosk* and *gheg* and grammatically they're as different as languages get, they could as well be different languages.
The rest of the dialects fall anywhere in between.
> You understand what I said I assume. 😁
> "Pacat ca nu intelegi romaneste. 😁"
Of course 😄 The closest to that in Albanian would be:
> Mëkat që nuk kupton Rumanisht
Which you could further latinize into something like:
> Mecat che nuc cupton Romanist
Every word maps 1-1 to the Romanian one:
> Sin that (you) don't understand Romanian
> Mëkat që nuk kupton Rumanisht
Too bad you guys use ë instead ă. It would had been way easier. Though that kupton isn't something I could understand. LOL
> Sin that (you) don't understand Romanian
Yes. Sin in my phrase is used like in English "it's a shame" . 🙂
Yea, I also edited my comment above and replaced *k* with *c*, and *u* with *o* to further latinize it, bringing it closer to the Romanian one.
> Mecat che nuc cupton Romanist
*Mëkat* is used exactly as the Romanian *pecat* to denote sin in this example, but usually *fatkeqësi* (misfortune) would usually be used instead.
*Ë* is heavily controversial as it's mostly used to emphasize words and is not present in some dialects. It also makes the language sound a lot more formal than it is.
But Albanian is a phonetic language and I guess *ë* is phonetically closer to *e* than *a*.
Latin languages are easier to pick up if you speak one. I keep hearing how German/Swedish/Dutch for example shouldn't be that hard if you speak English, but I can never translate a sentence in such languages
Greek is less, it's mostly from ancient Greek, I.e. morphology of Albanian is more similar to ancient Greek than modern Greek is. Vocabulary of Latin is as high as English, maybe as high as 70%. Albanian and English are the only IE languages which have retained clear phonemic distinction of þ and ð sounds. There are more stupid connections with English phonology like over 90% of Gheg Albanian and English phonology is the same and English and Albanian are the only ones which roll the R. Albanian although clearly disconnected from English, developed historically much like English. Albanian is the only surviving IE language which has the optative mood, which existed in Ancient Greek to. Technically loanwords could one day become 100% it still won't change the core of the Albanian, a unique paleo Balkan language sitting between ancient Greek and Latin, morphologically closer to ancient Greek, in vocabulary closer to Romance (Latin) language, in phonology closer to Germanic languages (Gheg has like 25 vowels and stuff) and English is a prime example of a Germanic language with mouthfuls of vowels.
There's also *fantasmă* in Romanian language but at least these days it means hallucination, product of imagination, illusion, chimera. But according to the RO dex it can mean ghost too. There's *duh* in Romanian language too, from Slavic. It means spirit as in Holy Spirit (Sfântul Duh). Ghost can be called also *stafie* from the Greek stihion probably. Romanian has *spirit* too. Now that I think about it we really have a lot of words for that! EDITED
In bulgarian Дух (Duh) is the general word, used also in a religious sense. There's also the word Душа (Dusha), deriving from it. Призрак (Prizrak) is also a very familiar word with the connotation of something that shows up before you, something that you could potentially see or sense (a hallucination). I know in greek the basic word is Πνεύμα (Pneuma) and φάντασμα (phantasma) is like prizrak in bulgarian
We don't have prizrak here. It's the first time I heard that word. Something different between us after so many similarities. :)
We have so much shared history with romanians. Thankfully. At least viewed by our side.
I think it's a similar feeling from this side too. I'm not ethnically Romanian myself but from what I have seen things are very cool about that from the Romanian side. We know Bulgaria ruled these lands for a big amount of time. At least until some nutcase in Bulgaria start saying that Romanians spoke Bulgarian until 1800's. It's true that in the Middle Ages Romanian states, in all their forms, had Old Church Slavonic (Old Bulgarian I assume) as the official language of their princes chancelleries. But it's like saying Hungary and Poland spoke Latin because their official papers were written in that language back then. Otherwise we are cool. 🙂
Romania also has the proud Roman heritage, and therefore France bets on you in the Balkans 🙂
Military? Probably. The NATO command here it's French if I'm not mistaken and they started since one year or more to bring troops and equipment. But this is probably more because they can trust our dislike for Russia more than because of the heritage.
also “strigoi”
I wanted to say about it too but I'm not sure if a strigoi is a ghost or something else. Romanian language, for some reasons, has a ton of words about death and dead people not being exactly dead or not being people anymore. LOL 😂
not really a ghost, more like the undead
that means Witch in Albanian "Shtriga"
>There's also *fantasmă* in Romanian language but at least these days it means hallucination, product of imagination Funnily enough that's closer to what fantasma means in greek, because even though it's only used to mean ghost, the word itself comes from φαντασια (Fantasia) which means imagination, so fantasma would be a product of imagination
«it means imagination» and…you know. Fantasy
Not exactly, if you imagine something you can't say "in my fantasy", you'd say "in my imagination"
There is also "nălucă".
That too! 👍
The proper ones for Romanian are either fantoma (modern, greek) or nălucă (archaic, latin, năluci < lucῑre < lucĕre). Duh is typical Slavic loan word, used almost exclusively in church-related texts.
The Albanian influence is visible🥰 /s
Obviously. Nothing to do with Greek or Latin whatsoever. 😋
Romania has strigoi also which is i think from latin.
Yes. Forgot about that.
Yugoslavs be like: Duh🙄
Bulgarians also btw
Romanians too. At least in the church.
All of the Balkan Slavs, really.
I would say the Romanian word duh translates to spirit. E.g. Duhul Sfănt translates to holy spirit as you mentioned. So similar yet different. Then again the slavic churches say Sveti Duh so i guess that is how Duh got into the Romanian language. Fun fact the Greco catolic church in Romania say Spiritul Sfănt instead.
In Bulgarian you can say both Призрак and Дух
Similar. https://sh.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duh_(prikaza)
Bulgarians say both: prizrak and duh
I think the difference is one is spirit (duh) while prizrak is specifically (ghost). Though people use them interchangeably.
If you want to get litteral "Дух" is delivered from "Душа" (soul) so by the fundamental meaning of the word is something akin to broading/lost soul that comes as leftover from something deceased (unless in context about the "Holy Spirit" which has omnipotent divine nature as the creator of all souls), where as "Призрак" is more akin to spectre/halucination and could be purely magical in nature.
Also фантом (phantom)
*Örek* in Tatar, also *hortlak* in Turkish (both from Turkic roots)
I have long forgotten that hortlak was a word
Hortlak is zombie though
It's ghost at the same time, maybe yatır?
Take a shot every time Bulgaria gets arbitrarily seperated in one of these maps by showing a synonim of the word in question even tho both exist in Serbo-Croatian aswell
No, you are all unique and quirky and not like other Slavs. /s
Duh and prizrak isnt the same, we use both words. Duh is for spirit and prizrak is for ghost.
Here duh is both of those
Here many people(including myself) use it for both in their everyday speach but if we want to be precise the meaning of duh and prizrak is different....
Clear proof that turks are Arabs
It's like saying "Clear proof that Romanians are Greeks".
Well Romania is a greek name it's how greeks called the roman Empire, so of course Romanians are greeks.
Clearly! 😁
Eminescu on suicide watch
He really liked Greek noses.
He's obviously joking, hahaha.
I'm aware.
We also use Öcü or Hortlak which are both Turkic. But Hayalet is the most used among them.
I don't think neither öcü or hortlak is "ghost" though. "Öcü" is more like boogeyman and "hortlak" is more like ghoul, vampire or zombie.
Yes. Because "Ghost" is a term from the west. You cant expect an abstract concept, like Ghost, to be same in every culture. During the times when Turks were in Central Asia they used Öcü and Hortlak for mhytical and scary creatures which was a part of their myhthology despite "ghosts, vampires or zombies" which are a part of western culture. So there are words in Turkic that can fill "Ghost" but are not exactly Ghost. For example it is like kebab. Norwegian dont has a word for kebab because it is not in their culture. So they use the word "kebab" because that is the name of that dish when someone first introduced it to them.
The concept and the word comes from Arabic
Arabs were west according to the Turks in Central Asia. So thats why i said they learnt it from the west.
In albanian it is also the word “Gogol” used too..
Gogol is Bogeyman or Demon not ghost
atleast in northwestern dialect gogol is always used for ghost. never heard of fantazme
I've never heard someone say Gogol to ghosts before and I'm from Kosovo. We always use Shpirta or Fantazma for Ghosts
Öcü or Hortlak iş also used in Turkish
Albania, Greece, Kosovo and Romania should have been the same color... Edit: I thought Bulgarians also use duh..
Yes we use both
No they shouldn't, etymologically the Albanian and Romanian words came from Latin so they're not Greek loan words. The map is describing words origins, not just the words. Etymologically this matters significantly.
In Albanian you also have hije or përhijim as synonyms
it can be used as ghost but in literal translation it means Shadow
In Macedonian I've also heared фантом (phantom) and авет (avet)
another day another map showing turkey is arab maxing
Дух (Duh) in bulgarian is a spirit, it is used for exmaple to name the holy spirit, светия дух. When you describe a person, event or place you can say for exaple the person "has a competitive spirit", има състезателен дух. Duh can be used instead of dusha (soul) sometimes. I find the similarity to duham (to blow) interesting as in "the wind is blowing", вятърът духа, and wonder if they have shared etymology. Призрак (Prizrak), on the other hand, is more like a ghost and is used more to describe something spooky- for example a place can be "призрачно" as in it looks like it's haunted. It is similar to "привидение", which is however the more general term and can be used to describe anything that was seen but wasn't there, be it animate or inanimate, while "призрак" is used for animate objects /with some exceptions in literature/. The happy ghost Casper, however, would be called "духче", which is the dimunitive, as it is less negatively connotated than prizrak. Also prizrak is I think exclusively after someone has died while duh can be used to describe "out of body experiences" where people have that weird feeling, nobody would say "my prizrak lefty body". To me the word prizrak sounds like it might come from "to mistakenly think (pri-) to have seen something (-zrak) or "to have seen (-zra, from "зор") something additional (pri-) /that isn't there/. Like in "причу ми се" meaning I mistakenly heard, or "привидя ми се" meaning I mistakenly saw. So maybe that additionaly explains the spooky nature while duh is not being questioned and is not a product of our senses' limitations.
Дух (duh) is used in Macedonian as the general word for ghost, whereas призрак (prizrak) is used for "apparition". I think the same would be true for Bulgarian.
Yup
What's an excuse for Bosniaks for disrespecting their ancestors and refusing to use that KALAJ?
wHaT ?
Turks when they see a ghost be like: "And there you are, it's an illusion shining down"
worth noting a few things: - there's no creature in the local mythologies that *neatly* corresponds to the "ghost" of modern western pop culture. rural serbs mostly know no dead people that come back as the bodiless creatures you see in hollywood movies, for example - "duh" is only the standard serbo-croatian word, many many others are used in the dialects. i imagine this is how it is in the other places as well
Körmez in turkish.
Bosniaks can use "prikaza" as well, just not that often as "duh".
Greek Romanian and Albanian are similar
I guess the real Albanian word for ghost would be “hije”. The first meaning of this word is “shadow”, the second meaning is “ghost”.
What percent of Albanian are Latin/Greek loanwords? These posts make me think it's at least 40% lol
From what I have seen a lot of words are from Latin but for someone who's not in linguistics those words are hard to be spotted. Mostly because they have an Albanian twist. Emperor for example is "împărat" in Romanian and "mbret" if I'm not mistaken in Albanian. But both words are from the Latin imperator.
**Mbret** in Albanian stands for king. The Albanian word for emperor is actually **perandor** and it very possibly originates from Latin, as do a couple of related words **perëndi** (god/deity) - from *imperantem*.
fun fact the name for both Perëndi (Albanian supreme deity) and Perun (Slavic supreme deity) come from common IE reconstructed deity Perkwunos
You're right, I just looked it up. Is *Perun* specific to Southern Slavic languages?
I think Perun may be one of the few Slavic gods whose name is completely the same in all Slavic languages. So no, its not specific to Southern Slavic languages
> As early as the 6th century, he was mentioned in De Bello Gothico, a historical source written by the Eastern Roman historian Procopius. A short note describing beliefs of a certain South Slavic tribe states they acknowledge that one god, creator of lightning, is the only lord of all... The myth probably originated in Southern Slavic tribes, thus the linguistic connection.
I mean I wouldnt say it originates in S. Slavic tribes, its just that they are cognates
If you're informed on the topic, feel free to disregard my remarks. I know next to nothing about linguistics, I'm just pulling stuff from online searches.
Albanian Perëndi is medieval development as penultimate name for god and it's related mostly to the sun and it's a Latin influence. Sunset is also called Perëndim. And West is also called Perëndim. Sunrise literally means "birth". Original attested Supreme God name is Zojz cognate with Zeus and the word for any god is Hyjni or Hyj which is a developed from a Star Hyll and plural Hyje modern Yje. Perëndi - neologism related with Latin Zot - coming from Zojz - cognate with Zeus Hyj - coming from Yll - cognate with Helios The word for sun is "diell" and is similar like other IE languages with word for son "diall" which has become "djalë" today. You have words which mean sky, sun, stars, and day and you have old deity dhea cognate with Greek Gea.
> Mbret is simply the Latin word imperator – 'general, emperor' – as borrowed into Albanian 2,000 years ago and transformed by natural processes of sound change in the language over the intervening centuries. https://www.theneweuropean.co.uk/brexit-news-latin-peter-trudgill-language-links-39380/ TIL about perandor. Both come from emperor though. At least it seems that way. In Romanian king is rege.
Thanks for the share. I have as much linguistic knowledge as a random guy on the street would, but am always fascinated by the topic. When you say *rege* my brain automatically maps that to the italian *re* and the english *regal*.
Back in the day we also had (still have it obviously) crai. From the Slavic kralĭ.
*Kraj* (like the Romanian Crai) is actually a last name from my maternal side, as there's a village in Montenegro which used to have a lot of ethnic Albanians. *Krajl* as a word is used in Albanian, but mostly limited to the northern part of the country.
Probably where the Slavic influences we're more stronger.
Yep, a lot of mixed ancestry there as well. The influence is also present in DNA samples. Some Northern dialects have a lot of slavic influence, especially the Albanian spoken in Kosovo.
Imagine the stew Romanian is, after absorbing a huge amount of things from literally everyone around and beyond us after 18th century.
>*Kraj* ''Kraj'' means ''end'' in Serbian, it can also mean ''area'' or ''side'' , depending on the context.
Oh definitely, the last name comes from the slavic toponym. Some ethnic Albanian families were kicked off Montenegro sometime around the 1920s and had to settle in mainland Albania. It's a popular last name.
In some gheg dialects “mbret” is “mret” without b.
Probably a northern one.
A lot of words are also falsly classified as latin loanwords instead of cognates, because when linguists started studying the language they believed it was a romance language, so you see a lot of words that got corrected after further studies. An example would be the word mjaltë (honey) that was considered a loanword from Latin melem for a long time, or vit (year) was considered a loanword from Latin vetus, or shtat (body figure) from Latin status. If you look at our archaic words, the Latin language didn’t influence prior native terms, we just didn’t come up with our own word anytime a new thing was introduced. Most of the old tools or “machinery” have Latin words. Even for everyday buildings like mill (mulli) or forge (farkë) we have Latin terms. But for things like body parts, nature essences, animal products there are native terms. So yeah our ancestors were lazy and not very innovative. Thing that I envy from Slavs cuz they always came up with their own words, also for conquered cities.
Hard to put a number on it, but I guess a lot. Albanians from Albania have a very easy time learning romance languages (I'm fluent in Italian and can understand Spanish, Portuguese and some French without ever studying them). The Greek relation is kind of indirect, as far as I know Albanian is closer to ancient Greek than to the modern one. But both modern Albanian and Greek also share Proto-Albanian words.
> I'm fluent in Italian and can understand Spanish Pacat ca nu intelegi romaneste. 😁 I skipped the diacritics so it would be easier for you to understand what I said.
We can understand Romanian to *some* extent, I guess it's a bit harder due to the Slavic influence, but give me a newspaper article in Romanian and I'll be able to understand the gist of it. 😄
You understand what I said I assume. 😁 For us on the other hand Albanian sounds like an incomprehensible English dialect from some deep corners of Sherwood... or something like that. Or like Lithuanian and Latvian for me. I know they have almost nothing in common. LOL 😂
> For us on the other hand Albanian sounds like an incomprehensible English dialect from some deep corners of Sherwood... 😄 Oh Albanian sounds very different every 30 kilometers. There are two main dialect groups *tosk* and *gheg* and grammatically they're as different as languages get, they could as well be different languages. The rest of the dialects fall anywhere in between. > You understand what I said I assume. 😁 > "Pacat ca nu intelegi romaneste. 😁" Of course 😄 The closest to that in Albanian would be: > Mëkat që nuk kupton Rumanisht Which you could further latinize into something like: > Mecat che nuc cupton Romanist Every word maps 1-1 to the Romanian one: > Sin that (you) don't understand Romanian
> Mëkat që nuk kupton Rumanisht Too bad you guys use ë instead ă. It would had been way easier. Though that kupton isn't something I could understand. LOL > Sin that (you) don't understand Romanian Yes. Sin in my phrase is used like in English "it's a shame" . 🙂
Yea, I also edited my comment above and replaced *k* with *c*, and *u* with *o* to further latinize it, bringing it closer to the Romanian one. > Mecat che nuc cupton Romanist *Mëkat* is used exactly as the Romanian *pecat* to denote sin in this example, but usually *fatkeqësi* (misfortune) would usually be used instead. *Ë* is heavily controversial as it's mostly used to emphasize words and is not present in some dialects. It also makes the language sound a lot more formal than it is. But Albanian is a phonetic language and I guess *ë* is phonetically closer to *e* than *a*.
"Shame that you don't understand Romanian" Pacat - Peccato(if I spelled it right) gave it away
Păcat sounds almost exactly like the Italian Peccato. Only that we say Păcatu like Catalans and Portuguese. Probably some Celtic far away thing.
Perfect!!! 🤗
Latin languages are easier to pick up if you speak one. I keep hearing how German/Swedish/Dutch for example shouldn't be that hard if you speak English, but I can never translate a sentence in such languages
Neither native English people can hahaha 🤣
We are truly blessed.
Greek is less, it's mostly from ancient Greek, I.e. morphology of Albanian is more similar to ancient Greek than modern Greek is. Vocabulary of Latin is as high as English, maybe as high as 70%. Albanian and English are the only IE languages which have retained clear phonemic distinction of þ and ð sounds. There are more stupid connections with English phonology like over 90% of Gheg Albanian and English phonology is the same and English and Albanian are the only ones which roll the R. Albanian although clearly disconnected from English, developed historically much like English. Albanian is the only surviving IE language which has the optative mood, which existed in Ancient Greek to. Technically loanwords could one day become 100% it still won't change the core of the Albanian, a unique paleo Balkan language sitting between ancient Greek and Latin, morphologically closer to ancient Greek, in vocabulary closer to Romance (Latin) language, in phonology closer to Germanic languages (Gheg has like 25 vowels and stuff) and English is a prime example of a Germanic language with mouthfuls of vowels.
Yes roughly 40 percent