Although Albanian has a host
of borrowings from its neighbours, it shows exceedingly
few evidences of contact with ancient Greek; one
such is the Gheg mokÔn (Tosk mokÔr) "millstone,"
from the Greek mekhane'. Obviously close contacts
with the Romans gave many Latin loans; e.g., mik
"friend," from Latin amicus; kÔndoj "sing, read"
from cantare. Furthermore, such loanwords in Albanian
attest to the similarities in development of the
Latin spoken in the Balkans and of Romanian, a
Balkan Romance tongue. For example, Latin paludem
"swamp" became padulem, and then padure in Romanian
and pyll in Albanian, both with a modified meaning,
"forest."
Conversely, Romanian also shares
some apparently non-Latin indigenous terms with
Albanian; e.g., Romanian brad, Albanian bredh
"fir." Thus these two languages reflect special
historical contacts of early date. Early communication
with the Goths presumably contributed tirq "trousers,
breeches" (from an old compound "thigh-breech"),
while early Slavic contacts gave gozhdÔ "nail."
Many Italian, Turkish, Modern Greek, Serbian,
and Macedonian-Slav loans can be attributed to
cultural contacts of the past 500 years with Venetians,
Ottomans, Greeks (to the south), and Slavs (to
the east).
A fair number of features--e.g.,
the formation of the future tense and of the noun
phrase--are shared with other languages of the
Balkans but are of obscure origin and development;
Albanian or its earlier kin could easily be the
source for at least some of these. The study of
such regional features in the Balkans has become
a classic case for research on the phenomena of
linguistic diffusion.
Provided by Andi ,omo
Bibliography: Eric P. Hamp: Readings in Linguistics,
Languages of the World.