July 15, 1880] 



NATURE 



245 



as the River Pavia,' and the Khamids or Khamis between 

 the Pavla and Kalama Rivers over against Corfu. Many 

 of the Khamids, however, have already been Hellenised, 

 and the rest form detached communities everywhere 

 surrounded by Greek-speaking populations, as correctly 

 indicated on the ethnological map of European Turkey 

 and Greece recently published by Stanford of Charing 

 Cross. 



Including the Albanian colonies since the fifteenth and 

 sixteenth centuries settled in South Italy and Sicily, and 

 many scattered Toshk settlements in the Morea, Attica, 

 Eubcea, and the Archipelago, the whole race numbers at 

 present considerably over a million and a half, as under : — 



Upper Albania (Ghegs) 700,000 



Central and Lower Albania (Tosks) 6So,ooo 



South Italy and Sicily 180,000 



Greece and Archipelago go,ooo 



1,650,000 

 Language. — The broad distinction between the north- 

 ern and southern branches of the race — lUyrians or 

 Ghegs, and Epirots or Toshks — dates from the earliest 

 historic records, and was clearly recognised by antiquitj'. 

 The parting line between the two ^^•as much the same 

 then as now, being fairly indicated by the famous Roman 

 road, the V'ia Egnatia, running from Dyrrachium ( Durazzo), 

 on the Adriatic, through Okhrida and Bitolia (Monastir), 

 to Thessalonica (Saloniki), on the /Egean. North of this 

 great highway dwelt the Illyrians, Dardanians, and 

 Preonians, all closely allied in speech, south of it the 

 Epirots and Southern Macedonians, also represented as 

 originally of kindred speech and like customs, though 

 both were later on largely Hellenised." The difterence 

 between the northern and southern dialects still persists 

 in Albania, where alone the Thrako-Illyrian languag3 

 survives, the Gheg and Toshk standing in much the same 

 relation to each other as High to Low German, or even 

 to Danish. Hence the extreme northern and southern 

 tribes are almost mutually unintelligible, although the 

 the Toshks and Ghegs of the border districts (Ergent and 

 Shkumbi valleys) are able to converse together. The 

 Italo-Albanian Demetrius Kamardas accordingly takes 

 the speech current in this central tract as the common 

 " lUirio-Epirotic" standard.^ 



The linguistic affinities of Albania were long a source 

 of great trouble to philologists, and its claims to member- 

 ship with the Aryan family were only finally established 

 beyond dispute by J. G. von Hahn.^ But its position 

 within the family itself can scarcely be said to have yet 

 been satisfactorily determined. Bopp ^ compared it, after 

 his usual method, chiefly with Sanskrit, while others have 

 regarded it as simply an archaic or even a corrupt variety 

 of Greek.'' The truth would seem to lie between these 

 extremes, and a more exhaustive study of the subject will 

 probably show that in Albanian we have the only surviving 

 link between the .'\siatic and Grceco-Italic branches of 

 the Arj-an family. An analysis of the southern dialect 

 shows that of its roots about one-third are common to 

 ^olic Greek, one-third to Italic, Keltic, Teutonic, and 



^ Here was Ptolemy's Albanopolis, and here is a maritime canton still 

 called .Arberia or Arberi, and in Gheg Arberia, that is, Albania. The inter- 

 change of r and / is a prevailing feature in Albanian, as in French, Cliinese, 

 Polynesian, and sd many other tongues. The peasantry about Frascati 

 and elsewhere in the Campagna call the English Ingresi for Ingkst. 



° Thus Strabo(vii.): "Leaving Epidamnus and Apollonia (Durazzo and 

 Polini) to follow the Via Egnatia, we have on our right the peoples of 

 Epirus, bordering on the Sicilian Sea as far as the Gulf of Ambracia. and on 

 our left the Illyrian highlands and the peoples of that region aa far as 

 Macedonia and the Pseonians." 



3 " Saggio di Grammatologia comparata sulla Lingua Albanese," Leg- 

 horn. 1865, p. 19. 



* In his classical work " Alb-inesische Studien," Jena, 1854. 



5 " Ueber das Albanesische," Berlin, 1855. 



6 Amongst others the anonymous author of tLe introductorj' remarks to 

 Stanfjrd's_ Ethnological Map. who (p. 8) speaks of the Albanians as 

 ** Greeks in their original and elementary condition,'* a fact "now clearly 

 established ... by the study of the Albanian dialect, which modern com- 

 parative philology has shown to be but another form of the Hellenic 



Slavonic, the rest consisting of an unknown element 

 assumed to represent the speech of the ancient Thrako- 

 lUyrians. The Italic, Keltic, Teutonic, and Slavonic 

 words may be referred partly to their common Aryan 

 inheritance, partly to contact possibly in prehistoric, 

 certainly in historic times— the Keltic invasion third 

 century B.C. ; Gothic irruption under Alaric ; Roman rule 

 of five centuries ; Serb occupation of Upper Albania to the 

 Drin from 640 to 1360 A.D. ; Bulgarian occupation of the 

 central districts till 1019. 



But what has been called the /Eolic Greek element 

 seems rather to date from a common pre-Hellenic period, 

 for it often presents a more primitive phonetic system, 

 and more archaic grammatical and lexical forms than 

 the oldest Greek extant — forms which cannot be derived 

 from Greek, but which are intermediate links between 

 Hellenic and Asiatic Aryan. Thus the Albanian holnesa 

 = will (noun) explains the Greek IBov\ofj.ai for jiokvoixai, 

 connecting it with the Sanskrit vaniamai. Alb. dcra = 

 door, stands between Gr. 6vpa and Sans, dvaraj Alb. neiir 

 or nicr = man between Gr. a-vijp and Sans. nar. Here 

 the organic a has become e both in Alb. and Gr., but Alb. 

 has not taken the prosthetic a, a sufficient proof that it 

 does not derive from, but belongs to an older period than, 

 Greek. Grammatical forms point in the same direction. 

 Thus the Alb. genitive in iye, as \natiye = ofjiiin, answers 

 to the Sans, sta, sya, and to the old Gr. do, eo, oio = on, 

 as in f'/^eio, ii>.io, efioio, ijxov. The numerals, often so 

 instructive in comparisons of this sort, place the matter 

 in a still clearer light. Thus Alb. iiye, nya = one = Gr. efs 

 for ff-f, neutral iv ; Ka-rrep = four, has the organic k, 

 which in Gr. becomes / (reVrafi-es), Sans, katvar, katiir, 

 Lat. qiiatiior. Compare also Alb. gvash-U = six with the 

 Sans, sliash and Gr. f'|, where the Alb. ff forms the inter- 

 mediate stage between the original sibilant and the Gr. 

 rough breathing. In slu-tta-te = seven Alb. retains the 

 sibilant, here standing on the same level as Sans, saptan, 

 as compared with Gr. iTrra for ai-nra. 



In other instances Albanian shows great corruption 

 and phonetic decay, as might be expected in a rude, un- 

 cultivated tongue never reduced to writing till quite 

 recently. But the corruption and decay always proceed 

 on different lines from those followed by Greek in its 

 evolution. Thus Alb. ncn-te (Skutari dialect nati) and 

 Gr. hvka = nine, have both lost the digamma preserved 

 in the Sans. Jiavan, from which each flows in independent 

 channels : Alb. nefan, ncan, nen, nan; Gr. avv^fav., dvuePa, 

 avvia, imia, here prosthetic a causing reduplication and 

 loss of final v. 



The general tendency of Albanian, as of French, is 

 towards short and contracted fonns, the suppression of 

 middle and weakening of final vowels to e mute or eu. 

 This, combined with a somewhat barbarous system of 

 orthography, half Greek, half Latin, which has here been 

 replaced by a simple phonetic system, gives the language 

 a decidedly rough and uncouth look, though it is by no 

 means deficient in harmony, and what Kamardas finely 

 calls a certain Hellenic "aura," so that "at times we 

 fancy we are listening to Greek instead of Albanian 

 utterances.) ' 



The determination of the true position of Albanian is 

 of such importance in the history of Arj-an speech that 

 the reader will ^ probably excuse this somewhat dry 

 excursus. 



Type.— From many of the foregoing indications it is 

 obvious that the Albanians can by no means be regarded 

 as a pure race. In popular works of travel or fiction a 

 certain halo of romance is thrown over the people, who 

 are represented as endowed with almost classic symmetry 

 of form and beauty. This is to some extent true in the 

 south, where intermixture with the kindred Hellenes 

 could scarcely be otherwise than beneficial, and even in 



■ " Una certa aura, per cosi dire, d'ellenismo. che ti fa talora credere d' 

 udire parole greche invece di albanesi." O/. cit., p. 19. 



