La storia della lingua albanese tra realtà e mito. Il controverso influsso del greco antico

The impact of Ancient Greek loanwords on Albanian became a scientific issue beginning with Thumb’s article (1909), followed by a major contribution from Ölberg (1972) and a series of works pertaining either to specific etymologies or to phonetic developments. It is an important topic, when we try to retrace the prehistory of the Albanian language, as a substantial number of Ancient Greek loanword in Albanian would easily point to a southern position of this language in the Balkans, in contact with Greek-speaking countries. This article shows that Ancient Greek loanwords in Albanian are overestimated. Their number has to be further lowered, from 26 down to 22. Four Albanian nouns, namely kandër ‘oil jug, oil vase’, kandër(r) ‘insect, beetle, ladybird’, lëpjetë ‘yellow dock, sorrel’, pjepën (gh.), pjepër (t.) ‘melon’, turn out to be Latin loanwords rather than Ancient Greek loanwords. Such inference is strengthened by a careful analysis of Romance languages, which show that the Latin sources of the above-mentioned Albanian words were not only alive but also normally used in Vulgar Latin.