Genetic Descent/Haitian Creole

Larry Trask larryt at cogs.susx.ac.uk
Fri Jun 29 14:11:54 UTC 2001


--On Sunday, June 24, 2001 11:21 pm +0200 Kreso Megyeral
<miskec4096 at hotmail.com> wrote:

[LT]

>> And Albanian is not Greek, Romance, Slavic, HUNGARIAN or Turkic, even
>> though elements of these origins greatly outnumber the inherited
>> elements.

> Excuse me, but I will kindly ask for the explanation of the possible
> Hungarian elements in Albanian. I'm a student of Hungarian and have also
> studied Albanian, but have found no trace of evidence for such connection
> (except the interesting similarity between Hungarian "|l" and Albanian
> "ul" - to sit). Or was it that you just took Hungarian as an example of
> "any-possible-language-it-could-be-connected-to"?

Ah, I knew I'd get pulled up on this one.

What happened here was this.  In my student days, back in the Bronze Age, I
was taught that the Hungarians were among those who had been prominent in
Albania at various times in the past, and that there were Hungarian loan
words in Albanian to prove it.

Before sending out that posting, I checked a standard reference source on
Albanian in my office, and I found that all the other languages I mentioned
were cited as important sources of loans in Albanian, while Hungarian was
not mentioned.

Having already typed the word 'Hungarian', but now doubting it, I almost
deleted it, but then I decided to leave it in.  I figured "Well, if there
are no Hungarian loans in Albanian, somebody will tell me about it."

This is true.  Honest.

Anyway, thanks for the correction.  Now I know that there are -- apparently
-- no Hungarian loans into Albanian.  Most interesting.  Absolutely
*everybody* who ever set foot in the Balkans seems to have conquered
Albania at some point, and I can hardly believe that the Hungarians never
did.

Larry Trask
COGS
University of Sussex
Brighton BN1 9QH
UK

larryt at cogs.susx.ac.uk

Tel: (01273)-678693 (from UK); +44-1273-678693 (from abroad)
Fax: (01273)-671320 (from UK); +44-1273-671320 (from abroad)



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