Chronology of the breakup of Common Romance

[Rick Mc Callister]

[ moderator re-formatted ]

I've seen this as well

Given that Rumanian dialects [or languages?] Daco-Rumanian, Istro-Rumanian,
Macedo-Rumanian, Megleno-Rumanian and the extinct Dalmatian and any other
extinct forms are [or were] spoken from Istria to the Black Sea and from the
Carphathians almost to the Aegean proto-Rumanian speakers could have been from
anywhere in that area

Rumanian does share a common pre-Romance substrate with Albanian
which presumibly should help pinpoint the origin of Rumanian

There is an argument that Albanian speakers were driven south by Slavs

BUT there is also an argument that Albanian is descended from Thracian
speakers who fled to the west

To compound the argument, there is an argument that Albanian consists of
elements of both Thracian and Illyrian

I seem to remember reading that while Albanian has a strong substrate, that
it is significantly lacking in Ancient or Classical Greek substrate. If
this is true, then it tells us where not to look

[snip]

>I have seen a suggestion that:-
>  (1) The Romanians are not descended from the Dacians, but from Vlachs
>(scattered nomadic mountain shepherds who are found over much of the Balkans)
>who found what is now Romania largely empty after Central Asia finally
>exhausted its supply of fresh tribes of steppe horsemen (Huns, Avars, Magyars,
>Patzinaks, etc) to maraud westwards and devastate south-east Europe;
>  (2) The Vlachs are descended from Latinized Illyrians who fled into the
>mountains when the Avars marauded in;
>  in which case the ancestors of the Romanians started learning Latin when
>Rome invaded Illyria, not when Rome invaded Dacia, and that alters the
>linguistic timetable a bit.