Renfrew and IE Overlords

[Rick Mc Callister]

	There's a also a very much ballyhooed list of cognate substrate in
Albanian and Rumanian, as well as the presence of Rumanian dialects [or
extinct dialects] in the W & S Balkans: Istro-Rumanian [is it still
around?], Megleno-Rumanian, Aromanian and the extinct Vegliot/Dalmatian, as
well as some disputed [moribund] Istro-Romance language [evidently
different from Istro-Rumanian from posts I've read]

[ Moderator's note:
  The material quoted below is from a posting by Sean Crist.
  --rma ]

>Actually, it doesn't appear that there's a continual Romance presence in
>what's now Romania from Roman times down to the present.  There's a book
>by a Romanian scholar who claims that the area was underpopulated in early
>medieval times, and that two leaders from a Romance-speaking area near
>what is now Albania got permission from the Emporer to settle their people
>in this land.  The names of the leaders happen to Romanian names.

>The author had to publish under a pseudonym, because this claim could be
>considered seditious by the Romanian government.  There is a substantial
>Hungarian minority in Transylvania, and if this minority wanted to
>separate from Romania, this author's book would allow the ethnic
>Hungarians to claim that they were in the land first.

>The linguistic evidence seems to be consistent with this picture as well;
>there was a very dense and diverse set of Romance languages, including
>Dalmatian, etc. in the western Balkan area where the early Romanians are
>believed to have migrated from; but in the larger Romanian-speaking area
>to the east, there is much more uniformity.  It's much like the case of
>British vs. American English; you get a tremendous and very dense
>diversity of local dialects within Britain, but a much greater uniformity
>in the huge area of America which the speakers of the language conquered.

[ moderator snip ]

Rick Mc Callister
W-1634
Mississippi University for Women
Columbus MS 39701