No, Ancient Greek Is Not Albanian

One of the most bizarre yet persistent linguistic claims I have encountered so far on Quora is the claim that Ancient Greek is somehow actually Albanian. This claim seems utterly bizarre to me, because I have been studying Ancient Greek on my own since high school, I have taken four semesters of it so far at the college level, and I can read texts written in it fairly well. I do not speak Albanian, but I have listened to recordings of people speaking it and tried to read passages written in it and I can say for a fact that it is not Ancient Greek.

Indeed, I have no idea how anyone who knows Albanian or Ancient Greek could possibly think that they are the same language. Nonetheless, again and again, I have encountered Albanian nationalists claiming that they are. I therefore think it is time for me to address this hypothesis (if we can even call it that) once and for all.

Debunking the claim that Ancient Greek is Albanian

The Albanian nationalists who claim that Ancient Greek is actually Albanian usually try to support this claim by picking out individual words and names from Ancient Greek, reinterpreting them using Albanian words that sound similar, and then claiming that they’ve found the “true meaning.”

In doing this, they completely ignore the Greek-language context in which these words and names are attested and attempt to shoehorn their own meanings onto the words. It is possible to do this with any language. For instance, using the exact same technique, one might interpret the names of Greek deities using English words in the following manner:

• Aphrodite = “afro” + “dyed T” (as in T-shirt)—thus meaning “woman with an afro and a dyed T-shirt”
• Apollon = “a pole” + “on”—thus meaning “man on a pole”
• Artemis = “art” + “a miss”—thus meaning “a woman or ‘miss’ who does art”
• Poseidon = “Po” (a male name) + “sighed on”

I think that anyone who is not a die-hard Albanian nationalist can see that this is all inherently extremely silly.

Moreover, Albanian nationalists can only manage to accomplish even these very clumsy sorts of reinterpretations when it comes to heavily cherrypicked, out-of-context individual words and names. Ancient Greek, however, is unquestionably one of the most thoroughly attested of all the languages that were spoken in the entire ancient world. If you compiled all the surviving texts, inscriptions, and papyrus fragments written in Ancient Greek into volumes, you could fill an entire library with them.

Scholars who study Ancient Greek—who are known as Hellenists—understand these texts very well and can usually read them from sight. These texts, however, can only be intelligibly read as Greek. If you try to read them as Albanian, you won’t be able to make them intelligible.

ABOVE: Photograph from Flickr of a Roman marble statue from the Flavian Period (lasted 69 – 96 CE), showing the goddess Aphrodite with an elaborate Flavian hairstyle that happens to resemble an afro

The real relationship between Ancient Greek and Albanian

Ancient Greek and Albanian are not the same language, nor is Albanian derived from Ancient Greek, nor is Ancient Greek derived from Albanian. The two languages are, however, somewhat distantly related. Greek and Albanian are both ultimately derived from Proto-Indo-European, a reconstructed language that is believed by linguists to have been spoken sometime between 4500 and 2500 BCE by nomadic peoples living in the steppes north of the Black Sea in the general region of what is now Ukraine and southwestern Russia.

Somehow or another, speakers of this language spread out across Eurasia, bringing the language with them. Over time, the language diverged into many different languages, which, in turn, diverged into even more languages. Consequently, nearly all the languages that are spoken throughout Europe today and many of the languages that are spoken throughout southern Asia are derived from Proto-Indo-European, including not only Greek and Albanian, but also English, German, Latin, Sanskrit, and a bunch of other languages.

ABOVE: Map from Wikimedia Commons showing the migrations of various Indo-European groups out of the Indo-European homeland or Urheimat and across much of Europe and southwest Asia

The Greek language

The Greek language is now generally thought to have developed in Greece itself. It was most likely already spoken in Greece in some form by around 1900 BCE. The oldest surviving texts in the Greek language are Linear B tablets dating to sometime around 1450 BCE. Greek belongs to its own branch of the Indo-European language family—the Hellenic branch.

By the time of the earliest sources written in Classical Greek, there were many different dialects of the Greek language. Here are the most notable ones:

• The best-attested dialect by far is the Classical Attic dialect, which was spoken in the region of Attike, which includes the city of Athens, which was the most populous city in mainland Greece and the city with the largest literary output. The vast majority of surviving ancient Greek literary texts were written in the Classical Attic dialect.

• The Classical Attic dialect is closely related to the Ionic dialect, which was spoken throughout most of the Aegean Islands and in most cities along the west coast of Asia Minor south of Smyrna. This is the dialect that the poet Hesiodos of Askre (fl. c. eighth century BCE) and the historian Herodotos of Halikarnassos (lived c. 484 – c. 425 BCE) wrote in.

• The Aiolic dialect was spoken in most cities along the coast of Asia Minor north of Smyrna. This is the dialect that the lyric poets Sappho of Lesbos (lived c. 630 – c. 570 BCE) and Alkaios of Mytilene (lived c. 625 – c. 580 BCE) both wrote in. As I discuss in this article I published in December 2019, in late antiquity, the Aiolic dialect became seen as obscure, archaic, and hard to read.

• The dialect that was spoken in the region of Arkadia in the central Peloponnesos and on the island of Kypros was the Arkado-Kypriot dialect.

• The dialect that was spoken throughout most of the western and southern Peloponnesos was the Doric dialect. This is the dialect that was spoken in Sparta. Speakers of this dialect were known as Dorians. For more information about them, you can read this article I wrote in January 2020.

The ancient Makedonian language, which is now extinct, is usually classified as either a dialect of Greek or a closely related Hellenic language. The relationship between Classical Attic Greek and Makedonian was probably very similar to the relationship between Standard Modern English and Scots. The tongues were closely enough related that it was possible for a speaker of one tongue to understand at least a little bit of what a speaker of the other was saying, but they were distantly enough related that there were probably some serious communication difficulties.

ABOVE: Map from Wikimedia Commons showing the dialects that were spoken in Greece during the Classical Period

During the Hellenistic Period (lasted c. 323 – c. 30 BCE), Koine, a dialect of the Greek language derived from Classical Attic Greek, became widely spoken throughout the eastern Mediterranean. The Roman Empire conquered the eastern Mediterranean over the course of the second and first centuries BCE, but Koine Greek remained the most widely spoken language throughout the region.

Over the course of the fifth century CE, the Roman Empire lost control of its western territories, but the eastern part of the empire survived. This eastern portion of the Roman Empire that survived throughout the Middle Ages is conventionally referred to in modern historiography as the “Byzantine Empire” because it had the city of Byzantion or Constantinople as its capital. The dominant language of the Byzantine Empire was a dialect of the Greek language derived from Koine that is variously referred to as “Byzantine Greek” or “Medieval Greek.”

Medieval Greek gradually diverged into various dialects of Demotic Greek. Over the course of the eighteenth, nineteenth, and twentieth centuries, however, these dialects were standardized to become Standard Modern Greek, which is now the official language of the Hellenic Republic (i.e., the modern nation-state of Greece). A closely related dialect of the Greek language, Modern Kypriot Greek, is spoken in the Republic of Kypros, where it is one of the two official languages.

Tsakonian, a highly endangered language derived from Doric Greek, is still spoken by some old people in some remote villages in the southwestern Peloponnesos.

ABOVE: Map from Wikimedia Commons showing areas of the eastern Mediterranean where the Greek language was widely spoken during the Hellenistic Era, before the Roman conquest

The non-Hellenic branches of the Indo-European language family most closely related to Greek

It is generally agreed that the non-Hellenic branch of the Indo-European language family that is most closely related to the Hellenic one is the extinct Phrygian branch. The only language included in this branch is Phrygian, which was spoken in classical times in the land of Phrygia in west-central Anatolia. Greek and Phrygian were so similar that some ancient Greek authors explicitly comment on this fact.

Notably, Plato in his dialogue Kratylos 410a portrays Socrates as commenting that many of the most basic words for everyday things in Greek and Phrygian are extremely similar, including the words πῦρ (meaning “fire”), ὕδωρ (meaning “water”), and κύων (meaning “dog”). (Incidentally, all three words listed by Socrates also have cognates in English and two of the three also have cognates in Albanian; πῦρ is cognate to the English word fire, ὕδωρ is cognate to both the English word water and the Albanian word ujë, κύων is cognate to both the English word hound and the Albanian word qen.)

Surviving Phrygian inscriptions display remarkable similarities to Greek, demonstrating that the languages were, in fact, closely related. Modern historical linguists therefore usually hold that Greek and Phrygian are derived from a more recent common ancestor than Proto-Indo-European. They refer to the common ancestor of Greek and Phrygian as “Greco-Phrygian” or “Helleno-Phrygian.”

ABOVE: Photograph from Wikimedia Commons of a sixth-century BCE inscription in the Phrygian language

Once you get past Phrygian, it starts getting really hard to tell which non-Hellenic branches of the Indo-European language family are most closely related to Greek. Nonetheless, many linguists believe that the branch of the Indo-European language family that is most closely related to the Hellenic branch after Phrygian is most likely Armenian.

The Danish linguist Holger Pedersen (lived 1867 – 1953) first proposed this hypothesis in 1906 in a paper titled “Armenisch und die Nachbarsprachen,” noting that Armenian has more lexical isoglosses in common with Greek than with any other Indo-European language. His hypothesis is accepted by many linguists today, but has not attained the status of the established consensus.

After Phrygian and Armenian, Greek is often thought to be most closely related to the Indo-Aryan languages. Greek, Phrygian, Armenian, and the Indo-Aryan languages are often loosely grouped together as “Eastern Indo-European languages.”

ABOVE: Page from a manuscript dating to 1495 containing a translation of the four gospels into Classical Armenian

Paleo-Balkan languages

In ancient times, a number of non-Hellenic, non-Phrygian Indo-European languages were spoken in the Balkan lands north of Greece, including Illyrian, Thrakian, and Dakian. Greek, Phrygian, Illyrian, Thrakian, Dakian, and all other Indo-European languages that were spoken in the Balkan region in ancient times are commonly grouped together by geography as “Paleo-Balkan languages.”

Unfortunately, apart from Greek and Phrygian, we really don’t know exactly how these languages are related to each other linguistically because the Paleo-Balkan languages other than Greek and Phrygian are barely attested in the written record and are known almost entirely from names attested in sources written in Greek and Latin, along with maybe a handful of very brief inscriptions.

The Albanian language is undoubtedly derived from a non-Hellenic, non-Phrygian, Indo-European Paleo-Balkan language. Unfortunately, non-Hellenic, non-Phrygian Paleo-Balkan languages are so poorly attested in the written record that it is impossible to conclusively identify which one is the ancestor of Albanian.

The language that scholars have traditionally regarded as the most likely ancestor of Albanian is Illyrian, which was spoken in ancient times in the same general region that the modern Albanian language is spoken. Nonetheless, various scholars have argued that Albanian might be derived from a dialect of Thrakian or Dakian instead. For conventional purposes, scholars usually call the unknown language from which Albanian is derived “Proto-Albanian.”

ABOVE: Illyrian gravestone depicting four men in traditional dress, dating to around the fourth century BCE

The true history of the Albanian language

Between roughly the sixth and third centuries BCE, speakers of Proto-Albanian came into contact with speakers of Doric Greek, resulting in a number of loanwords from Doric Greek entering the Albanian language. Most of these are words for trade goods, indicating that contact between speakers of Proto-Albanian and Doric Greek was mostly through trade.

In the second century BCE, the Roman Empire annexed the entire Balkan Peninsula. As a result, Latin began to exert an extremely heavy influence on Proto-Albanian. This Latin influence continued until at least the fifth century CE. As a result, over half the most commonly used words in the Albanian language today are of Latin origin.

The fact that Albanian contains only a few loanwords from Classical Greek and such a fantastically huge number of loanwords from Latin suggests that the Proto-Albanian language was most likely originally spoken somewhere a little bit further northwest than where the Albanian language is primarily spoken today—most likely in the approximate region of Dardania, which included all of what is now Kosovo, northern parts of Albania, and northern parts of the Republic of North Macedonia. Scholars still debate whether the majority of Dardanians spoke a dialect of Illyrian, a dialect of Thrakian, or a separate Dardanian language altogether.

The earliest known attestation of the name Albanian comes from the Egyptian geographer Klaudios Ptolemaios (lived c. 100 – c. 170 CE), who wrote exclusively in the Greek language. In his Geographika 3.13.23, Klaudios Ptolemaios mentions an Illyrian tribe living in what is now Albania whom he calls Ἀλβανοί (Albanoí). The exact same name is still used for Albanians in Modern Greek. Klaudios Ptolemaios also mentions that these Albanoi have a city called Ἀλβανόπολις (Albanópolis).

ABOVE: Map from Wikimedia Commons showing the lands controlled by the ancient Kingdom of Dardania at its greatest territorial extent. Proto-Albanian was most likely spoken somewhere in this general vicinity.

Despite this remarkably early attestation of the name Albanian, the earliest undisputed surviving mention of anyone speaking in the Albanian language is a court document written in Latin in around the year 1285 in the city of Ragusa (which is now Dubrovnik, Croatia) describing the investigation of a robbery. The document records one of the witnesses in the case as having said these words: “Audivi unam vocem clamantem in monte in lingua albanesca.” This means: “I heard a voice shouting in the mountains in the Albanian language.”

The oldest undisputed surviving writing in the Albanian language is a single line quoted in a letter written in Latin by the bishop Pal Engëlli in 1462. The line is a translation of the standard baptismal formula “I baptize you in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit” into Albanian. It reads: “Vnte’ paghesont premenit Atit et birit et spertit senit.”

The oldest surviving text in the Albanian language of any substantial length is the Meshari, a printed book written in the Gheg dialect of Albanian by the Albanian Catholic priest Gjon Buzuku containing liturgies for the major Catholic holidays. It was printed in the year 1555.

ABOVE: Photograph of a page from the Meshari of Gjon Buzuku, the oldest surviving text in the Albanian language of any substantial length

Conclusion

Albanian is not Ancient Greek, nor is it closely related to Ancient Greek, but it is still a beautiful and genuinely ancient language. Although Albanian does not have nearly as long of a written history as Greek and the extant corpus of Albanian literature is far smaller than the extant corpus of Greek literature, Modern Greek and Modern Albanian share the noteworthy distinction of being the only two languages derived from Paleo-Balkan languages that are still spoken as living vernaculars today.

Romanian and Aromanian are derived from dialects of Vulgar Latin, which was introduced to the Balkans by the Romans after they conquered the region. Most of the other languages that are spoken in the Balkans are derived from Slavic languages that were introduced by the migration of Slavic peoples from northern Europe south into the Balkan Peninsula in the sixth and seventh centuries CE. Only Greek and Albanian remain more-or-less autochthonous to the region.