Archaic features of Bogdani’s language: overlappings with southern dialects
Archaic features of Bogdani’s language: overlappings with southern dialects

Summary/Abstract: Albanologists have long noted a greater closeness between the two main dialects of Albanian, the Gheg and the Tosk, during an earlier stage of Albanian language. Gustav Meyer, questioning Hahn’s argument as being unsupported by facts, according to whom differences between the Gheg and Tosk dialects reflected an ancient division between the Illyrian and Epirotic languages, wrote: “In ogni caso la odierna differenza fra il gego e il tosco, la quale non è poi tanto grande, può derivare da una distinzione posteriore. Lo studio dell’albanese parlato in Grecia mi fa presentemente ritenere questa opinione come la piu plausibile.” Other scholars, such as Jokl and Tagliavini, later expressed that same position. After Gjon Buzuku’s Missal (1555) was discovered, various Arbëresh (i.e. Italo-Albanian) scholars offered remarks concerning similarities between the language of the earliest (known) Albanian author and that of the varieties of the Arbëresh of Italy.

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