Talk:Balkan language area

Proposed merge to here of Albanian-Romanian Linguistic Connection

Checking the facts on the said article no unique features not shared with other languages in the Balkansprachbund are provided. Since this is part of the Albanian-Eastern Romance discussion within the sprachbund I think it's only natural to be part of this article. Aristeus01 (talk) 14:14, 30 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose. The Balkansprachbund covers more languages, including Bulgarian, Macedonian, Greek and certain dialects of Serbian. The close relationship between Albanian and Romanian is emphasized in most reliable source about the history of the two languages, and is subject to specific scholarly works (as it is demonstrated by the sources cited in the article). Borsoka (talk) 05:53, 1 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Noted. However, by analyzing the said sources - WP:WEIGHT, out of 31 cited only 2 (Karagjoze and Caragata) describe the Albanian-Romanian language similarities independently, 2 other describe it within Indo-European studies context, and 9 speak of the similarities within Balkan context and in comparison to other languages of the area (Daskalov&Vezenkov, Schramm, Friedman, Petrucci, Malcolm, Thomason,Antwerp, Sufflay, Madgearu). I should also add all of them also reference to Vulgar Latin and Eastern Romance group - mainly Aromanian and Megleno-Romanian (again Balkan context) - therefore no unique Albanian-Romanian feature is mentioned. By continuing to have this as a separate topic we risk falling under WP:FALSEBALANCE. Please, if you can provide more references to help balance the article's "independence", do so. Aristeus01 (talk) 12:37, 1 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]

As you mentioned, the topic is discussed separately in at least two articles. Furthermore, the special relationship between Romanian and Albanian is emphasized in most works about these two languages. For instance, words with cognates in Albanian are assumed to be of substrate origin. Most linguists cited in the article assume that Albanian and Romanian lived side by side at the beginning of the development of Romanian from a Balkan Latin dialect. Borsoka (talk) 13:11, 1 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Respectfully, you are confusing Romanian with Eastern Romance here. When we talk about special relation it needs to be specific to the two. I couldn't find any unique features shared by Romanian and Albanian (that are not shared also by Aromanian and Megleno-Romanian) therefore the connection is not special. By all means please highlight them if you know any. Also, linguistics separates diachronic of synchronic views therefore we must not confuse Romanian with its ancestor Vulgar Latin or other languages derived from the latter. If we want to highlight this cohabitation we need to name it accordingly - Albanian-Eastern Romance linguistic connection for example. Even so, we still need more sources for WP:BALANCE 2 versus 9.

NB: cognates are by definition words inherited from a common parent language. Substratum in Romanian is whatever language people spoke before Vulgar Latin, so the common parent language of those words cannot be the parent language of Romanian which is Common Romanian itself having Vulgar Latin as a parent language, but the local parent language of Vulgar Latin of whom we can then say it inherited directly the cognates to Albanian. Aristeus01 (talk) 14:31, 1 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]

The article's title is verified by two scholarly works cited in the article and they deal with all Romanian variants, including the variant spoken in present-day Romania and Moldova. We should allow other editors to comment the issue so I stop commenting it. Borsoka (talk) 16:23, 1 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]