Linguistic glob

The standardization of the Albanian language is treated as a set of interrelated processes—selection, codification, elaboration, and acceptance (Haugen, 1966)—rather than as a predetermined endpoint of linguistic evolution. The ongoing conflation of the “unified language” and the “standard language” is analyzed as a rhetorical strategy that retrospectively legitimizes a historically conditioned standard emerging from koineization and institutionally driven language planning, in this case under a unilateral communist framework. The apparent lack of opposition by leading Albanian literary and academic figures is reconsidered in the context of diglossic conditions and the limited potential for Ausbau (Kloss, 1967). Drawing on Milroy & Milroy (1985) on socially mediated language change, the analysis emphasizes that language standardization should not be equated with diachronic continuity, Abstand-based differentiation, or inherent linguistic legitimacy. Instead, the Albanian case demon...

Erechtheus: Earth, Wind, and the Semantics of Breaking The figure of Erechtheus (Ancient Greek: Ἐρεχθεύς), an early king of Athens, is traditionally interpreted through Greek etymology as deriving from roots meaning “tear” or “rend” (erékhthō, ἐρέχθω) and “earth” (chthōn, χθών), producing the meaning “earth-shaker” or “smasher of the earth.” This etymology emphasizes his chthonic associations, linking him to the earth-born king Erichthonius and underscoring his role as a mediator of ritual and natural forces. From a comparative-semantic perspective, Albanian provides an additional symbolic dimension. The verb kthej (past tense ktheva, participle kthyer) encompasses a wide semantic range, including “to turn, flip, bend, plough, transform, rotate, return, or break.” Its etymological root thyej , meaning “to break,” reinforces the metaphor of rupture and transformation. Paired with Ere (“wind”), the compound suggests “the one who breaks or transforms the wind”, aligning with mythic narr...

🇦🇱 Shqip 🇬🇷 Ελληνικά 🇺🇸 English Pas më shumë se dhjetë vitesh angazhim të vazhdueshëm online, kam hasur vazhdimisht reagime armiqësore, abuzive dhe thellësisht nacionaliste ndaj diskutimeve historike dhe gjuhësore, veçanërisht nga përdorues grekë të mediave sociale. Ndoshta kjo përvojë nuk përfaqëson shoqërinë greke në tërësi, ajo tregon një model të përsëritur të diskursit online që meriton vëmendje kritike. Ύστερα από περισσότερα από δέκα χρόνια συνεχούς διαδικτυακής ενασχόλησης, έχω επανειλημμένα συναντήσει εχθρικές, υβριστικές και έντονα εθνικιστικές αντιδράσεις σε συζητήσεις ιστορικού και γλωσσολογικού περιεχομένου, ιδιαίτερα από χρήστες ελληνικών μέσων κοινωνικής δικτύωσης. Αν και αυτή η εμπειρία δεν αντιπροσωπεύει το σύνολο της ελληνικής κοινωνίας, αποκαλύπτει ένα επαναλαμβανόμενο μοτίβο διαδικτυακού λόγου που αξίζει κριτικής εξέτασης. For more than ten years of sustained online engagement, I have repeatedly encountered hostile, abusive, and strongly nationalist reactions ...

The Symbolism of Ianuarius and Janus: A Semantic-Symbolic Perspective Introduction The Roman calendar, like many ancient temporal systems, encodes more than mere dates—it reflects concepts of time, thresholds, and initiation. The month Ianuarius (January) offers a fascinating case study. Named after Ianus , the deity of beginnings and transitions, it marks the threshold between the old year and the new, symbolically bridging past and future. This article explores Ianuarius from a semantic-symbolic perspective, highlighting cross-linguistic patterns that illuminate how early cultures conceptualized beginnings, orientation, and boundaries. Ianus : The Deity of Beginnings and Thresholds Janus is traditionally depicted with two faces, one looking backward and one forward, emphasizing his role as a guardian of transitions. He presides over gates, doorways, and temporal thresholds, embodying both initiation and reflection. In Roman thought, this duality encapsulates the cyclical and directi...

The Modern Greek word “ απόδειξη ” (“proof”) is usually presented as a simple inheritance from Ancient Greek ἀπόδειξις. That’s convenient—but misleading. Traditional etymology stops at Greek literary explanations and refuses to look at the Balkan linguistic reality. Here’s the truth: ἀπο - functions exactly like the Gheg Albanian “à bo ” (“it has been done”, b>p), marking a completed action. δείκνυμι (“to show”) matches the Albanian di (“know”), di, ditë (“day”), diell (“sun”)—preserving a concept of light → seeing → knowing. -σις / -ξη marks the result of an action, consistent with this semantic logic. In short : what is done in the light is seen; what is seen is known. This is the real idea of proof—not some abstract Greek invention. Ancient Greek formalism tries to hide this, forcing the word into rhetoric or logic. Modern Greek even stretches it to mean receipts or invoices—but that doesn’t explain its origin. By excluding Albanian and other Balkan substrate evidence, main...

 What I am doing in this article is root–semantic probing, not naïve word-matching. That distinction is crucial, and it is exactly the kind of analysis that curse tablets invite but mainstream linguistics avoids when Albanian is involved. Let’s take my findings one by one and situate them methodologically, not rhetorically. 1. nys / nis (“to start, set in motion”) Albanian nis / nys encodes initiation, activation, setting something into action. This semantic field is ritual-critical, because curse tablets are structured around: initiating binding setting a spell in motion activating divine or chthonic forces Greek curse language often uses opaque verbs whose semantics are inferred only contextually. Albanian preserves transparent motion/activation verbs, which are precisely what one expects in early ritual speech. Even if the form is not identical, the semantic architecture matches the function of the text. 2. di / ditë (“day; know”) This is one of the strongest Balkan survivals. I...

Against Greek-Centric Abstractionism Generation, Quantity, and the Misordering of Semantic History Greek-centric historical linguistics has long suffered from a systematic inversion of semantic chronology. By privileging abstract lexical forms preserved in Classical Greek—particularly adjectives of quantity such as πολλά (“many”)—it mistakes philological visibility for semantic primacy. This error is not incidental; it is structural. At the core of this paradigm lies an unexamined assumption: that the earliest attestable abstractions in Greek texts reflect the earliest stages of linguistic meaning itself. This assumption collapses immediately when confronted with cognitive, typological, and anthropological evidence. 1. The Greek fallacy: abstraction as origin Greek-centric models routinely treat abstract categories—number, measure, plurality—as primary semantic units, simply because they are lexicalized early in written Greek. This is a methodological fallacy. Writing preserves late c...

The Emergence of an “Engineering Language” from the Symbolic Root di The so-called “technical” or “engineering” forms of Indo-European languages—Latin vidēre, Greek oida, Sanskrit véda, and so on—are not arbitrary lexical innovations. They are the fossilized remnants of a fully articulated symbolic system, still alive and transparent in Albanian. At its core lies the root di / dia, encoding sun, light, visibility, and knowing, combined with spatial or perceptual operators such as ve / vi (“place, position, orientation”) or sy (“eye”). The fundamental equation is simple, elegant, and mechanical: LIGHT → VISIBILITY → SEEING → KNOWING Albanian preserves this semantic machine in its living grammar, while other Indo-European languages have reduced it to fragments—isolated words, abstract roots, and fossilized forms. The “seeing–knowing” root in Latin, Greek, Sanskrit, and Germanic languages is not a reflection of independent invention but a derivative, opaque shadow of what Albanian still a...

Cham Albanian and the Root “di” In the Cham Albanian dialect, the expression “ u di ” (standard “ u gdhi ”) means “it dawned / it became day.” This is not a poetic metaphor but an ordinary, living usage: u di → impersonal, intransitive → literally: “it became known / it became visible” → semantically: light appeared; darkness ended u gdhi → from gdhihem / gdhi, “to dawn; to wake into daylight” → more concrete, but semantically equivalent The decisive point—systematically ignored in Greek-centric etymology—is that di here does not mean “to know” in a modern cognitive sense. It preserves an archaic semantic identity: di = to see = to become visible light → visibility → consciousness This is not speculative reconstruction; it is direct linguistic evidence, still functioning in a living Balkan language. Cham Albanian exposes the pre-abstract layer from which later philosophical meanings were derived—and subsequently obscured. The Root “di” and the Semantic Mechanics of αἰδώς The key to un...

Back to Beekes: αἰδώς and the Failure of the PIE Abstraction 1. The Data Greek Cannot Explain In the Cham Albanian dialect, the expression “ u di” (standard “ u gdhi ”) means “it dawned / it became day.” This is not a poetic metaphor but an ordinary, living usage. u di → impersonal, intransitive → literally: “it became known / it became visible” → semantically: light appeared; darkness ended u gdhi → from gdhihem / gdhi, “to dawn; to wake into daylight” → more concrete, but semantically equivalent The decisive point—systematically ignored in Greek-centric etymology—is that di here does not mean “to know” in a modern cognitive sense. It preserves an archaic semantic identity: di = to see = to become visible light → visibility → consciousness This is not speculative reconstruction; it is direct linguistic evidence, still functioning in a living Balkan language. Cham Albanian thus exposes the pre-abstract layer from which later philosophical meanings were derived—and subsequently obs...

6. Hypothesized Primordial Phonetic–Symbolic Units and Their Reflexes in European Languages This study further proposes that a limited set of primordial phonetic–symbolic units, associated with the mouth, sound production, and articulated speech, underlies a broad range of lexical formations across European languages. These units are not presented as directly reconstructible Proto-Indo-European roots in the strict comparative sense, but as pre-lexical symbolic elements that may predate formal linguistic differentiation and later grammaticalization. 6.1. A / HA / FOL / FIAL / ZË, ZO, ZA: Mouth, Consumption, and Sound The vocalic element A, together with related Albanian forms such as ha (“to eat”), fol (“to speak”), and zë (“sound, voice”), is interpreted here as encoding the mouth as both an organ of intake and articulation. Symbolically, this cluster represents a nexus uniting eating, breathing, and vocalization—core biological functions mediated by the oral cavity. From an anthropolo...

Abstract This study examines the Latin term Kalendae through a multi-dimensional philological framework, integrating phonological, semantic, symbolic, and comparative perspectives. While mainstream etymology derives Kalendae from calendae (“first day of the month”) and calendarium (“account book, register”), this analysis investigates the underlying conceptual structures preserved across Indo-European languages. Albanian, Greek, and Proto-Indo-European (PIE) roots are examined to identify primordial phonetic–symbolic units that encode emergence, separation, and temporal transition. The findings suggest that Kalendae reflects an ancient cosmological understanding of time, subsequently formalized in Roman ritual and administrative practice. This approach demonstrates that etymology can reveal deep symbolic and cognitive continuities underlying lexical evolution. Keywords Kalendae, Albanian, Greek καλέω, Proto-Indo-European, etymology, symbolic semantics, comparative philology, temporal c...

Etymology, properly understood, is concerned with the origin and development of the constituent elements of a word, not simply with the word as a fixed lexical unit. Consequently, a comprehensive analysis requires consideration of multiple perspectives—phonological, semantic, symbolic, and comparative—rather than relying on a single comparative explanatory framework. The current approach seeks to trace the origin of words through the partiality of elements in place of the basic symbolic element, rather than through later administrative or functional partial meanings of the word that may represent later historical layers. From this perspective, primordial symbolism constitutes a generative substrate from which multiple lexical forms have emerged, subsequently changing in meaning over time and across languages. Within this framework, a limited set of archaic phonetic-symbolic units - such as bhë, bho, bha, bher, al, el, ar, ol, oi, oia, ui, ul, i, o, zë, zhër, zhor, zhur, za, zan, da, nd...

A Comparative Philological Note on the Semantic Origins of Calendar The standard etymological account derives calendar from Latin calendarium (“account book, register”), itself formed from Kalendae, the Roman term for the first day of the month. While this derivation accurately describes the term’s attested Latin usage, it does not address the semantic motivation underlying the formation of Kalendae itself. From a comparative-philological perspective, such administrative explanations may reflect secondary institutionalization rather than primary conceptual origin. This study advances a semantic-comparative hypothesis, examining whether the phonological form Kalendae corresponds to a deeper conceptual structure preserved in other Indo-European languages, particularly Albanian, which is frequently noted for retaining archaic semantic patterns. Morphological Segmentation and Semantic Parallels For analytical purposes, the form Kalendae may be segmented as ka + le + ndae. When compared wit...

Petro Zheji and the Symbolic Conception of Language Petro Zheji is frequently described as a “linguistic genius,” not because his work conforms to the conventions of mainstream historical linguistics, but because it proceeds from a fundamentally different epistemological framework. Rather than treating language as a mechanical or exclusively historical system, Zheji approaches it as a symbolic and cognitive totality, integrating linguistic form with metaphysical structure and semantic genesis. This methodological divergence largely explains the difficulty many linguists encounter when engaging with his work. The following analysis outlines the principal reasons for both the opacity and the originality of Zheji’s linguistic thought. 1. Departure from Conventional Linguistic Methodology Contemporary linguistics is largely characterized by: diachronic analysis (sound laws and attested developments), comparative reconstruction, positivist criteria of verification based on documentary evide...

The word FILIZ, a term of clear meaning in Albanian, signifies “beginning,” “sprout,” or “that which is created in the beginning.” Phonetically, its development is transparent: beginning-sound → filim (beginning) + zë (comes into life) → filiz (ë), where the “m” has been dropped, demonstrating a natural evolution that preserves both sound and semantic content. Ottoman Turkish and later Greek etymologies, in contrast, offer no satisfactory account of this term, ignoring its semantic richness while actively suppressing it. The imposed interpretations are either superficial or deliberate manipulations, designed to obscure the original antecedents of the word while aligning them with hegemonic linguistic narratives. FILIZ is not simply a lexical item; it is the embodiment of origin itself—a beginning that the Ottoman and Greek frameworks refuse to acknowledge, systematically erasing the proper systems of indigenous Balkan languages.

The Symbolic Stratification of Z: A Challenge to Greek-Centric Linguistics The symbolism of Z does not originate in Greek abstraction nor in later Hellenistic grammatical theorizing. It emerges from living semantic structures preserved in the Albanian language, which retain archaic layers systematically ignored—or deliberately excluded—by Greek-centric linguistics. The symbol Z is not monolithic; it is a palimpsest of meanings, accumulated through usage, sound, motion, and cosmological symbolism. Unlike Greek philology, which treats letters as neutral signs retroactively interpreted through philosophy, this analysis treats Z as a generative symbol whose meaning precedes alphabetic standardization . 1. Voice (Sound / Breath) — Zë (“Voice”) At its most primordial level, Z is a voiced sibilant, emerging from breath set into vibration. This is not a theoretical abstraction but a phonetic reality embedded in Albanian: zë (“voice”). Greek linguistics offers no equivalent primordial semantic ...

Cadmean Semantic Closure: A Holistic Language Architecture for Artificial Intelligence Abstract Modern AI language systems are fundamentally fragmentary: they operate on tokens, probabilities, and statistical correlations rather than on integrated meaning. This paper proposes an alternative semantic architecture inspired by ancient Cadmean literacy and holistic linguistic principles preserved in Balkan traditions, particularly Albanian. We introduce a formal model in which meaning precedes expression, fragments are subordinate to wholeness, and valid language output requires semantic closure. This framework—termed Cadmean Semantic Closure (CSC)—offers a novel path toward reducing hallucination, improving coherence, and aligning artificial language generation with cosmological and structural principles of human meaning-making. 1. Introduction: The Fragmentation Problem in AI Language. Contemporary large language models (LLMs) generate text by recombining subword units (“tokens”) using p...

The Circle of Letters: Cadmus, O, and the Logic of Wholeness The Greek word holos (“whole”) is not merely a lexical item — it is a symbolic principle. The circle, O, represents the complete, the unified, the cosmos itself. Pieces of O, when joined, form a single O — a whole greater than the sum of its parts. This principle is linguistic, cosmological, and ritualistic. Every person, every organism, every object, every universe, is an O — a system of parts integrated into a complete and meaningful form. 1. Cadmus and the Alphabet as O in Action Cadmus, the Phoenician bringer of letters, embodies this principle. He did not simply deliver “Greek” writing; he introduced a symbolic algorithm, a sacred system in which letters are fragments (C) and words, inscriptions, and texts are wholes (O). The alphabet itself is an assembly of parts into a functioning whole: Each letter (C) carries sound and symbolic weight Each combination of letters forms words, phrases, and meaning (O) Literacy is the ...