Albanian–Eastern Romance linguistic parallels

The Albanian–Eastern Romance linguistic parallels are subject of historical and contact linguistic research applied to the Albanian and Eastern Romance languages (Aromanian, Megleno-Romanian, Romanian and Istro-Romanian). It has also been studied to understand the history of Albanian and Eastern Romance speakers. The common phonological, morphological and syntactical features of the two language families have been studied for more than a century. Both are part of the Balkan sprachbund but there are certain elements shared only by Albanian and Eastern Romance languages that descended from Common Romanian. Aside from Latin, and from shared Greek, Slavic and Turkish elements, other characteristics and words are attributed to the Palaeo-Balkan linguistic base. Similarities between Eastern Romance and Albanian are not limited to their common Balkan features and the assumed common lexical items: the two language families share calques and proverbs, and display analogous phonetic changes, some of the latter especially shared between Tosk Albanian and Common Romanian.

Geographic distribution of speakers of the Albanian (top) and Eastern Romance (bottom) languages

Despite the similarities, genetically they are only distantly related Indo-European languages, as Albanian is the only surviving representative of the Albanoid branch that belongs to the Paleo-Balkan group, whence Eastern Romance languages are the only surviving representatives of the Balkan Vulgar Latin, belonging to the Italic branch.

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