Originally Posted by
blogen
No, no no. Not Thracian, but an Eastern Illyrian dialect or an independent language between the Illyrian and the Thracian (or a Western Thracian dialect). The problem is the Central Balkan, the only place where the close contact betwen the proto-Balkanite Latins and the proto-Albanians was possible. But this was the contact zone between the Illyrian, Thracian and other languages.
No, they were not. Their ancestors only. Or maybe yes, if their ancestors' language was an isolated language in the ancient times (definitely not Illyrian or Thracian!). Becasue the independent language is isolated from the other languages, a distance is needed for this. But the chance to this is not too big.
The great problem with the Albanian is the formation period. There are not living relatives or well documented ancient relatives to the reconstruction of the process and the internal evolution of this language was huge in the last two thousands years.