1705-1715
Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz:
Correspondence on the Albanian Language
II. On this occasion, I would beg you, Sir, to send me the Lord's Prayer in the Epirotic (Albanian) language in an interlinear version and would be obliged to you if you could add the Credo, if possible. Please also send me the titles of the two books in this idiom, their size and the date and place of publication, for this language, being little known, is worthy of being investigated. I will endeavour to find these books in Rome. With them, ancient monuments have been dug up from the foundations of Notre Dame in Paris.
(Hanover, 28 December 1711)
… The modern European alphabets are derived from Latin, with the exception of the two Slavic ones: Cyrillic and so-called Glagolitic. Some authors later attributed these to Saint Jerome who was of Illyrian origin, but falsely so, as if the ancient Illyrian language were some sort of Slavic. But the Slavs were late to arrive in Illyria, not before the age of Justinian. The ancient Illyrians were of Celtic origin. They used a language closely related to Germanic and Gaulish. It is evident that relics of this are preserved in the modern language, in particular in that of the Epirots, of which I have seen specimens published. Nowadays they generally call the Slavic language Illyrian because the Slavs settled in Illyria. …
(Vienna, 13 January 1714)
II. …One day in Berlin you gave me a book in the language of the Epirots, printed in Rome by the Propaganda Fide. I believe it had the Lord's Prayer in that language and I took it out. But I cannot easily find it in my letters. Would you be so kind, Sir, as to send it to me once more?
(Hanover, 24 March 1715)
[Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, Opera Philologica (Hildesheim: Georg Olms, 1989). Translated from the French by Robert Elsie.]
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