Originally posted by Risto the Great
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1. Westerners reject Slavic speakers as being descendants of Illyrians.
2. The author makes the point that today's people are not pure Slavs.
3. He then states that the Illyrians spoke what appears to be proto-Slavic.
The question I have is not whether the Illyrians were Slavic speakers. Nor is the issue of whether modern day Bosnians etc are of Illyrian lineage.
The issue is with the argument. It appears to be a paradox. On the one hand, there were people living in the Balkans before the Slavic migration, who spoke a proto-Slavic language. The Slavs came, of which Westerns believe to be the heirs of modern day Balkan people. For Westerners the logic is that the migrating Slavs cannot claim to be Illyrian, because there were no Slavs nor Slavic speakers among the Illyrians.
The author disagrees with this.
So if Slavic was already spoken in the Balkans by the Illyrians, and then Slavs came, it does not make sense that the author of the article would state that modern day Balkan people are not pure Slavs, an argument the author used to negate the counter argument used by Westerners to state that today's Yugoslavs cannot be Illyrian. By logic, today's Balkan people would have to be more on the pure Slav side.
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