"I was very pleased to hear that you have received a book and a Dictionary of the Albanian ... By it we see what the language of the ancient Illyrians was like." (Hanover, 10 December 1709)
"… 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)
[Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, Opera Philologica (Hildesheim: Georg Olms, 1989). Translated from the French by Robert Elsie.]
