Misplaced Pages

Albanian
Shqip Arbërisht
Pronunciation	[ʃcip] [ˈɟuha ˈʃcipɛ] [aɾbəˈɾiʃt]
Native to	Albania Kosovo Greece Italy Montenegro North Macedonia Serbia
Ethnicity	Albanians
Native speakers	7.5 million (2017)
Language family	Indo-European Albanoid Albanian
Early forms	Proto-Indo-European Proto-Albanian
Dialects	Gheg (Arbanasi · Istrian† · Upper Reka · Malsia e Madhe) Tosk (Arbëresh · Arvanitika · Cham · Lab)
Writing system	Latin (Albanian alphabet) Albanian Braille
Official status
Official language in	Albania  Kosovo (co-official)  North Macedonia (co-official)  Montenegro (co-official)
Recognised minority language in	Italy  Serbia  Croatia  Romania
Regulated by	Academy of Sciences of Albania Academy of Sciences and Arts of Kosovo
Language codes
ISO 639-1	sq
ISO 639-2	alb (B) sqi (T)
ISO 639-3	sqi – inclusive code Individual codes: aae – Arbëresh aat – Arvanitika aln – Gheg als – Tosk
Glottolog	alba1267
Linguasphere	to 55-AAA-ahe (25 varieties) 55-AAA-aaa to 55-AAA-ahe (25 varieties)
The dialects of the Albanian language in Southern Europe.
This article contains IPA phonetic symbols. Without proper rendering support, you may see question marks, boxes, or other symbols instead of Unicode characters. For an introductory guide on IPA symbols, see Help:IPA.

Albanian (endonym: shqip [ʃcip] , gjuha shqipe [ˈɟuha ˈʃcipɛ], or arbërisht [aɾbəˈɾiʃt]) is an Indo-European language and the only surviving representative of the Albanoid branch, which belongs to the Paleo-Balkan group. It is the native language of the Albanian people. Standard Albanian is the official language of Albania and a co-official language in Kosovo, where it is the native language of the vast majority of the population. It is also a co-official language in North Macedonia and Montenegro, where it is the primary language of significant Albanian minority communities. Albanian is recognized as a minority language in Italy, Croatia, Romania, and Serbia. It is also spoken in Greece and by the Albanian diaspora, which is generally concentrated in the Americas, Europe and Oceania. Albanian is estimated to have as many as 7.5 million native speakers.

Albanian and other Paleo-Balkan languages had their formative core in the Balkans after the Indo-European migrations in the region. Ancestors of Albanian in antiquity is often thought to have been an Illyrian language for obvious geographic and historical reasons, but not proven, or otherwise an unmentioned Balkan Indo-European language that was closely related to Illyrian and Messapic. The Indo-European subfamily that gave rise to Albanian is called Albanoid in reference to a specific ethnolinguistically pertinent and historically compact language group. Whether descendants or sisters of what was called 'Illyrian' by classical sources, Albanian and Messapic, on the basis of shared features and innovations, are grouped together in a common branch in the current phylogenetic classification of the Indo-European language family.

The first written mention of Albanian was in 1284 in a witness testimony from the Republic of Ragusa, while a letter written by Dominican Friar Gulielmus Adea in 1332 mentions the Albanians using the Latin alphabet in their writings. The oldest surviving attestation of modern Albanian is from 1462. The two main Albanian dialect groups (or varieties), Gheg and Tosk, are primarily distinguished by phonological differences and are mutually intelligible in their standard varieties, with Gheg spoken to the north and Tosk spoken to the south of the Shkumbin river. Their characteristics in the treatment of both native words and loanwords provide evidence that the split into the northern and the southern dialects occurred after Christianisation of the region (4th century AD), and most likely not later than the 6th century AD, hence possibly occupying roughly their present area divided by the Shkumbin river since the Post-Roman and Pre-Slavic period, straddling the Jireček Line.

Centuries-old communities speaking Albanian dialects can be found scattered in Greece (the Arvanites and some communities in Epirus, Western Macedonia and Western Thrace), Croatia (the Arbanasi), Italy (the Arbëreshë) as well as in Romania, Turkey and Ukraine. The Malsia e Madhe Gheg Albanian and two varieties of the Tosk dialect, Arvanitika in Greece and Arbëresh in southern Italy, have preserved archaic elements of the language. Ethnic Albanians constitute a large diaspora, with many having long assimilated in different cultures and communities. Consequently, Albanian-speakers do not correspond to the total ethnic Albanian population, as many ethnic Albanians may identify as Albanian but are unable to speak the language.

Standard Albanian is a standardised form of spoken Albanian based on Tosk.

Geographic distribution

The language is spoken by approximately 6 million people in the Balkans, primarily in Albania, Kosovo, North Macedonia, Serbia, Montenegro and Greece. However, due to old communities in Italy and the large Albanian diaspora, the worldwide total of speakers is much higher than in Southern Europe and numbers approximately 7.5 million.

Europe

The Albanian language is the official language of Albania and Kosovo and a co-official language in North Macedonia and Montenegro. Albanian is a recognised minority language in Croatia, Italy, Romania and in Serbia. Albanian is also spoken by a minority in Greece, specifically in the Thesprotia and Preveza regional units and in a few villages in Ioannina and Florina regional units in Greece. It is also spoken by 450,000 Albanian immigrants in Greece, making it one of the commonly spoken languages in the country after Greek.

Albanian is the third most common mother tongue among foreign residents in Italy. This is due to a substantial Albanian immigration to Italy. Italy has a historical Albanian minority of about 500,000, scattered across southern Italy, known as Arbëreshë. Approximately 1 million Albanians from Kosovo are dispersed throughout Germany, Switzerland and Austria. These are mainly immigrants from Kosovo who migrated during the 1990s. In Switzerland, the Albanian language is the sixth most spoken language with 176,293 native speakers.

Albanian became an official language in North Macedonia on 15 January 2019.

Americas

There are large numbers of Albanian speakers in the United States, Argentina, Chile, Uruguay, and Canada. Some of the first ethnic Albanians to arrive in the United States were the Arbëreshë. The Arbëreshë have a strong sense of identity and are unique in that they speak an archaic dialect of Tosk Albanian called Arbëresh.

In the United States and Canada, there are approximately 250,000 Albanian speakers. It is primarily spoken on the East Coast of the United States, in cities like New York City, Boston, Chicago, Philadelphia, and Detroit, as well as in parts of the states of New Jersey, Ohio, and Connecticut.

In Argentina, there are nearly 40,000 Albanian speakers, mostly in Buenos Aires.

Asia and Africa

Approximately 1.3 million people of Albanian ancestry live in Turkey, with more than 500,000 recognizing their ancestry, language and culture. There are other estimates, however, that place the number of people in Turkey with Albanian ancestry and or background upward to 5 million. However, the vast majority of this population is assimilated and no longer possesses fluency in the Albanian language, though a vibrant Albanian community maintains its distinct identity in Istanbul to this day.

Egypt also lays claim to about 18,000 Albanians, mostly Tosk speakers. Many are descendants of the Janissary of Muhammad Ali Pasha, an Albanian who became Wāli, and self-declared Khedive of Egypt and Sudan. In addition to the dynasty that he established, a large part of the former Egyptian and Sudanese aristocracy was of Albanian origin. In addition to the recent emigrants, there are older diasporic communities around the world.

Oceania

Albanian is also spoken by Albanian diaspora communities residing in Australia and New Zealand.

Dialects

• Albanian
  • Tosk
    • Northern Tosk
    • Labërisht
    • Cham
    • Arvanitika
    • Arbëresh
  • Gheg
    • Northwest Gheg
    • Northeast Gheg
    • Central Gheg
    • Southern Gheg

The Albanian language has two distinct dialects, Tosk which is spoken in the south, and Gheg spoken in the north. Standard Albanian is based on the Tosk dialect. The Shkumbin River is the rough dividing line between the two dialects.

Gheg is divided into four sub-dialects: Northwest Gheg, Northeast Gheg, Central Gheg and Southern Gheg. It is primarily spoken in northern Albania, Kosovo, and throughout Montenegro and northwestern North Macedonia. One fairly divergent dialect is the Upper Reka dialect, which is however classified as Central Gheg. There is also a diaspora dialect in Croatia, the Arbanasi dialect.

Tosk is divided into five sub-dialects, including Northern Tosk (the most numerous in speakers), Labërisht, Cham, Arvanitika, and Arbëresh. Tosk is spoken in southern Albania, southwestern North Macedonia and northern and southern Greece. Cham Albanian is spoken in North-western Greece, while Arvanitika is spoken by the Arvanites in southern Greece. In addition, Arbëresh is spoken by the Arbëreshë people, descendants of 15th and 16th century migrants who settled in southeastern Italy, in small communities in the regions of Sicily and Calabria. These settlements originated from the (Arvanites) communities probably of Peloponnese known as Morea in the Middle Ages. Among them the Arvanites call themselves Arbëror and sometime Arbëresh. The Arbëresh dialect is closely related to the Arvanites dialect with more Italian vocabulary absorbed during different periods of time.

Orthography

The Albanian language has been written using many alphabets since the earliest records from the 15th century. The history of Albanian language orthography is closely related to the cultural orientation and knowledge of certain foreign languages among Albanian writers. The earliest written Albanian records come from the Gheg area in makeshift spellings based on Italian or Greek. Originally, the Tosk dialect was written in the Greek alphabet and the Gheg dialect was written in the Latin script. Both dialects had also been written in the Ottoman Turkish version of the Arabic script, Cyrillic, and some local alphabets (Elbasan, Vithkuqi, Todhri, Veso Bey, Jan Vellara and others, see original Albanian alphabets). More specifically, the writers from northern Albania and under the influence of the Catholic Church used Latin letters, those in southern Albania and under the influence of the Greek Orthodox church used Greek letters, while others throughout Albania and under the influence of Islam used Arabic letters. There were initial attempts to create an original Albanian alphabet during the 1750–1850 period. These attempts intensified after the League of Prizren and culminated with the Congress of Manastir held by Albanian intellectuals from 14 to 22 November 1908, in Manastir (present day Bitola), which decided on which alphabet to use, and what the standardised spelling would be for standard Albanian. This is how the literary language remains. The alphabet is the Latin alphabet with the addition of the letters ⟨ë⟩, ⟨ç⟩, and ten digraphs: dh, th, xh, gj, nj, ng, ll, rr, zh and sh.

According to Robert Elsie:

The hundred years between 1750 and 1850 were an age of astounding orthographic diversity in Albania. In this period, the Albanian language was put to writing in at least ten different alphabets – most certainly a record for European languages. ... the diverse forms in which this old Balkan language was recorded, from the earliest documents to the beginning of the twentieth century ... consist of adaptations of the Latin, Greek, Arabic, and Cyrillic alphabets and (what is even more interesting) a number of locally invented writing systems. Most of the latter alphabets have now been forgotten and are unknown, even to the Albanians themselves.

Classification

Albanian constitutes one of the eleven major branches of the Indo-European language family, within which it occupies an independent position. In 1854, Albanian was demonstrated to be an Indo-European language by the philologist Franz Bopp. Albanian was formerly compared by a few Indo-European linguists with Germanic and Balto-Slavic, all of which share a number of isoglosses with Albanian. Other linguists linked the Albanian language with Latin, Greek and Armenian, while placing Germanic and Balto-Slavic in another branch of Indo-European. In current scholarship there is evidence that Albanian is closely related to Greek and Armenian, while the fact that it is a satem language is less significant.

Messapic is considered the closest language to Albanian, grouped in a common branch titled Illyric in Hyllested & Joseph (2022). Hyllested & Joseph (2022) in agreement with recent bibliography identify Greco-Phrygian as the IE branch closest to the Albanian-Messapic one. These two branches form an areal grouping – which is often called "Balkan IE" – with Armenian. The hypothesis of the "Balkan Indo-European" continuum posits a common period of prehistoric coexistence of several Indo-European dialects in the Balkans prior to 2000 BC. To this group would belong Albanian, Ancient Greek, Armenian, Phrygian, fragmentary attested languages such as Macedonian, Thracian, or Illyrian, and the relatively well-attested Messapic in Southern Italy. The common features of this group appear at the phonological, morphological, and lexical levels, presumably resulting from the contact between the various languages. The concept of this linguistic group is explained as a kind of language league of the Bronze Age (a specific areal-linguistics phenomenon), although it also consisted of languages that were related to each other. A common prestage posterior to PIE comprising Albanian, Greek, and Armenian, is considered as a possible scenario. In this light, due to the larger number of possible shared innovations between Greek and Armenian, it appears reasonable to assume, at least tentatively, that Albanian was the first Balkan IE language to branch off. This split and the following ones were perhaps very close in time, allowing only a narrow time frame for shared innovations.

Albanian represents one of the core languages of the Balkan Sprachbund.

Glottolog and Ethnologue recognize four Albanian languages. They are classified as follows:

• Indo-European
  • Albanian
    • Tosk
      • Northern Tosk Albanian
      • Southern Tosk
        • Arbëreshë Albanian
        • Arvanitika Albanian
    • Gheg Albanian

History

Historical documentation

The first attested written mention of the Albanian language was on 14 July 1284 in Ragusa in modern Croatia (Dubrovnik) when a crime witness named Matthew testified: "I heard a voice crying on the mountain in the Albanian language" (Latin: Audivi unam vocem, clamantem in monte in lingua albanesca).

The Albanian language is also mentioned in the Descriptio Europae Orientalis dated in 1308:

Habent enim Albani prefati linguam distinctam a Latinis, Grecis et Sclauis ita quod in nullo se intelligunt cum aliis nationibus. (Namely, the above-mentioned Albanians have a language that is different from the languages of Latins, Greeks and Slavs, so that they do not understand each other at all.)

The oldest attested document written in Albanian dates to 1462, while the first audio recording in the language was made by Norbert Jokl on 4 April 1914 in Vienna.

However, as Fortson notes, Albanian written works existed before this point; they have simply been lost. The existence of written Albanian is explicitly mentioned in a letter attested from 1332, and the first preserved books, including both those in Gheg and in Tosk, share orthographic features that indicate that some form of common literary language had developed.

By the Late Middle Ages, during the period of Humanism and the European Renaissance, the term lingua epirotica 'Epirotan language' was preferred in the intellectual, literary, and clerical circles of the time, and used as a synonym for the Albanian language. Published in Rome in 1635, by the Albanian bishop and writer Frang Bardhi, the first dictionary of the Albanian language was titled Latin: Dictionarium latino-epiroticum 'Latin-Epirotan dictionary'.

During the five-century period of the Ottoman presence in Albania, the language was not officially recognised until 1909, when the Congress of Dibra decided that Albanian schools would finally be allowed.

Linguistic affinities

Albanian is an isolate within the Indo-European language family; no other language has been conclusively linked to its branch. The only other languages that are the sole surviving members of a branch of Indo-European are Armenian and Greek.

The Albanian language is part of the Indo-European language family and the only surviving representative of its own branch, which belongs to the Paleo-Balkan group. Although it is still uncertain which ancient mentioned language of the Balkans it continues, or where in the region its speakers lived. In general, there is insufficient evidence to connect Albanian with one of those languages, whether Illyrian, Thracian, or Dacian.Among these possibilities, Illyrian is the most probable.

Although Albanian shares lexical isoglosses with Greek, Germanic, and to a lesser extent Balto-Slavic, the vocabulary of Albanian is quite distinct. In 1995, Taylor, Ringe, and Warnow used quantitative linguistic techniques that appeared to obtain an Albanian subgrouping with Germanic, a result which the authors had already reasonably downplayed. Indeed, the Albanian and Germanic branches share a relatively moderate number of lexical cognates. Many shared grammatical elements or features of these two branches do not corroborate the lexical isoglosses. Albanian also shares lexical linguistic affinity with Latin and Romance languages. Sharing linguistic features unique to the languages of the Balkans, Albanian also forms a part of the Balkan linguistic area or sprachbund.

Historical presence and location

The place and the time that the Albanian language was formed are uncertain. The American linguist Eric Hamp has said that during an unknown chronological period a pre-Albanian population (termed as "Albanoid" by Hamp) inhabited areas stretching from Poland to the southwestern Balkans. Further analysis has suggested that it was in a mountainous region rather than on a plain or seacoast. The words for plants and animals characteristic of mountainous regions are entirely original, but the names for fish and for agricultural activities (such as ploughing) are borrowed from other languages.

A deeper analysis of the vocabulary, however, shows that could be a consequence of a prolonged Latin domination of the coastal and plain areas of the country, rather than evidence of the original environment in which the Albanian language was formed. For example, the word for 'fish' is borrowed from Latin, but not the word for 'gills' which is native. Indigenous are also the words for 'ship', 'raft', 'navigation', 'sea shelves' and a few names of fish kinds, but not the words for 'sail', 'row' and 'harbor'; objects pertaining to navigation itself and a large part of sea fauna. This rather shows that Proto-Albanians were pushed away from coastal areas in early times (probably after the Latin conquest of the region) and thus lost a large amount (or the majority) of their sea environment lexicon. A similar phenomenon could be observed with agricultural terms. While the words for 'arable land', 'wheat', 'cereals', 'vineyard', 'yoke', 'harvesting', 'cattle breeding', etc. are native, the words for 'ploughing', 'farm' and 'farmer', agricultural practices, and some harvesting tools are foreign. This, again, points to intense contact with other languages and people, rather than providing evidence of a possible linguistic homeland (also known as a Urheimat).

The centre of Albanian settlement remained the Mat River. In 1079, the Albanians were recorded farther south in the valley of the Shkumbin River. The Shkumbin, a 181 km long river that lies near the old Via Egnatia, is approximately the boundary of the primary dialect division for Albanian, Tosk and Gheg. The characteristics of Tosk and Gheg in the treatment of the native words and loanwords from other languages are evidence that the dialectal split preceded the Slavic migrations to the Balkans, which means that in that period (the 5th to 6th centuries AD), Albanians were occupying nearly the same area around the Shkumbin river, which straddled the Jireček Line.

References to the existence of Albanian as a distinct language survive from the 14th century, but they failed to cite specific words. The oldest surviving documents written in Albanian are the "formula e pagëzimit" (Baptismal formula), Un'te paghesont' pr'emenit t'Atit e t'Birit e t'Spertit Senit. ("I baptize thee in the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit") recorded by Pal Engjelli, Bishop of Durrës in 1462 in the Gheg dialect, and some New Testament verses from that period.

The linguists Stefan Schumacher and Joachim Matzinger (University of Vienna) assert that the first literary records of Albanian date from the 16th century. The oldest known Albanian printed book, Meshari, or "missal", was written in 1555 by Gjon Buzuku, a Roman Catholic cleric. In 1635, Frang Bardhi wrote the first Latin–Albanian dictionary. The first Albanian school is believed to have been opened by Franciscans in 1638 in Pdhanë.

One of the earliest Albanian dictionaries was written in 1693; it was the Italian manuscript Pratichae Schrivaneschae authored by the Montenegrin sea captain Julije Balović and includes a multilingual dictionary of hundreds of the most frequently used words in everyday life in Italian, Slavic, Greek, Albanian, and Turkish.

Pre-Indo-European substratum

Pre-Indo-European (PreIE) sites are found throughout the territory of Albania. Such PreIE sites existed in Maliq, Vashtëmi, Burimas, Barç, Dërsnik in the Korçë District, Kamnik in Kolonja, Kolsh in the Kukës District, Rashtan in Librazhd, and Nezir in the Mat District. As in other parts of Europe, these PreIE people joined the migratory Indo-European tribes that entered the Balkans and contributed to the formation of the historical Paleo-Balkan tribes. In terms of linguistics, the pre-Indo-European substrate language spoken in the southern Balkans probably influenced pre-Proto-Albanian, the ancestor idiom of Albanian. The extent of this linguistic impact cannot be determined with precision due to the uncertain position of Albanian among Paleo-Balkan languages and their scarce attestation. Some loanwords, however, have been proposed, such as shegë 'pomegranate' or lëpjetë 'orach'; compare Pre-Greek λάπαθον, lápathon 'monk's rhubarb'.

Literary tradition

Earliest undisputed texts

The earliest known texts in Albanian:

• the formula e pagëzimit (Baptismal Formula), which dates back to 1462 and was authored by Pal Engjëlli (or Paulus Angelus) (c. 1417 – 1470), Archbishop of Durrës. Engjëlli was a close friend and counsellor of Skanderbeg. It was written in a pastoral letter for a synod at the Holy Trinity in Mat and read in Latin characters as follows: Unte paghesont premenit Atit et Birit et Spertit Senit (standard Albanian: Unë të pagëzoj në emër të Atit, të Birit e të Shpirtit të Shenjtë; English: "I baptise you in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit"). It was discovered and published in 1915 by Nicolae Iorga.
• the Fjalori i Arnold von Harfit (Arnold Ritter von Harff's lexicon), a short list of Albanian phrases with German glosses, dated 1496.
• a song, recorded in the Greek alphabet, retrieved from an old codex that was written in Greek. The document is also called Perikopeja e Ungjillit të Pashkëve or Perikopeja e Ungjillit të Shën Mateut ("The Song of the Easter Gospel, or "The Song of Saint Matthew's Gospel"). Although the codex is dated to during the 14th century, the song, written in Albanian by an anonymous writer, seems to be a 16th-century writing. The document was found by Arbëreshë people who had emigrated to Italy in the 15th century.

• 

  

  The first book in Albanian is the Meshari ("The Missal"), written by Gjon Buzuku between 20 March 1554 and 5 January 1555. The book was written in the Gheg dialect in the Latin script with some Slavic letters adapted for Albanian vowels. The book was discovered in 1740 by Gjon Nikollë Kazazi, the Albanian archbishop of Skopje. It contains the liturgies of the main holidays. There are also texts of prayers and rituals and catechetical texts. The grammar and the vocabulary are more archaic than those in the Gheg texts from the 17th century. The 188 pages of the book comprise about 154,000 words with a total vocabulary of c. 1,500 different words. The text is archaic yet easily interpreted because it is mainly a translation of known texts, in particular portions of the Bible. The book also contains passages from the Psalms, the Book of Isaiah, the Book of Jeremiah, the Letters to the Corinthians, and many illustrations. The uniformity of spelling seems to indicate an earlier tradition of writing. The only known copy of the Meshari is held by the Apostolic Library. In 1968 the book was published with transliterations and comments by linguists.
• The first printed work in Tosk Albanian is the Mbsuame e krështerë (in Italian: Dottrina cristiana) by Lekë Matrënga or (in Italian) Luca Matranga. It was published in 1592 and is written in an early form of the Arbëresh language (also known as Italo-Albanian).

Albanian scripts were produced earlier than the first attested document, formula e pagëzimit, but none yet have been discovered. We know of their existence by earlier references. For example, a French monk signed as "Broccardus" notes, in 1332, that "Although the Albanians have another language totally different from Latin, they still use Latin letters in all their books".

Disputed earlier texts

In 1967 two scholars claimed to have found a Letter text in Albanian inserted into the Bellifortis text, a book written in Latin dating to 1402–1405.

"A star has fallen in a place in the woods, distinguish the star, distinguish it.

Distinguish the star from the others, they are ours, they are.
Do you see where the great voice has resounded? Stand beside it
That thunder. It did not fall. It did not fall for you, the one which would do it.
...
Like the ears, you should not believe ... that the moon fell when ...
Try to encompass that which spurts far ...

Call the light when the moon falls and no longer exists ..."

Robert Elsie, a specialist in Albanian studies, considers that "The Todericiu/Polena Romanian translation of the non-Latin lines, although it may offer some clues if the text is indeed Albanian, is fanciful and based, among other things, on a false reading of the manuscript, including the exclusion of a whole line."

Ottoman period

In 1635, Frang Bardhi (1606–1643) published in Rome his Dictionarum latinum-epiroticum, the first known Latin-Albanian dictionary. Other scholars who studied the language during the 17th century include Andrea Bogdani (1600–1685), author of the first Latin-Albanian grammar book, Nilo Katalanos (1637–1694) and others.

Indo-European features

Part of a series on
Indo-European topics
Languages List of Indo-European languages Extant Albanoid Albanian Armenian Balto-Slavic Baltic Slavic Celtic Germanic Hellenic Greek Indo-Iranian Indo-Aryan Iranian Nuristani Italic Romance Extinct Anatolian Tocharian Paleo-Balkan Dacian Illyrian Liburnian Messapic Mysian Paeonian Phrygian Thracian Reconstructed Proto-Indo-European language Phonology: Sound laws, Accent, Ablaut Hypothetical Balkanic Daco-Thracian Graeco-Albanian Graeco-Armenian Graeco-Aryan Graeco-Phrygian Indo-Hittite Italo-Celtic Thraco-Illyrian Grammar Vocabulary Root Verbs Nouns Pronouns Numerals Particles Other Proto-Albanian Proto-Anatolian Proto-Armenian Proto-Germanic (Proto-Norse) Proto-Italo-Celtic (Proto-Celtic · Proto-Italic) Proto-Greek Proto-Balto-Slavic (Proto-Slavic · Proto-Baltic) Proto-Indo-Iranian (Proto-Iranian)
Philology Hittite inscriptions Hieroglyphic Luwian Linear B Rigveda Avesta Homer Behistun Greek epigraphy Phrygian epigraphy Messapic epigraphy Latin epigraphy Gaulish epigraphy Runic epigraphy Ogham Gothic Bible Bible translations into Armenian Tocharian script Old Irish glosses Albanian Kanun
Origins Homeland Proto-Indo-Europeans Society Religion Mainstream Kurgan hypothesis Indo-European migrations Eurasian nomads Alternative and fringe Anatolian hypothesis Armenian hypothesis Beech argument Indigenous Aryanism Baltic homeland Paleolithic continuity theory
Archaeology Chalcolithic (Copper Age) Pontic Steppe Domestication of the horse Kurgan Kurgan stelae Kurgan culture Steppe cultures Bug–Dniester Sredny Stog Dnieper–Donets Samara Khvalynsk Yamnaya Mikhaylovka culture Novotitarovskaya culture Caucasus Maykop East Asia Afanasievo Eastern Europe Usatovo Cernavodă Cucuteni Northern Europe Corded ware Baden Middle Dnieper Bronze Age Pontic Steppe Chariot Yamnaya Catacomb Multi-cordoned ware Poltavka Srubnaya Northern/Eastern Steppe Abashevo culture Andronovo Sintashta Europe Globular Amphora Corded ware Bell Beaker Únětice Trzciniec Nordic Bronze Age Terramare Tumulus Urnfield Lusatian South Asia BMAC Yaz Gandhara grave Iron Age Steppe Chernoles Europe Thraco-Cimmerian Hallstatt Jastorf Caucasus Colchian India Painted Grey Ware Northern Black Polished Ware
Peoples and societies Bronze Age Anatolian peoples (Hittites) Armenians Mycenaean Greeks Indo-Iranians Iron Age Indo-Aryans Indo-Aryans Iranians Iranians East Asia Wusun Yuezhi Europe Celts Gauls Celtiberians Insular Celts Cimmerians Hellenic peoples Italic peoples Germanic peoples Paleo-Balkan/Anatolia Thracians Dacians Illyrians Paeonians Phrygians Scythians Middle Ages East Asia Tocharians Europe Albanians Balts Slavs Norsemen/Medieval Scandinavians Middle Ages Indo-Aryan Medieval India Iranian Greater Iran
Religion and mythology Reconstructed Proto-Indo-European mythology Proto-Indo-Iranian paganism Historical Vedic religion Ancient Iranian religion Historical Hittite Indo-Aryan Vedic Hinduism Buddhism Jainism Sikhism Iranian Persian Zoroastrianism Kurdish Yazidism Yarsanism Scythian Ossetian Others Armenian European Paleo-Balkan (Albanian · Illyrian · Thracian · Dacian) Greek Roman Celtic Irish Scottish Breton Welsh Cornish Germanic Anglo-Saxon Continental Norse Baltic Latvian Lithuanian Slavic Practices Fire rituals Horse sacrifice Sati Winter solstice/Yule
Indo-European studies Scholars Marija Gimbutas J. P. Mallory Institutes Copenhagen Studies in Indo-European Publications Encyclopedia of Indo-European Culture The Horse, the Wheel, and Language Journal of Indo-European Studies Indogermanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch Indo-European Etymological Dictionary
v t e

Indo-European vocabulary

PIE phonological correspondences

Phonologically, Albanian is not so conservative. Like many IE stocks, it has merged the two series of voiced stops (e.g. both PIE *d and *dʰ became Albanian: d). In addition, voiced stops tend to disappear in between vowels. There is almost complete loss of final syllables and very widespread loss of other unstressed syllables (e.g. mik 'friend' from Lat. amicus). PIE *o appears as a (also as e if a high front vowel i follows), while PIE *ē and *ā become o, and PIE *ō appears as e.

The palatals, velars, and labiovelars show distinct developments, with Albanian showing the three-way distinction also found in Luwian. Labiovelars are for the most part differentiated from all other Indo-European velar series before front vowels, but they merge with the "pure" (back) velars elsewhere. The palatal velar series, consisting of Proto-Indo-European *ḱ and the merged *ģ and *ģʰ, usually developed into *th and *dh, but were depalatalised to merge with the back velars when in contact with sonorants. Because the original Proto-Indo-European tripartite distinction between dorsals is preserved in such reflexes, Albanian is therefore neither centum nor satem, despite having a "satem-like" realization of the palatal dorsals in most cases. Thus PIE *ḱ, *k, and *kʷ become th, q, and s, respectively (before back vowels PIE *ḱ becomes th, while *k and *kʷ merge as k).

A minority of scholars reconstruct a fourth laryngeal *h₄ allegedly surfacing as Alb. h word-initially, e.g. Alb. herdhe 'testicles' presumably from PIE *h₄órǵʰi- (rather than the usual reconstruction *h₃erǵʰi-), but this is generally not followed elsewhere, as h- has arisen elsewhere idiosyncratically (for example Alb. hark < Lat. arcus).

1. ^ Between vowels or after r

1. Before u̯/u or i̯/i
2. Before sonorant
3. Archaic relic
4. Syllable-initial and followed by sibilant

1. Initial
2. Between vowels
3. Between u/i and another vowel (ruki law)
4. Dissimilation with following s

1. Before i, e, a
2. Before back vowels
3. Between vowels
4. ^ Before C clusters, i, j

Standard Albanian

Since World War II, standard Albanian used in Albania has been based on the Tosk dialect. Kosovo and other areas where Albanian is official adopted the Tosk standard in 1969.

Elbasan-based standard

Until the early 20th century, Albanian writing developed in three main literary traditions: Gheg, Tosk, and Arbëreshë. Throughout this time, a Gheg subdialect spoken around Elbasan served as lingua franca among the Albanians, but was less prevalent in writing. The Congress of Manastir of Albanian writers held in 1908 recommended the use of the Elbasan subdialect for literary purposes and as a basis of a unified national language. While technically classified as a southern Gheg variety, the Elbasan speech is closer to Tosk in phonology and practically a hybrid between other Gheg subdialects and literary Tosk.

Between 1916 and 1918, the Albanian Literary Commission met in Shkodër under the leadership of Luigj Gurakuqi with the purpose of establishing a unified orthography for the language. The commission, made up of representatives from the north and south of Albania, reaffirmed the Elbasan subdialect as the basis of a national tongue. The rules published in 1917 defined spelling for the Elbasan variety for official purposes. The commission did not, however, discourage publications in one of the dialects, but rather laid a foundation for Gheg and Tosk to gradually converge into one.

When the Congress of Lushnje met in the aftermath of World War I to form a new Albanian government, the 1917 decisions of the Literary Commission were upheld. The Elbasan subdialect remained in use for administrative purposes and many new writers embraced it for creative writing. Gheg and Tosk continued to develop freely and interaction between the two dialects increased.

Tosk standard

At the end of World War II, however, the new communist regime radically imposed the use of the Tosk dialect in all facets of life in Albania: administration, education, and literature. Most Communist leaders were Tosks from the south. Standardisation was directed by the Albanian Institute of Linguistics and Literature of the Academy of Sciences of Albania. Two dictionaries were published in 1954: an Albanian language dictionary and a Russian–Albanian dictionary. New orthography rules were eventually published in 1967 and in 1973 with the Drejtshkrimi i gjuhës shqipe (Orthography of the Albanian Language).

Until 1968, Kosovo and other Albanian-speaking areas in Yugoslavia followed the 1917 standard based on the Elbasan dialect, though it was gradually infused with Gheg elements in an effort to develop a Kosovan language separate from communist Albania's Tosk-based standard. Albanian intellectuals in the former Yugoslavia consolidated the 1917 standard twice in the 1950s, culminating with a thorough codification of orthographic rules in 1964. The rules already provided for a balanced variety that accounted for both Gheg and Tosk dialects, but only lasted through 1968. Viewing divergences with Albania as a threat to their identity, Kosovars arbitrarily adopted the Tosk project that Tirana had published the year before. Although it was never intended to serve outside of Albania, the project became the "unified literary language" in 1972, when approved by a rubberstamp Orthography Congress. Only about 1 in 9 participants were from Kosovo. The Congress, held at Tirana, authorized the orthography rules that came out the following year, in 1973.

More recent dictionaries from the Albanian government are Fjalori Drejtshkrimor i Gjuhës Shqipe (1976) (Orthographic Dictionary of the Albanian Language) and Dictionary of Today's Albanian language (Fjalori i Gjuhës së Sotme Shqipe) (1980). Prior to World War II, dictionaries consulted by developers of the standard have included Lexikon tis Alvanikis glossis (Albanian: Fjalori i Gjuhës Shqipe (Kostandin Kristoforidhi, 1904), Fjalori i Bashkimit (1908), and Fjalori i Gazullit (1941).

Calls for reform

Since the fall of the communist regime, Albanian orthography has stirred heated debate among scholars, writers, and public opinion in Albania and Kosovo, with hardliners opposed to any changes in the orthography, moderates supporting varying degrees of reform, and radicals calling for a return to the Elbasan dialect. Criticism of Standard Albanian has centred on the exclusion of the 'me + participle' infinitive and the Gheg lexicon. Critics say that Standard Albanian disenfranchises and stigmatises Gheg speakers, affecting the quality of writing and impairing effective public communication. Supporters of the Tosk standard view the 1972 Congress as a milestone achievement in Albanian history and dismiss calls for reform as efforts to "divide the nation" or "create two languages." Moderates, who are especially prevalent in Kosovo, generally stress the need for a unified Albanian language, but believe that the 'me + participle' infinitive and Gheg words should be included. Proponents of the Elbasan dialect have been vocal, but have gathered little support in the public opinion. In general, those involved in the language debate come from diverse backgrounds and there is no significant correlation between one's political views, geographic origin, and position on Standard Albanian.

Many writers continue to write in the Elbasan dialect but other Gheg variants have found much more limited use in literature. Most publications adhere to a strict policy of not accepting submissions that are not written in Tosk. Some print media even translate direct speech, replacing the 'me + participle' infinitive with other verb forms and making other changes in grammar and word choice. Even authors who have published in the Elbasan dialect will frequently write in the Tosk standard.

In 2013, a group of academics for Albania and Kosovo proposed minor changes to the orthography. Hardline academics boycotted the initiative, while other reformers have viewed it as well-intentioned but flawed and superficial.

Education

Albanian is the medium of instruction in most Albanian schools. The literacy rate in Albania for the total population, age 9 or older, is about 99%. Elementary education is compulsory (grades 1–9), but most students continue at least until a secondary education. Students must pass graduation exams at the end of the 9th grade and at the end of the 12th grade in order to continue their education.

Phonology

Standard Albanian has seven vowels and 29 consonants. Like English, Albanian has dental fricatives /θ/ (like the th in thin) and /ð/ (like the th in this), written as ⟨th⟩ and ⟨dh⟩, which are rare cross-linguistically.

Gheg uses long and nasal vowels, which are absent in Tosk, and the mid-central vowel ë is lost at the end of the word. The stress is fixed mainly on the last syllable. Gheg n (femën: compare English feminine) changes to r by rhotacism in Tosk (femër).

Consonants

Notes:

• The contrast between flapped r and trilled rr is the almost the same as in Spanish or Armenian. However, in most of the dialects, as also in standard Albanian, the single r changes from an alveolar flap /ɾ/ to an alveolar approximant .
• The palatal nasal /ɲ/ corresponds to the Spanish ñ and the French and Italian gn. It is pronounced as one sound, not a nasal plus a glide.
• The ll sound is a velarised lateral, close to English dark l.
• The letter ç is sometimes written ch due to technical limitations, in analogy to the other digraphs xh, sh, and zh. Usually it is written simply c or more rarely q with context resolving any ambiguities.
• The sounds spelled with q and gj show variation. They may range between occurring as palatal affricates or as palatal stops among dialects. Some speakers merge them into the palatoalveolar sounds ç and xh. This is especially common in Northern Gheg, but is increasingly the case in Tosk as well. Other speakers reduced them into /j/ in consonant clusters, such as in the word fjollë, which before standardisation was written as fqollë ( < Medieval Greek φακιολης).
• The ng can be pronounced as /ŋ/ in final position, otherwise it is an allophone of n before k and g.
• Before q and gj, n is always pronounced /ɲ/ but this is not reflected in the orthography.

Vowels

Notes

• ë can also range to an open-mid sound in the Northern Tosk dialect.
• Mid sounds /e, o/ can also be heard as more open-mid sounds , in free variation.

Schwa

The schwa in Albanian has a great degree of variability from extreme back to extreme front articulation. Although the Indo-European schwa (*ə or *-h₂-) was preserved in Albanian, in some cases it was lost, possibly when a stressed syllable preceded it. Until the standardisation of the modern Albanian alphabet, in which the schwa is spelled as ⟨ë⟩, as in the work of Gjon Buzuku in the 16th century, various vowel letters and digraphs were employed, including ⟨ae⟩ by Lekë Matrënga and ⟨é⟩ by Pjetër Bogdani in the late 16th and early 17th century. Within the borders of Albania, the phoneme is pronounced about the same in both the Tosk and the Gheg dialect due to the influence of standard Albanian. However, in the Gheg dialects spoken in the neighbouring Albanian-speaking areas of Kosovo and North Macedonia, the phoneme is still pronounced as back and rounded.

Grammar

Albanian has a canonical word order of SVO (subject–verb–object) like English and many other Indo-European languages. Albanian nouns are categorised by gender (masculine, feminine and neuter) and inflected for number (singular and plural) and case. There are five declensions and six cases (nominative, accusative, genitive, dative, ablative, and vocative), although the vocative only occurs with a limited number of words (such as 'bir' ("son"), vocative case: biro, zog ("bird") vocative case: zogo), and the forms of the genitive and dative are identical (a genitive construction employs the prepositions i/e/të/së alongside dative morphemes). Some dialects also retain a locative case, which is not present in standard Albanian (e.g. "në malt" loc.sg.def). The cases apply to both definite and indefinite nouns, and there are numerous cases of syncretism.

The following shows the declension of mal (mountain), a noun in the masculine class which takes "i" in the definite singular:

The following shows the declension of the noun zog (bird), a noun in the masculine class which takes "u" in the definite singular:

The following table shows the declension of the noun vajzë (girl) in the feminine class:

The definite article is placed after the noun as in many other Balkan languages, like in Romanian, Macedonian and Bulgarian.

• The definite article can be in the form of noun suffixes, which vary with gender and case.
  • For example, in singular nominative, masculine nouns add -i, or those ending in -g/-k/-h take -u (to avoid palatalization):
    • mal (mountain) / mali (the mountain);
    • libër (book) / libri (the book);
    • zog (bird) / zogu (the bird).
  • Nouns in the feminine class take the suffix -(i/j)a:
    • veturë (car) / vetura (the car);
    • shtëpi (house) / shtëpia (the house);
    • lule (flower) / lulja (the flower).
• Nouns in the neuter class take -t.

Albanian has developed an analytical verbal structure in place of the earlier synthetic system, inherited from Proto-Indo-European. Its complex system of moods (six types) and tenses (three simple and five complex constructions) is distinctive among Balkan languages. There are two general types of conjugations.

Albanian has a series of verb forms called miratives or admiratives. These may express surprise on the part of the speaker, but may also have other functions, such as expressing irony, doubt, or reportedness. The Albanian use of admirative forms is unique in the Balkan context. In English, the expression of surprise can be rendered by 'oh, look!' or 'lookee there!'; the expression of doubt can be rendered by 'indeed!'; the expression of neutral reportedness can be rendered by 'apparently'.

• Ti flet shqip. "You speak Albanian." (indicative)
• Ti folke shqip! "You (surprisingly) speak Albanian!" (admirative)
• Rruga është e mbyllur. "The street is closed." (indicative)
• Rruga qenka e mbyllur. "(Apparently,) The street is closed." (admirative)

For more information on verb conjugation and on inflection of other parts of speech, see Albanian morphology.

Word order

Albanian word order is relatively free. To say 'Agim ate all the oranges' in Albanian, one may use any of the following orders, with slight pragmatic differences:

• SVO: Agimi i hëngri të gjithë portokallët.
• SOV: Agimi të gjithë portokallët i hëngri.
• OVS: Të gjithë portokallët i hëngri Agimi.
• OSV: Të gjithë portokallët Agimi i hëngri.
• VSO: I hëngri Agimi të gjithë portokallët.
• VOS: I hëngri të gjithë portokallët Agimi.

However, the most common order is subject–verb–object.

The verb can optionally occur in sentence-initial position, especially with verbs in the passive form (forma joveprore):

• Parashikohet një ndërprerje "An interruption is anticipated".

Negation

Verbal negation in Albanian is mood-dependent, a trait shared with some fellow Indo-European languages such as Greek.

In indicative, conditional, or admirative sentences, negation is expressed by the particles nuk or s' in front of the verb, for example:

• Toni nuk flet anglisht "Tony does not speak English";
• Toni s'flet anglisht "Tony doesn't speak English";
• Nuk e di "I do not know";
• S'e di "I don't know".

Subjunctive, imperative, optative, or non-finite forms of verbs are negated with the particle mos:

• Mos harro "Do not forget!".

Numerals

Notes

• In certain dialects, numerals with an extra syllable may undergo metrical syncope. For example, pesëmbëdhjetë becomes pesëmet.

Vigesimal system

Beside the Indo-European decimal numeration, there are also remnants of the vigesimal system, as njëzet 'twenty' and dyzet 'forty'. The Arbëreshë in Italy and Arvanites in Greece may still use trezet 'sixty' and katërzet 'eighty'. Albanian is the only Balkan language that has preserved the Pre-Indo-European vigesimal system.

Lexicon

This section should specify the language of its non-English content, using {{lang}}, {{transliteration}} for transliterated languages, and {{IPA}} for phonetic transcriptions, with an appropriate ISO 639 code. Misplaced Pages's multilingual support templates may also be used. See why. (April 2020)

Albanian is known within historical linguistics as a case of a language which, although surviving through many periods of foreign rule and multilingualism, saw a "disproportionately high" influx of loans from other languages augmenting and replacing much of its original vocabulary. Of all the foreign influences in Albanian, the deepest reaching and most impactful was the absorption of loans from Latin in the Classical period and its Romance successors afterward. Scholars have estimated a great number of Latin loanwords in Albanian, some even claiming 60% of the Albanian vocabulary.

Major work in reconstructing Proto-Albanian has been done with the help of knowledge of the original forms of loans from Ancient Greek, Latin and Slavic, while Ancient Greek loanwords are scarce the Latin loanwords are of extreme importance in phonology. The presence of loanwords from more well-studied languages from time periods before Albanian was attested, reaching deep back into the Classical Era, has been of great use in phonological reconstructions for earlier ancient and medieval forms of Albanian. Some words in the core vocabulary of Albanian have no known etymology linking them to Proto-Indo-European or any known source language, and as of 2018 are thus tentatively attributed to an unknown, unattested, pre-Indo-European substrate language; some words among these include zemër (heart) and hekur (iron). Some among these putative pre-IE words are thought to be related to putative pre-IE substrate words in neighboring Indo-European languages, such as lule (flower), which has been tentatively linked to Latin lilia and Greek leirion.

Lexical distance of Albanian to other languages in a lexicostatistical analysis by Ukrainian linguist Tyshchenko shows the following results (the lower figure, the higher similarity): 49% Slovenian, 53% Romanian, 56% Greek, 82% French, 86% Macedonian, 86% Bulgarian.

Cognates with Illyrian

Early linguistic influences

The earliest loanwords attested in Albanian come from Doric Greek, whereas the strongest influence came from Latin. Some scholars argue that Albanian originated from an area located east of its present geographic spread due to the several common lexical items found between the Albanian and Romanian languages. However it does not necessarily define the genealogical history of Albanian language, and it does not exclude the possibility of Proto-Albanian presence in both Illyrian and Thracian territory.

The period during which Proto-Albanian and Latin interacted was protracted, lasting from the 2nd century BC to the 5th century AD. Over this period, the lexical borrowings can be roughly divided into three layers, the second of which is the largest. The first and smallest occurred at the time of less significant interaction. The final period, probably preceding the Slavic or Germanic invasions, also has a notably smaller number of borrowings. Each layer is characterised by a different treatment of most vowels: the first layer follows the evolution of Early Proto-Albanian into Albanian; while later layers reflect vowel changes endemic to Late Latin (and presumably Proto-Romance). Other formative changes include the syncretism of several noun case endings, especially in the plural, as well as a large-scale palatalisation.

A brief period followed, between the 7th and the 9th centuries, that was marked by heavy borrowings from South Slavic, some of which predate the "o-a" shift common to the modern forms of this language group.

Early Greek loans

There are some 30 Ancient Greek loanwords in Proto-Albanian. Many of these reflect a dialect which voiced its aspirants, as did the Macedonian dialect. Other loanwords are Doric; these words mainly refer to commodity items and trade goods and probably came through trade with a now-extinct intermediary.

• drapër; "sickle" < (Northwest Greek) drápanon
• bletë; "hive, bee" < Attic mélitta "bee" (vs. Ionic mélissa).
• kumbull; "plum" < kokkúmelon
• lakër; "cabbage, green vegetables" < lákhanon "green; vegetable"
• lëpjetë; "orach, dock" < lápathon
• lyej; "to smear, to oil"< Proto-Albanian *elaiwanja < *elaiwa (olive oil) < Greek elaion
• mokër; "millstone" < (Northwest) mākhaná "device, instrument"
• mollë; "apple" < mēlon "fruit"
• pëllëmbë; "palm of the hand" < palámā
• pjepër; "melon" < pépōn
• presh; "leek" < práson
• trumzë; "thyme" < (Northwest) thýmbrā, thrýmbrē
• pellg; "pond, pool" < pélagos "high sea"

According to Huld (1986), the following come from a Greek dialect without any significant attestation called "Makedonian" because it was akin to the native idiom of the Greek-speaking population in the Argead kingdom:

• llërë; "elbow" < *ὠlénā
• brukë; "tamarisk" < *mīrýkhā
• mëllagë; 'mallow' < *malákhā (with the reflex of /ɡ/ for Greek <χ> indicating a dialectal voicing of the what came as an aspirate stop from Greek)
• maraj "fennel" < *márathrion (cf Romanian mărar(iu), Ionic márathron; with the Albanian simplification of -dri̯- to -j- reflecting that of earlier *udri̯om to ujë "water")

Latin influence

Scholars have estimated a great number of Latin loanwords in Albanian, some even claiming 60% of the Albanian vocabulary. They include many frequently used core vocabulary items, including shumë ("very", from Latin summus), pak ("few", Latin paucus), ngushtë ("narrow", Latin angustus), pemë ("tree", Latin poma), vij ("to come", Latin veniō), rërë ("sand", Latin arena), drejt ("straight", Latin directus), kafshë ("beast", Latin causa, meaning "thing"), and larg ("far away", Latin largus).

Jernej Kopitar (1780–1844) was the first to note Latin's influence on Albanian and claimed "the Latin loanwords in the Albanian language had the pronunciation of the time of Emperor Augustus". Kopitar gave examples such as Albanian qiqer 'chickpea' from Latin cicer, qytet 'city, town' from civitas, peshk 'fish' from piscis, and shigjetë 'arrow' from sagitta. The hard pronunciations of Latin ⟨c⟩ and ⟨g⟩ are retained as palatal and velar stops in the Albanian loanwords. Gustav Meyer (1888) and Wilhelm Meyer-Lübke (1914) later corroborated this. Meyer noted the similarity between the Albanian verbs shqipoj "to speak clearly, enunciate" and shqiptoj "to pronounce, articulate" and the Latin word excipiō (meaning "to welcome"). Therefore, he believed that the word Shqiptar "Albanian person" was derived from shqipoj, which in turn was derived from the Latin word excipere. Johann Georg von Hahn, an Austrian linguist, had proposed the same hypothesis in 1854.

Eqrem Çabej also noticed, among other things, the archaic Latin elements in Albanian:

1. Latin /au/ becomes Albanian /a/ in the earliest loanwords: aurum → ar 'gold'; gaudium → gaz 'joy'; laurus → lar 'laurel'. Latin /au/ is retained in later loans, but is altered in a way similar to Greek: causa 'thing' → kafshë 'thing; beast, brute'; laud → lavd.
2. Latin /oː/ becomes Albanian /e/ in the oldest Latin loans: pōmus → pemë 'fruit tree'; hōra → herë 'time, instance'. An analogous mutation occurred from Proto-Indo-European to Albanian; PIE *nōs became Albanian ne 'we', PIE *oḱtṓw + suffix -ti- became Albanian tetë 'eight', etc.
3. Latin unstressed internal and initial syllables become lost in Albanian: cubitus → kub 'elbow'; medicus → mjek 'physician'; palūdem 'swamp' → Vulgar Latin *padūle → pyll 'forest'. An analogous mutation occurred from Proto-Indo-European to Albanian. In contrast, in later Latin loanwords, the internal syllable is retained: paganus → pagan; plaga → plagë 'wound', etc.
4. Latin /tj/, /dj/, /kj/ palatalized to Albanian /s/, /z/, /c/: vitium → ves 'vice; worries'; ratiōnem → arsye 'reason'; radius → rreze 'ray; spoke'; faciēs → faqe 'face, cheek'; socius → shok 'mate, comrade', shoq 'husband', etc. In turn, Latin /s/ was altered to /ʃ/ in Albanian.

Haralambie Mihăescu demonstrated that:

• Some 85 Latin words have survived in Albanian but not (as inherited) in any Romance language. A few examples include Late Latin celsydri → dial. kulshedër → kuçedër 'hydra', hībernus → vërri 'winter pasture', sarcinārius 'used for packing, loading' → shelqëror 'forked peg, grapnel, forked hanger', sōlānum 'nightshade', lit. 'sun plant' → shullë(r) 'sunny place out of the wind, sunbathed area', splēnēticus → shpretkë 'spleen', trifurcus → tërfurk 'pitchfork'.
• 151 Albanian words of Latin origin were not inherited in Romanian. A few examples include Latin amīcus → Albanian mik 'friend', inimīcus → armik 'foe, enemy', ratiōnem → arsye, benedīcere → bekoj, bubulcus 'ploughman, herdsman' → bulk, bujk 'peasant', calicis → qelq 'drinking glass', castellum → kështjellë 'castle', centum → qind 'hundred', gallus → gjel 'rooster', iunctūra → gjymtyrë 'limb; joint', medicus → mjek 'doctor', retem → rrjetë 'net', spērāre → dial. shp(ë)rej, shpresoj 'to hope', pres 'to await', voluntās (voluntātis) → vullnet 'will; volunteer'.
• Some Albanian church terminology has phonetic features which demonstrate their very early borrowing from Latin. A few examples include Albanian bekoj 'to bless' from benedīcere, engjëll 'angel' from angelus, kishë 'church' from ecclēsia, i krishterë 'Christian' from christiānus, kryq 'cross' from crux (crucis), (obsolete) lter 'altar' from Latin altārium, mallkoj 'to curse' from maledīcere, meshë 'mass' from missa, murg 'monk' from monachus, peshkëp 'bishop' from episcopus, and ungjill 'gospel' from ēvangelium.

Other authors have detected Latin loanwords in Albanian with an ancient sound pattern from the 1st century BC, for example, Albanian qingël(ë) 'saddle girth; dwarf elder' from Latin cingula and Albanian e vjetër 'old, aged; former' from vjet but influenced by Latin veteris. The Romance languages inherited these words from Vulgar Latin: cingula became (via *clinga) Romanian chingă 'girdle; saddle girth', and veterānus became Romanian bătrân 'old'.

Albanian, Basque, and the surviving Celtic languages such as Breton and Welsh are the non-Romance languages today that have this sort of extensive Latin element dating from ancient Roman times, which has undergone the sound changes associated with the languages. Other languages in or near the former Roman area either came on the scene later (Turkish, the Slavic languages, Arabic) or borrowed little from Latin despite coexisting with it (Greek, German), although German does have a few such ancient Latin loanwords (Fenster 'window', Käse 'cheese').

Romanian scholars such as Vatasescu and Mihaescu, using lexical analysis of the Albanian language, have concluded that Albanian was heavily influenced by an extinct Romance language that was distinct from both Romanian and Dalmatian. Because the Latin words common to only Romanian and Albanian are significantly fewer in number than those that are common to only Albanian and Western Romance, Mihaescu argues that the Albanian language evolved in a region with much greater contact with Western Romance regions than with Romanian-speaking regions, and located this region in present-day Albania, Kosovo and Western Macedonia, spanning east to Bitola and Pristina.

Slavic influence

After the Slavs arrived in the Balkans, the Slavic languages became an additional source of loanwords. Contact between Albanian with the Slavic languages lasted very intensively for almost four centuries, and continued even in the late Middle Ages. Slavic loanwords in Albanian constitute a less studied area in literature. Per Vladimir Orel (1998), there are about 556 Slavic loanwords in Albanian.

Turkish influence

The rise of the Ottoman Empire meant an influx of Turkish words; this also entailed the borrowing of Persian and Arabic words through Turkish. Some Turkish personal names, such as Altin, are common. There are some loanwords from Modern Greek, especially in the south of Albania. Many borrowed words have been replaced by words with Albanian roots or modern Latinised (international) words. According to calculations mentioned by Emanuele Banfi (1985), the total number of Turkish loanwords in Albanian is about two thousand. However, when taking into account obsolete and rare words, and restricted dialectalisms, their number is considerably larger.

Gothic

Albanian is also known to possess a small set of loans from Gothic, with early inquiry into the matter done by Norbert Jokl and Sigmund Feist, though such loans had been claimed earlier in the 19th century by early linguists such as Gustav Meyer. Many words claimed as Gothic have now been attributed to other origins by later linguists of Albanian (fat and tufë, though used for major claims by Huld in 1994, are now attributed to Latin, for example), or may instead be native to Albanian, inherited from Proto-Indo-European. Today, it is accepted that there are a few words from Gothic in Albanian, but for the most part they are scanty because the Goths had few contacts with Balkan peoples.

Martin Huld defends the significance of the admittedly sparse Gothic loans for Albanian studies, however, arguing that Gothic is the only clearly post-Roman and "pre-Ottoman" language after Latin with a notable influence on the Albanian lexicon (the influence of Slavic languages is both pre-Ottoman and Ottoman). He argues that Gothic words in Albanian are attributable to the late fourth and early fifth centuries during the invasions of various Gothic speaking groups of the Balkans under Alaric, Odoacer, and Theodoric. He argues that Albanian Gothicisms bear evidence for the ordering of developments within Proto-Albanian at this time: for example, he argues Proto-Albanian at this stage had already shifted /uː/ to /y/ as Gothic words with /uː/ reflect with /u/ in Albanian, not /y/ as seen in most Latin and ancient Greek loans, but had not yet experienced the shift of /t͡s/ to /θ/, since loans from Gothic words with /θ/ replace /θ/ with /t/ or another close sound.

Notable words that continue to be attributed to Gothic in Albanian by multiple modern sources include:

• tirk "felt gaiters, white felt" (cf Romanian tureac "top of boot") < Gothic *θiuh-brōks- or *θiuhbrōkeis, cf Old High German theobrach "gaiters"
• shkumë "foam" < Gothic *skūm-, perhaps via an intermediary in a Romance *scuma (cf. Romanian spumă)
• gardh "fence, garden" is either considered a native Albanian word that was loaned into Romanian as gard
• zverk "nape, back of neck" < Gothic *swairhs; the "difficult" word having various otherwise been attributed (with phonological issues) to Celtic, Greek or native development.
• horr "villain, scoundrel" and horre "whore" < Gothic *hors "adulterer, cf Old Norse hóra "whore"
• punjashë "purse", diminutive of punjë < Gothic puggs "purse" (cf. Romanian pungă)

Patterns in loaning

Although Albanian is characterised by the absorption of many loans, even, in the case of Latin, reaching deep into the core vocabulary, certain semantic fields nevertheless remained more resistant. Terms pertaining to social organisation are often preserved, though not those pertaining to political organisation, while those pertaining to trade are all loaned or innovated.

Hydronyms present a complicated picture; the term for "sea" (det) is native and an "Albano-Germanic" innovation referring to the concept of depth, but a large amount of maritime vocabulary is loaned. Words referring to large streams and their banks tend to be loans, but lumë ("river") is native, as is rrymë (the flow of water). Words for smaller streams and stagnant pools of water are more often native, but the word for "pond", pellg is in fact a semantically shifted descendant of the old Greek word for "high sea", suggesting a change in location after Greek contact. Albanian has maintained since Proto-Indo-European a specific term referring to a riverside forest (gjazë), as well as its words for marshes. Albanian has maintained native terms for "whirlpool", "water pit" and (aquatic) "deep place", leading Orel to speculate that the Albanian Urheimat likely had an excess of dangerous whirlpools and depths.

Regarding forests, words for most conifers and shrubs are native, as are the terms for "alder", "elm", "oak", "beech", and "linden", while "ash", "chestnut", "birch", "maple", "poplar", and "willow" are loans.

The original kinship terminology of Indo-European was radically reshaped; changes included a shift from "mother" to "sister", and were so thorough that only three terms retained their original function, the words for "son-in-law", "mother-in-law" and "father-in-law". All the words for second-degree blood kinship, including "aunt", "uncle", "nephew", "niece", and terms for grandchildren, are ancient loans from Latin.

The Proto-Albanians appear to have been cattle breeders given the vastness of preserved native vocabulary pertaining to cow breeding, milking and so forth, while words pertaining to dogs tend to be loaned. Many words concerning horses are preserved, but the word for horse itself is a Latin loan.

See also

• Abetare
• Arbëresh language
• Arvanitika
• Gheg Albanian
• Illyrian language
• IPA/Albanian
• Messapic language
• Thraco-Illyrian
• Tosk Albanian

Notes

1. The map does not indicate where the language is majority or minority.

1. "... in Figure 2.1 are listed three subfamilies which contain only one language each: the Albanian, Hellenic, and Armenian subfamilies. These three languages – Albanian, Greek, and Armenian – are isolates within the Indo-European family showing no closer connection to any other Indo-European languages or to each other." — Pereltsvaig (2012) pp. 30–31
2. "It is generally accepted that Albanians continue one of the ancient languages of the Balkans, although scholars disagree on which language they spoke and what area of the Balkans they occupied before the Slavs' migration to the Balkans." — Curtis (2011) p. 16
3. "So while linguists may debate about the ties between Albanian and older languages of the Balkans, and while most Albanians may take the genealogical connection to Illyrian as incontrovertible, the fact remains that there is simply insufficient evidence to connect Illyrian, Thracian, or Dacian with any language, including Albanian." — Curtis (2011) p. 18
4. "The most probable predecessor of Albanian was Illyrian since much of present-day Albania was inhabited by the Illyrians during the Antiquity, but the comparison of the two languages is impossible because almost nothing is known about Illyrian ... It is a-priori less probable to assume that a single language was spoken in the whole Illyricum, from the river Arsia in Istria, to Epirus in Greece, when such a linguistic uniformity is found nowhere else in Europe before the Roman conquest. Moreover, the examination of personal names and toponyms from Illyricum shows that several onomastic areas can be distinguished, and these onomastic areas just might correspond to different languages spoken in ancient Illyricum. If Illyrians actually spoke several different languages, the question arises: From which Illyrian language did Albanian develop? – and that question cannot be answered until new data are discovered." — Ranko (2012)
5. disputed

References

1. ^ Rusakov 2017, p. 552.
2. ^ Klein, Jared; Brian, Joseph; Fritz, Matthias (2018). Handbook of Comparative and Historical Indo-European Linguistics. Walter de Gruyter. p. 1800. ISBN 9783110542431.
3. "Language and alphabet Article 13". Constitution of Montenegro. WIPO. 19 October 2007. Serbian, Bosnian, Albanian and Croatian shall also be in the official use.
4. Franceschini 2014, pp. 533–534
5. "Application of the Charter in Serbia" (PDF). European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. 11 June 2013. pp. 4–5, 9.
6. Franceschini, Rita (2014). "Italy and the Italian-Speaking Regions". In Fäcke, Christiane (ed.). Manual of Language Acquisition. Walter de Gruyter GmbH. p. 546. ISBN 9783110394146.
7. "Reservations and Declarations for Treaty No.148 – European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages". Council of Europe. Archived from the original on 8 December 2015. Retrieved 3 December 2015.
8. ^ Coretta, Stefano; Riverin-Coutlée, Josiane; Kapia, Enkeleida; Nichols, Stephen (2022). "Northern Tosk Albanian". Journal of the International Phonetic Association. 53 (3). Illustration of the IPA: 1–23. doi:10.1017/S0025100322000044. hdl:20.500.11820/ebce2ea3-f955-4fa5-9178-e1626fbae15f.
9. Orel 2000, p. 12; Matzinger 2018, p. 1790; Matasović 2019, p. 39; Hamp 1963, p. 104; Katicic 2012, p. 184: "And yet we know that it is the continuation of a language spoken in the Balkans already in ancient times. This has been proved by the fact that there are Ancient Greek loan words in Albanian".
10. Fatjona Mejdini (3 May 2013). "Albania Aims to Register its Huge Diaspora". Balkan Insight. Retrieved 17 January 2017.
11. Friedman, Victor (2022). "The Balkans". In Salikoko Mufwene, Anna Maria Escobar (ed.). The Cambridge Handbook of Language Contact: Volume 1: Population Movement and Language Change. Cambridge Handbooks in Language and Linguistics. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 9781009115773.
12. Lazaridis, Iosif; Alpaslan-Roodenberg, Songül; et al. (26 August 2022). "The genetic history of the Southern Arc: A bridge between West Asia and Europe". Science. 377 (6609): eabm4247. doi:10.1126/science.abm4247. PMC 10064553. PMID 36007055. S2CID 251843620.
13. Coretta, Stefano; Riverin-Coutlée, Josiane; Kapia, Enkeleida; Nichols, Stephen (16 August 2022). "Northern Tosk Albanian". Journal of the International Phonetic Association. 53 (3): 1122–1144. doi:10.1017/S0025100322000044. hdl:20.500.11820/ebce2ea3-f955-4fa5-9178-e1626fbae15f. Though the origin of the language has been debated, the prevailing opinion in the literature is that it is a descendant of Illyrian (Hetzer 1995).
14. Matasović 2019, p. 5: "Much has been written about the origin of the Albanian language. The most probable predecessor of Albanian was Illyrian, since much of the present-day Albania was inhabited by the Illyrians during the Antiquity, but the comparison of the two languages is impossible because almost nothing is known about Illyrian, despite the fact that two handbooks of that language have been published (by Hans Krahe and Anton Mayer)... examination of personal names and toponyms from Illyricum shows that several onomastic areas can be distinguished, and these onomastic areas just might correspond to different languages spoken in ancient Illyricum. If Illyrians actually spoke several different languages, the question arises -from which 'Illyrian' language did Albanian develop, and that question cannot be answered until new data are discovered. The single "Illyrian" gloss preserved in Greek (rhínon 'fog') may have the reflex in Alb. (Gheg) re͂ 'cloud' (Tosk re)< PAlb. *ren-."
15. Beekes 2011, p. 25: "It is often thought (for obvious geographic reasons) that Albanian descends from ancient Illyrian (see above), but this cannot be ascertained as we know next to nothing about Illyrian itself."
16. Fortson 2010, p. 446: "Albanian forms its own separate branch of Indo-European; it is the last branch to appear in written records. This is one of the reasons why its origins are shrouded in mystery and controversy. The widespread assertion that it is the modern–day descendant of Illyrian, spoken in much the same region during classical times (), makes geographic and historical sense but is linguistically untestable since we know so little about Illyrian."
17. Mallory & Adams 1997, p. 11: "Although there are some lexical items that appear to be shared between Romanian (and by extension Dacian) and Albanian, by far the strongest connections can be argued between Albanian and Illyrian. The latter was at least attested in what is historically regarded as Albanian territory and there is no evidence of any major migration into Albanian territory since our records of Illyrian occupation. The loan words from Greek and Latin date back to before the Christian era and suggest that the ancestors of the Albanians must have occupied Albania by then to have absorbed such loans from their histori-cal neighbors. As the Illyrians occupied Albanian territory at this time, they are the most likely recipients of such loans."
18. Villar, Francisco (1996). Los indoeuropeos y los orígenes de Europa (in Spanish). Madrid: Gredos. pp. 313–314, 316. ISBN 84-249-1787-1.
19. ^ Friedman 2020, p. 388.
20. Matzinger 2018, p. 1790.
21. ^ Ismajli 2015, p. 45.
22. ^ Hamp & Adams 2013, p. 8.
23. ^ Trumper 2018, p. 385.
24. ^ Hyllested & Joseph 2022, p. 235.
25. Matasović 2019, p. 39.
26. Demiraj & Esposito 2009, p. 23:

    "...these innovations, as those that are also evident in different varieties of Gheg, are not such as to impede communication between speakers of the two dialects. Furthermore, the major part of the Albanian lexicon is common to the two dialects."

27. Fortson 2010, p. 446: "The two dialects are mutually intelligible in their standard varieties, although numerous subdialects exist that show considerable variation, especially in the north and northeast of the Geg–speaking area."
28. Demiraj & Esposito 2009, p. 23:

    "The river Shkumbin in central Albania historically forms the boundary between those two dialects, with the population on the north speaking varieties of Geg and the population on the south varieties of Tosk."

29. Demiraj 2006, p. 102:

    "It is the case of the evolution of stressed /a-/ and partly stressed /e-/ in front of a nasal consonant to /ë-/ in thee southern dialect. While the evolution /a-/ > /ë/ in front of a nasal consonant has involved the southern dialect, the evolution /e-/ > /-ë/ in the same phonetic conditions has not taken place in the northern part and partly in the eastern part of that dialect (...). This phonetic phenomenon has appeared earlier than rhotacism, as it is clearly evidenced in such examples as llanë > llërë, ranë > rërë etc., in which the evolution /a-/ > /ë-/ could not take place before /-r-/. Since this phonetic change has not appeared in the Slavic loanwords of Albanian, but has involved mainly the I.E. inherited words as well as the loans from Old Greek (compare mokënë > mokërë < mākanāʼ etc.) and from Latin (compare ranë > rërë > arena etc.), it has generally been acknowledged that it has taken place in the pre-Slavic period of Albanian. Its sporadic appearance in a very reduced number of Slavic loanwords is due to the action of analogy with similar cases of inherited or more ancient loans of Albanian."

30. Demiraj & Esposito 2009, p. 23:

    "In Tosk /a/ before a nasal has become a central vowel (shwa), and intervocalic /n/ has become /r/. These two sound changes have affected only the pre-Slav stratum of the Albanian lexicon, that is the native words and loanwords from Greek and Latin."

31. Douglas Q. Adams (January 1997). Encyclopedia of Indo-European Culture. Taylor & Francis. pp. 9, 11. ISBN 978-1-884964-98-5. The Greek and Latin loans have undergone most of the far-reaching phonological changes which have so altered the shape of inherited IE words while Slavic and Turkish words do not show these changes. Thus Albanian must have acquired much of its present form by the time Slavs entered into the Balkans in the fifth and sixth centuries AD The loan words from Greek and Latin date back to before the Christian era Even very common words such as mik ʻfriendʼ (< Lat amicus) or këndoj ʻI sing; readʼ (< Lat cantāre) come from Latin and attest to a widespread intermingling of pre-Albanian and Balkan Latin speakers during the Roman period, roughly from the second century BC to the fifth century AD.
32. ^ Fortson 2010, p. 448: "The dialectal split into Geg and Tosk happened sometime after the region became Christianized in the fourth century AD: Christian Latin loanwords show Tosk rhotacism, such as Tosk murgu 'monk' (Geg mungu) from Lat. monachus."
33. Demiraj 2010, pp. 77–78
34. Rusakov 2017, p. 559.
35. Demiraj 2006, pp. 102–103:

    "...such sporadic analogical cases do not reverse the generally acknowledged conclusion that this dialectal peculiarity as a phonetic process has appeared in pre-Slavic period of Albanian and is relatively more ancient than the rhotacism. It has most probably appeared not later than the V-VI centuries A.D."

36. See also Hamp 1963 The isogloss is clear in all dialects I have studied, which embrace nearly all types possible. It must be relatively old, that is, dating back into the post-Roman first millennium. As a guess, it seems possible that this isogloss reflects a spread of the speech area, after the settlement of the Albanians in roughly their present location, so that the speech area straddled the Jireček Line.
37. Demiraj 2006, p. 103:

    "And, as it was pointed out in §3, since the dialectal differentiations have appeared in a certain geographical area, one is entitled to draw the conclusion that the speakers of the northern and southern dialects have been present in their actual areas in the Post-Roman and Pre-Slavic period of Albanian."

38. ^ Euromosaic project (2006). "L'arvanite/albanais en Grèce" (in French). Brussels: European Commission. Retrieved 5 December 2016.
39. "Albanians in Italy". Archived from the original on 21 January 2012. Retrieved 2 January 2012.
40. "Robert Elsie". The Albanian Language. 25 November 1972. Retrieved 17 January 2017.
41. Dedvukaj, Lindon; Ndoci, Rexhina (2023). "Linguistic variation within the Northwestern Gheg Albanian dialect". Proceedings of the Linguistic Society of America. 8 (1). Linguistic Society of America: 5501. doi:10.3765/plsa.v8i1.5501.
42. Dedvukaj, Lindon; Gehringer, Patrick (2023). "Morphological and phonological origins of Albanian nasals and its parallels with other laws". Proceedings of the Linguistic Society of America. 8 (1). Linguistic Society of America: 5508. doi:10.3765/plsa.v8i1.5508.
43. Demiraj & Esposito 2009, p. 23.
44. Mai, Nicola. "The Albanian diaspora-in-the-making: media, migration and social exclusion." Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies 31, no. 3 (2005): 543–561.
45. de Rapper, Gilles. "Albanians facing the Ottoman past: the case of the Albanian diaspora in Turkey." (2005).
46. Gkaintartzi, Anastasia, Aspasia Chatzidaki, and Roula Tsokalidou. "Albanian parents and the Greek educational context: Who is willing to fight for the home language?." International Multilingual Research Journal 8, no. 4 (2014): 291–308.
47. "Constitution of the Republic of Kosovo (with amendments I-XXVI)". Library of Congress. Article 5 1. The official languages in the Republic of Kosovo are Albanian and Serbian. ...
48. Trandafili, Evis; Meçe, Elinda Kajo; Duka, Enea (2020). Appice, Annalisa; Ceci, Michelangelo; Loglisci, Corrado; Manco, Giuseppe; Masciari, Elio; Ras, Zbigniew W. (eds.). Complex Pattern Mining: New Challenges, Methods and Applications. Springer Nature. p. 89. ISBN 978-3-030-36617-9. It is the official language of Albania, the co-official language of Kosovo, and the co-official language of many western municipalities of the Republic of Macedonia. Albanian is also spoken widely in some areas in Greece, southern Montenegro, southern Serbia, and in some towns in southern Italy and Sicily.
49. "Linguistic diversity among foreign citizens in Italy". Statistics of Italy. 25 July 2014. Retrieved 1 April 2015.
50. "Macedonia's Albanian-Language Bill Becomes Law". Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty. 15 January 2019.
51. "Albanian migration" (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on 16 September 2016. Retrieved 9 July 2016.
52. Saunders, Robert A. (2011). Ethnopolitics in Cyberspace: The Internet, Minority Nationalism, and the Web of Identity. Lanham: Lexington Books. p. 98. ISBN 9780739141946. In addition to the recent emigrants, there are older diasporic communities around the world. There are upwards of 5 million ethnic Albanians in the Turkish Republic; however, the vast majority of this population is assimilated and no longer possesses fluency in the language, though a vibrant Albanian community maintains its distinct identity in Istanbul to this day. Egypt also lays claim to some 18,000 Albanians, supposedly lingering remnants of Mohammad Ali's army.
53. Gjinari, Jorgji. Dialektologjia shqiptare
54. ^ The river Shkumbin in central Albania historically forms the boundary between those two dialects, with the population on the north speaking varieties of Geg and the population on the south varieties of Tosk. (page 23) Concise Encyclopedia of Languages of the World By Keith Brown, Sarah Ogilvie Contributor Keith Brown, Sarah Ogilvie Edition: illustrated Published by Elsevier, 2008 ISBN 0-08-087774-5, ISBN 978-0-08-087774-7
55. Prendergast, Eric (2017). The Origin and Spread of Locative Determiner Omission in the Balkan Linguistic Area (Ph.D). University of California Berkeley. p. 87.
56. The Italo-Albanian villages of southern Italy Issue 25 of Foreign field research program, report, National Research Council (U.S.) Division of Earth Sciences Volume 1149 of Publication (National Research Council (U.S.)) Foreign field research program, sponsored by Office of Naval research, report; no.25 Issue 25 of Report, National Research Council (U.S.). Division of Earth Sciences Volume 1149 of (National Academy of Sciences. National Research Council. Publication) Author George Nicholas Nasse Publisher National Academy of Sciences-National Research Council, 1964 page 24-25 link
57. Nasse, George Nicholas (1964). The Italo-Albanian Villages of Southern Italy. National Academy of Sciences-National Research Council. ISBN 9780598204004.
58. ^ Lloshi 2008, p. 12.
59. Elsie, Robert. (2017). Albanian Alphabets: Borrowed and Invented. London, UK: CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform. ISBN 9781544294094.
60. Chang, Will; Chundra, Cathcart (January 2015). "Ancestry-constrained phylogenetic analysis supports the Indo-European steppe hypothesis" (PDF). Language. 91 (1): 194–244. doi:10.1353/lan.2015.0005. S2CID 143978664. Retrieved 30 September 2020.
61. ^ Schumacher, Stefan (2020). "The perfect system of Old Albanian (Geg variety)". In Robert Crellin; Thomas Jügel (eds.). Perfects in Indo-European Languages and Beyond. Current Issues in Linguistic Theory. Vol. 352. John Benjamins Publishing Company. ISBN 978-90-272-6090-1.
62. Fortson 2010, p. 446: "Albanian forms its own separate branch of Indo-European; it is the last branch to appear in written records."
63. Watkins, Calvert. "Proto-Indo-European: Comparison and Reconstruction", in The Indo-European Languages, Anna Giacalone Ramat and Paolo Ramat, eds. London: Routledge, 1998.
64. Google Books, Mallory, J. P. and Adams, D. Q.: The Oxford Introduction to Proto-Indo-European and the Proto-Indo-European World
65. JHholm.de Archived 11 October 2017 at the Wayback Machine, Holm, Hans J.: The Distribution of Data in Word Lists and its Impact on the Subgrouping of Languages. In: Christine Preisach, Hans Burkhardt, Lars Schmidt-Thieme, Reinhold Decker (eds.): Data Analysis, Machine Learning, and Applications. Proc. of the 31st Annual Conference of the German Classification Society (GfKl), University of Freiburg, 7–9 March 2007. Springer-Verlag, Heidelberg-Berlin
66. HJholm.de Archived 5 September 2019 at the Wayback Machine A possible Homeland of the Indo-European Languages And their Migrations in the Light of the Separation Level Recovery (SLRD) Method – Hans J. Holm
67. Sowa, Wojciech (2020). "Thracian Tracio". Palaeohispanica: 810–811. doi:10.36707/palaeohispanica.v0i20.377. ISSN 1578-5386.
68. Thorsø, Rasmus (2019). "Two Balkan Indo-European Loanwords". In Matilde Serangeli; Thomas Olander (eds.). Dispersals and Diversification: Linguistic and Archaeological Perspectives on the Early Stages of Indo-European. Brill's Studies in Indo-European Languages & Linguistics. Vol. 19. Brill. pp. 251–262. ISBN 9789004416192.
69. Hammarström, Harald; Forkel, Robert; Haspelmath, Martin, eds. (2017). "Albanian". Glottolog 3.0. Jena, Germany: Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History.
70. Eberhard, David M.; Simons, Gary F.; Fennig, Charles D., eds. (2022). "Albanian". Ethnologue (25th ed.). SIL International. Archived from the original on 8 April 2022.
71. Nicholas Geoffrey Lemprière Hammond (1976). Migrations and invasions in Greece and adjacent areas. Noyes Press. p. 57. ISBN 978-0-8155-5047-1.
72. Zeitschrift für Balkanologie. R. Trofenik. 1990. p. 102.
73. Tibor Živković, Vladeta Petrović, Aleksandar Uzelac, Dragana Kunčer: Anonymi Descriptio Europae Orientalis : Anonimov opis istočne Evrope. January 2013. Edition: Izvori za srpsku istoriju. Publisher: Istorijski institut. Editor: Srđan Rudić. ISBN 978-86-7743-102-0
74. Fortson 2010, p. 446
75. Robert Elsie (2010). Historical Dictionary of Albania. Rowman & Littlefield. p. 216. ISBN 978-0-8108-6188-6.
76. Fortson 2010, pp. 447–448: "But it is likely that there were earlier works which have vanished. The earliest preserved books both in Geg and in Tosk share features of spelling that point to some kind of common literary language having already developed, and a letter written by a Dominican friar named Gulielmus Adea in 1332 says that the inhabitants of Albania had a language very different from Latin but used the Latin alphabet in their writings, suggesting (if not proving) an already–existing written Albanian tradition."
77. Demiraj 2012, pp. 132–133.
78. Bihiku 1980, pp. 14–15.
79. Bartl, Peter (1995). Albanien: vom Mittelalter bis zur Gegenwart (in German). Michigan: Pustet. p. 86. ISBN 9783791714516.
80. ^ Pereltsvaig, Asya (2012). "Indo-European languages". Languages of the World: An introduction. Cambridge University Press. pp. 30–31. ISBN 978-1-107-37791-2.
81. Sowa 2020, pp. 810–811.
82. ^ Fine, J.A. (1991). The Early Medieval Balkans. University of Michigan Press. pp. 10–11. ISBN 9780472081493 – via Google Books.
83. In his latest book, Eric Hamp supports the thesis that the Illyrian language belongs to the Northwestern group, that the Albanian language is descended from Illyrian, and that Albanian is related to Messapic which is an earlier Illyrian dialect (Comparative Studies on Albanian, 2007).
84. Woodard, Roger D. (2008). The Ancient Languages of Europe. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 9780521684958. The modern Albanian language, it has been conjectured, is descendent directly from ancient Illyrian ...
85. ^ Curtis, Matthew Cowan (30 November 2011). Slavic-Albanian Language Contact, Convergence, and Coexistence. ISBN 9781267580337. Retrieved 31 March 2017.
86. Matasovic, Ranko (2012). "A grammatical sketch of Albanian for students of Indo-European".
87. "Introduction to Albanian". lrc.la.utexas.edu. Retrieved 9 June 2023.
88. Taylor, Ann; Ringe, Donald; Warnow, Tandy (August 1995). Written at Manchester, UK. Smith, John Charles; Bentley, Delia (eds.). Historical Linguistics 1995: Selected papers. 12th International Conference on Historical Linguistics. Vol. 1 – General issues and non-Germanic Languages. Amsterdam, NL: John Benjamins Publishing (published 2000). p. 400. ISBN 9027236666.
89. ^ Hyllested & Joseph 2022, p. 225.
90. Vermeer, Willem (2008). "The prehistory of the Albanian vowel system: A preliminary exploration". Studies in Slavic and General Linguistics. 32: 591–608. ISSN 0169-0124. JSTOR 40997529.
91. Sampson, Rodney (1997). "Rebecca Posner, The Romance Languages. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996, xvi + 376 pp. 0 521 28139 3". Journal of French Language Studies (book review). 7 (2): 227–229. doi:10.1017/S0959269500003793. ISSN 1474-0079. S2CID 230472704.
92. Posner, Rebecca (1966). The Romance Languages: A linguistic introduction (1st ed.). United States of America: Anchor Books. p. 3. ISBN 084460853X.
93. Friedman, Victor A. (2011). "The Balkan languages and Balkan linguistics". Annual Review of Anthropology. 40: 275–291. doi:10.1146/annurev-anthro-081309-145932. ISSN 0084-6570. JSTOR 41287733.
94. Lindstedt, Jouko (2000). "Linguistic balkanization: Contact-induced change by mutual reinforcement". Studies in Slavic and General Linguistics. 28: 231–246. ISSN 0169-0124. JSTOR 40997168.
95. Bayraktar, Uğur Bahadır (15 December 2011). "Mythifying the Albanians: A Historiographical Discussion on Vasa Efendi's "Albania and the Albanians"". Balkanologie. Revue d'Études Pluridisciplinaires. XIII (1–2). doi:10.4000/balkanologie.2272.
96. Curtis, Matthew Cowan (30 November 2011). Slavic-Albanian Language Contact, Convergence, and Coexistence. p. 17. ISBN 9781267580337. ... for example, argues that from some indeterminate time a pre-Albanian (in Hamp's terms, Albanoid) population inhabited areas stretching from Poland to the current area
97. ^ Tripod.co, Eric Hamp, "The position of Albanian, Ancient IE dialects, Proceedings of the Conference on IE linguistics held at the University of California, Los Angeles, April 25–27, 1963, ed. By Henrik Birnbaum and Jaan Puhvel. "It is clear that in the Middle Ages the Albanians extended farther north (Jokl, Albaner §2); that there are persuasive arguments which have been advanced against their having extended as far as the Adriatic coast—the fact that Scodra 'Scutari' (Shkodër) shows un-Albanian development (see §6 below), that there is no demonstrated old maritime vocabulary (see above), and that there are few ancient Greek loans (Jokl, Albaner §5; but see §5 below)
98. Kazhdan, Alexander (Ed.) (1991). Oxford Dictionary of Byzantium. Oxford University Press. pp. 52–53. ISBN 978-0-19-504652-6.
99. ^ Mallory & Adams 1997, p. 9.
100. Demiraj, Shaban. Prejardhja e shqiptarëve në dritën e dëshmive të gjuhës shqipe.(Origin of Albanians through the testimonies of the Albanian language) Shkenca (Tirane) 1999
101. Schumacher, Stefan (2016). "The development of the PIE middle in Albanian". In Bjarne Simmelkjær Sandgaard Hansen; Benedicte Nielsen Whitehead; Thomas Olander; Birgit Anette Olsen (eds.). Etymology and the European Lexicon: Proceedings of the 14th Fachtagung der Indogermanischen Gesellschaft, 17–22 September 2012, Copenhagen. Wiesbaden: Reichert – via Academia.edu.
102. Müller, Peter O.; Ohnheiser, Ingeborg; Olsen, Susan; Rainer, Franz, eds. (2016). "171. Albanian". Word-Formation: An International Handbook of the Languages of Europe. Vol. 5. Berlin, Boston: De Gruyter. p. 3124. doi:10.1515/9783110424942. ISBN 9783110424942.
103. Pantić, Miroslav (1990). Književnost na tlu Crne Gore i Boke Kotorske od XVI do XVIII veka. Serbian Literary Guild. p. 98. ISBN 9788637901907.
104. ^ Demiraj 2006, pp. 42–43.
105. Demiraj 2006, pp. 44–45.
106. Orel 1998, pp. 225, 409.
107. Newmark, Leonard; Hubbard, Philip; Prifti, Peter R. (1982). Standard Albanian: a reference grammar for students. Andrew Mellon Foundation. p. 3. ISBN 9780804711296. Retrieved 28 May 2010.
108. Francisc Pall (1971). "Di nuovo sulle biografie scanderbegiane del XVI secolo". Revue des études sud-est européennes (in French). 9 (1). Academia Republicii Socialiste România, Academia Republicii Populare Romîne: 102. Retrieved 28 May 2010.
109. Anamali, Skënder (2002). Historia e popullit shqiptar në katër vëllime (in Albanian). Vol. I. Botimet Toena. p. 311. OCLC 52411919.
110. Lloshi 2008, p. 97.
111. "Meshari". National Library of Albania. Retrieved 14 May 2010.
112. Demiraj, Shaban. "Albanian". In Ramat and Ramat (2006), The Indo-European Languages. Page 480
113. Dumitru Todericiu, An Albanian text older than the "Christening Formula" of 1462, in "Magazin Istoric", nr. 8, Bucharest, November 1967.
114. Robert Elsie, The Bellifortis text and early Albanian in "Zeitschrift für Balkanologie", Berlin, 22 February 1986, p. 158-162.
115. Marmullaku, Ramadan (1975). Albania and the Albanians. C. Hurst. p. 17. ISBN 0903983133.
116. ^ Orel 2000, pp. 66, 70–71
117. ^ Bardhyl Demiraj (2018). "100. The evolution of Albanian". In Fritz, Matthias; Joseph, Brian; Klein, Jared (eds.). Handbook of Comparative and Historical Indo-European Linguistics. De Gruyter Mouton. ISBN 978-3-11-054036-9. and the outcomes of the three dorsal series suggest that Albanian, like Luwian, may have origi- nally retained this three-way opposition intact and therefore is neither centum nor satem, despite the clear satem-like outcome of its palatal dorsals in most instances
118. J. P. Mallory; Douglas Q. Adams (1997). Encyclopedia of Indo-European culture. Taylor & Francis. ISBN 978-1-884964-98-5. ISBN 1-884964-98-2, ISBN 978-1-884964-98-5
119. de Vaan, Michiel (2018). "The phonology of Albanian". In Klein, Jared; Joseph, Brian; Fritz, Matthias (eds.). Handbook of Comparative and Historical Indo-European Linguistics. Vol. 3. Walter de Gruyter. p. 1757. but h- has arisen secondarily in words such as hark 'curve' ← Latin arcus, which renders h- non-probative
120. Schumacher/Matzinger 2013, p. 267.
121. Matasović 2019, p. 11.
122. ^ Lloshi 2008, p. 10.
123. Kostallari, Androkli (1973). Drejtshkrimi i gjuhës shqipe. "Instituti i Gjuhësisë dhe i Letërsisë" ( in "Akademia e Shkencave e RPS të Shqipërisë", today "Akademia e Shkencave e Republikës së Shqipërisë").
124. Kamusella, Tomasz (2016). "The idea of a Kosovan language in Yugoslavia's language politics" (PDF). International Journal of the Sociology of Language (242): 217–237. doi:10.1515/ijsl-2016-0040. hdl:10023/11804. S2CID 55005555. Archived (PDF) from the original on 6 January 2024 – via St Andrews Research Repository.
125. "Drejtshkrimi Prishtinë 1964". Wikisource. Retrieved 26 May 2018.
126. Kostallari, Androkli (1976). Fjalori drejtshkrimor i gjuhës shqipe. "Instituti i Gjuhësisë dhe i Letërsisë" (in "Akademia e Shkencave e RPS të Shqipërisë", today "Akademia e Shkencave e Republikës së Shqipërisë").
127. Akademia e Shkencave e RPS të Shqipërisë (1980). Fjalori i Gjuhës së Sotme Shqipe. Tirana: Academy of Sciences of Albania.
128. ^ Lloshi 2008, p. 9.
129. Vrapi, Julia (27 April 2013). "Emil Lafe: Këshilli Ndërakademik për Gjuhën Shqipe ecën pa busull, ende pa një platformë shkencore të miratuar njëzëri". Sot.com.al.
130. Kolgjini, Julie M. (2004). Palatalisation in Albanian : an acoustic investigation of stops and affricates. PhD Dissertation, University of Texas at Arlington. ISBN 0496859366.
131. Buchholz & Fiedler 1987, p. 28-31.
132. ^ Granser, Thedor; Moosmüller, Sylvia. "The schwa in Albanian" (PDF). Institute of Acoustics of the Austrian Academy of Sciences. Retrieved 15 December 2010.
133. Orel 2000, p. 3.
134. de Vaan, Michiel. "PIE *e in Albanian" (PDF). p. 72. Retrieved 16 December 2010.
135. Elsie, Robert; London Centre for Albanian Studies (2005). Albanian literature: a short history. I.B.Tauris. p. 16. ISBN 978-1-84511-031-4.
136. Maxwell, Daniel Newhall. (1979). A Crosslinguistic Correlation between Word Order and Casemarking institution. Bloomington: Indiana University Pub.
137. ^ Breu, W. (2021) Italo-Albanian: Balkan Inheritance and Romance Influence p. 154
138. Friedman, Victor A. (1986). "Evidentiality in the Balkans: Bulgarian, Macedonian and Albanian" (PDF). In Chafe, Wallace L.; Nichols, Johanna (eds.). Evidentiality: The Linguistic Coding of Epistemology. Ablex. pp. 168–187. ISBN 978-0-89391-203-1. Archived from the original (PDF) on 29 March 2018. Retrieved 12 May 2023. p. 180.
139. Friedman, Victor (2021). "The Epic Admirative in Albanian". In Scaldaferri, Nicola (ed.). Wild Songs, Sweet Songs: The Albanian Epic in the Collections of Milman Parry and Albert B. Lord. Publications of the Milman Parry Collection of Oral Literature Series. Vol. 5. In collaboration with Victor Friedman, John Kolsti, Zymer U. Neziri. Harvard University, Center for Hellenic Studies. ISBN 9780674271333.
140. Hamp, Eric Pratt (3 June 2011). "Albanian". In Gvozdanovic, Jadranka (ed.). Indo-European Numerals. Walter de Gruyter. p. 869. ISBN 978-3-11-085846-4.
141. Shkurtaj, Gjovalin (1972). "Vëzhgime rreth të folmëve të banorëve të Bregut të Matës, ishullit të Lezhës dhe ishullit të Shëngjinit". Studime Filologjike (in Albanian) (2). Akademia e Shkencave e RPSSH, Instituti i Gjuhësisë dhe i Letërsisë: 96.
142. Demiraj 2006, p. 43.
143. ^ Matasovic, Ranko (2018). A Grammatical Sketch of Albanian for students of Indo-European. p. 6.
144. ^ Sawicka, Irena. "A Crossroad Between West, East and Orient–The Case of Albanian Culture." Colloquia Humanistica. No. 2. Instytut Slawistyki Polskiej Akademii Nauk, 2013. Page 97: "Even according to Albanian linguists, Albanian vocabulary is composed in 60 percent of Latin words from different periods... When albanological studies were just emerging, it happened that Albanian was classified as a Romance language. Already there exists the idea of a common origin of both Albanian and Rumanian languages. The Rumanian grammar is almost identical to that of Albanian, but it may be as well the effect of later convergence within the Balkan Sprachbund.."
145. Orel 2000, p. 23.
146. Matasovic, Ranko (2018). Page 35.
147. Orel 2000, p. 191.
148. "Excel File_Lexical-Distance-Matrix". Alternative Transport. 19 November 2016.
149. "How much does language change when it travels?". Alternative Transport. 4 May 2015.
150. ^ Adzanela, Ardian (1 January 1970). "Cultural Treasure of Bosnia and Herzegovina edition-Prehistoric and Ancient Period- Book 2- Illyrian Bosnia and Herzegovina-an Overview of a Cultural Legacy/ Ancient Illyrians of Bosnia and Herzegovina | Ardian Adžanela Adzanela Axhanela". Academia.edu.
151. Suart E. Mann (1977). An Albanian Historical Grammar. Buske. ISBN 978-3-87118-262-4.
152. Sborník prací Filozofické fakulty brněnské univerzity : Řada klasická. 3 June 2008.
153. Ushaku, Ruzhdi, Hulumtime etnoliguistike, chapter: The continuation of Illyrian Bind in Albanian Mythology and Language, Fakulteti filologjise, Prishtine, 2000, p. 46-48
154. ^ Mayani, Zĕchariă (1962). The Etruscans begin to speak. Souvenir Press.
155. ^ "Illyrian Glossary". bizland.com. Archived from the original on 17 June 2011.
156. Stipčević, Aleksandar (1977). The Illyrians: history and culture. Noyes Press. ISBN 9780815550525.
157. Linguistic Society of America (1964). Language, Volumes 1–3. Linguistic Society of America.
158. ^ Orel 1998.
159. Diokletian und die Tetrarchie: Aspekte einer Zeitenwende. Millennium Studies. 2004. ISBN 9783110182309.
160. Price, Roberto Salinas (2006). Homeric whispers: intimations of orthodoxy in the Iliad and Odyssey. Scylax Press. p. 72. ISBN 9780910865111.
161. Eggebrecht, Arne; Roemer-Museum; Pelizaeus-Museum (1988). Albanien: Schätze aus dem Land der Skipetaren. P. von Zabern. ISBN 9783805309783.
162. Ancient Indo-European dialects: proceedings, Volume 1963. Millennium Studies. 1966.
163. Suart E., Mann (1977). An Albanian Historical Grammar. Hamburg: Buske. ISBN 9783871182624.
164. Fortson 2010, p. 465
165. ^ Huld, Martin E. (1986). "Accentual Stratification of Ancient Greek Loanwords in Albanian". Zeitschrift für vergleichende Sprachforschung. 99 (2): 245–253.
166. Orel 2000, p. 23: "Latin loanwords are of extreme importance for the history of Albanian phonology, especially its vocalism. The duration of the borrowing was so long that loanwords reflect several distinct chronological stages."
167. Curtis, Matthew Cowan (30 November 2011). Slavic-Albanian language contact, convergence, and coexistence. pp. 17–18. ISBN 9781267580337. One other point that some scholars make is the fact that Albanian and Romanian share many lexical items; this has led some to believe that Albanian originated east of its present geographical spread (Georgiev 1957; Hamp 1994)...it does not necessarily determine the genealogical history of the language, nor does it rule out the possibility of Proto-Albanian being present in both Illyrian and Thracian territory.
168. ^ The Field of Linguistics, Volume 2 Volume 1 of World of linguistics Authors Bernd Kortmann, Johan Van Der Auwera Editors Bernd Kortmann, Johan Van Der Auwera Publisher Walter de Gruyter, 2010 ISBN 3-11-022025-3, ISBN 978-3-11-022025-4 p.412
169. ^ Ancient Indo-European dialects: proceedings, Volume 1963 Ancient Indo-European Dialects: Proceedings, University of California, Los Angeles. Center for Research in Languages and Linguistics Authors Henrik Birnbaum, Jaan Puhvel, University of California, Los Angeles. Center for Research in Languages and Linguistics Editors Henrik Birnbaum, Jaan Puhvel Publisher University of California Press, 1966 p.102
170. Orel 2000 postulates a Vulgar Latin intermediary for no good reason. Mallory & Adams (1997) erroneously give the word as native, from *melítiā, the protoform underlying Greek mélissa; however, this protoform gave Albanian mjalcë "bee", which is a natural derivative of Proto-Albanian * melita; "honey" (mod. mjaltë).
171. ^ Orel 2000, p. 23.
172. Orel 2000, p. 102.
173. Orel 1998, p. 236.
174. Bonnet, Guillaum (1998). Les mots latins de l'albanais. Paris: L'Harmattan. p. 324.
175. Orel 1998, p. 318.
176. Orel 2000, p. 264.
177. Kopitar 1829, p. 254.
178. Meyer, Gustav. Die lateinischen Elemente im Albanesischen. (In: Grцbers Grundriss, I; I.Auflage) (1888), p. 805
179. Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm. Rumanisch, romanisch, albanesisch. (Mitteilungen des Romanischen Instituts an der Universitet Wien. I. Heilderberg 1914), p. 32
180. Bardhyl Demiraj (2010). Wir sind die Deinen. Studien zur albanischen Sprache, Literatur und Kulturgeschichte, dem Gedenken an Martin Camaj (1925–1992) gewidmet. Harrassowitz Verlag. ISBN 978-3-447-06221-3.
181. Çabej, Eqrem. Karakteristikat e huazimeve latine të gjuhës shqipe. SF 1974/2 (In German RL 1962/1) pp. 13-51
182. Mihăescu 1966, pp. 1, 30.
183. Mihăescu 1966, pp. 1, 21.
184. Mihăescu 1966, pp. 1–2.
185. A. Rosetti, Istoria limbii române, 1986, pp. 195–197
186. Madgearu, Alexandru; Gordon, Martin. The Wars of the Balkan Peninsula: Their Medieval Origins. pp. 146–147.
187. Banfi, Emanuele (1985). "Linguistica balcanica". Bologna: 162.
188. Jokl, Norbert (1929). "Balkangermanisches und Germanisches in Albanischen". Festschrift der 57. Versammlung deutscher Philologen und Schulmänner in Salzberg. Baden bei Wien: 105–137.
189. Feist, Sigmund (1939). Vergleichendes Wörterbuch der gotischen Sprafche. Leiden: Brill.
190. Orel 1998, pp. 456–457, 468.
191. ^ Matasovic, Ranko (2019). A Grammatical Sketch of Albanian for Students of Indo-European. Zagreb. Page 39
192. ^ Curtis, M.C., 2012. Slavic-Albanian language contact, convergence, and coexistence Archived 7 February 2023 at the Wayback Machine. Page 19
193. ^ Huld, M.E., 1994. Albanian zverk – Gothic *swairhs. Historische Sprachforschung/Historical Linguistics, 107(1. H), pp.165–171. Pages 167–8.
194. ^ Orel 1998, pp. 456–457.
195. Orel 1998, p. 424.
196. Curtis, M.C., 2012. Slavic-Albanian language contact, convergence, and coexistence Archived 7 February 2023 at the Wayback Machine. Page 107
197. Orel 1998, p. 110.
198. Fortson 2010, p. 449
199. Huld, M.E., 1994. Albanian zverk – Gothic *swairhs. Historische Sprachforschung/Historical Linguistics, 107(1. H), pp.165–171.
200. Orel 1998, pp. 526–527.
201. Orel 1998, pp. 150–151.
202. Orel 1998, p. 350.
203. Orel 2000, p. 263.
204. Orel 2000, pp. 264–265.
205. Orel 2000, pp. 266–267.
206. Orel 2000, p. 262.
207. Orel 2000, pp. 267–268.

Bibliography

• Ajeti, Idriz (1968). "La présence de l'albanais dans les parlers des populations slaves de la Péninsule balkanique à la lumière de la langue et de la toponymie". Studia Albanica. 2: 131–136.
• Ajeti, Idriz (1972). "Për historinë e marrëdhënieve të hershme gjuhësore shqiptare-sllave". Studime Filologjike. 4: 83–94. (reprint in Gjurmime albanologjike – Seria e shkencave filologjike II – 1972. Pristina: 1974, pp. 33–44).
• Arapi, Inna (2010). Der Gebrauch von Infinitiv nagger und Konjunktiv im Altalbanischen mit Ausblick auf das Rumänische. Hamburg: Kovač.
• Banfi, Emanuele (1985). Linguistica balcanica. Bologna: Zanichelli.
• Banfi, Emanuele (1991). Storia linguistica del sud-est europeo: Crisi della Romània balcanica tra alto e basso medioevo. Milan: Franco Angeli.
• Beekes, Robert Stephen Paul (2011). de Vaan, Michiel (ed.). Comparative Indo-European Linguistics: An Introduction (2nd ed.). John Benjamins Publishing Company. ISBN 978-90-272-1185-9.
• Bihiku, Koço (1980). A history of Albanian literature. Tirana: 8 Nëntori Publishing House. OCLC 9133663.
• Bonnet, Guillaume (1998). Les mots latins de l'albanais. Paris: L'Harmattan. ISBN 9782738460349.
• Bopp, Franz (1855). Über das Albanesische in seinen verwandtschaftlichen Beziehungen. Berlin: J. A. Stargardt.
• Boretzky, Norbert (1975). Phonologie und Morphologie der albanischen Turzismen. Der türkische Einfluss auf das Albanische. Vol. 1. Wiesbaden: Otto Harrassowitz.
• Boretzky, Norbert (1975). Wörterbuch der albanischen Turzismen. Der türkische Einfluss auf das Albanische. Vol. 2. Wiesbaden: Otto Harrassowitz.
• Buchholz, Oda; Fiedler, Wilfried (1987). Albanische Grammatik (in German). Leipzig: VEB Verlag Enzyklopädie. ISBN 978-3-324-00025-3.
• Çabej, Eqrem (1962). "Disa probleme themelore të historisë së vjetër të gjuhës shqipe". Buletin i Universitetit Shtetëror të Tiranës. Seria e Shkencave Shoqërore. 4: 117–148. (In German Studia Albanica 1 (1964))
• Çabej, Eqrem (1962). "Zur Charakteristik der lateinischen Lehnwörter im Albanischen". Revue roumaine de linguistique (in German). 7 (1): 161–199.
  • Çabej, Eqrem (1974). "Karakteristikat e huazimeve latine të gjuhës shqipe". Studime Filologjike (in Albanian). 2: 14–51.
• Çabej, Eqrem. "Rreth disa çështjeve të historisë së gjuhës shqipe", Buletin i Universitetit Shtetëror të Tiranës. Seria e Shkencave Shoqërore 3 (1963): 69–101. (In Romanian Studii și cercetări lingvistiche 4 (1954))
• Çabej, Eqrem. "Mbi disa rregulla të fonetikës historike të shqipes", Studime Filologjike 2 (1970): 77–95 (In German "Über einige Lautregeln des Albanischen", Die Sprache 18 (1972): 132–54)
• Çabej, Eqrem (1972). "L'ancien nom national des albanais". Studia Albanica. 1: 1–40.
• Çabej, Eqrem (1972). "Problemi i vendit të formimit të gjuhës shqipe". Studime Filologjike. 4: 3–27.
• Çabej, Eqrem. Studime etimologjike në fushë të shqipes. 7 vols. Tirana: Akademia et Shkencave e Republikës Popullore të Shqipërisë, Instituti i Gjuhësisë dhe i Letërsisë, 1976–2014.
• Camaj, Martin (1966). Albanische Wortbildung. Wiesbaden: Otto Harrassowitz.
• Camaj, Martin (1984). Albanian Grammar. Translated by Fox, Leonard. Wiesbaden: Otto Harrassowitz.
• Camarda, Demetrio (1864). Saggio di grammatologia comparata sulla lingua albanese. Livorno: Successore di Egisto Vignozzi.
• Camarda, Demetrio (1866). Appendice al saggio di grammatologia comparata sulla lingua albanese. Prato.
• Campbell, George L., ed. (2000). "Albanian". Compendium of the World's Languages. Vol. 1 (2nd ed.). London: Routledge. pp. 50–57.
• Cimochowski, Wacław (1950). "Recherches sur l'histoire du sandhi dans la langue albanaise". Lingua Posnaniensis. 2: 220–255.
• Cimochowski, Wacław (1960). "Des recherches sur la toponomastique de l'Albanie". Lingua Posnaniensis. 8: 133–145.
• Cimochowski, Wacław (1973). "Pozicioni gjuhësor i ilirishtes ballkanike në rrethin e gjuhëve indoevropiane". Studime Filologjike. 2.
• Coretta, Stefano; Riverin-Coutlée, Josiane; Kapia, Enkeleida; Nichols, Stephen (2022). "Northern Tosk Albanian". Journal of the International Phonetic Association. 53 (3): 1–23. doi:10.1017/S0025100322000044. hdl:20.500.11820/ebce2ea3-f955-4fa5-9178-e1626fbae15f.
• Demiraj, Bardhyl (1997). Albanische Etymologien: Untersuchungen zum albanischen Erbwortschatz. Amsterdam: Rodopi. ISBN 9042001615.
• Demiraj, Shaban (1998). "Albanian". In Giacalone Ramat, Anna; Ramat, Paolo (eds.). The Indo-European Languages. London: Routledge. pp. 480–501. ISBN 9780415064491.
• Demiraj, Shaban (1986). Gramatikë historike e gjuhës shqipe. Tirana: 8 Nëntori.
• Demiraj, Shaban (1988). Gjuha shqipe dhe historia e saj. Tirana: Shtëpia botuese e librit universitar.
• Demiraj, Shaban (1996). Fonologjia historike e gjuhës shqipe. Tirana: Akademia e Shkencave e Shqiperise, Instituti i Gjuhesise dhe i Letersise. OCLC 39182610.
• Demiraj, Shaban (1999). Prejardhja e shqiptarëve në dritën e dëshmive të gjuhës shqipe. Tirana: Shkenca. ISBN 9789992765470.
• Demiraj, Shaban (2006). The origin of the Albanians: linguistically investigated. Tirana: Academy of Sciences of Albania. ISBN 978-99943-817-1-5.
• Demiraj, B.; Esposito, A. (2009). "Albanian". In Brown, Keith; Ogilvie, Sarah (eds.). Concise Encyclopedia of Languages of the World. Elsevier. ISBN 978-0-08-087774-7.
• Demiraj, Bardhyl (2010). "Gli insediamenti degli albanesi nell'alto medioevo" (PDF). In Belluscio, Gianni; Mendicino, Antonino (eds.). Scritti in onore di Eric Pratt Hamp per il suo 90 compleanno. Rende: Università della Calabria. pp. 73–83.
• Demiraj, Bardhyl (2012). "La Maledizione dell'Epirota (1483)". Res Albanicae. I (1). Palermo: 133–149.
• De Simone, Carlo (1986). "Gli illiri del Sud. Tentativo di una definizione". Iliria. 1.
• Desnickaja, Agnija (1968). Albanskij jazyk i ego dialekty. Leningrad: Nauka.
• Desnickaja, Agnija (1973). "Language Interferences and Historical Dialectology". Linguistics. 113: 41–57.
• Desnickaja, Agnija (1990). Osnovy balkanskogo jazykoznanija. Leningrad: Nauka.
• de Vaan, Michiel (2018). "The Phonology of Albanian". Handbook of Comparative and Historical Indo-European Linguistics. Vol. 3. Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton. pp. 1732–1749.
• Domi, Mahir (1974). "Prapashtesa ilire dhe shqipe, përkime dhe paralelizma". Studime Filologjike. 4.
• Domi, Mahir (1975). "Considérations sur les traits communs ou parallèles de l'albanais avec les autres langues balkaniques et sur leur étude". Studia Albanica. 1.
• Fortson, Benjamin Wynn IV (2010). Indo-European Language and Culture: An Introduction (2nd ed.). Wiley-Blackwell. ISBN 978-1-4443-5968-8.
• Friedman, Victor A. (2020). "The Balkans". In Adamou, Evangelia; Matras, Yaron (eds.). The Routledge Handbook of Language Contact. Routledge Handbooks in Linguistics. Routledge. pp. 385–403. ISBN 9781351109147.
• Genesin, Monica (1998). "Albanian". In Price, Glanville (ed.). Encyclopedia of the Languages of Europe. Oxford: Blackwell. pp. 4–8.
• Gjinari, Jorgji (1968). "Për historinë e dialekteve të gjuhës shqipe". Studime Filologjike. 4.
• Gjinari, Jorgji (1969). "Mbi vazhdimësinë e ilirishtes në gjuhën shqipe". Studime Filologjike. 3.
• Gjinari, Jorgji (1970). Dialektologjia shqiptare. Pristina: Universiteti.
• Gjinari, Jorgji (1976). "Struktura dialektore e shqipes e parë në lidhje me historinë e popullit". Studime Filologjike. 3.
• Gjinari, Jorgji (1982). "Dëshmi të historisë së gjuhës shqipe për kohën dhe vendin e formimit të popullit shqiptar". Studime Filologjike. 3.
• Gjinari, Jorgji; Beci, Bahri; Shkurtaj, Gjovalin; Gosturani, Xheladin (2007). Atlasi dialektologjik i gjuhës shqipe. Vol. 1. Naples: Università degli Studi di Napoli L'Orientali.
• Hamp, Eric P. (1963). "The Position of Albanian, Ancient IE dialects". In Birnbaum, Henrik; Puhvel, Jaan (eds.). Proceedings of the Conference on IE linguistics held at the University of California, Los Angeles, April 25–27, 1963.
• Hamp, Eric; Adams, Douglas (August 2013). "The Expansion of the Indo-European Languages: An Indo-Europeanist's Evolving View" (PDF). Sino-Platonic Papers. 239.
• Hamp, Eric P. (1994). "Albanian". In Asher, R. E. (ed.). Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics. Vol. 1. Oxford: Pergamon. pp. 65–67.
• Huld, Martin E. (1984). Basic Albanian Etymologies. Columbus, OH: Slavica Publishers.
• Hyllested, Adam; Joseph, Brian (2022). "Albanian". The Indo-European Language Family. Cambridge University Press. pp. 223–245. doi:10.1017/9781108758666.013. ISBN 9781108499798.
• Imami, Petrit (2011). Origjina e fjalëve të gjuhës shqipe (in Albanian). Prishtinë.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
• Ismajli, Rexhep (2015). Eqrem Basha (ed.). Studime për historinë e shqipes në kontekst ballkanik [Studies on the History of Albanian in the Balkan context] (in Albanian). Prishtinë: Kosova Academy of Sciences and Arts, special editions CLII, Section of Linguistics and Literature.
• Katicic, Radoslav (2012). Ancient Languages of the Balkans. Walter de Gruyter. ISBN 978-3111568874.
• Kocaqi, Altin (2013). Dokumente historiko-gjuhësore: vëndi i shqipes ndër gjuhët evropiane. Albania: Marin Barleti. ISBN 978-9995604707.
• Kopitar, Jernej K. (1829). "Albanische, walachische und bulgarische Sprache". Jahrbücher der Literatur (Wien). 46: 59–106.
• Kretschmer, Paul (1896). Einleitung in die Geschichte der griechischen Sprache. Göttingen.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
• Kretschmer, Paul (1935). "Sprachliche Vorgeschichte des Balkans". Revue internationale des études balkaniques. 2 (1): 41–48.
• Lloshi, Xhevat (1994). Reiter, Norbert; Hinrichs, Uwe; van Leeuwen-Turnovcova, Jirina (eds.). Substandard Albanian and Its Relation to Standard Albanian. Sprachlicher Standard und Substandard in Südosteuropa und Osteuropa: Beiträge zum Symposium vom 12.-16. Oktober 1992 in Berlin. Berlin: Otto Harrassowitz. pp. 184–194.
• Lloshi, Xhevat (1999). "Albanian". In Hinrichs, Uwe (ed.). Handbuch der Südosteuropa-Linguistik. Wiesbaden: Otto Harrassowitz. pp. 277–299.
• Lloshi, Xhevat (2008). Rreth alfabetit të shqipes: me rastin e 100-vjetorit të Kongresit të Manastirit. Skopje–Pristina–Tirana: Logos-A. ISBN 9789989582684.
• Lambertz, Maximilian. Lehrgang des Albanischen. 3 vols., vol. 1: Albanisch-deutsches Wörterbuch; vol. 2: Albanische Chrestomathie; vol. 3: Grammatik der albanischen Sprache. Berlin: Deutscher Verlag der Wissenschaften 1954; Berlin 1955; Halle an der Saale 1959.
• Mallory, J.P.; Adams, D. Q. (1997). "Albanian language". Encyclopedia of Indo-European Culture. London: Fitzroy Dearborn. pp. 8–11.
• Matasović, Ranko (2019). A Grammatical Sketch of Albanian for Students of Indo European (PDF). Zagreb. p. 39.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
• Matzinger, Joachim (2009). "Die Albaner als Nachkommen der Illyrier aus der Sicht der historischen Sprachwissenschaft". In Schmitt, Oliver Jens; Frantz, Eva (eds.). Albanische Geschichte: Stand und Perspektiven der Forschung. Munich: R. Oldenburg Verlag. pp. 13–35.
• Matzinger, Joachim. "Der lateinisch-albanische Sprachkontakt und seine Implikationen für Vorgeschichte des Albanischen und der Albaner", in Südosteuropäische Romania: Siedlungs-/Migrationsgeschichte und Sprachtypologie. Edited by Wolfgang Dahmen et al. Tübingen: Narr Verlag, 2012, pp. 75–103.
• Matzinger, Joachim (2018). "The Lexicon of Albanian". In Klein, Jared; Joseph, Brian; Fritz, Matthias (eds.). Handbook of Comparative and Historical Indo-European Linguistics. Vol. 3. Walter de Gruyter. ISBN 978-3-11-054243-1.
• Mayer, Anton. Die Sprache der alten Illyrier. 2 vols. Vienna: Österreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften, 1957/1959.
• Mann, Stuart E. (1977). An Albanian Historical Grammar. Hamburg: Helmut Buske.
• Meyer, Gustav. "Albanesische Studien I. Die Pluralbildungen der albanesischen Nomina", in Sitzungsberichte der philosophisch-historischen Classe der Kaiserlichen Akademie der Wissenschaften 104 (1883): 257–362.
• Miklosich, Franz. Albanische Forschungen. 2 vols., vol. 1: Die slavischen Elemente im Albanischen; vol. 2: Die romanischen Elemente im Albanischen. Vienna: Karl Gerold's Sohn, 1870.
• Mihăescu, Haralambie (1966). "Les éléments latins de la langue albanaise". Révue des études sud-est européennes. 4: 5–33, 323–53.
• Mihăescu, Haralambie (1978). La langue latine dans le sud-est de l'Europe. Bucharest and Paris: Editura Academiei and Les Belles Lettres.
• Newmark, Leonard; Hubbard, Philip; Prifti, Peter (1982). Standard Albanian: A Reference Grammar for Students. Stanford: Stanford University Press.
• Ölberg, Hermann (1977). "Einige Uberlegungen zur Autochtonie der Albaner auf der Balkanhalbinsel". In Ölberg, Hermann M. (ed.). Akten der internationalen albanologischen Kolloquiums, Innsbruck, 1972, zum Gedächtnis an Norbert Jokl. Innsbruck: Institut für Sprachwissenschaft der Universität Innsbruck.
• Ölberg, Hermann (1982). "Kontributi i gjuhësisë për çështjen e atdheut ballkanik të shqiptarëve". Studime Filologjike. 3.
• Olsen, Birgit Anette; Thorsø, Rasmus (2022). "Armenian". In Olander, Thomas (ed.). The Indo-European Language Family : A Phylogenetic Perspective. Cambridge University Press. pp. 202–222. doi:10.1017/9781108758666.012. ISBN 9781108758666.
• Pedersen, Holger (1894). "Bidrag til den albanesiske Sproghistorie". Festskrift til Vilhelm Tomsen. Kopenhagen: Gyldendal. pp. 246–257.
• Pedersen, Holger (1905). "Albanesisch". Kritischer Jahrbericht. 9 (1): 206–217. Erlangen (1909)
• Pellegrini, Giovan Battista (1980). "I rapporti linguistici interadriatici e l'elemento latino dell'albanese". Abruzzo. 19: 31–71.
• Pellegrini, Giovan Battista. "Disa vëzhgime mbi elementin Latin të shqipes" , Studime Filologjike 3 (1982); (in Italian) "Alcune osservazioni sull'elemento latino dell'albanese", Studia Albanica 1983: 63–83.
• Pellegrini, Giovan Battista. Avviamento alla linguistica albanese. Edizione rinnovata. Rende: Università degli studi della Calabria, Centro editoriale e librario, 1997.
• Pisani, Vittore (1950). "L'albanais et les autres langues indo-européennes". Mélanges Henri Grégoire II. Brussels. pp. 519–538.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link) reprint in Saggi di linguistica storica: Scritti scelti. Torino: Rosenberg & Sellier, 1959, pp. 96–114.
• Pisani, Vittore (1964). "Les origines de la langue albanaise, questions de principe et de méthode". Studia Albanica. 1: 61–68.
• Pisani, Vittore (1977). "Sulla genesi dell'albanese". In Ölberg, Hermann M. (ed.). Akten der internationalen albanologischen Kolloquiums, Innsbruck, 1972, zum Gedächtnis an Norbert Jokl. Innsbruck: Institut für Sprachwissenschaft der Universität Innsbruck. pp. 345–366.
• Plasari, Aurel; Nadin, Lucia (2022). Barleti i hershëm sipas një dorëshkrimi të panjohur . Albanian Academy of Sciences/Onufri. ISBN 978-9928-354-88-4.
• Orel, Vladimir (1998). Albanian Etymological Dictionary. Leiden: Brill.
• Orel, Vladimir (2000). A Concise Historical Grammar of the Albanian Language: Reconstruction of Proto-Albanian. Leiden: Brill. ISBN 9004116478.
• Riza, Selman (1979). Studime albanistike. Pristina.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
• Rusakov, Alexander (2017). "Albanian". In Kapović, Mate; Giacalone Ramat, Anna; Ramat, Paolo (eds.). The Indo-European Languages. Routledge. ISBN 9781317391531.
• Schumacher, Stefan; Matzinger, Joachim (2013). Die Verben des Altalbanischen: Belegwörterbuch, Vorgeschichte und Etymologie. Wiesbaden: Otto Harrassowitz.
• Svane, Gunnar (1992). Slavische Lehnwörter im Albanischen. Århus: Aarhus University Press.
• Tagliavini, Carlo (1965). La stratificazione del lessico albanese: Elementi indoeuropei. Bologna: Casa editrice Prof. Riccardo Pàtron.
• Thumb, Albert (1909). "Altgriechische Elemente des Albanesischen". Indogermanische Forschungen. 26: 1–20.
• Trumper, John (2018). "Some Celto-Albanian isoglosses and their implications". In Grimaldi, Mirko; Lai, Rosangela; Franco, Ludovico; Baldi, Benedetta (eds.). Structuring Variation in Romance Linguistics and Beyond: In Honour of Leonardo M. Savoia. John Benjamins Publishing Company. ISBN 9789027263179.
• von Hahn, Johann Georg. Albanesische Studien. 3 vols. Jena: F. Mauko, 1854.
• Watkins, Calvert. "Proto-Indo-European: Comparison and Reconstruction", in The Indo-European Languages. Edited by Anna Giacalone Ramat & Paolo Ramat. London-NY: Routledge, 1998, pp. 25–73.
• Ylli, Xhelal. Das slawische Lehngut im Albanischen. 2 vols., vol. 1: Lehnwörter; vol. 2: Ortsnamen. Munich: Verlag Otto Sagner, 1997/2000.
• Ylli, Xhelal; Sobolev, Andrej N. (2003). Albanskii gegskii govor sela Muhurr. Munich: Biblion Verlag. ISBN 3-932331-36-2.

External links

• Albanian Online by Brian Joseph, Angelo Costanzo, and Jonathan Slocum, free online lessons at the Linguistics Research Center at the University of Texas at Austin
• glottothèque – Ancient Indo-European Grammars online, an online collection of introductory videos to Ancient Indo-European languages produced by the University of Göttingen

Articles related to the Albanian language

v t e Albanian language History Genealogy Proto-Indo-European language family Palaeo-Balkanic Albanoid Proto-Albanian Formation Origins debate Paleo-Balkan Illyrian Daco-Moesian Thracian Contacts Linguistic parallels with Eastern Romance languages Balkan sprachbund Varieties Tosk Southeast Tosk Standard Lab Cham Arbëresh Vaccarizzo Albanian Arvanitika Gheg Reka Arbanasi Istrian Srem Scripts Modern Elbasan Vithkuqi Vellara Todhri Veso Bey Elifba Category v t e Albania articles History Illyrians Ardiaei Albanoi Amantes Amantini Balaites Bylliones Dassaretii Enchele Labeatae Parthini Taulantii Middle Ages (1190–1385) Principality of Arbanon Kingdom of Albania Despotate of Arta House of Kastrioti Ottoman period (1385–1912) Skanderbeg's rebellion League of Lezhë Kanun of Lekë Dukagjini Arbëni Council Islamization of Albania Albanian Pashaliks Massacre of the Albanian Beys Revolts of 1833–1839 Uprising of Dervish Cara Albanian National Awakening League of Prizren Congress of Manastir Revolt of 1910 Malissori uprising Taksim meeting Revolt of 1912 Kimza Government Independence (1912–present) Declaration of Independence Anthem Provisional Government of Albania Albania during the Balkan Wars Republic of Central Albania Principality of Albania (1914–25) World War I in Albania Autonomous Province of Korçë Italian protectorate Vlora War Republic of Mirdita Albanian Republic (1925–1928) Albanian Kingdom (1928–1939) Union with Italian kingdom Italian invasion of Albania German Nazi occupation The Holocaust in Albania Albanian resistance during World War II Communist Albania (1946–91) Orthography Congress (1972) Post-Communist Albania 1997 Civil Unrest NATO membership EU Accession See also Origins Timeline Archives Geography Landscape Mountains Rivers Lakes Islands Environment Climate Biodiversity Habitat Protected areas Politics Executive Government (agencies) Head of state (list) Prime Minister Foreign relations Political parties Treaties Visa policy Judiciary Vetting Institutions KPA IKP ONM KPK Constitution Corruption EURALIUS SPAK Prosecutor General Subdivisions NUTS Counties Municipalities Cities and towns Communes Villages Maps Legislature Elections Assembly (speakers) Members Opposition Human rights Abortion Capital punishment Assassinations LGBT Ombudsman Security Military Police Organized crime Prisons Border crossings Economy Finance Banking Lek (currency) Taxation Trade unions State Supreme Audit Retail Shopping centers Supermarkets Industry Agriculture Healthcare Companies Energy Operators KESH OST OSHEE ERE Hydropower plants Natural resources Oil and gas Mining Infrastructure Highways Aviation Ports Railways Bridges Tunnels Highrises (structures) Telecommunications Posta Shqiptare Squatting Tourism Monuments Archaeological sites Castles Mosques Tekkes Churches Lighthouses Adriatic Sea Coast Ionian Sea Coast (riviera) Beaches Images of Albania Society People Demographics Census Tribes Noble families Diaspora Women Culture Art (galleries) Architecture Photography Museums Theatres Education Alphabet scripts Abetare Language Literature Research institutes Libraries Universities Publishers Proverbs Albanology Tradition Folk beliefs Besa Oda Secularism Religion Nevruz Sworn virgins Costumes Qeleshe Fustanella Xhubleta Brez Opinga Xhamadan Cuisine Gjellë Tavë kosi Kabuni Raki Beer Wine Cognac Skënderbeu Sports Football National team Clubs Players Stadiums Other sports Weightlifting Athletics Cycling Basketball Volleyball Swimming Olympics Indoor arenas Entertainment Music Television Radio Cinema Symbols Heraldry Flag (list) Coat of arms (armorial) Epitaph of Gllavenica Sign language Orders, decorations and medals Passport .al Other Public holidays Smoking Copyright law Outline Index Bibliography Category v t e Languages of Albania Official language Albanian (Tosk - Gheg) Minority languages Aromanian Bulgarian Greek Himariote Macedonian Romani Serbo-Croatian Sign languages Albanian Sign Language v t e Languages of Italy Historical linguistic minorities: Albanian, Catalan, Croatian, French, Franco-Provençal, Friulian, Germanic, Greek, Ladin, Occitan, Romani, Sardinian, Slovene, Wenzhounese Italo-Romance Italian Regional Italian Tuscan Florentine Central Central-Northern Latian Marchigiano Marinese Romanesco Sabino Intermediate Southern (Neapolitan) Beneventano Barese Castelmezzanese Cilentan Cosentino Irpinian Arianese Molisan Southern Latian Tarantino Vastese Extreme Southern Central-Southern Calabrian Salentino Manduriano Sicilian Pantesco Other Italo-Dalmatian languages Corsican Gallurese Sassarese Sardinian Sardinian Campidanese Logudorese Occitano-Romance Catalan Algherese Occitan Vivaro-Alpine Mentonasc Niçard Gallo-Romance French Aostan Franco-Provençal Valdôtain Faetar Cellese Gallo-Italic Ligurian Brigasc Genoese Intemelio Monégasque Royasc Tabarchino Lombard Western Lombard Brianzöö dialects Canzés Bustocco and Legnanese Legnanese Comasco-Lecchese dialects Comasco Laghée Vallassinese Lecchese Milanese Ticinese Ossolano Varesino Southwestern Lombard Pavese Novarese Cremunés Spasell Eastern Lombard Bergamasque Cremish Emilian–Romagnol Emilian Bolognese Parmigiano Romagnol Forlivese Other Gallo-Italic languages Gallo-Italic of Basilicata Gallo-Italic of Sicily Judeo-Italian Judaeo-Piedmontese Piedmontese Venetian Venetian Fiuman Triestine Rhaeto-Romance Rhaeto-Romance Friulian Ladin Cadorino Fornes Nones Albanian Arbëresh language Arbëresh Vaccarizzo Albanian South Slavic Slovenian Brda Gail Valley Inner Carniolan Istrian Karst Natisone Valley Resian Torre Valley Serbo-Croatian Croatian Montenegrin Slavomolisano Triestine Serbian Greek Italiot Greek Calabrian Greek Griko German Bavarian Cimbrian Mòcheno Southern Bavarian South Tyrolean Other German dialects Austrian German Walser Yiddish Others Hebrew Italian Hebrew Italian Sign Language Romani Sinte Romani Wenzhounese Venetian is either grouped with the rest of the Italo-Dalmatian or the Gallo-Italic languages, depending on the linguist. v t e Languages of Kosovo Official languages Albanian Serbian Minority languages Bosnian Gorani Romani Turkish Sign languages Albanian Sign Language v t e Languages of North Macedonia Official language Macedonian Albanian Minority languages Aromanian Bosnian Megleno-Romanian Romani Serbian Turkish Sign languages Macedonian Sign Language v t e Languages of Montenegro Official languages Montenegrin Venetian Minority languages Albanian Bosnian Croatian Serbian Romani Sign languages Yugoslav Sign Language See Also: Minority languages of Montenegro v t e Languages of Romania Official language Romanian Regional or minority languages Albanian Armenian Bulgarian Croatian Czech German Greek Hungarian Italian Macedonian Polish Romani Russian Rusyn Serbian Slovak Tatar Turkish Ukrainian Yiddish Sign languages Romanian Sign Language v t e Languages of Serbia Official language Serbian Minority languages Albanian Bosnian Bulgarian Croatian Hungarian Macedonian Slovak Romani Romanian Rusyn Sign languages Yugoslav Sign Language

• Albanian language
• Languages attested from the 15th century
• Indo-European languages
• Illyrian languages
• Languages of Albania
• Languages of Greece
• Languages of Italy
• Languages of Kosovo
• Languages of North Macedonia
• Languages of Romania
• Languages of Montenegro
• Languages of Serbia
• Languages of Sicily
• Languages of Turkey
• Subject–verb–object languages