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Albanian (gjuha shqipe) is a language spoken by over 6 million people primarily in Albania, but also by smaller numbers of ethnic Albanians in other parts of the southern Balkans, along the eastern coast of Italy and in Sicily, as well as by emigrant groups in Scandinavia, Germany, the UK and the USA. The language forms its own distinct branch of the Indo-European language family.

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Classification

Albanian was proven to be an Indo-European language 1854 by the German philologist Franz Bopp. The Albanian language is its own independent branch of the Indo-European language family with no living close relatives. There is no scholarly consensus over its origin. Most scholars maintain that it derives from the Illyrian language, but there is a minority claiming that it derives from Thracian. The former group don't exclude a relationship with Thracian, however it should be added that this question is often loaded with political implications.

How Albanian compares with other languages

Geographic distribution

Albanian is spoken by about 6 million people mainly in Albania and Kosovo but also in many other countries, including the Republic of Macedonia, Belgium, Egypt, Germany, Greece, Italy, Sweden, Turkey (Europe), Ukraine, the UK and USA.

Official status

Albanian in the Tosk dialect is the official language of the Republic of Albania. Albanian is also one of the official languages of Kosovo, and the Republic of Macedonia.

Dialects

There are two principal dialects, Tosk and Gheg, which have been diverging for at least a millennium, and their less extreme forms are mutually intelligible. The geographical border of the two dialects has traditionally been the Shkumbin River in Albania, with Gheg being spoken north of the river, and Tosk south of the river. The two dialects have phonological as well as lexicological differences. Lexicological

Tosk is the dialect spoken by most members of the large Albanian immigrant communities that have recently arrived in these two countries, and in smaller Albanian communities in Ukraine, Turkey, Egypt, and United States.

Gheg (or Geg) is spoken in northern Albania and by the Albanians of Serbia and Montenegro (Southern Montenegro and Southern Serbia), the UN protectorate of Kosovo, as well as those of the Republic of Macedonia.

Since after World War II there have been efforts to create a Standard or Literary Albanian that borrows most heavily from the Tosk dialect (at the behest of the dictator Enver Hoxha, himself a Tosk speaker). The Congress on the Orthography of Albanian, held in 1972 with the additional participation of delegates from the Yugoslav territories of Kosovo, Macedonia and Montenegro and Calabria (Italy), established a unified literary language. The resulting orthographic rules were codified in such tomes as Drejtshkrimi i gjuhës shqipe (1973) (The Orthography of the Albanian Language) and Fjalori drejtshkrimor i gjuhës shqipe (1976) (The Orthographic Dictionary of the Albanian Language).

Notable lexicological differences between Tosk and Gheg

(ˆ) denotes nasal vowels, which are a common feature of Gheg.

Phonology

Albanian has 7 vowels and 29 consonants. Gheg has a set of nasal vowels which are absent in Tosk. Another peculiarity is the mid-central vowel "ë" reduced at the end of the word. Two dental fricatives exist (/ð/ and /θ/) and the sounds r and l can be weak or strong. The original Indo-European phonetic system was destroyed in Albanian after diphthongs disappeared, and unstressed vowels were dropped. The stress is fixed mainly on the penultimate syllable.

Consonants

Notes:

• The affricates are pronounced as one sound (a stop and a fricative at the same point).
• The palatal stops q and gj are completely unknown to English, so the pronunciation guide is approximate. Palatal stops can be found in other European languages, for example, in Hungarian (where these sounds are spelt ty and gy respectively).
• The palatal nasal nj corresponds to the sound of the Spanish ñ or the French or Italian digraph gn (as in gnocchi). 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 contrast between flapped r and trilled rr is the same as in Spanish. English does not have any of the two sounds phonemically (but tt in butter is pronounced as a flap r in most American dialects).
• (1) The letter ç can be spelt ch on American English keyboards, both due to its English sound, but more importantly, due to analogy with Albanian xh, sh, zh. (Usually, however, it's spelt simply c, which may cause confusion; however, meanings are usually understood).

Vowels

Grammar

Albanian nouns are inflected by gender (masculine, feminine and neuter) and number (singular and plural). There are 4 declensions with 5 cases (nominative, dative, accusative, ablative and vocative), although the vocative only occurs with a limited number of words. The cases apply to both definite and indefinite nouns and there are numerous cases of syncretism. The equivalent of a genitive is formed by using the prepositions i/e/të/së with the dative.

The following shows the declension of the masculine noun mal (mountain):

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

The article can be posited either before or after the noun as in many other Balkan languages, for example Romanian 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 -u:
    • mal (mountain) / mali (the mountain);
    • libër (book) / libri (the book);
    • zog (bird) / zogu (the bird).
  • Feminine nouns take the suffix -(j)a:
    • veturë (car) / vetura (the car);
    • shtëpi (house) / shtëpia (the house);
    • lule (flower) / lulja (the flower).
• Neuter nouns take -t.

Albanian develops an analytical structure of the verb. Its complex system of moods (6 types) and tenses (3 simple and 5 complex constructions) is distinguishing among other Balkan languages. There are two general types of conjugation. In Albanian the Constituent Order is Subject Verb Object and negation is expressed by the particles nuk or s' in front of the verb, for example:

• Goni nuk flet anglisht "Goni doesn't speak English";
• s'di "don't know".

In imperative sentences, the particle mos is used:

• mos harro "don't forget".

Vocabulary

Albanian split from the Proto-Indo-European language about 4000 years ago and most of the basic words are derived directly from it. Some of these words have cognates (of non-Latin origin) in Romanian and there is a theory that the language spoken by the Dacians before the Romanization was a language related to proto-Albanian.

It is not certain whether ancient Greek influenced the early Albanian language (there are a few somewhat uncertain examples of possible loanwords). With the expansion of the Roman Empire, Latin, more specifically, the Balkan Latin (which was the ancestor of Romanian and other Balkan Romance languages), would exert a great influence on Albanian. Examples of words borrowed from Latin: qytet < civitas (city), qiell < caelum (sky), mik < amicus (friend).

After the Slavs arrived in the Balkans, another source of Albanian vocabulary were the Slavic languages, especially Bulgarian. As in all other Balkan languages, 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 loanwords from Modern Greek also exist.

Writing system

Albanian has been written with many different alphabets since the 15th century. Originally, the Tosk dialect was written with the Greek alphabet and the Gheg dialect was written with the Latin alphabet. They have both also been written with the Ottoman Turkish version of the Arabic alphabet.

The modern Albanian alphabet was standardised in 1909, and is based on the Latin alphabet, with the addition of the letters ë, ç, and nine digraphs.

Albanian has also been written with two other local alphabets: The Elbasan and the Beitha Kukju scripts, local inventions of the 18th and 19th centuries which were never widely used.

History

The place where the ancestors of today's Albanians lived in ancient Balkans is still uncertain, but they are usually identified with the ancient Illyrians or Thracians. The common vocabulary with Romanian suggests that the ancestors of the Albanians and Romanians lived closed to each other in ancient times. Some scholars support a "theory of continuity", which says that the Albanians lived in the territory of current Albania. However, the low number of Doric Greek words and the high number of Latin borrowings suggests that the Albanians have lived well north of the Jirecek Line, which divided the spheres of influence of Latin and Greek languages.

The oldest surviving document written in Albanian is "Formula e Pagëzimit" (Baptismal formula), written in 1462 in the Gheg dialect, and some New Testament verses from that period. However, Guiliam Adae in 1332 states that "Albanians, even though they have a different language from Latin, they use the Latin letters in their writings."

The oldest known Albanian printed book, Meshari or missal, was written by Gjon Buzuku, a Catholic cleric, in 1555. The first Albanian school is believed to have been opened by Franciscans in 1638 in Pdhanë. In 1635, Frang Bardhi wrote the first Latin-Albanian dictionary.

Examples

Note: All the sounds above are in the Ogg Vorbis format.

References

• Encyclopædia Britannica, edition 15 (1985). Article: Albanian language

External links

• English - Albanian Dictionary
• Albanian - English Dictionary: from Webster's Online Dictionary - the Rosetta Edition.
• An overview of the Albanian language and culture
• Albanian phrase guide
• Ethnologue report on Albanian
• List of free online resources for learners
• List of online Albanian-related resources
• Albanian World Learn Albanian here

Samples of various Albanian dialects:

• Albanian (Gheg)
• Albanian (Tosk)
• Albanian (Arbëreshë)

• Languages of Albania
• Languages of Kosovo
• Languages of the Republic of Macedonia
• Languages of Italy
• Languages of Serbia and Montenegro
• Languages of Greece
• Languages of Turkey
• Albanian language
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• WikiProject Linguistics