Albanian language

Albanian is a language spoken by over 6 million people primarily in Albania, but also in several other states in the Balkans as well as by emigrant groups in Italy and Turkey. The language makes up its own branch of the Indo-European languages.

History

The oldest known Albanian printed book, Meshari [1] 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.

Classification

Albanian was proved to be an Indo-European language in the 1850s. The Albanian language is on its own branch of the Indo-European language family. Some hypothesize that Albanian may be the survival of an Illyrian language once spoken in the northwestern Balkans. Others suggest Albanian may be related more to the ancient Dacian language once spoken in Moesia and Dacia. It is unclear whether Dacian and Illyrian were on different branches of the Indo-European family, but most scholars consider that they were.

The two distinct Albanian dialects, Tosk and Gheg, spoken today are part of a wider language group. The related languages spoken in Italian and Greek enclaves have a common origin with Tosk and appear to be related most closely to the dialect of Çamëria in the extreme south of Albania. Due to the heavy influence of the Italian and Greek languages with which they have come into contact, they have diverged significantly from standard Albanian and are regarded by their speakers as distinct languages.

• Gheg subgroup:
  • Gheg dialect
• Tosk subgroup:
  • Tosk dialect
  • Arbëreshë language
  • Arvanitic language

Albanology

Some eminent scholars in the field of Albanian language have been Johann Georg von Hahn, Franz Bopp, Gustav Meyer, Norbert Jokl, Eqrem Çabej, Stuart Edward Mann, Carlo Tagliavini, Wacław Cimochowski, Eric Pratt Hamp, Agnija Desnickaja and Gjovalin Shkurtaj who is probably the most distinguished socio-linguist in Albania today. He is the head of the Department of Linguistics at Tirana University.

Geographic distribution

Dialects

There are two principal dialects, the Tosk and the Gheg which are mutually intelligible depending on the level of speakers' literacy and proficiency in standard Albanian. In their purest vernacular forms, Gheg and Tosk are inherently unintelligible. The geographical border of the two dialects has traditionally been the Shkumbini 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.

Dialects Tosk are spoken by the Arbëreshë of Italy and among the Arvanites of Greece. 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 standardize on one dialect called Standard or Literary Albanian that borrows most heavily from the Tosk dialect (at the behest of the Dictator Enver Hoxha, himself a Tosk speaker). Two books that were published in the 1970s, Drejtshkrimi i gjuhës shqipe and Fjalori drejtshkrimor i gjuhës shqipe, contained prescribed orthographical rules and dictionary definitions respectively.

Official status

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

Sounds

Albanian has seven vowels: /i ɛ a ə ɔ y u/ and 29 phonemic consonants.

Vowels

Albanian vowels

Phoneme	Written as...	Pronunciation as in...
/i/	i	English bead
/ɛ/	e	English let
/a/	a	Spanish la
/ə/	ë	English alone (schwa)
/ɔ/	o	English four
/y/	y	French du
/u/	u	English doom

Consonants

The following is a table of the Albanian phonemic consonants. Orthography and pronunciation are shown later.

Albanian consonants

	Dental	Labial	Alveolar	Postalv.	Palatal	Velar	Glottal
Stop		p b	t d		c ɟ	k g
Affricate			ts dz	tʃ dʒ
Fricative	θ ð	f v	s z	ʃ ʒ			h
Nasal		m	n		ɲ
Approximant			l		j	lˠ
Flap/trill			ɾ r

Albanian consonants (writing and pronunciation)

Phoneme	Written as...	Pronunciation as in...
/p/	p	English pen
/b/	b	English bat
/t/	t	English tan
/d/	d	English debt
/c/	q	similar to English hot year
/ɟ/	gj	similar to English did you
/k/	k	English car
/g/	g	English go
/ts/	c	similar to English hats, Japanese tsuki
/dz/	x	similar to English goods
/tʃ/	ç (1)	English chat
/dʒ/	xh	English jet
/θ/	th	English thin
/ð/	dh	English this
/f/	f	English far
/v/	v	English van
/s/	s	English son
/z/	z	English zip
/ʃ/	sh	English show
/ʒ/	zh	English vision, French jour
/h/	h	English hat
/m/	m	English man
/n/	n	English none
/ɲ/	nj	similar to English canyon, Spanish ñ
/l/	l	English law
/j/	j	English yes, German j
/lˠ/	ll	English mill ("dark L")
/r/	rr	Spanish rosa, hierro (trilled)
/ɾ/	r	North American English "battle", Spanish aro

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. Among major languages, palatal stops can be found, for example, in Hungarian (where these sounds are spelt ty and gy respectively) or in Czech (respectively t' and d').
• 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 velarized 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).

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 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. With the expansion of the Roman Empire, Latin, more specifically, the Balkan Latin (which was the ancestor of Romanian), 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.

Writing system

The Albanian alphabet is based on the Latin alphabet, with the addition of the letters ë, ç, and nine digraphs to account for certain sounds in pronunciations. Until 1908, when the Latin alphabet was introduced in Albanian, the Greek alphabet, Cyrillic alphabet, and the Ottoman Turkish version of the Arabic alphabet had been used to write Albanian.

Examples

Albanian	shqip	/ʃkʲip/	(shkEEp)	listen
hello	tungjatjeta	/tun ɟat jɛ ta/	(tUhn-ngIAt-IEta)	listen
good-bye	mirupafshim	/mi ru paf ʃim/	(mEEr-Uh-pA-fshEEm)	listen
please	ju lutem	/ju lu tɛm/	(iU LU-tehm)	listen
thank you	faleminderit	/fa ɫɛ min dɛ rit/	(fAh-leh-mEE-nde-rEEt)	listen
that one	atë	/a tə/	(ATEH)	listen
how much?	sa është?	/sa əʃ tə/	(sAh ush-te)	listen
English	anglisht	/an gliʃt/	(ahn-GLEE-sht)	listen
yes	po	/po/	(POE)	listen
no	jo	/jo/	(IOH)	listen
sorry	më fal	/mə fal/	(mUh FAL)	listen
I don't understand	nuk kuptoj	/nuk kup toj/	(nUhk KUP-toi)	listen
where's the bathroom?	ku është banjoja?	/ku əʃ tə ba ɲo ja/	(kuh ush-tEh bA-nio-jA)	listen
generic toast	gëzuar	/gə zu ar/	(gUh-zuh-ar)	listen
Do you speak English?	flisni Anglisht?	/flis ni an gliʃt/	(flee-snEE ahn-GLEE-sht)	listen

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

See also

• Arvanitika
• List of common phrases in various languages
• Tongue-twisters
• Language families and languages
• Numbers in various languages

External links

• English - Albanian Dictionary
• Albanian - English Dictionary: from Webster's Online Dictionary - the Rosetta Edition.
• An overview of the Albanian language
• 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 Albanian dialects and related languages:

• Albanian (Gheg)
• Albanian (Tosk)
• Arbëreshë (Italy)
• Arbëríshte/Arvanitic (Greece)