Albanian language

Albanian (Shqip)
Pronunciation:	IPA: /ʃcip/
Spoken in:	Albania, Serbia and Montenegro, Republic of Macedonia, Greece, Turkey, Italy, and other countries
Region:	Southeastern Europe
Total speakers:	6,169,000 (Ethnologue, 2000)
Language family:	Indo-European  Albanian
Writing system:	Latin alphabet (Albanian variant)
Official status
Official language of:	Albania, Kosova (Serbia and Montenegro), parts of the Republic of Macedonia
Regulated by:	no official regulation
Language codes
ISO 639-1:	sq
ISO 639-2:	alb (B)	sqi (T)
ISO/DIS 639-3:	variously: sqi — Albanian (generic) aln — Gheg aae — Arbëreshë aat — Arvanitika als — Tosk
Note: This page may contain IPA phonetic symbols in Unicode.

Albanian (gjuha shqipe /ˈɟuˌha ˈʃciˌpɛ/) is a language spoken by over 8 million people primarily in Albania, Kosovo, and the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia but also by smaller numbers of ethnic Albanians in other parts of the Balkans, along the eastern coast of Italy and in Sicily, as well as by emigrant groups in Scandinavia, Germany, Greece the UK, Egypt, Turkey, and the USA. The language forms its own distinct branch of the Indo-European language family.

Contents 1 Classification 1.1 How Albanian compares with other languages 2 Geographic distribution 2.1 Official status 2.2 Dialects 2.2.1 Notable lexicological differences between Tosk and Gheg 3 Sounds 3.1 Consonants 3.2 Vowels 4 Grammar 5 Vocabulary 6 Writing system 7 History 8 Examples 9 References 10 See also 11 External links

Classification

Albanian was proven to be an Indo-European language in 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. Some scholars maintain that it derives from the Illyrian language, and others claim that it derives from Thracian. The former group doesn't exclude a relationship with Thracian, but this question is often loaded with political implications.

How Albanian compares with other languages

Albanian	muaj	i ri	mëmë/nânë/mama	natë	hundë	tre	zi	kuq	verdhë	gjelbër
Other Indo-European languages
English	month	new	mother	night	nose	three	black	red	yellow	green
Latin	mensis	novus	mater	nox	nasus	tres	āter/niger	ruber	flāvus/gilvus/fulvus	viridis
Italian	mese	nuovo	madre	notte	naso	tre	nero	rosso	giallo	verde
German	Monat	neu	Mutter	Nacht	Nase	drei	schwartz	rot	gelb	grün
Romanian	luna	nou/noi	mama	noapte	nas	trei	negru	roşu	galben	verde
Welsh	mis	newydd	mam	nos	trwyn	tri	du (/di/)	coch	melyn	gwyrdd

Note: How close "red" and "black" are to Welsh, a Celtic language.

Note: The roots for "yellow" and "green" are very similar to the Romanian for "green" and "yellow". Does this show a similarity with Latin or with other languages of the Balkans such as Dacian? The separation must have occured when "green" and "yellow" were not considered distinct colours much as we consider both "turquoise" (cyan) and "indigo" (primary blue) to be "blue".

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, Montenegro, and the Republic of Macedonia

Dialects

There are two principal dialects, Tosk (Toskërishte) and Gheg (Gegërishte), which have been diverging for at least a millennium, and their less extreme forms are mutually intelligible. A subgroup of dialects deriving from Tosk are spoken by descendants of 15th and 16th century immigrants in southeastern Italy, in small communities in the provinces of Sicily, Calabria, Basilicata, Campania, Molise, Abruzzi, and Puglia, is called Arbëreshë, and a further group of varying intelligibility dialects, are spoken in Greece, by descendents of Orthodox Christian 13th and 15th century immigrants in Attica, Boeotia, southern Evia, the island of Salamina, in the Epirus region and in Athens. The geographical border between the two dialect groups spoken within Albania proper, 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.

Tosk is furthermore divided into many mutually intelligible sub-dialects, which either belong to the Labërishte sub-group or the Çamërishte sub-group, including north-western Greece, but not to be confused with the Arvanites. This dialect is 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 divided into many mutually intelligible sub-dialects, which either belong to the Northern Gheg sub-group or the Southern-Gheg sub-group, the traditional border between the two being the Mati River in northern Albania. This dialect 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

Standard form	Tosk form	Gheg form	Translation
Shqipëri	Shqipëri	Shqypni	Albania
është	është	âsht	is
bëj	bëj	bâj	do
emër	emër	êmën	name
pjekuri	pjekuri	pjekuni	maturity
gjendje	gjëndje	gjêndje	situation
zog	zok	zog	bird
mbret	mbret	mret	king
për të punuar	për të punuar	me punue	to work
rërë	rërë	rânë	sand
qenë	qënë	kenë/kânë	been (part.)

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

Sounds

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

	bilabial	labio- dental	dental	alveolar	post- alveolar	palatal	velar	glottal
plosive	p  b			t  d		c  ɟ	k  g
nasal	m			n		ɲ
flap				ɾ  r
fricative		f  v	θ  ð	s  z	ʃ  ʒ			h
affricate				ts  dz	tʃ  dʒ
approximant						j
lateral approximant				l			ɫ

IPA	Description	Written as	Pronounced as in
p	Voiceless bilabial plosive	p	pen
b	Voiced bilabial plosive	b	bat
t	Voiceless alveolar plosive	t	tan
d	Voiced alveolar plosive	d	debt
c	Voiceless palatal plosive	q	similar to keep
ɟ	Voiced palatal plosive	gj	similar to geek
k	Voiceless velar plosive	k	car
g	Voiced velar plosive	g	go
ts	Voiceless alveolar affricate	c	hats
dz	Voiced alveolar affricate	x	goods
tʃ	Voiceless postalveolar affricate	ç	chop
dʒ	Voiced postalveolar affricate	xh	jet
θ	Voiceless dental fricative	th	thin
ð	Voiced dental fricative	dh	this
f	Voiceless labiodental fricative	f	far
v	Voiced labiodental fricative	v	van
s	Voiceless alveolar fricative	s	son
z	Voiced alveolar fricative	z	zip
ʃ	Voiceless postalveolar fricative	sh	show
ʒ	Voiced postalveolar fricative	zh	vision
h	Voiceless glottal fricative	h	hat
m	Bilabial nasal	m	man
n	Alveolar nasal	n	not
ɲ	Palatal nasal	nj	new
l	Alveolar lateral approximant	l	law
j	Palatal approximant	j	yes
ɫ	Velarized alveolar lateral approximant	ll	milk
r	Alveolar trill	rr	Spanish hierro
ɾ	Alveolar tap	r	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. 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

IPA	Description	Written as	Pronounced as in
i	Close front unrounded vowel	i	bead
ɛ	Open-mid front unrounded vowel	e	bed
a	Open front unrounded vowel	a	car
ə	Schwa	ë	alone
ɔ	Open-mid back rounded vowel	o	four
y	Close front rounded vowel	y	hurt
u	Close back rounded vowel	u	doom

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):

	Indefinite Singular	Indefinite Plural	Definite Singular	Definite Plural
Nominative	mal (mountain)	male (mountains)	mali (the mountain)	malet (the mountains)
Accusative	mal	male	malin	malet
Genitive	i/e/të/së mali	i/e/të/së maleve	i/e/të/së malit	i/e/të/së maleve
Dative	mali	maleve	malit	maleve
Ablative	mali	maleve/malesh	malit	maleve

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

	Indefinite Singular	Indefinite Plural	Definite Singular	Definite Plural
Nominative	vajzë (girl)	vajza (girls)	vajza (the girl)	vajzat (the girls)
Accusative	vajzë	vajza	vajzën	vajzat
Genitive	i/e/të/së vajze	i/e/të/së vajzave	i/e/të/së vajzës	i/e/të/së vajzave
Dative	vajze	vajzave	vajzës	vajzave
Ablative	vajze	vajzave/vajzash	vajzës	vajzave

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:

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

In imperative sentences, the particle mos is used:

• mos harro "do not forget!".

Vocabulary

There are Albanian words which 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.

Although there's no documentation on the Albanian language prior to the 15th century AD, it is widely assumed that Greek and 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. 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 especially in the south of Albania. Also due to the large population of Roma Gypsies in Albania words such as "jaan" or "xhan" in Albanian and Hindi mean the same thing which literally translates as "my life" or "my soul" but is also used to refer to a beloved one as "darling"

Writing system

Full article: Albanian alphabet

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 Cyrillic alphabet, and some local alphabets.

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.

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 close 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.

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. In 1635, Frang Bardhi wrote the first Latin-Albanian dictionary.

Examples

Albanian	shqip	/ʃcip/	(shkEEp)	listen
hello	tungjatjeta	/ˌtunɟaˈtjɛta/	(tUhn-ngIAt-IEta)	listen
good-bye	mirupafshim	/ˈmiruˌpafʃim/	(mEEr-Uh-pA-fshEEm)	listen
please	ju lutem	/ju ˌluˈtɛm/	(iU LU-tehm)	listen
thank you	faleminderit	/faˈlɛminˌdɛrit/	(fAh-leh-mEE-nde-rEEt)	listen
that one	atë	/ˌaˈtə/	(ATEH)	listen
how much?	sa është?	/sa ˌəʃˈtə/	(sAh ush-te)	listen
English	anglisht	/ˈanˌgliʃt/	(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 ˈkupˌtoj/	(nUhk KUP-toi)	listen
where's the bathroom?	ku është banjoja?	/ku ˌəʃˈtə baˌɲoˈja/	(kuh ush-tEh bA-nio-jA)	listen
generic toast	gëzuar	/gəˌzuˈar/	(gUh-zuh-ar)	listen
Do you speak English?	flisni Anglisht?	/ˈflisˌni ˈanˌgliʃt/	(flee-snEE ahn-GLEE-sht)	listen

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

The Islamic shahadah in Albanian is Nuk ka Zot përveç Allahut, dhe Muhamedi është profet i Tij.

MONTHS IN ALBANIAN

January- Janar

February- Shkurt

March- Mars

April- Prill

May- Maj

June- Qershor

July- Korrik

August- Gusht

September- Shtator

October- Tetor

November- Nëntor

December- Dhjetor

DAYS OF THE WEEK

e hënë- Monday

e martë- Tuesday

e mërkurë- Wednesday

e enjte- Thursday

e premte- Friday

e shtunë- Saturday

e diel- Sunday

OTHER PHRASES AND WORDS IN ALBANIAN

unë jam- i am

ti je- you are

ju jini- you are (formal)

ai/ajo është- he/ she is

ne jemi- we are

ju jeni- you are (plural)

ata/ato janë- they(m)/they(f) are

më quajnë- my name is....

flisni anglisht?- do you speak English (formal)

flet anglisht- do you speak English (informal)

hajde këtu- come here

ik atje- go there

sa ështe ora- what time is it

si e ke emrin/ si te quajnë- what is your name (informal)

si e kini emrin/ si ju quajnë- what is your name (formal)

jam nga Amerika- I'm from America (a.k.a USA)

jam nga Kanadaja- I'm from Canada

nuk flas Shqip- I don't speak Albanian

flas pak Shqip- I speak little Albanian

References

• Encyclopædia Britannica, edition 15 (1985). Article: Albanian language
• Isa Zemberi, Colloquial Albanian, Routledge, ISBN 0-415-05663-2

See also

• Albanian Wikipedia

External links

• English - Albanian Dictionary
• 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)
• Albanian (Arvanitika)

Dictionaries:

• English - Albanian dictionary
• English - Albanian dictionary
• Turkish - Albanian dictionary
• German - Albanian dictionary