Albanian

Introduction

Albanian Map Albanian (also known as Shqip), is a member of the Indo-European language family. It is spoken by close to 6 million people worldwide. It does Albania not belong to any branch of the Indo-European language family and thus has no close relatives. Albanian was finally proven to be an Indo-European language only in 1854. Although there is no consensus among scholars about its origin, it is generally believed that the ancestors of Albanian split from Proto-Indo-European about 4,000 Albanian Mansion years ago. The origin of the word Albanian is a matter of dispute.

Standard Albanian is the official language of Albania. It is also one of the official languages of Kosovo, and of the Republic of Macedonia.

Dialects

There are two principal dialects of Albanian that are mutually unintelligible due to significant linguistic differences between the two. The Shkumbin River in Albania divides the two dialect areas.

Tosk (toskërishtja) is spoken by 3 million people south of the Shkumbin River. It is also spoken in Italy, Greece and in small communities of Albanian immigrants in Ukraine, Turkey, Egypt, and the United States (Ethnologue).
Gheg (gegërishtja) is spoken by 2.8 million people north of the Shkumbin River. It is also spoken in Serbia and Montenegro (including the province of Kosova) and in the Republic of Macedonia (Ethnologue).

Standard Albanian is based on the Tosk dialect.

Structure

Sound System

Albanian Peasant

chess match

children waving

Tosk dialects have 7 vowel and 29 consonant phonemes, i.e., sounds that make a difference in word meaning. Gheg dialects have between 14 and 19 vowel phonemes.

Vowels

Consonants

Tosk has seven vowel phonemes: /i/, /e/, /a/, //, /o/, /y/, /u/. Gheg differentiates between short and long and between oral and nasal vowels.
// (as in tuna) is present only in Tosk; Gheg uses a nasalized vowel instead and drops unstressed // at the end of words.
/y/ is a vowel, similar to the vowel in statue.

six commonly-occurring stop consonants /p/, /b/, /t/, /d/, /k/, /g/. In addition, there are two palatal stops // and // that have no equivalents in English.
three nasals: /m/, /n/, // (as in canyon)
alveolar tap /r/ as in Spanish pero) and an alveolar trill /rr/ (as in Spanish perro).
nine fricatives: /f/, /v/, // (as in thin), // (as in those), // (as in shape), // (as in pleasure), /h/ (as in hat).
four affricates: /ts/ (as in cats), /dz/ (as in cads), /t/ (as in chop), /d/ (as in joke).
two lateral approximants: /l/, // (as in bull).
one palatal approximant /j/ (as in yet).

Stress
Stress normally falls on the last syllable of the stem.

Click here to listen to the pronunciation of some common phrases in Albanian.

Grammar

men

smiling children

singers

women

The grammar of Albanian is quite complex. It shares some features with the grammars of other Balkan languages, such as Romanian and Greek.

Nouns

Verbs

three genders: masculine, feminine and neuter;
two numbers: singular and plural;
4 declensions;
6 cases: nominative, genitive, dative, accusative, ablative, vocative); the vocative case occurs with only a few nouns.
definite articles are attached to the end of nouns (as in Romanian and Greek), e.g., zog "bird," zogu "the bird," shtëpi "house," shtëpia "the house."
Adjectives generally follow the noun they modify and agree with it in gender, number and case.
.adjectives require a particle preceding them that agrees with the noun they modify, e.g., in një burrë i madh "a big man," the noun burrë "man" is modified by madh "big," which is preceded by i, which agrees with burrë "man."

The verb system is extremely complex due to the large number of moods, each of which has several tenses. Verbs agree with their subjects in person and number.

three persons: 1st, 2nd, 3rd;
two numbers: singular, plural;
six moods: indicative, subjunctive, admirative, conditional, optative, imperative;
each mood has several tenses: Indicative - 8; subjunctive - 4, admirative - 4, conditional - 2, optative - 2, imperative - 1.
verbs have two forms, e.g., laj "'I wash', and lahem "'I am washed," or "I wash myself."
An unusual feature of the verb phrase is that when a definite noun is the direct object of the sentence, a pronoun in the objective case that repeats this information is inserted in the verb phrase; e.g., i-a dhash‘ librin atij is literally "him it I gave the book to him."

Word order
The normal word order in Albanian sentences in Subject-Verb-Object.

Click here for a very detailed Albanian reference grammar.

Vocabulary

Albanian Singers

old man and woman

Albanian has borrowed a great number of words from its neighbors. Close contact with the Romans resulted in many Latin loanwords, e.g., mik "friend," from Latin amicus. After the arrival of Slavs in the Balkans, another source of borrowing were Slavic languages, especially Bulgarian. The rise of the Ottoman Empire also brought an influx of Turkish words into the language.

Below is a list of common phrases and words in Albanian Tosk.

Tungjatjeta (tung)	Hello
Mirupafshim	Good bye
Ju lutem	Please
Faleminderit	Thank you
Më fal	Sorry
Yes	Po
No	Jo
Burrë	Man
Grua	Woman

Below are the numerals 1-10 in Albanian Tosk.

1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	10
një	dy	tre	katër	pesë	gjashtë	shtatë	tetë	nëntë	dhjetë

Writing

woman thinking

men talking

woman smiling

Writing
The oldest surviving document in Albanian was written in 1462 in the Gheg dialect. The oldest known Albanian printed book was a missal written by a Catholic cleric in 1555. The first Albanian school is believed to have been opened by Franciscans in 1638. The first Latin-Albanian dictionary was written in 1635.

The modern Albanian alphabet is based on an extended Latin alphabet which was introduced in 1908. It consists of 36 letters some of which were adapted to represent Albanian sounds. Before that, Albanian was written using the Greek alphabet, the Cyrillic alphabet, and the Turkish version of the Arabic alphabet. The table below lists the letters of the Albanian alphabet and their approximate pronunciation in English.

A a	mark	I i	seat	Rr rr	trilled
B b	bat	J j	yam	S s	set
C c	cats	K k	ski	T t	stop
Ç ç	chat	L l	lean	Th th	thin
D d	day	LL ll	bull	U u	boot
Dh dh	those	M m	mat	V v	vat
E e	bet	N n	note	X x	cads
Ë ë	tuna	Nj nj	canyon	Xh xh	joy
F f	fat	O o	more	Y y	statue
G g	gas	P p	spar	Z z	zany
Gj gj	gift	Q q	cute	Zh zh	measure
H h	hat	R r	flap or tap

Take a look at Article 1 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in Albanian Tosk.

Deklarata e pergjithshme mbi te drejtat e njeriut
Neni 1.
Të gjithë njerëzit lindin të lirë dhe të barabartë në dinjitet dhe në të drejta. Ata kanë arsye dhe ndërgjegje dhe duhet të sillen ndaj njëri tjetrit me frymë vëllazërimi.

Universal Declaration of Human Rights
Article 1
All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood.

Resources

Click here to find out where Albanian is taught in the United States.
Click here to find learning materials for studying Albanian.

Online resources for the study of Spanish language and culture
The Albanian Overview
Language Directory: Albanian
UCLA Language Profile: Albanian
The Slavic and East European Language Resource Center
Yamada Language Guide for Albanian
Wikipedia article on Albanian
AlphaDictionary.com: Albanian
SEELRC Albanian Webliography
Albanian Reference Grammar (very detailed)
Omniglot guide to Albanian alphabet
BBC Country Profile: Albania

Interesting Facts

Mother Teresa

Mother Teresa
Mother Teresa was born Agnes Gonxhe Bojaxhiu in Uskub, a town in the Ottoman province of Kosovo in what is now the Republic of Macedonia. Her parents, Nikolla and Dranafila Bojaxhiu, were Catholic, even though the majority of Albanians are Muslim.