Where is albanian language spoken

The earliest texts were written in various forms of the Latin alphabet, with additional characters borrowed from the Greek alphabet as well as some additional characters of other origins. Up until the late 19th century, the script used to write Albanian appears to have been dependent on the religion of the scribe: Latin for Catholics, Greek for Orthodox Christians, and Perso-Arabic script for Muslims.

In the late 19th century there were various attempts to create a standardized alphabet for Albanian; in , the modern Albanian alphabet was codified at the Congress of Manastir. The modern Albanian alphabet consists of 36 letters, several of which are digraphs. As briefly discussed above, Geg has nasalized vowels. The normal convention is to write these vowels with a circumflex accent. All other issues with the alphabet are discussed in the relevant lessons. Standard Albanian, as well as most Tosk dialects, has a seven-vowel system:.

This sound is also commonly elided in other unstressed syllables. In some mainly Tosk dialects, this vowel is fully pronounced. While Standard Albanian has a relatively simple seven-vowel system, most Geg varieties have a much more complex set of vowels.

Camaj also claims that some Geg varieties have a distinction between short nasal vowels and long nasal vowels. As for consonants, though most of the letter-sound correspondences will be familiar, there are some exceptions:. General Inquiries: Student Inquiries: Menu GIVE. History Albanian and Indo-European Albanian forms a separate branch of Indo-European and cannot conclusively be closely connected with any other Indo-European language.

Albanians and Albanian in the Historical Record Mention of the Albanian people and the Albanian language appears rather late in the historical record.

Earliest Attestations of the Albanian Language While the earliest attested Albanian texts are from over a century later, the existence of Albanian texts is mentioned in in Directorium ad passagium faciendum by a French monk whose identity is uncertain : licet Albanenses aliam omnino linguam a latina habeant et diversam, tamen litteram latinam habent in uso et in omnibus suis libris 'The Albanians have a language different from Latin, although they use Latin letters in their books' note that this could potentially be saying that Albanians just wrote in Latin.

Structure of Albanian Some general characteristics of the Albanian language: Albanian shows a fairly complex nominal inflection system. Albanian has a three-gender system masculine, feminine, neuter , though the exact status of the neuter gender is disputed. Five cases remain from Proto-Indo-European: nominative, accusative, dative, genitive, and ablative, though the dative and genitive are morphologically identical.

In addition to inflecting for case and number, Albanian nouns also inflect for definiteness. As is also seen in several other languages of the Balkans e. This includes several compound past tenses e.

In addition, Albanian also has a substantial inventory of synthetic verb forms, some familiar e. One of the most noticeable features of Albanian is the vast number of "small words" that exist. It is not that there is a huge inventory of different "small words" in Albanian; rather there are many instances in which words having the same form are found in different functions. Some of these small words include: the attributive article or as we call it, nyje , that can take four different forms depending on a variety of factors and is required with most adjectives, some nouns, and all instances of nouns in the genitive case it is what distinguishes the genitive from the dative ; subordinators; weak pronouns; etc.

This often gets a bit tricky as, e. Variation in Albanian Dialects Albanian dialects are traditionally divided into two groups: Geg dialects in the north, and Tosk dialects in the south. Major differences between Geg and Tosk Phonological variation: Geg has nasal vowels while Tosk does not, e. Nearly all Tosk dialects lack vowel length distinctions, e. Tosk dialects have undergone a change by which intervocalic n became r. No such change has occurred in Geg, e.

Morphosyntactic variation: The Tosk future tense is formed with the marker do followed by a conjugated present subjunctive form of the verb e. Tosk lacks infinitives altogether similar to several other languages of the Balkans , while Geg maintains the infinitive composed of me plus the past participle.

In Tosk, most verbs have a past participle in -r e. In Geg, no verbs have this ending e. Language Contact As with the other languages of the Balkans, the development of Albanian has been drastically affected by contact with speakers of other languages.

Lexical Borrowing While reports of over 90 percent of Albanian's lexicon being composed of foreign words are definitely overstated, lexical borrowing has had an enormous effect on Albanian.

They have both also been written with the Turkish version of the Arabic alphabet. The Latin alphabet for Albanian was standardised in , and a unified literary version of Albanian, based on the Tosk dialect, was established in Albanian has also been written with a number of other alphabets, including Elbasan , Beitha Kukju and Todhri , local inventions which appeared during the 18th and 19th centuries, but were not widely used.

Hear a recording of the Albanian alphabet by Plator Gashi. The main phonological differences between Gheg and Tosk are in the pronunciation of vowels, and that Gheg uses nasalization. Here are the Gheg vowels:.

Hear a recording of this text by Granit Studenica. 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. Article 1 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Where can I learn how to speak Shqip Albanian? Explore the LingoHut blog. Read the latest Roaming Rome. The Italian Language — Italiano.

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