Albanian language
|
|
Albanian or Gjuha shqipe is a language spoken by more than six million inhabitants of the western Balkan peninsula (Albania, Serbia and Montenegro, Republic of Macedonia, Greece) in south-eastern Europe (Albanians) and in numerous villages in Abruzzo, Apulia, Basilicata, Calabria, Campania, Molise, southern Italy and on the island of Sicily.
| Albanian (Gjuha shqipe) | |
|---|---|
| Spoken in: | Albania, Serbia and Montenegro, Republic of Macedonia¤, Greece, Turkey, Italy, and other countries |
| Region: | Eastern Europe |
| Total speakers: | 6,169,000 (Ethnologue, 2000) |
| Ranking: | Not in top 100 |
| Genetic classification: | Indo-European Albanian |
| Official status | |
| Official language of: | Albania, Serbia and Montenegro, Republic of Macedonia |
| Regulated by: | - |
| Language codes | |
| ISO 639-1 | sq |
| ISO 639-2 | sqi |
| SIL | ALS, ALN, AAE, AAT |
| See also: Language – List of languages | |
| Contents |
History
The oldest known Albanian printed book, Meshari [1] (http://www.albanianliterature.com/html/authors/prose/buzuku.html) 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 suggest that Albanian may be the survival of an Illyrian language once spoken in the southwestern 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.
Four distinct languages spoken today share a common Thraco-Illyrian origin. They are divided into two groups according to the Ethnologue classification, Gheg and Tosk:
- Gheg group
- Gheg Albanian
- Tosk group
- Tosk Albanian
- 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 of limited mutual intelligibility: Tosk and Gheg. 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.
Languages sharing a common origin with 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: and 29 phonemic consonants.
Vowels
| Phoneme | Written as... | Pronunciation as in... |
|---|---|---|
| i | English bead | |
| e | English let | |
| a | Spanish la | |
| ë | English alone (schwa) | |
| o | English four | |
| y | French du | |
| u | English doom |
Consonants
The following is a table of the Albanian phonemic consonants. Orthography and pronunciation are shown later.
| Dental | Labial | Alveolar | Postalv. | Palatal | Velar | Glottal | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Stop | |||||||
| Affricate | |||||||
| Fricative | |||||||
| Nasal | |||||||
| Approximant | |||||||
| Flap/trill |
| Phoneme | Written as... | Pronunciation as in... |
|---|---|---|
| p | English pen | |
| b | English bat | |
| t | English tan | |
| d | English debt | |
| q | similar to English hot year | |
| gj | similar to English did you | |
| k | English car | |
| g | English go | |
| c | similar to English hats, Japanese tsuki | |
| x | similar to English goods | |
| ç (1) | English chat | |
| xh | English jet | |
| th | English thin | |
| dh | English this | |
| f | English far | |
| v | English van | |
| s | English son | |
| z | English zip | |
| sh | English show | |
| zh | English vision, French jour | |
| h | English hat | |
| m | English man | |
| n | English none | |
| nj | similar to English canyon, Spanish ñ | |
| l | English law | |
| j | English yes, German j | |
| ll | English mill ("dark L") | |
| rr | Spanish rosa, hierro (trilled) | |
| r | Spanish aro, Japanese hara (flapped) |
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 | (shkEEp) | listen | |
| hello | tungjatjeta | (tUhn-ngIAt-IEta) | listen | |
| good-bye | mirupafshim | (mEEr-Uh-pA-fshEEm) | listen | |
| please | ju lutem | (iU LU-tehm) | listen | |
| thank you | faleminderit | (fAh-leh-mEE-nde-rEEt) | listen | |
| that one | atë | (ATEH) | listen | |
| how much? | sa është? | (sAh ush-te) | listen | |
| English | anglisht | (ahn-GLEE-sht) | listen | |
| yes | po | (POE) | listen | |
| no | jo | (IOH) | listen | |
| sorry | më fal | (mUh FAL) | listen | |
| I don't understand | nuk kuptoj | (nUhk KUP-toi) | listen | |
| where's the bathroom? | ku është banjoja? | (kuh ush-tEh bA-nio-jA) | listen | |
| generic toast | gëzuar | (gUh-zuh-ar) | listen | |
| Do you speak English? | flisni Anglisht? | (flee-snEE ahn-GLEE-sht) | listen |
Note: All the sounds above are in the Ogg Vorbis format.
See also
- Arvanitika
- Albanian proverbs
- Common phrases
- Tongue-twisters
- Language families and languages
- Numbers in various languages
External links
- English - Albanian Dictionary (http://www.argjiro.net/fjalor)
- Albanian - English Dictionary (http://www.websters-online-dictionary.org/definition/Albanian-english/): from Webster's Online Dictionary (http://www.websters-online-dictionary.org) - the Rosetta Edition.
- An overview of the Albanian language (http://albanianoverview.com/)
- Albanian phrase guide (http://www.single-serving.com/Albanian/)
- Ethnologue report on Albanian (http://www.ethnologue.com/show_family.asp?subid=90071)
- List of free online resources for learners (http://www.sprachprofi.de.vu/english/al.htm)
- List of online Albanian-related resources (http://www.geocities.com/language_directory/languages/albanian.htm)
- Albanian World (http://www.geocities.com/cezarkurti/) Learn Albanian here
Sample of 3 different type of Albanian Language:
- Albanian (Arbëreshë) (http://www.language-museum.com/a/albanian-arbereshe.php)
- Albanian (Gheg) (http://www.language-museum.com/a/albanian-gheg.php)
- Albanian (Tosk) (http://www.language-museum.com/a/albanian-tosk.php)ar:ألبانية
bg:Албански език da:Albansk de:Albanische Sprache el:Αλβανική γλώσσα et:Albaania keel es:Idioma albanés eo:Albana lingvo fr:Albanais hu:Albán nyelv id:Bahasa Albania li:Albanees nds:Albaansche Spraak nl:Albanees ja:アルバニア語 pl:Język albański pt:Língua albanesa ro:Limba albaneză sq:Gjuha Shqipe sl:Albanščina sv:Albanska zh:阿尔巴尼亚语