Albanian is the official language of Albania, where it is spoken by approximately four million native speakers. A million more people speak Albanian in Yugoslavia, and there are a number of native speakers of Albanian dialects scattered throughout Greece and Italy. The Albanians' own name for their language is
Shqip.
The exact origins of Albanian are uncertain. In the mid-1800s, linguists determined that Albanian is an Indo-European language, forming its own branch of the Indo-European language family, but it is not closely related to the other Indo-European languages. It may have been related to the ancient Dacian and Illyrian languages, but such relationships have not yet been definitively established.
There are two main dialects of Albanian: Gheg, which is spoken north of the Shkumbin river, and Tosk, which is spoken south of the Shkumbin river. Educated speakers of Tosk and Gheg can usually understand each other, although less educated speakers who speak more extreme dialect variations may not be able to converse. Other dialects, mostly related to Tosk, are found in the Albanian-speaking enclaves in Italy and Greece. The Tosk dialect of Albanian is considered the official language of Albania.
The Albanian language has been written with a variety of alphabets over the course of its history, including variations of the Greek alphabet, the Cyrillic alphabet, and the Turkish Arabic alphabet. However, in the early 1900s, the government chose a variation on the Latin alphabet (the same alphabet used in English) as the standard alphabet. There are thirty-six letters in this Albanian alphabet, including seven vowels, thirteen regular consonants, and nine consonants that are digraphs, meaning that they are written as a combination of two letters. These digraphs (dh, gj, ll, nj, rr, sh, th, xh, and zh) are each considered to be a single letter, and each has its own entry in Albanian dictionaries.
The Albanian alphabet is:
A B C Ç D Dh E Ë F G Gj H I J K L Ll M N Nj O P Q R Rr S Sh T Th U V X Xh Y Z Zh
In lowercase, it is:
a b c ç d dh e ë f g gj h i j k l ll m n nj o p q r rr s sh t th u v x xh y z zh
Because the Albanian language has no close relatives in its language family, Albanian vocabulary includes many words that do not have cognates in any other languages. However, there is evidence of some Albanian words that were originally borrowed from Latin and Romanian, and a few Albanian words can be traced to ancient Greek.
Albanian grammar has a number of features that may seem unusual and interesting to English speakers. For example, unlike English nouns, Albanian nouns have gender and case, as well as definite and indefinite forms. The definite form is created by adding a suffix that acts like a definite article. Thus, a word like
qytet "town" must be changed to
qyteti if you want to say "the town". There are no separate definite or indefinite articles in Albanian.
Albanian adjectives usually come after the nouns they modify, and they must match that noun's gender and number. Albanian verbs are conjugated to show tense and person. In an Albanian dictionary, you will find a verb listed by the first person singular of the present tense.
Regular practice is important to learn to speak Albanian well. That's why good
Albanian software programs can be so useful. It's easier than ever to learn Albanian and to begin to speak Albanian with the language resources and Albanian language software from Transparent Language, such as
Languages of the World. We wish you the best of luck in your endeavors to learn Albanian!
