A | B | C | D | E | F | G | H | CH | I | J | K | L | M | N | O | P | Q | R | S | T | U | V | W | X | Y | Z | 0 | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9
| Albanian | |
|---|---|
| |
| Pronunciation | [ʃcip] ⓘ [ˈɟuha ˈʃcipɛ] [aɾbəˈɾiʃt] |
| Native to | |
| Ethnicity | Albanians |
Native speakers | 7.5 million (2017)[1][2] |
Indo-European
| |
Early form | |
| Dialects |
|
| Official status | |
Official language in |
|
Recognised minority language in | |
| Regulated by | Academy of Sciences of Albania Academy of Sciences and Arts of Kosovo |
| Language codes | |
| ISO 639-1 | sq |
| ISO 639-2 | alb (B) sqi (T) |
| ISO 639-3 | sqi – inclusive codeIndividual codes: aae – Arbëreshaat – Arvanitikaaln – Ghegals – Tosk |
| Glottolog | alba1267 |
| Linguasphere | 55-AAA-aaa to 55-AAA-ahe (25 varieties) |
 | |
Albanian (endonym: shqip [ʃcip] ⓘ, gjuha shqipe [ˈɟuha ˈʃcipɛ], or arbërisht [aɾbəˈɾiʃt]) is an Indo-European language and the only surviving representative of the Albanoid branch, which belongs to the Paleo-Balkan group.[9] Standard Albanian is the official language of Albania and Kosovo, and a co-official language in North Macedonia and Montenegro, as well as a recognized minority language of Italy, Croatia, Romania and Serbia. It is also spoken in Greece and by the Albanian diaspora, which is generally concentrated in the Americas, Europe and Oceania.[2][10] Albanian is estimated to have as many as 7.5 million native speakers.[1][2]
Albanian and other Paleo-Balkan languages had their formative core in the Balkans after the Indo-European migrations in the region.[11][12] Albanian in antiquity is often thought to have been an Illyrian language for obvious geographic and historical reasons,[13][14][15][16][17][18] or otherwise an unmentioned Balkan Indo-European language that was closely related to Illyrian and Messapic.[19][20][21][22] The Indo-European subfamily that gave rise to Albanian is called Albanoid in reference to a specific ethnolinguistically pertinent and historically compact language group.[23] Whether descendants or sisters of what was called 'Illyrian' by classical sources, Albanian and Messapic, on the basis of shared features and innovations, are grouped together in a common branch in the current phylogenetic classification of the Indo-European language family.[24][19][23][21][22]
The first written mention of Albanian was in 1284 in a witness testimony from the Republic of Ragusa, while a letter written by Dominican Friar Gulielmus Adea in 1332 mentions the Albanians using the Latin alphabet in their writings. The oldest surviving attestation of modern Albanian is from 1462.[25] The two main Albanian dialect groups (or varieties), Gheg and Tosk, are primarily distinguished by phonological differences and are mutually intelligible in their standard varieties,[26][27] with Gheg spoken to the north and Tosk spoken to the south of the Shkumbin river.[28] Their characteristics[29][30] in the treatment of both native words and loanwords provide evidence that the split into the northern and the southern dialects occurred after Christianisation of the region (4th century AD),[31][32] and most likely not later than the 6th century AD,[33][34][35] hence possibly occupying roughly their present area divided by the Shkumbin river since the Post-Roman and Pre-Slavic period, straddling the Jireček Line.[36][37]
Centuries-old communities speaking Albanian dialects can be found scattered in Greece (the Arvanites and some communities in Epirus, Western Macedonia and Western Thrace),[38] Croatia (the Arbanasi), Italy (the Arbëreshë)[39] as well as in Romania, Turkey and Ukraine.[40] The Malsia e Madhe Gheg Albanian[41][42] and two varieties of the Tosk dialect, Arvanitika in Greece and Arbëresh in southern Italy, have preserved archaic elements of the language.[43] Ethnic Albanians constitute a large diaspora, with many having long assimilated in different cultures and communities. Consequently, Albanian-speakers do not correspond to the total ethnic Albanian population, as many ethnic Albanians may identify as Albanian but are unable to speak the language.[44][45][46]
Standard Albanian is a standardised form of spoken Albanian based on Tosk.
Geographic distribution
The language is spoken by approximately 6 million people in the Balkans, primarily in Albania, Kosovo, North Macedonia, Serbia, Montenegro and Greece.[1] However, due to old communities in Italy and the large Albanian diaspora, the worldwide total of speakers is much higher than in Southern Europe and numbers approximately 7.5 million.[1][2]
Europe
The Albanian language is the official language of Albania and Kosovo and a co-official language in North Macedonia and Montenegro.[47][48] Albanian is a recognised minority language in Croatia, Italy, Romania and in Serbia. Albanian is also spoken by a minority in Greece, specifically in the Thesprotia and Preveza regional units and in a few villages in Ioannina and Florina regional units in Greece.[38] It is also spoken by 450,000 Albanian immigrants in Greece, making it one of the commonly spoken languages in the country after Greek.
Albanian is the third most common mother tongue among foreign residents in Italy.[49] This is due to a substantial Albanian immigration to Italy. Italy has a historical Albanian minority of about 500,000, scattered across southern Italy, known as Arbëreshë. Approximately 1 million Albanians from Kosovo are dispersed throughout Germany, Switzerland and Austria. These are mainly immigrants from Kosovo who migrated during the 1990s. In Switzerland, the Albanian language is the sixth most spoken language with 176,293 native speakers.
Albanian became an official language in North Macedonia on 15 January 2019.[50]
Americas
There are large numbers of Albanian speakers in the United States, Argentina, Chile, Uruguay, and Canada. Some of the first ethnic Albanians to arrive in the United States were the Arbëreshë. The Arbëreshë have a strong sense of identity and are unique in that they speak an archaic dialect of Tosk Albanian called Arbëresh.
In the United States and Canada, there are approximately 250,000 Albanian speakers. It is primarily spoken on the East Coast of the United States, in cities like New York City, Boston, Chicago, Philadelphia, and Detroit, as well as in parts of the states of New Jersey, Ohio, and Connecticut.[citation needed]
In Argentina, there are nearly 40,000 Albanian speakers, mostly in Buenos Aires.[51][need quotation to verify]
Asia and Africa
Approximately 1.3 million people of Albanian ancestry live in Turkey, with more than 500,000 recognising their ancestry, language and culture. There are other estimates, however, that place the number of people in Turkey with Albanian ancestry and or background upward to 5 million. However, the vast majority of this population is assimilated and no longer possesses fluency in the Albanian language, though a vibrant Albanian community maintains its distinct identity in Istanbul to this day.
Egypt also lays claim to about 18,000 Albanians, mostly Tosk speakers.[52] Many are descendants of the Janissary of Muhammad Ali Pasha, an Albanian who became Wāli, and self-declared Khedive of Egypt and Sudan. In addition to the dynasty that he established, a large part of the former Egyptian and Sudanese aristocracy was of Albanian origin. In addition to the recent emigrants, there are older diasporic communities around the world.
Oceania
Albanian is also spoken by Albanian diaspora communities residing in Australia and New Zealand.
Dialects
The Albanian language has two distinct dialects, Tosk which is spoken in the south, and Gheg spoken in the north.[53] Standard Albanian is based on the Tosk dialect. The Shkumbin River is the rough dividing line between the two dialects.[54]
Gheg is divided into four sub-dialects: Northwest Gheg, Northeast Gheg, Central Gheg and Southern Gheg. It is primarily spoken in northern Albania, Kosovo, and throughout Montenegro and northwestern North Macedonia. One fairly divergent dialect is the Upper Reka dialect, which is however classified as Central Gheg. There is also a diaspora dialect in Croatia, the Arbanasi dialect.
Tosk is divided into five sub-dialects, including Northern Tosk (the most numerous in speakers), Labërisht, Cham, Arvanitika, and Arbëresh. Tosk is spoken in southern Albania, southwestern North Macedonia and northern and southern Greece. Cham Albanian is spoken in North-western Greece,[55] while Arvanitika is spoken by the Arvanites in southern Greece. In addition, Arbëresh is spoken by the Arbëreshë people, descendants of 15th and 16th century migrants who settled in southeastern Italy, in small communities in the regions of Sicily and Calabria.[56][57] These settlements originated from the (Arvanites) communities probably of Peloponnese known as Morea in the Middle Ages. Among them the Arvanites call themselves Arbëror and sometime Arbëresh. The Arbëresh dialect is closely related to the Arvanites dialect with more Italian vocabulary absorbed during different periods of time.
Orthography
The Albanian language has been written using many alphabets since the earliest records from the 15th century. The history of Albanian language orthography is closely related to the cultural orientation and knowledge of certain foreign languages among Albanian writers.[58] The earliest written Albanian records come from the Gheg area in makeshift spellings based on Italian or Greek. Originally, the Tosk dialect was written in the Greek alphabet and the Gheg dialect was written in the Latin script. Both dialects had also been written in the Ottoman Turkish version of the Arabic script, Cyrillic, and some local alphabets (Elbasan, Vithkuqi, Todhri, Veso Bey, Jan Vellara and others, see original Albanian alphabets). More specifically, the writers from northern Albania and under the influence of the Catholic Church used Latin letters, those in southern Albania and under the influence of the Greek Orthodox church used Greek letters, while others throughout Albania and under the influence of Islam used Arabic letters. There were initial attempts to create an original Albanian alphabet during the 1750–1850 period. These attempts intensified after the League of Prizren and culminated with the Congress of Manastir held by Albanian intellectuals from 14 to 22 November 1908, in Manastir (present day Bitola), which decided on which alphabet to use, and what the standardised spelling would be for standard Albanian. This is how the literary language remains. The alphabet is the Latin alphabet with the addition of the letters ⟨ë⟩, ⟨ç⟩, and ten digraphs: dh, th, xh, gj, nj, ng, ll, rr, zh and sh.
According to Robert Elsie:[59]
The hundred years between 1750 and 1850 were an age of astounding orthographic diversity in Albania. In this period, the Albanian language was put to writing in at least ten different alphabets – most certainly a record for European languages. ... the diverse forms in which this old Balkan language was recorded, from the earliest documents to the beginning of the twentieth century ... consist of adaptations of the Latin, Greek, Arabic, and Cyrillic alphabets and (what is even more interesting) a number of locally invented writing systems. Most of the latter alphabets have now been forgotten and are unknown, even to the Albanians themselves.
Classification
Albanian constitutes one of the eleven major branches of the Indo-European language family,[61] within which it occupies an independent position.[62] In 1854, Albanian was demonstrated to be an Indo-European language by the philologist Franz Bopp. Albanian was formerly compared by a few Indo-European linguists with Germanic and Balto-Slavic, all of which share a number of isoglosses with Albanian.[63] Other linguists linked the Albanian language with Latin, Greek and Armenian, while placing Germanic and Balto-Slavic in another branch of Indo-European.[64][65][66] In current scholarship there is evidence that Albanian is closely related to Greek and Armenian, while the fact that it is a satem language is less significant.[61]
| Albanian in the Palaeo-Balkanic Indo-European branch based on the chapters "Albanian" (Hyllested & Joseph 2022) and "Armenian" (Olsen & Thorsø 2022) in Olander (ed.) The Indo-European Language Family |
Messapic is considered the closest language to Albanian,[24][23][19] grouped in a common branch titled Illyric in Hyllested & Joseph (2022).[24] Hyllested & Joseph (2022) in agreement with recent bibliography identify Greco-Phrygian as the IE branch closest to the Albanian-Messapic one. These two branches form an areal grouping – which is often called "Balkan IE" – with Armenian. The hypothesis of the "Balkan Indo-European" continuum posits a common period of prehistoric coexistence of several Indo-European dialects in the Balkans prior to 2000 BC. To this group would belong Albanian, Ancient Greek, Armenian, Phrygian, fragmentary attested languages such as Macedonian, Thracian, or Illyrian, and the relatively well-attested Messapic in Southern Italy. The common features of this group appear at the phonological, morphological, and lexical levels, presumably resulting from the contact between the various languages. The concept of this linguistic group is explained as a kind of language league of the Bronze Age (a specific areal-linguistics phenomenon), although it also consisted of languages that were related to each other.[67] A common prestage posterior to PIE comprising Albanian, Greek, and Armenian, is considered as a possible scenario. In this light, due to the larger number of possible shared innovations between Greek and Armenian, it appears reasonable to assume, at least tentatively, that Albanian was the first Balkan IE language to branch off. This split and the following ones were perhaps very close in time, allowing only a narrow time frame for shared innovations.[68]
Albanian represents one of the core languages of the Balkan Sprachbund.[61]
Glottolog and Ethnologue recognize four Albanian languages. They are classified as follows:[69][70]
- Indo-European
- Paleo-Balkan
- Albanian
- Albanian-Tosk
- Arbëreshë Albanian
- Arvanitika Albanian
- Northern Tosk Albanian
- Gheg Albanian
- Albanian-Tosk
- Albanian
- Paleo-Balkan
History
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