Albanian language

Albanian (Gjuha shqipe) is an Indo-European language spoken by nearly 10 million people,primarily in Albania and Kosovo but also in other areas of the Balkans in which there is an Albanian population, including western Macedonia, Montenegro, and southern Serbia. Albanian is also spoken by native enclaves in Greece, along the eastern coast of southern Italy, and in Sicily. Additionally, speakers of Albanian can be found elsewhere throughout the latter two countries resulting from a modern diaspora, originating from the Balkans, that also includes Scandinavia, Switzerland, Germany, United Kingdom, Turkey, Australia, New Zealand, Canada and the United States. To the south of Albania, in Greece, there are traditional settlements of Çamërian dialect speakers, in particular around Parga and Igoumenitsa in Epirus. Despite border changes and deportations to Albania, the Albanian population here may be as high as 100,000. In central Greece, the Albanian language, known in Albanian as Arbërisht and in Greek as Arvanitika, languishes in more than 320 villages, primarily those of Boeotia (especially around Levadhia), southern Euboea, Attica, Corinth and northern Andros. These speakers are the descendants of large-scale Albanian emigration to Greece during the late Middle Ages. No official statistics exist as to their numbers. This exceptionally archaic form of Albanian is dying out rapidly.

In southern Italy, there is a small but well-established Albanian-speaking minority, the so-called Arbëresh, or Italo-Albanians. These are the descendants of refugees who fled Albania after the death of Scanderbeg in 1468.Most of them live in the mountain villages of Cosenza in Calabria and in the vicinity of Palermo in Sicily. The Arbëresh speak an archaic dialect of Albanian, which differs substantially from the Albanian now spoken in the Balkans, to the extent that communication is difficult if Arbëresh speakers are not familiar with standard literary Albanian.

Traditional Albanian settlements can be encountered sporadically elsewhere in the Balkans: in Arbanasi, a suburb of Zadar on the Dalmatian coast of Croatia; in some villages in the Sandjak in Serbia and in the Bulgarian-Greek-Turkish border region, notably in the Bulgarian village of Mandrica. A few Albanian speakers are also to be found in the Ukraine, notably in villages in the regions of Melitopol’ and Odessa.

Little remains of the once extensive colonies of Albanians scattered throughout the Ottoman Empire. The Albanian minority in Egypt has now dissipated, though Albanian communities still exist in large numbers in Turkey (Istanbul, Bursa and elsewhere) and to an extent in Syria, notably in Damascus.


Classification
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Traditionally scholars have seen the Albanian as the descendant of Illyrian while some dispute this claiming that it derives from Dacian or Thracian. (Illyrian, Dacian, and Thracian, however, may have formed a subgroup or a sprachbund).
Albanian is a language of the extensive Indo-European family and is thus related to a certain degree to almost all other languages of Europe. The Indo-European character of the language was first recognized in 1854 by the German linguist Franz Bopp (1791-1867). At the same time, Albanian shows no particularly close historical affinity to any other language or language group within the Indo-European family, i.e. it forms a language group of its own.

Despite Albania’s geographical proximity to Greece, linguistic contacts with ancient Greek seem to have been sporadic. Roman trading settlements on the Illyrian coast and Albania’s absorption into the Roman Empire, however, left noticeable traces in the language. Borrowings from Latin, which took place over a period of several centuries, were so massive as to threaten the very structure of the language. Cultural contacts with the Slavs (Bulgarians and Serbs), Turks and Italians have also left substantial strata of vocabulary in Albanian.Establishing longer relations, Albanian is often compared to Balto-Slavic and Germanic , both of which share a number of isoglosses with Albanian. Moreover, Albanian has undergone a vowel shift in which stressed, long o has fallen to a, much like in the former and opposite the latter. Likewise, Albanian has taken the old relative jos and innovatively used it exclusively to qualify adjectives, much in the way Balto-Slavic has used this word to provide the definite ending of adjectives. Other linguists link Albanian with Greek and Armenian, while placing Germanic and Balto-Slavic in another branch of Indo-European. Nakhleh, Ringe, and Warnow found that Albanian can be placed at a variety of points within the Indo-European tree with equally good fit; determining its correct placement is hampered by the loss of much of its former diagnostic inflectional morphology and vocabulary.


Dialects
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The Albanian language is divided into two basic dialect groups: Gheg in the north of the country and Tosk in the south. The Shkumbin River in central Albania, flowing past Elbasan into the Adriatic, forms the approximate boundary between the two dialect regions. Here, in a zone ten to twenty kilometers wide, intermediate dialects are also found.

The Gheg dialect group, characterized by the presence of nasal vowels, by the retention of the older n for Tosk r (e.g., venë “wine” for Tosk verë; Shqypnia “Albania” for Tosk Shqipëria) and by several distinct morphological features, can be further classified into a northwestern (Shkodra and surrounding region), a northeastern (northeastern Albania and Kosova), a central (between the Ishëm and Mat Rivers and eastwards into Macedonia, including Dibra and Tetova) and a southern (Durrës, Tirana) Gheg dialect.

The Tosk dialect group is in general more homogenous, though it can be subdivided into a northern (from Fier to Vlora on the coast and all of inland southern Albania north of the Vjosa River), a Labërian or Lab (south of the Vjosa to Saranda), and a Çamërian or Çam (the southern tip of Albania and into Greece) dialect.

The modern literary language (gjuha letrare), agreed upon at the Orthography Congress of 20 to 25 November 1972, is a combination of the two dialect groups, though based about eighty percent on Tosk. It is now a widely accepted standard both in Albania and elsewhere, though there have been increasing tendencies in recent years to revive literary Gheg.


Historical presence and location
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While it is considered established that the Albanians originated in the Balkans, the exact location from which they spread out is hard to pinpoint. Traditionally scholars have seen the Albanians as descended from Illyrians, however, from time to time this view has been challenged, very frequently for modern nationalistic reasons[27]

The theory that Albanians were related to the Illyrians was proposed for the first time by a German historian in 1774.[28] The scholars who advocate an Illyrian origin are numerous. There are two variants of the theory: one is that the Albanian language represents a survival of an indigenous Illyrian language spoken in what is now Albania.[32] The other is that the Albanian language is the descendant of an Illyrian language that was spoken north of the Jireček Line and probably north or northeast of Albania.

The arguments for the Illyrian-Albanian connection have been as follows:

* The national name Albania is derived from Albanoi, an Illyrian tribe mentioned by Ptolemy about 150 A.D.

* From what we know from the old Balkan populations territories (Greeks, Illyrians, Thracians, Dacians), Albanian language is spoken in the same region where Illyrian was spoken in ancient times.

* There is no evidence of any major migration into Albanian territory since the records of Illyrian occupation.

* Many of what remain as attested words to Illyrian have an Albanian explanation and also a number of Illyrian lexical items (toponyms, hydronyms, oronyms, anthroponyms, etc.) have been linked to Albanian.

* Borrowed words (eg Gk (NW) "device, instrument" mākhaná > *mokër "millstone" Gk (NW) drápanon > *drapër "sickle" etc) from Greek language date back before the Christian era[39] and are mostly of Doric dialect of Greek language, which means that the ancestors of the Albanians were in Northwestern part of Ancient Greek civilization and probably borrowed them from Greek cities (Dyrrachium, Apollonia, etc) in the Illyrian territory, colonies which belonged to the Doric division of Greek, or from the contacts in Epirus area.

* Borrowed words from Latin (eg Latin aurum > ar "gold", gaudium > gaz "gas" etc)date back before the Christian era, while Illyrians in the today's Albanian territory were the first from the old Balkan populations to be conquered by Romans in 229 - 167 B.C., Thracians were conquered in 45 A.D. and Dacians in 106 A.D.

* The ancient Illyrian place-names of the region have achieved their current form following Albanian phonetic rules e.g. Durrachion > Durrës (with the Albanian initial accent) Aulona > Vlonë~Vlorë (with rhotacism) Scodra > Shkodra etc.

* The characteristics of the Albanian dialects Tosk and Geg in the treatment of the native and loanwords from other languages, have lead to the conclusion that the dialectal split preceded the Slavic migration to the Balkans which means that in that period (5th to 6th century AD) Albanians were occupying pretty much the same area around Shkumbin river which straddled the Jirecek line.

However, archaeology has more convincingly pointed to the early Byzantine province of Praevitana (modern northern Albania) which shows an area where a primarily shepherding, transhumance population of Illyrians retained their culture. This area was based in the Mat district and the region of high mountains in Northern Albania, as well as in Dukagjin, Mirditë, and the mountains of Drin, from where the population would descend in the summer to the lowlands of western Albania, the Black Drin (Drin i zi) river valley, and into parts of Old Serbia. Indeed, the region's complete lack of Latin place names seems to imply little latinization of any kind and a more likely spot for the early medieval heart of Albanian territory, following the collapse of the Illyrian province.

Cognates with Illyrian

* brisa, "husk of grapes"; cf. Alb bërsí "lees, dregs; mash" (< PA *brutiā)
* loúgeon, "pool"; cf. Alb lag "to wet, soak, bathe, wash" (< PA *lauga), lëgatë
"pool" (< PA *leugatâ), lakshte "dew" (< PA *laugista)
* mandos, "small horse"; cf. Alb mëz, mâz "poney"
* mantía "bramblebush"; Old and dial. Alb mandë, mod. Alb mën, man "berry, mulberry"
* rhinos, "fog, mist"; cf. OAlb ren, mod. Alb re, rê "cloud" (< PA *rina)
* sibina, "spear"; cf. Alb thupër "bar, stick"
* sica, "dagger"; cf. Alb thika "knife"


Historical considerations
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Indeed, the center of the Albanians remained the river Mat. In 1079 AD they are recorded in the territory of the Shkumbin river.

Furthermore, the major Tosk-Gheg dialect division is based on the course of the Shkumbin River, a seasonal stream that lay near the old Via Egnatia. Since rhotacism postdates the dialect division, it is reasonable that the major dialect division occurred after the Christianization of the Roman Empire (4th c. AD) and before the eclipse of the East-West land-based trade route by Venetian seapower (10th c. AD).
The oldest surviving documents written in Albanian are the "Teodor Shkodrani Script 1210", "Formula e Pagëzimit" (Baptismal formula), "Un'te paghesont' pr'emenit t'Atit e t'Birit e t'Spirit Senit." (I baptize thee in the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit) recorded by Pal Engjelli, Bishop of Durrës in 1462 in the Gheg dialect, and some New Testament verses from that period.

The oldest known Albanian printed book, Meshari or missal, was written by Gjon Buzuku, a Roman Catholic cleric, in 1555. The first Albanian school is believed to have been opened by Franciscans in 1638 in Pdhanë. In 1635, Frang Bardhi wrote the first Latin-Albanian dictionary.