ALBANIAN LANGUAGE

The Albanian language is not spoken only in Albania, but also in Yugoslavia, in the regions of Kosovo, Macedonia and Montenegro, in some cities of Greece (in Voiotía , Attica, Évvoia,Ándros, and in the Peloponnesian ) and in Italy, by the Arbëreshë communities;  moreover some minorities that speak Albanian are present also in Bulgaria (Mandritsa), Ukraine (Melitopol), in Croatia (Bar, former Antivari) and in Rumania.  It has been certified , that Albanian language was also spoken in Istria and Syrmia.  Other Albanian communities that keep on using their ancient language and respect their traditions are still present in the U.S.A., in Canada, in Argentine, Egypt and Brazil.

Albanian language is of Indo-European origin, as it has been recognized by the German philologists Franz Bopp in 1854 and Gustav Meyer, in 1890, but, even though numerous and unavoidable lexical loans have been adopted by the Albanians, strangely their language has no affinities with the other groups of the Indo-European stock.  Other studies on this language have been carried out by the Danish linguist Holger Pedersen and the Austrian Norbert Jokl. They pointed out that Albanian gets its origins from the ancient language spoken in Dacha and Illyria, the Albania of today .  The first written document of the modern Albanian goes back to year 1462 and is " Formula e Pagëzimit " (the Formula of Baptism), written by the archbishop Pal Engjëlli.  The first literary work, entitled " Meshari " of Gjon Buzuku, has been published in the 1555.  During the Renaissance, the albanian language has been deeply studied.  Frang Bardhi is the author of the first dictionary from the Latin to the Albanian, formed by approximately 5000 terms, printed in the 1635.

The two main Albanian dialects are the GHEG (" Gegerisht ") spoken in the north, and the TOSK, (from " Toskerisht "), used in the south of the country.  The Arbëreshë Albanian belongs to the Tosk variety, while the Albanian inhabitants of Kosovo and Macedonian speak Gheg Albanian .  The Albanian minorities of Greece speak the Arvanitika Albanian. The differences between these dialects  regard mainly the phonetic aspect.  The official Albanian language, previously subject to the use of Greek and sometimes Turk-Arab graphical signs,  has stablily adopted the Latin alphabet in 1909.  Among the remote and important testimonies of  written Albanian, many are linked to the religious activity carried out by the Catholic missionaries in the sixteenth and seventeenth century, above all in the zone of Shkodrë.  The intense artistic activity of the Arbëreshë has moreover remarkably contributed to the development and the study of the Albanian language.  

The Albanian language has received terms coming from the Latin (Example " Mik " = Friend, from Latin " Amicus "), from Greek, Turk, Slavic, because of  Albania’s  geographic position and the continuous contacts with their neighbours.

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" This is  the tragedy of a race that has donated the better elements, the soldiers, the thinkers, the men of State, the saints, to all its rulers, Slavs and Latins, Greeks and Turks and that finally demands its sons, poor and humiliated, to educate them ;  that tries to instil, between many difficulties, of every kind, a national conscience.  For a long time, a single but powerful symptom has been the proof of this collective longing :  the conservation and the unity of the national language. “

  Eugene Vaina De Pava, " Albania that Is born ", Catania, Italy, 1914

 ALBANIAN ALPHABET  - ALFABETI  I  GJUHËS  SHQIPE  

( The official Albanian language, approved by the  "National Congress of Manastir " in 1908, today includes   36 letters on the whole. )

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