Albanian language

Albanian (/ælˈbeɪniən/; shqip, [ʃc͡çip] or gjuha shqipe, [ɟ͡ʝuha ˈʃc͡çipɛ]) is an Indo-European language spoken by the Albanians in the Balkans and the Albanian diaspora in the Americas, Europe and Oceania.[1][8] With about 7.5 million speakers,[2][1] it comprises an independent branch within the Indo-European languages and is not closely related to any other language.[9]

Albanian
shqip gjuha shqipe
Pronunciation	[ʃc͡çip]
Native to	Albania, Kosovo, North Macedonia Greece, Italy, Montenegro, Serbia
Ethnicity	Albanians
Native speakers	6 million (2018) in the Balkans[1] 7.5 million globally (2017/2018)[2][1]
Language family	Indo-European Albanian
Early form	Proto-Albanian
Dialects	Gheg Tosk Arbëresh Istrian †
Writing system	Latin (Albanian alphabet) Albanian Braille
Official status
Official language in	Albania  Kosovo  North Macedonia  Montenegro[3]
Recognised minority language in	Italy[4]  Serbia[5]  Croatia[6]  Romania[7]
Regulated by	Officially by the Social Sciences and Albanological Section of the Academy of Sciences of Albania
Language codes
ISO 639-1	sq
ISO 639-2	alb (B) sqi (T)
ISO 639-3	sqi – inclusive code Individual codes: aae – Arbëresh aat – Arvanitika aln – Gheg als – Tosk
Glottolog	alba1267
Linguasphere	55-AAA-aaa to 55-AAA-ahe (25 varieties)
The dialects of the Albanian language. (The map does not indicate where the language is majority or minority.)

First attested in the 15th century, it is the last Indo-European branch to appear in written records. This is one of the reasons why its still-unknown origin has long been a matter of dispute among linguists and historians.[9] Albanian is considered to be the descendant of one of the Paleo-Balkan languages of antiquity. For more historical and geographical reasons than specifically linguistic ones, there are various modern historians and linguists who believe that the Albanian language may have descended from a southern Illyrian dialect[10] spoken in much the same region in classical times. Alternative hypotheses hold that Albanian may have descended from Thracian or Daco-Moesian, other ancient languages spoken farther east than Illyrian.[9][11] Not enough is known of these languages to completely prove or disprove the various hypotheses.[12]

The two main Albanian dialects, Gheg and Tosk, are primarily distinguished by phonological differences and are mutually intelligible,[13][14] with Gheg spoken to the north and Tosk spoken to the south of the Shkumbin river.[13] Their characteristics[15] in the treatment of both native words and loanwords indicate the dialectal split occurred after Christianisation of the region (4th century AD) and at the time of the Slavic migration to the Balkans,[16][17] with the historic boundary between Gheg and Tosk being the Shkumbin[18] which straddled the Jireček line.[19][20] Standard Albanian is a standardised form of spoken Albanian based on the Tosk dialect. It is the official language of Albania and Kosovo[lower-alpha 1] and a co-official language in North Macedonia as well as a minority language of Italy, Montenegro, Romania and Serbia.

Centuries-old communities speaking Albanian dialects can be found scattered in Croatia (the Arbanasi), Greece (the Arvanites and some communities in Epirus, Western Macedonia and Western Thrace),[21] Italy (the Arbëreshë)[22] as well as in Romania, Turkey and Ukraine.[23] Two varieties of the Tosk dialect, Arvanitika in Greece and Arbëresh in Southern Italy, have preserved archaic elements of the language.[24]

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.[25][26][27]

Geographic distribution

The dialects of Albania

The language is spoken by approximately 6 million people in the Balkans, primarily in Albania, Kosovo, North Macedonia, Serbia, Montenegro and Greece.[2] 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.[2][1]

Europe

The Albanian language is the official language of Albania and Kosovo and co-official in North Macedonia. Albanian is a recognised minority language in Croatia, Italy, Montenegro, 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.[21] It is also spoken by 450,000 Albanian immigrants in Greece.

Albanian is the third most spoken language in Italy.[28] 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.[29]

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 Arbëreshë. Arbëreshe have a strong sense of identity and are unique in that they speak an archaic dialect of Tosk Albanian called Arbëreshë.

In the United States and Canada, there are approximately 250,000 Albanian speakers. It is spoken in the eastern area of the United States in cities like New York City, New Jersey, Boston, Chicago, Philadelphia and Detroit, as well as in parts of the states of Ohio and Connecticut. Greater New Orleans has a large Arbëresh community. Oftentimes, wherever there are Italians, there are a few Arbëreshe mixed with them. Arbëreshe Americans, therefore are often indistinguishable from Italian Americans due to being assimilated into the Italian American community.

In Argentina, there are nearly 40,000 Albanian speakers, mostly in Buenos Aires.[30]

Asia and Oceania

Approximately 1.3 million people of Albanian ancestry live in Turkey, and 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.

In Egypt there are around 18,000 Albanians, mostly Tosk speakers.[31] 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.

Albanian is also spoken by Albanian diaspora communities residing in Australia and New Zealand.

Dialects

The dialects of the Albanian language.

The Albanian language has two distinct dialects, Tosk which is spoken in the south, and Gheg spoken in the north.[32] Standard Albanian is based on the Tosk dialect. The Shkumbin River is the rough dividing line between the two dialects.[18]

Gheg is divided into four sub-dialects, in Northwest Gheg, Northeast Gheg, Central Gheg, and Southern Gheg. It is primarily spoken in northern Albania and throughout Montenegro, Kosovo 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, Çam, 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, 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.

Orthography

Albanian keyboard layout.

The Albanian language has been written using many alphabets since the earliest records from the 14th century. The history of Albanian language orthography is closely related to the cultural orientation and knowledge of certain foreign languages among Albanian writers.[33] 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:[34]

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.[34]

Classification

Tree of Indo-European languages.

The Albanian language occupies an independent branch of the Indo-European language tree.[14] 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.[35] Other linguists linked the Albanian language with Latin, Greek and Armenian, while placing Germanic and Balto-Slavic in another branch of Indo-European.[36][37][38]

History

Historical documentation

The first attested written mention of the Albanian language was on 14 July 1284 in Dubrovnik in modern Croatia when a crime witness named Matthew testified: "I heard a voice shouting on the mountainside in the Albanian language" (Latin: Audivi unam vocem, clamantem in monte in lingua albanesca).[39][40]

The Albanian language is also mentioned in the Descriptio Europae Orientalis[41] dated in 1308:

Habent enim Albani prefati linguam distinctam a Latinis, Grecis et Sclauis ita quod in nullo se intelligunt cum aliis nationibus. (Namely, the above-mentioned Albanians have a language that is different from the languages of Latins, Greeks and Slavs, so that they do not understand each other at all.)

The oldest attested document written in Albanian dates back to 1462,[9] while the first audio recording in the language was made by Norbert Jokl on 4 April 1914 in Vienna.[42]

However, as Fortson notes, Albanian written works existed before this point; they have simply been lost. The existence of written Albanian is explicitly mentioned in a letter attested from 1332, and the first preserved books, including both those in Gheg and in Tosk, share orthographic features that indicate that some form of common literary language had developed.[43]

During the five-century period of the Ottoman presence in Albania, the language was not officially recognised until 1909, when the Congress of Dibra decided that Albanian schools would finally be allowed.[44]

Linguistic affinities

Albanian is considered an isolate within the Indo-European language family; no other language has been conclusively linked to its branch. The only other languages that are sole surviving members of a branch of Indo-European are Armenian and Greek.

The Albanian language is part of the Indo-European language group and is considered to have evolved from one of the Paleo-Balkan languages of antiquity,[45][46][47] although it is still uncertain which particular Paleo-Balkan language represents the ancestor of Albanian, or where in Southern Europe that population lived.[48] In general there is insufficient evidence to connect Albanian with one of those languages, whether one of the Illyrian languages (which historians mostly confirm), or Thracian and Dacian.[49] Among these possibilities, Illyrian is typically held to be the most probable, though insufficient evidence still clouds the discussion.[50]

Although Albanian shares lexical isoglosses with Greek, Germanic, and to a lesser extent Balto-Slavic, the vocabulary of Albanian is quite distinct. In 1995, Taylor, Ringe and Warnow, using quantitative linguistic techniques, found that Albanian appears to comprise a "subgroup with Germanic". However, they argued that this fact is hardly significant, as Albanian has lost much of its original vocabulary and morphology, and so this "apparently close connection to Germanic rests on only a couple of lexical cognates – hardly any evidence at all".[51]

Historical presence and location

The location of the Albanoi tribe 150 AD

Illyrians, Dacians, Getae and Thracians at 200 BC

The place and the time where the Albanian language was formed is uncertain.[52] American linguist Eric Hamp stated that during an unknown chronological period a pre-Albanian population (termed as "Albanoid" by Hamp) inhabited areas stretching from Poland to the southwestern Balkans.[53] Further analysis has suggested that it was in a mountainous region rather than on a plain or seacoast: while the words for plants and animals characteristic of mountainous regions are entirely original, the names for fish and for agricultural activities (such as ploughing) are borrowed from other languages.[45][54]

A deeper analysis of the vocabulary, however, shows that this could be a consequence of a prolonged Latin domination of the coastal and plain areas of the country, rather than evidence of the original environment where the Albanian language was formed. For example, the word for 'fish' is borrowed from Latin, but not the word for 'gills', which is native. Indigenous are also the words for 'ship', 'raft', 'navigation', 'sea shelves' and a few names of fish kinds, but not the words for 'sail', 'row' and 'harbor' – objects pertaining to navigation itself and a large part of sea fauna. This rather shows that Proto-Albanians were pushed away from coastal areas in early times (probably after the Latin conquest of the region) thus losing large parts (or the majority) of sea environment lexicon. A similar phenomenon could be observed with agricultural terms. While the words for 'arable land', 'corn', 'wheat', 'cereals', 'vineyard', 'yoke', 'harvesting', 'cattle breeding', etc. are native, the words for 'ploughing', 'farm' and 'farmer', agricultural practices, and some harvesting tools are foreign. This, again, points to intense contact with other languages and people, rather than providing evidence of a possible Urheimat.

1905 issue of the magazine Albania, the most important Albanian periodical of the early 20th century

The centre of Albanian settlement remained the Mat river. In 1079, they were recorded farther south in the valley of the Shkumbin river.[55] The Shkumbin, a seasonal stream that lies near the old Via Egnatia, is approximately the boundary of the primary dialect division for Albanian, Tosk and Gheg. The characteristics of Tosk and Gheg in the treatment of the native and loanwords from other languages are evidence that the dialectal split preceded the Slavic migration to the Balkans,[18][56][57] which means that in that period (the 5th to 6th centuries AD), Albanians were occupying nearly the same area around the Shkumbin river, which straddled the Jireček Line.[58][54]

References to the existence of Albanian as a distinct language survive from the 14th century, but they failed to cite specific words. The oldest surviving documents written in Albanian are the "formula e pagëzimit" (Baptismal formula), Un'te paghesont' pr'emenit t'Atit e t'Birit e t'Spertit 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.

Linguists Stefan Schumacher and Joachim Matzinger (University of Vienna) assert that the first literary records of Albanian date from the 16th century.[59][60] The oldest known Albanian printed book, Meshari, or "missal", was written in 1555 by Gjon Buzuku, a Roman Catholic cleric. In 1635 Frang Bardhi wrote the first Latin–Albanian dictionary. The first Albanian school is believed to have been opened by Franciscans in 1638 in Pdhanë.

One of the earliest dictionaries of Albanian language was written in 1693 which was an Italian language manuscript authored by Montenegrin sea captain Julije Balović Pratichae Schrivaneschae and includes a multilingual dictionary of hundreds of the most often used words in everyday life in the Italian, Slavic, Greek, Albanian and Turkish languages.[61]

Pre-Indo-European substratum

Pre-Indo-European (PreIE) sites are found throughout the territory of Albania. Such PreIE sites existed in Maliq, Vashtëm, Burimas, Barç, Dërsnik in Korçë District, Kamnik in Kolonja, Kolsh in Kukës District, Rashtan in Librazhd and Nezir in Mat District.[62] As in other parts of Europe, these PreIE people joined the migratory Indo-European tribes that entered the Balkans and contributed to the formation of the historical Paleo-Balkan tribes. In terms of linguistics, the pre-Indo-European substrate language spoken in the southern Balkans has probably influenced pre-Proto-Albanian, the ancestor idiom of Albanian.[62] The extent of this linguistic impact cannot be determined with precision due to the uncertain position of Albanian among Paleo-Balkan languages and their scarce attestation.[63] Some loanwords, however, have been proposed such as shegë ("pomegranate") or lëpjetë ("orach", compare with Pre-Greek lápathon, λάπαθον, "monk's rhubarb").[64][62]

Proto-IE features

Although Albanian has several words that do not correspond to IE cognates, it has retained many proto-IE features: for example, the demonstrative pronoun *ḱi- is ancestral to Albanian ky/kjo, English he, and Russian sej but not to English this or Russian etot.

Albanian is compared to other Indo-European languages below, but note that Albanian has exhibited some notable instances of semantic drift, such as motër meaning "sister" rather than "mother".

Vocabulary of Albanian and other Indo-European languages

Albanian

muaj

ri

nënë

motër

natë

hundë

tre / tri

zi

kuq

verdhë

kaltër

ujk

Proto-Indo-European

*meh1ns-

*neu-(i)o-

*méh2tēr

*swésōr

*nókʷts

*neh2-s-

*treies

*kʷr̥snós *mel-n-

*h1reudʰ-ó- ~ h1roudʰ-ó-

*ǵʰelh3-

*bʰléh1-uo-

*wĺ̥kʷos

English

month

new

mother

sister

night

nose

three

black

red

yellow

blue

wolf

Latin

mēnsis

novus

māter

soror

noct-

nāsus

trēs

āter, niger

ruber

helvus

flāvus

lupus

Lithuanian

mė́nuo / mėnesis

naũjas

motė / motina

sesuõ

naktìs

nósis

trỹs

júodas

raűdas / raudonas

gel̃tas / geltonas

mė́lynas

vil̃kas

Old Church Slavonic

мѣсѧць měsęcь

новъ novъ

мати mati

сестра sestra

ношть noštь

носъ nosъ

три, триѥ tri, trije

чрънъ črъnъ

чръвенъ črъvenъ

жлътъ žlъtъ

син҄ь siņь

влькъ vlьkъ

Ancient Greek

μην- men-

νέος néos

μήτηρ mḗtēr

ἀδελφή adelphḗ

νυκτ- nukt-

ῥιν- rhin-

τρεῖς treîs

μέλας mélas

ἐρυθρός eruthrós

ξανθός xanthós

κυανός kyanós

λύκος lýkos

Armenian

ամիս amis

նոր nor

մայր mayr

քույր k'uyr

գիշեր gišer

քիթ k'it

երեք yerek'

սեւ sev

կարմիր karmir

դեղին deġin

Կապույտ kapuyt

գայլ gayl

Irish

mí

nua

máthair

deirfiúr

oíche

srón

trí

dubh

dearg

buí

gorm

faolchú

Sanskrit

मास māsa

नव nava

मातृ mātr̥

स्वसृ svasr̥

नक्त/निश् nakta/niś

नस nasa

त्रि tri

काल/कृष्ण kāla/kr̥ṣṇa

रुधिर rudhira

पीत/हिरण्य pīta/hiraṇya

नील nīla

वृक vr̥ka

Albanian–PIE phonological correspondences

Phonologically, Albanian is not so conservative. Like many IE stocks, it has merged the two series of voiced stops (e.g. both *d and *dʰ became d). In addition, voiced stops tend to disappear in between vowels. There is almost complete loss of final syllables and very widespread loss of other unstressed syllables (e.g. mik 'friend' from Lat. amicus). PIE *o appears as a (also as e if a high front vowel i follows), while *ē and *ā become o, and PIE *ō appears as e.

The palatals, velars, and labiovelars show distinct developments, with Albanian showing the three-way distinction also found in Luwian.[65][66] Labiovelars are for the most part differentiated from all other Indo-European velar series before front vowels, but they merge with the "pure" (back) velars elsewhere.[65] The palatal velar series, consisting of Proto-Indo-European *ḱ and the merged *ģ and ģʰ, usually developed into th and dh, but were depalatalised to merge with the back velars when in contact with sonorants.[65] Because the original Proto-Indo-European tripartite distinction between dorsals is preserved in such reflexes, Albanian is therefore neither centum nor satem, despite having a "satem-like" realization of the palatal dorsals in most cases.[66] Thus PIE *ḱ, *k, and *kʷ become th, q, and s, respectively (before back vowels *ḱ becomes th, while *k and *kʷ merge as k).

A minority of scholars reconstruct a fourth laryngeal *h₄ allegedly surfacing as Alb. h word-initially, e.g. Alb. herdhe 'testicles' presumably from PIE *h₄órǵʰi-[67] (rather than the usual reconstruction *h₃erǵʰi-), but this is generally not followed elsewhere, as h- has arisen elsewhere idiosyncratically (for example hark < Latin arcus).[68][69]

Reflexes of PIE bilabial plosives in Albanian

PIE	Albanian	PIE	Albanian
*p	p	*pékʷ- 'to cook'	pjek 'to bake'
*bʰ / b	b	*srobʰ-éi̯e- 'to sip, gulp'	gjerb 'to sip'

Reflexes of PIE coronal plosives in Albanian

PIE	Albanian	PIE	Albanian
*t	t	*túh2 'thou'	ti 'you (singular)'
*d	d	*dih2tis 'light'	ditë 'day'
	dh[* 1]	*pérd- 'to fart'	pjerdh 'to fart'
	g	*dl̥h1-tó- 'long'	gjatë 'long' (Tosk dial. glatë)
*dʰ	d	*dʰégʷʰ- 'burn'	djeg 'to burn'
	dh[* 1]	*gʰórdʰos 'enclosure'	gardh 'fence'

1. Between vowels or after r

Reflexes of PIE palatal plosives in Albanian

PIE	Albanian	PIE	Albanian
*ḱ	th	*ḱéh1smi 'I say'	them 'I say'
	s[* 1]	*ḱupo- 'shoulder'	sup 'shoulder'
	k[* 2]	*smeḱ-r̥ 'chin'	mjekër 'chin; beard'
	ç/c[* 3]	*ḱentro- 'to stick'	çandër 'prop'
*ǵ	dh	*ǵómbʰos 'tooth, peg'	dhëmb 'tooth'
*ǵʰ	dh	*ǵʰed-ioH 'I defecate'	dhjes 'I defecate'
	d[* 4]	*ǵʰr̥sdʰi 'grain, barley'	drithë 'grain'

1. Before u̯/u or i̯/i
2. Before sonorant
3. Archaic relic
4. Syllable-initial and followed by sibilant

Reflexes of PIE velar plosives in Albanian

PIE	Albanian	PIE	Albanian
*k	k	*kágʰmi 'I catch, grasp'	kam 'I have'
	q	*kluH-i̯o- 'to weep'	qaj 'to weep, cry' (dial. kla(n)j)
*g	g	*h3lígos 'sick'	ligë 'bad'
	gj	*h1reug- 'to retch'	regj 'to tan hides'
*gʰ	g	*gʰórdʰos 'enclosure'	gardh 'fence'
	gj	*gʰédn-i̯e/o- 'to get'	gjej 'to find' (Old Alb. gjãnj)

Reflexes of PIE labiovelar plosives in Albanian

PIE	Albanian	PIE	Albanian
*kʷ	k	*kʷeh2sleh2 'cough'	kollë 'cough'
	s	*kʷélH- 'to turn'	sjell 'to fetch, bring'
	q	*kʷṓd	që 'that, which'
*gʷ	g	*gʷr̥H 'stone'	gur 'stone'
	z	*gʷréh2us 'heavy'	zor 'hard, difficult'
*gʷʰ	g	*dʰégʷʰ- 'to burn'	djeg 'to burn'
	z	*dʰogʷʰéi̯e- 'to ignite'	ndez 'to kindle, light a fire'

Reflexes of PIE *s in Albanian

PIE	Albanian	PIE	Albanian
*s	gj[* 1]	*séḱstis 'six'	gjashtë 'six'
	h[* 2]	*nosōm 'us' (gen.)	nahe 'us' (dat.)
	sh[* 3]	*bʰreusos 'broken'	breshër 'hail'
	th[* 4]	*suh1s 'swine'	thi 'pig'
	∅	h1ésmi 'I am'	jam 'I am'
*-sd-	th	*gʷésdos 'leaf'	gjeth 'leaf'
*-sḱ-	h	*sḱi-eh2 'shadow'	hije 'shadow'
*-sp-	f	*spélnom 'speech'	fjalë 'word'
*-st-	sht	*h2osti 'bone'	asht 'bone'
*-su̯-	d	*su̯eíd-r̥- 'sweat'	dirsë 'sweat'

1. Initial
2. Between vowels
3. Between u/i and another vowel (ruki law)
4. Dissimilation with following s

Reflexes of PIE sonorants in Albanian

PIE	Albanian	PIE	Albanian
*i̯	gj[* 1]	*i̯éh3s- 'to gird'	(n)gjesh 'I gird; squeeze, knead'
	j[* 2]	*i̯uH 'you' (nom.)	ju 'you (plural)'
	∅[* 3]	*trei̯es 'three' (masc.)	tre 'three'
*u̯	v	*u̯os-éi̯e- 'to dress'	vesh 'to wear, dress'
*m	m	*meh2tr-eh2 'maternal'	motër 'sister'
*n	n	*nōs 'we' (acc.)	ne 'we'
	nj	*eni-h1ói-no 'that one'	një 'one' (Gheg njâ, njo, nji )
	∅ (Tosk) ~ nasal vowel (Gheg)	*pénkʷe 'five'	pesë 'five' (vs. Gheg pês)
	r (Tosk only)	*ǵʰeimen 'winter'	dimër 'winter' (vs. Gheg dimën)
*l	l	*h3lígos 'sick'	ligë 'bad'
	ll	*kʷélH- 'turn'	sjell 'to fetch, bring'
*r	r	*repe/o 'take'	rjep 'peel'
	rr	*u̯rh1ḗn 'sheep'	rrunjë 'yearling lamb'
*n̥	e	*h1n̥men 'name'	emër 'name'
*m̥	e	*u̯iḱm̥ti 'twenty'	(një)zet 'twenty'
*l̥	li, il[* 4] / lu, ul	*u̯ĺ̥kʷos 'wolf'	ujk 'wolf' (Chamian ulk)
*r̥	ri, ir[* 4] / ru, ur	*ǵʰr̥sdom 'grain, barley'	drithë 'grain'

1. Before i, e, a
2. Before back vowels
3. Between vowels
4. Before C clusters, i, j

Reflexes of PIE laryngeals in Albanian

PIE	Albanian	PIE	Albanian
*h1	∅	*h1ésmi 'I am'	jam 'to be'
*h2	∅	*h2r̥tḱos 'bear'	ari 'bear'
*h3	∅	*h3ónr̥ 'dream'	ëndërr 'dream'

Reflexes of PIE vowels in Albanian

PIE	Albanian	PIE	Albanian
*i	i	*sínos 'bosom'	gji 'bosom, breast'
	e	*dwigʰeh2 'twig'	degë 'branch'
*ī < *iH	i	*dih2tis 'light'	ditë 'day'
*e	e	*pénkʷe 'five'	pesë 'five' (Gheg pês)
	je	*wétos 'year' (loc.)	vjet 'last year'
*ē	o	*ǵʰēsreh2 'hand'	dorë 'hand'
*a	a	*bʰaḱeh2 'bean'	bathë 'bean'
	e	*h2élbʰit 'barley'	elb 'barley'
*o	a	*gʰórdʰos 'enclosure'	gardh 'fence'
*ō	e	*h2oḱtōtis 'eight'	tetë 'eight'
*u	u	*súpnom 'sleep'	gjumë 'sleep'
*ū < *uH	y	*suHsos 'grandfather'	gjysh 'grandfather'
	i	*muh2s 'mouse'	mi 'mouse'

Standard Albanian

Since World War II, standard Albanian used in Albania has been based on the Tosk dialect. Kosovo and other areas where Albanian is official adopted the Tosk standard in 1969.[70]

Elbasan-based standard

Until the early 20th century, Albanian writing developed in three main literary traditions: Gheg, Tosk, and Arbëreshë. Throughout this time, an intermediate subdialect spoken around Elbasan served as lingua franca among the Albanians, but was less prevalent in writing. The Congress of Manastir of Albanian writers held in 1908 recommended the use of the Elbasan subdialect for literary purposes and as a basis of a unified national language. While technically classified as a southern Gheg variety, the Elbasan speech is closer to Tosk in phonology and practically a hybrid between other Gheg subdialects and literary Tosk.[70]

Between 1916 and 1918, the Albanian Literary Commission met in Shkodër under the leadership of Luigj Gurakuqi with the purpose of establishing a unified orthography for the language. The commission, made up of representatives from the north and south of Albania, reaffirmed the Elbasan subdialect as the basis of a national tongue. The rules published in 1917 defined spelling for the Elbasan variety for official purposes. The Commission did not, however, discourage publications in one of the dialects, but rather laid a foundation for Gheg and Tosk to gradually converge into one.[70]

When the Congress of Lushnje met in the aftermath of World War I to form a new Albanian government, the 1917 decisions of the Literary Commission were upheld. The Elbasan subdialect remained in use for administrative purposes and many new writers embraced for creative writing. Gheg and Tosk continued to develop freely and interaction between the two dialects increased.

Tosk standard

At the end of World War II, however, the new communist regime radically imposed the use of the Tosk dialect in all facets of life in Albania: administration, education, and literature. Most Communist leaders were Tosks from the south.[70] Standardisation was directed by the Albanian Institute of Linguistics and Literature of the Academy of Sciences of Albania.[71] Two dictionaries were published in 1954: an Albanian language dictionary and a Russian–Albanian dictionary. New orthography rules were eventually published in 1967[71] and 1973 Drejtshkrimi i gjuhës shqipe (Orthography of the Albanian Language).[72]

Until 1968, Kosovo and other Albanian-speaking areas in Yugoslavia followed the 1917 standard based on the Elbasan dialect, though it was gradually infused with Gheg elements in an effort to develop a Kosovan language separate from communist Albania's Tosk-based standard.[73] Albanian intellectuals in the former Yugoslavia consolidated the 1917 twice in the 1950s, culminating with a thorough codification of orthographic rules in 1964.[74] The rules already provided for a balanced variety that accounted for both Gheg and Tosk dialects, but only lasted through 1968. Viewing divergences with Albania as a threat to their identity, Kosovars arbitrarily adopted the Tosk project that Tirana had published the year before. Although it was never intended to serve outside of Albania, the project became the "unified literary language" in 1972, when approved by a rubberstamp Orthography Congress.[70] Only about 1 in 9 participants were from Kosovo. The Congress, held at Tirana, authorized the orthography rules that came out the following year, in 1973.

More recent dictionaries from the Albanian government are Fjalori Drejtshkrimor i Gjuhës Shqipe (1976) (Orthographic Dictionary of the Albanian Language)[75] and Dictionary of Today's Albanian language (Fjalori Gjuhës së Sotme Shqipe) (1980).[71][76] Prior to World War II, dictionaries consulted by developers of the standard have included Lexikon tis Alvanikis glossis (Albanian: Fjalori i Gjuhës Shqipe (Kostandin Kristoforidhi, 1904),[77] Fjalori i Bashkimit (1908),[77] and Fjalori i Gazullit (1941).[33]

Calls for reform

Since the fall of the communist regime, Albanian orthography has stirred heated debate among scholars, writers, and public opinion in Albania and Kosovo, with hardliners opposed to any changes in the orthography, moderates supporting varying degrees of reform, and radicals calling for a return to the Elbasan dialect. Criticism of Standard Albanian has centred on the exclusion of the 'me+' infinitive and the Gheg lexicon. Critics say that Standard Albanian disenfranchises and stigmatises Gheg speakers, affecting the quality of writing and impairing effective public communication. Supporters of the Tosk standard view the 1972 Congress as a milestone achievement in Albanian history and dismiss calls for reform as efforts to "divide the nation" or "create two languages." Moderates, who are especially prevalent in Kosovo, generally stress the need for a unified Albanian language, but believe that the 'me+' infinitive and Gheg words should be included. Proponents of the Elbasan dialect have been vocal, but have gathered little support in the public opinion. In general, those involved in the language debate come from diverse backgrounds and there is no significant correlation between one's political views, geographic origin, and position on Standard Albanian.

Many writers continue to write in the Elbasan dialect but other Gheg variants have found much more limited use in literature. Most publications adhere to a strict policy of not accepting submissions that are not written in Tosk. Some print media even translate direct speech, replacing the 'me+' infinitive with other verb forms and making other changes in grammar and word choice. Even authors who have published in the Elbasan dialect will frequently write in the Tosk standard.

In 2013, a group of academics for Albania and Kosovo proposed minor changes to the orthography.[78] Hardline academics boycotted the initiative,[79] while other reformers have viewed it as well-intentioned but flawed and superficial.[78] Media such as Rrokum and Java have offered content that is almost exclusively in the Elbasan dialect. Meanwhile, author and linguist Agim Morina has promoted Shqipe e Përbashkët or Common Albanian, a neostandard or a reformed version of the Tosk standard that aims at reflecting the natural development of the language among all Albanians.[80][70] Common Albanian incorporates the 'me+' infinitive, accommodates for Gheg features, provides for dialect-neutral rules that favor simplicity, predictability, and usage trends.[81][82] Many modern writers have embraced Common Albanian to various extents, especially in less formal writing.[83]

Education

Albanian is the medium of instruction in most Albanian schools. The literacy rate in Albania for the total population, age 9 or older, is about 99%. Elementary education is compulsory (grades 1–9), but most students continue at least until a secondary education. Students must pass graduation exams at the end of the 9th grade and at the end of the 12th grade in order to continue their education.

Phonology

Standard Albanian has seven vowels and 29 consonants. Like English, Albanian has dental fricatives /θ/ (like the th in thin) and /ð/ (like the th in this), written as th and dh, which are rare cross-linguistically.

Gheg uses long and nasal vowels, which are absent in Tosk, and the mid-central vowel ë is lost at the end of the word. The stress is fixed mainly on the last syllable. Gheg n (femën: compare English feminine) changes to r by rhotacism in Tosk (femër).

Consonants

Albanian consonants

		Labial	Dental	Alveolar		Post- alveolar	Palatal	Velar	Glottal
				plain	velar.
Nasal		m		n			ɲ	(ŋ)
Plosive	voiceless	p		t				k
	voiced	b		d				ɡ
Affricate	voiceless			t͡s		t͡ʃ	c͡ç
	voiced			d͡z		d͡ʒ	ɟ͡ʝ
Fricative	voiceless	f	θ	s		ʃ			h
	voiced	v	ð	z		ʒ
Approximant				l	ɫ		j
Flap				ɾ
Trill				r

IPA	Description	Written as	English approximation
m	Bilabial nasal	m	man
n	Alveolar nasal	n	not
ɲ	Palatal nasal	nj	~onion
ŋ	Velar nasal	ng	bang
p	Voiceless bilabial plosive	p	spin
b	Voiced bilabial plosive	b	bat
t	Voiceless alveolar plosive	t	stand
d	Voiced alveolar plosive	d	debt
k	Voiceless velar plosive	k	scar
ɡ	Voiced velar plosive	g	go
t͡s	Voiceless alveolar affricate	c	hats
d͡z	Voiced alveolar affricate	x	goods
t͡ʃ	Voiceless postalveolar affricate	ç	chin
d͡ʒ	Voiced postalveolar affricate	xh	jet
c͡ç	Voiceless palatal affricate	q	~cute
ɟ͡ʝ	Voiced palatal affricate	gj	~gear
f	Voiceless labiodental fricative	f	far
v	Voiced labiodental fricative	v	van
θ	Voiceless dental fricative	th	thin
ð	Voiced dental fricative	dh	then
s	Voiceless alveolar fricative	s	son
z	Voiced alveolar fricative	z	zip
ʃ	Voiceless postalveolar fricative	sh	show
ʒ	Voiced postalveolar fricative	zh	vision
h	Voiceless glottal fricative	h	hat
r	Alveolar trill	rr	Spanish perro
ɾ	Alveolar tap	r	Spanish pero
l	Alveolar lateral approximant	l	lean
ɫ	Velarized alveolar lateral approximant	ll	ball
j	Palatal approximant	j	yes

Notes:

• The contrast between flapped r and trilled rr is the same as in Spanish or Armenian. In most of the dialects, as also in standard Albanian, the single "r" changes from an alveolar flap /ɾ/ into a retroflex flap [ɽ], or even an alveolar approximant [ɹ] when it is at the end of a word.
• The palatal nasal /ɲ/ corresponds to the Spanish ñ and the French and Italian gn. It is pronounced as one sound, not a nasal plus a glide.
• The ll sound is a velarised lateral, close to English dark L.
• The letter ç is sometimes written ch due to technical limitations because of its use in English sound and its analogy to the other digraphs xh, sh, and zh. Usually it is written simply c or more rarely q with context resolving any ambiguities.
• The position of q and gj sound is not clear. Many speakers merge them into the palatoalveolar sounds ç and xh. This is especially common in Northern Gheg, but is increasingly the case in Tosk as well.[84] Other speakers reduced them into /j/ in consonant clusters, such as in the word fjollë, which before standardisation was written as fqollë ( < Medieval Greek φακιολης).
• The ng can pronounced as /ŋ/ in final position, otherwise is an allophone of n before k and g.
• Before q and gj, the n is always pronounced /ɲ/ but this is not reflected in the orthography.
• /θ, ð, ɫ/ are interdental.

Vowels

	Front	Central	Back
Close	i y		u
Open-mid / Mid	ɛ	ə	ɔ
Open		a

IPA	Description	Written as	English approximation
i	Close front unrounded vowel	i	seed
y	Close front rounded vowel	y	French tu, German Lüge
ɛ	Open-mid front unrounded vowel	e	bed
a	Open central unrounded vowel	a	cow
ə	Schwa	ë	about, the
ɔ	Open-mid back rounded vowel	o	law
u	Close back rounded vowel	u	boot

Schwa

Although the Indo-European schwa (ə or -h₂-) was preserved in Albanian, in some cases it was lost, possibly when a stressed syllable preceded it.[85] Until the standardisation of the modern Albanian alphabet, in which the schwa is spelled as ë, as in the work of Gjon Buzuku in the 16th century, various vowels and gliding vowels were employed, including ae by Lekë Matrënga and é by Pjetër Bogdani in the late 16th and early 17th century.[86][87] The schwa in Albanian has a great degree of variability from extreme back to extreme front articulation.[88] Within the borders of Albania, the phoneme is pronounced about the same in both the Tosk and the Gheg dialect due to the influence of standard Albanian. However, in the Gheg dialects spoken in the neighbouring Albanian-speaking areas of Kosovo and North Macedonia, the phoneme is still pronounced as back and rounded.[88]

Grammar

Albanian has a canonical word order of SVO (subject–verb–object) like English and many other Indo-European languages.[89] Albanian nouns are categorised by gender (masculine, feminine and neuter) and inflected for number (singular and plural) and case. There are five declensions and six cases (nominative, accusative, genitive, dative, ablative, and vocative), although the vocative only occurs with a limited number of words, and the forms of the genitive and dative are identical (a genitive is produced when the prepositions i/e/të/së are used with the dative). Some dialects also retain a locative case, which is not present in standard Albanian. The cases apply to both definite and indefinite nouns, and there are numerous cases of syncretism.

The following shows the declension of mal (mountain), a masculine noun which takes "i" in the definite singular:

	Indefinite singular	Indefinite plural	Definite singular	Definite plural
Nominative	një mal (a mountain)	male (mountains)	mali (the mountain)	malet (the mountains)
Accusative	një mal	male	malin	malet
Genitive	i/e/të/së një mali	i/e/të/së maleve	i/e/të/së malit	i/e/të/së maleve
Dative	një mali	maleve	malit	maleve
Ablative	(prej) një mali	(prej) malesh	(prej) malit	(prej) maleve

The following shows the declension of the masculine noun zog (bird), a masculine noun which takes "u" in the definite singular:

	Indefinite singular	Indefinite plural	Definite singular	Definite plural
Nominative	një zog (a bird)	zogj (birds)	zogu (the bird)	zogjtë (the birds)
Accusative	një zog	zogj	zogun	zogjtë
Genitive	i/e/të/së një zogu	i/e/të/së zogjve	i/e/të/së zogut	i/e/të/së zogjve
Dative	një zogu	zogjve	zogut	zogjve
Ablative	(prej) një zogu	(prej) zogjsh	(prej) zogut	(prej) zogjve

The following table shows the declension of the feminine noun vajzë (girl):

	Indefinite singular	Indefinite plural	Definite singular	Definite plural
Nominative	një vajzë (a girl)	vajza (girls)	vajza (the girl)	vajzat (the girls)
Accusative	një vajzë	vajza	vajzën	vajzat
Genitive	i/e/të/së një vajze	i/e/të/së vajzave	i/e/të/së vajzës	i/e/të/së vajzave
Dative	një vajze	vajzave	vajzës	vajzave
Ablative	(prej) një vajze	(prej) vajzash	(prej) vajzës	(prej) vajzave

The definite article is placed after the noun as in many other Balkan languages, like in Romanian, Macedonian and Bulgarian.

• The definite article can be in the form of noun suffixes, which vary with gender and case.
  • For example, in singular nominative, masculine nouns add -i, or those ending in -g/-k/-h take -u (to avoid palatalization):
    • mal (mountain) / mali (the mountain);
    • libër (book) / libri (the book);
    • zog (bird) / zogu (the bird).
  • Feminine nouns take the suffix -(i/j)a:
    • veturë (car) / vetura (the car);
    • shtëpi (house) / shtëpia (the house);
    • lule (flower) / lulja (the flower).
• Neuter nouns take -t.

Albanian has developed an analytical verbal structure in place of the earlier synthetic system, inherited from Proto-Indo-European. Its complex system of moods (six types) and tenses (three simple and five complex constructions) is distinctive among Balkan languages. There are two general types of conjugations.

Albanian verbs, like those of other Balkan languages, have an "admirative" mood (mënyra habitore) that is used to indicate surprise on the part of the speaker or to imply that an event is known to the speaker by report and not by direct observation. In some contexts, this mood can be translated using English "apparently".

• Ti flet shqip. "You speak Albanian." (indicative)
• Ti folke shqip! "You (surprisingly) speak Albanian!" (admirative)
• Rruga është e mbyllur. "The street is closed." (indicative)
• Rruga qenka e mbyllur. "(Apparently,) The street is closed." (admirative)

For more information on verb conjugation and on inflection of other parts of speech, see Albanian morphology.

Word order

Albanian word order is relatively free. To say 'Agim ate all the oranges' in Albanian, one may use any of the following orders, with slight pragmatic differences:

• SVO: Agimi i hëngri të gjithë portokallët.
• SOV: Agimi të gjithë portokallët i hëngri.
• OVS: Të gjithë portokallët i hëngri Agimi.
• OSV: Të gjithë portokallët Agimi i hëngri.
• VSO: I hëngri Agimi të gjithë portokallët.
• VOS: I hëngri të gjithë portokallët Agimi.

However, the most common order is subject–verb–object.

The verb can optionally occur in sentence-initial position, especially with verbs in the non-active form (forma joveprore):

• Parashikohet një ndërprerje "An interruption is anticipated".

Negation

Verbal negation in Albanian is mood-dependent, a trait shared with some fellow Indo-European languages such as Greek.

In indicative, conditional, or admirative sentences, negation is expressed by the particles nuk or s' in front of the verb, for example:

• Toni nuk flet anglisht "Tony does not speak English";
• Toni s'flet anglisht "Tony doesn't speak English";
• Nuk e di "I do not know";
• S'e di "I don't know".

Subjunctive, imperative, optative, or non-finite forms of verbs are negated with the particle mos:

• Mos harro "do not forget!".

Numerals

një—one tetëmbëdhjetë—eighteen dy—two nëntëmbëdhjetë—nineteen tri/tre—three njëzet—twenty katër—four njëzet e një—twenty-one pesë—five njëzet e dy—twenty-two gjashtë—six tridhjetë—thirty shtatë—seven dyzet/katërdhjetë—forty tetë—eight pesëdhjetë—fifty nëntë—nine gjashtëdhjetë—sixty dhjetë—ten shtatëdhjetë—seventy njëmbëdhjetë—eleven tetëdhjetë—eighty dymbëdhjetë—twelve nëntëdhjetë—ninety trembëdhjetë—thirteen njëqind—one hundred katërmbëdhjetë—fourteen pesëqind—five hundred pesëmbëdhjetë—fifteen një mijë—one thousand gjashtëmbëdhjetë—sixteen një milion—one million shtatëmbëdhjetë—seventeen një miliard—one billion

Literary tradition

Earliest undisputed texts

Meshari of Gjon Buzuku 1554–1555

The earliest known texts in Albanian:

• the "formula e pagëzimit" (Baptismal Formula), which dates back to 1462 and was authored by Pal Engjëlli (or Paulus Angelus) (c. 1417 – 1470), Archbishop of Durrës. Engjëlli was a close friend and counsellor of Skanderbeg.[90] It was written in a pastoral letter for a synod at the Holy Trinity in Mat and read in Latin characters as follows: Unte paghesont premenit Atit et Birit et Spertit Senit (standard Albanian: "Unë të pagëzoj në emër të Atit, të Birit e të Shpirtit të Shenjtë"; English: "I baptise you in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit"). It was discovered and published in 1915 by Nicolae Iorga.[91]
• the Fjalori i Arnold von Harfit (Arnold Ritter von Harff's lexicon), a short list of Albanian phrases with German glosses, dated 1496.[92]
• a song, recorded in the Greek alphabet, retrieved from an old codex that was written in Greek. The document is also called "Perikopeja e Ungjillit të Pashkëve" or "Perikopeja e Ungjillit të Shën Mateut" ("The Song of the Easter Gospel, or "The Song of Saint Matthew's Gospel"). Although the codex is dated to during the 14th century, the song, written in Albanian by an anonymous writer, seems to be a 16th-century writing. The document was found by Arbëreshë people who had emigrated to Italy in the 15th century.[93]
• The first book in Albanian is the Meshari ("The Missal"), written by Gjon Buzuku between 20 March 1554 and 5 January 1555. The book was written in the Gheg dialect in the Latin script with some Slavic letters adapted for Albanian vowels. The book was discovered in 1740 by Gjon Nikollë Kazazi, the Albanian archbishop of Skopje. It contains the liturgies of the main holidays. There are also texts of prayers and rituals and catechetical texts. The grammar and the vocabulary are more archaic than those in the Gheg texts from the 17th century. The 188 pages of the book comprise about 154,000 words with a total vocabulary of c. 1,500 different words. The text is archaic yet easily interpreted because it is mainly a translation of known texts, in particular portions of the Bible. The book also contains passages from the Psalms, the Book of Isaiah, the Book of Jeremiah, the Letters to the Corinthians, and many illustrations. The uniformity of spelling seems to indicate an earlier tradition of writing. The only known copy of the Meshari is held by the Apostolic Library.[94] In 1968 the book was published with transliterations and comments by linguists.
• The first printed work in Tosk Albanian is the Mbsuame e krështerë (in Italian: Dottrina cristiana) by Lekë Matrënga or (in Italian) Luca Matranga. It was published in 1592 and is written in an early form of the Arbëresh language (also known as Italo-Albanian).

Albanian scripts were produced earlier than the first attested document, "formula e pagëzimit", but none yet have been discovered. We know of their existence by earlier references. For example, a French monk signed as "Broccardus" notes, in 1332, that "Although the Albanians have another language totally different from Latin, they still use Latin letters in all their books".[95]

Disputed earlier texts

Possibly the oldest surviving Albanian text, highlighted in red, from the Bellifortis manuscript, written by Konrad Kyeser around 1402–1405.

In 1967 two scholars claimed to have found a brief text in Albanian inserted into the Bellifortis text, a book written in Latin dating to 1402–1405.[96]

"A star has fallen in a place in the woods, distinguish the star, distinguish it.

Distinguish the star from the others, they are ours, they are.
Do you see where the great voice has resounded? Stand beside it
That thunder. It did not fall. It did not fall for you, the one which would do it.
...
Like the ears, you should not believe ... that the moon fell when ...
Try to encompass that which spurts far ...

Call the light when the moon falls and no longer exists ..."

Dr. Robert Elsie, a specialist in Albanian studies, considers that "The Todericiu/Polena Romanian translation of the non-Latin lines, although it may offer some clues if the text is indeed Albanian, is fanciful and based, among other things, on a false reading of the manuscript, including the exclusion of a whole line."[97]

Ottoman period

In 1635, Frang Bardhi (1606–1643) published in Rome his Dictionarum latinum-epiroticum, the first known Latin-Albanian dictionary. Other scholars who studied the language during the 17th century include Andrea Bogdani (1600–1685), author of the first Latin-Albanian grammar book, Nilo Katalanos (1637–1694) and others.[98]

Lexicon

Albanian is known within historical linguistics as a case of a language which, although surviving through many periods of foreign rule and multilingualism, saw a "disproportionately high" influx of loans from other languages augmenting and replacing much of its original vocabulary.[99] Some scholars suggest that Albanian seems to have lost more than 90% of its original vocabulary in favour of Latin, Greek, Slavic, Italian and Turkish loanwords,[100] but according to other scholars this percentage is definitely overstated.[101] Of all the foreign influences in Albanian, the deepest reaching and most impactful was the absorption of loans from Latin in the Classical period and its Romance successors afterward, with over 60% of Albanian vocabulary consisting of Latin roots, causing Albanian to once have been mistakenly identified as a Romance language.[102]

Major work in reconstructing Proto-Albanian has been done with the help of knowledge of the original forms of loans from Ancient Greek, Latin and Slavic, while Ancient Greek loanwords are scarce the Latin loanwords are of extreme importance in phonology.[103] The presence of loanwords from more well-studied languages from time periods before Albanian was attested, reaching deep back into the Classical Era, has been of great use in phonological reconstructions for earlier ancient and medieval forms of Albanian.[99] Some words in the core vocabulary of Albanian have no known etymology linking them to Proto-Indo-European or any known source language, and as of 2018 are thus tentatively attributed to an unknown, unattested, pre-Indo-European substrate language; some words among these include zemër (heart) and hekur (iron).[104] Some among these putative pre-IE words are thought to be related to putative pre-IE substrate words in neighboring Indo-European languages, such as lule (flower), which has been tentatively linked to Latin lilia and Greek leirion.[105]

Lexical distance of Albanian in a lexicostatistical analysis of the Ukrainian linguist Tyshchenko (the lower figure – the higher similarity): 49% Slovenian, 53% Romanian, 56% Greek, 82% French, 86% Macedonian, 86% Bulgarian.[106][107]

Cognates with Illyrian

• Andena/Andes/Andio/Antis — personal Illyrian names based on a root-word and- or ant-, found in both the southern and the Dalmatian-Pannonian (including modern Bosnia and Herzegovina) onomastic provinces; cf. Alb. andë (northern Albanian dialect, or Gheg) and ëndë (southern Albanian dialect or Tosk) "appetite, pleasure, desire, wish"; Andi proper name, Andizetes, an Illyrian people inhabiting the Roman province of Panonia.[108]
• aran "field"; cf. Alb. arë; plural ara[109]
• Ardiaioi/Ardiaei, name of an Illyrian people, cf. Alb. ardhja "arrival" or "descent", connected to hardhi "vine-branch, grape-vine", with a sense development similar to Germanic *stamniz, meaning both stem, tree stalk and tribe, lineage. However, the insufficiency of this hypothesis is that so far there is no certainty as to the historical or etymological development of either ardhja/hardhi or Ardiaioi, as with many other words.[108]
• Bilia "daughter"; cf. Alb. bijë, dial. bilë[110]
• Bindo/Bindus, an Illyrian deity from Bihać, Bosnia and Herzegovina; cf. Alb. bind "to convince" or "to make believe", përbindësh "monster".[111]
• bounon, "hut, cottage"; cf. Alb bun[112]
• brisa, "husk of grapes"; cf. Alb bërsí "lees, dregs; mash" ( < PA *brutiā)[113]
• Barba- "swamp", a toponym from Metubarbis; possibly related to Alb. bërrakë "swampy soil"[113]
• can- "dog"; related to Alb. qen[113]
• Daesitiates, a name of an Illyrian people, cf. Alb. dash "ram", corresponding contextually with south Slavonic dasa "ace", which might represent a borrowing and adaptation from Illyrian (or some other ancient language).[108]
• mal, "mountain"; cf. Alb mal[114]
• bardi, "white"; cf. Alb bardhë[115]
• drakoina "supper"; cf. Alb. darke, dreke[19]
• drenis, "deer"; cf. Alb dre, dreni[112]
• delme "sheep"; cf. Alb dele, Gheg dialect delme[116]
• dard, "pear"; cf. Alb dardhë[117]
• Hyllus (the name of an Illyrian king); cf. Alb. yll (hyll in some northern dialects) "star", also Alb. hyj "god", Ylli proper name.[19]
• sīca, "dagger"; cf. Alb thikë or thika "knife"[118]
• Ulc-, "wolf" (pln. Ulcinium); cf. Alb ujk "wolf", ulk (Northern Dialect)[119]
• loúgeon, "pool"; cf. Alb lag, legen "to wet, soak, bathe, wash" ( < PA *lauga), lëgatë "pool" ( < PA *leugatâ), lakshte "dew" ( < PA laugista)[120]
• mag- "great"; cf. Alb. i madh "big, great"[113]
• mantía "bramblebush"; Old and dial. Alb mandë "berry, mulberry" (mod. Alb mën, man)
• rhinos, "fog, mist"; cf. Old Alb ren "cloud" (mod. Alb re, rê) ( < PA *rina)[121]
• Vendum "place"; cf. Proto-Alb. wen-ta (Mod. Alb. vend)[19]

Early linguistic influences

The earliest loanwords attested in Albanian come from Doric Greek,[122] whereas the strongest influence came from Latin. According to Matthew C. Curtis, the loanwords do not necessarily indicate the geographical location of the ancestor of Albanian language.[123] However, according to other linguists, the borrowed words can help to get an idea about the place of origin and the evolution of the Albanian language.[124][125] Some scholars argue that Albanian originated from an area located east of its present geographic spread due to the several common lexical items found between the Albanian and Romanian languages. However it does not necessarily define the genealogical history of Albanian language, and it does not exclude the possibility of Proto-Albanian presence in both Illyrian and Thracian territory.[126]

The period during which Proto-Albanian and Latin interacted was protracted, lasting from the 2nd century BC to the 5th century AD.[57] Over this period, the lexical borrowings can be roughly divided into three layers, the second of which is the largest. The first and smallest occurred at the time of less significant interaction. The final period, probably preceding the Slavic or Germanic invasions, also has a notably smaller number of borrowings. Each layer is characterised by a different treatment of most vowels: the first layer follows the evolution of Early Proto-Albanian into Albanian; while later layers reflect vowel changes endemic to Late Latin (and presumably Proto-Romance). Other formative changes include the syncretism of several noun case endings, especially in the plural, as well as a large-scale palatalisation.

A brief period followed, between the 7th and the 9th centuries, that was marked by heavy borrowings from Southern Slavic, some of which predate the "o-a" shift common to the modern forms of this language group. Starting in the latter 9th century, there was a period characterised by protracted contact with the Proto-Romanians (or "Vlachs"), though lexical borrowing seems to have been mostly one sided: from Albanian into Romanian. Such borrowing indicates that the Romanians migrated from an area where the majority was Slavic (i.e. Middle Bulgarian) to an area with a majority of Albanian speakers (i.e. Dardania, where Vlachs are recorded in the 10th century). Their movement is presumably related to the expansion of the Bulgarian Empire into Albania around that time.

Early Greek loans

There are some 30 Ancient Greek loanwords in Albanian.[127] Many of these reflect a dialect which voiced its aspirants, as did the Macedonian dialect. Other loanwords are Doric; these words mainly refer to commodity items and trade goods and probably came through trade with a now-extinct intermediary.[122]

• bletë; "hive, bee" < Attic mélitta "bee" (vs. Ionic mélissa).[128]
• drapër; "sickle" < (Northwest Greek) drápanon[129][122]
• kumbull; "plum" < kokkúmelon[129]
• lakër; "cabbage, green vegetables" < lákhanon "green; vegetable"[130]
• lëpjetë; "orach, dock" < lápathon[131]
• leva (lyej); "to smear, oil" < *liwenj < *elaiwā < Gk elai(w)ṓn "oil"
• mokër; "millstone" < (Northwest) mākhaná "device, instrument"[127][122]
• mollë; "apple" < mēlon "fruit"[132]
• pjepër; "melon" < pépōn [122]
• presh; "leek" < práson[130]
• shpellë; "cave" < spḗlaion
• trumzë; "thyme" < (Northwest) thýmbrā, thrýmbrē[129]
• pellg; "pond, pool" < pélagos "high sea"[133]
• verë; "wine" < *woínā [122]

The following come from a Greek dialect without any significant attestation called "Makedonian" because it was akin to the native idiom of the Greek-speaking population in the Argead kingdom:[122]

• angari; "corvée" < *ẚngareíā (ἀγγαρεία) [122]
• pëllëmbë; "palm of the hand" < *palámā[122]
• llërë; "elbow" < *ὠlénā[122]
• brukë; "tamarisk" < *mīrýkhā[122]
• mëllagë; 'mallow' < *malákhā (with the reflex of /ɡ/ for Greek <χ> indicating a dialectal voicing of the what came as an aspirate stop from Greek)[122]
• maraj "fennel" < *márathrion (cf Romanian marariu, Ionic márathron; with the Albanian simplification of -dri̯- to -j- reflecting that of earlier *udri̯om to ujë "water") [122]
• bredh "fir tree" < brathy "savin", with Romanian brad having the same Greek dialectal origin, the Greek itself being of ultimate Semitic provenance[122]

Latin influence

In total Latin roots comprise over 60% of the Albanian lexicon.[102] They include many frequently used core vocabulary items, including shumë ("very", from Latin summus), pak ("few", Latin paucus), ngushtë ("narrow", Latin angustus), pemë ("tree", Latin poma), vij ("to come", Latin venio), rërë ("sand", Latin arena), drejt ("straight", Latin "directus"), kafshë ("beast", Latin causa, meaning "thing"), and larg ("far away", Latin largus).

Jernej Kopitar (1780–1844) was the first to note Latin's influence on Albanian and claimed "the Latin loanwords in the Albanian language had the pronunciation of the time of Emperor Augustus".[134] Kopitar gave examples such as Albanian qiqer 'chickpea' from Latin cicer, qytet 'city, town' from civitas, peshk 'fish' from piscis, and shigjetë 'arrow' from sagitta. The hard pronunciations of Latin ⟨c⟩ and ⟨g⟩ are retained as palatal and velar stops in the Albanian loanwords. Gustav Meyer (1888)[135] and Wilhelm Meyer-Lübke (1914)[136] later corroborated this. Meyer noted the similarity between the Albanian verbs shqipoj "to speak clearly, enunciate" and shqiptoj "to pronounce, articulate" and the Latin word excipio (meaning "to welcome"). Therefore, he believed that the word Shqiptar "Albanian person" was derived from shqipoj, which in turn was derived from the Latin word excipere. Johann Georg von Hahn, an Austrian linguist, had proposed the same hypothesis in 1854.[137]

Eqrem Çabej also noticed, among other things, the archaic Latin elements in Albanian:[138]

1. Latin /au/ becomes Albanian /a/ in the earliest loanwords: aurum → ar 'gold'; gaudium → gaz 'joy'; laurus → lar 'laurel'. Latin /au/ is retained in later loans, but is altered in a way similar to Greek: causa 'thing' → kafshë 'thing; beast, brute'; laud → lavd.
2. Latin /oː/ becomes Albanian /e/ in the oldest Latin loans: pōmus → pemë 'fruit tree'; hōra → ora 'hour'. An analogous mutation occurred from Proto-Indo-European to Albanian; PIE *nōs became Albanian ne 'we', PIE *oḱtō + suffix -ti- became Albanian tetë 'eight', etc.
3. Latin unstressed internal and initial syllables become lost in Albanian: cubitus → kub 'elbow'; medicus → mjek 'physician'; palūdem 'swamp' → VL padūle → pyll 'forest'. An analogous mutation occurred from Proto-Indo-European to Albanian. In contrast, in later Latin loanwords, the internal syllable is retained: paganus → pagan; plaga → plagë 'wound', etc.
4. Latin /tj/, /dj/, /kj/ palatalized to Albanian /s/, /z/, /c/: vitium → ves 'vice; worries'; rationem → arsye 'reason'; radius → rreze 'ray; spoke'; facies → faqe 'face, cheek'; socius → shok 'mate, comrade', shoq 'husband', etc. In turn, Latin /s/ was altered to /ʃ/ in Albanian.

Haralambie Mihăescu demonstrated that:

• Some 85 Latin words have survived in Albanian but not (as inherited) in any Romance language. A few examples include Late Latin celsydri → dial. kulshedër → kuçedër 'hydra', hībernus → vërri 'winter pasture', sarcinārius 'used for packing, loading' → shelqëror 'forked peg, grapnel, forked hanger', solanum 'nightshade', lit. 'sun plant' → shullë(r) 'sunny place out of the wind, sunbathed area', splēnēticus → shpretkë 'spleen', trifurcus → tërfurk 'pitchfork'.[139]
• 151 Albanian words of Latin origin were not inherited in Romanian. A few examples include Latin amicus → Albanian mik 'friend', inimicus → armik 'foe, enemy', rationem → arsye, benedicere → bekoj, bubulcus 'ploughman, herdsman' → bulk, bujk 'peasant', calicis → qelq 'drinking glass', castellum → kështjellë 'castle', centum → qind 'hundred', gallus → gjel 'rooster', iunctūra → gjymtyrë 'limb; joint', medicus → mjek 'doctor', retem → rrjetë 'net', spērāre → dial. shp(ë)rej shpresoj 'to hope' pres 'await', voluntās (voluntātis) → vullnet 'will; volunteer'.[140]
• Some Albanian church terminology has phonetic features which demonstrate their very early borrowing from Latin. A few examples include Albanian bekoj 'to bless' from benedīcere, engjëll 'angel' from angelus, kishë 'church' from ecclēsia, i krishterë 'Christian' from christiānus, kryq 'cross' from crux (crucis), (obsolete) lter 'altar' from Latin altārium, mallkoj 'to curse' from maledīcere, meshë 'mass' from missa, murg 'monk' from monacus, peshkëp 'bishop' from episcopus, and ungjill 'gospel' from ēvangelium.[141]

Other authors[142] have detected Latin loanwords in Albanian with an ancient sound pattern from the 1st century BC, for example, Albanian qingël(ë) 'saddle girth; dwarf elder' from Latin cingula and Albanian e vjetër 'old, aged; former' from vjet but influenced by Latin veteris. The Romance languages inherited these words from Vulgar Latin: cingula became Romanian chinga 'girdle; saddle girth', and Vulgar Latin veterānus became Romanian bătrân 'old'.

Albanian, Basque, and the surviving Celtic languages such as Breton and Welsh are the non-Romance languages today that have this sort of extensive Latin element dating from ancient Roman times, which has undergone the sound changes associated with the languages. Other languages in or near the former Roman area either came on the scene later (Turkish, the Slavic languages, Arabic) or borrowed little from Latin despite coexisting with it (Greek, German), although German does have a few such ancient Latin loanwords (Fenster 'window', Käse 'cheese', Köln).

Romanian scholars such as Vatasescu and Mihaescu, using lexical analysis of the Albanian language, have concluded that Albanian was heavily influenced by an extinct Romance language that was distinct from both Romanian and Dalmatian. Because the Latin words common to only Romanian and Albanian are significantly fewer in number than those that are common to only Albanian and Western Romance, Mihaescu argues that the Albanian language evolved in a region with much greater contact with Western Romance regions than with Romanian-speaking regions, and located this region in present-day Albania, Kosovo and Western Macedonia, spanning east to Bitola and Pristina.[143]

Other loans

It is assumed that Greek and Balkan Latin (the ancestor of Romanian and other Balkan Romance languages) exerted a great influence on Albanian. Examples of words borrowed from Latin: qytet < civitas (city), qiell < caelum (sky), mik < amicus (friend), kape ditën < carpe diem (seize the day).

After the Slavs arrived in the Balkans, the Slavic languages became an additional source of loanwords. The rise of the Ottoman Empire meant an influx of Turkish words; this also entailed the borrowing of Persian and Arabic words through Turkish. Some Turkish personal names, such as Altin, are common. There are some loanwords from Modern Greek, especially in the south of Albania. Many borrowed words have been replaced by words with Albanian roots or modern Latinised (international) words.

Gothic

Albanian is also known to possess a small set of loans from Gothic, with early inquiry into the matter done by Norbert Jokl[144] and Sigmund Feist,[145] though such loans had been claimed earlier in the 19th century by early linguists such as Gustav Meyer. Many words claimed as Gothic have now been attributed to other origins by later linguists of Albanian (fat and tufë, though used for major claims by Huld in 1994, are now attributed to Latin, for example),[146] or may instead be native to Albanian, inherited from Proto-Indo-European.[147] Today, it is accepted that there are a few words from Gothic in Albanian, but for the most part they are scanty because the Goths had few contacts with Balkan peoples.[148]

Martin Huld[149] defends the significance of the admittedly sparse Gothic loans for Albanian studies, however, arguing that Gothic is the only clearly post-Roman and "pre-Ottoman" language after Latin with a notable influence on the Albanian lexicon (the influence of Slavic languages is both pre-Ottoman and Ottoman).[149] He argues that Gothic words in Albanian are attributable to the late fourth and early fifth centuries during the invasions of various Gothic speaking groups of the Balkans under Alaric, Odoacer, and Theodoric. He argues that Albanian Gothicisms bear evidence for the ordering of developments within Proto-Albanian at this time: for example, he argues Proto-Albanian at this stage had already shifted /uː/ to [y] as Gothic words with /uː/ reflect with /u/ in Albanian, not /y/ as seen in most Latin and ancient Greek loans, but had not yet experienced the shift of /t͡s/ to /θ/, since loans from Gothic words with /θ/ replace /θ/ with /t/ or another close sound.[149]

Notable words that continue to be attributed to Gothic in Albanian by multiple modern sources include:

• tirk "felt gaiters, white felt" (cf Romanian tureac "top of boot") < Gothic *θiuh-brōks- [148][150] or *θiuhbrōkeis,[149] cf Old High German theobrach "gaiters"[150]
• shkumë "foam"[151] < Gothic *skūm-,[149] perhaps via an intermediary in a Romance *scuma [152]
• gardh "fence, garden" [153] is either considered a native Albanian word[154] that was loaned into Romanian as gard [155][156] or from a Romance word itself loaned from Gothic gards [157]
• zverk "nape, back of neck" < Gothic *swairhs;[158] the "difficult" word having various otherwise been attributed (with phonological issues) to Celtic, Greek or native development.[159]
• horr "villain, scoundrel" and horre "whore" < Gothic *hors "adulterer, cf Old Norse hóra "whore" [160]
• punjashë "purse", diminutive of punjë < Gothic puggs "purse" [161]

Patterns in loaning

Although Albanian is characterised by the absorption of many loans, even, in the case of Latin, reaching deep into the core vocabulary, certain semantic fields nevertheless remained more resistant. Terms pertaining to social organisation are often preserved, though not those pertaining to political organisation, while those pertaining to trade are all loaned or innovated.[162]

Hydronyms present a complicated picture; the term for "sea" (det) is native and an "Albano-Germanic" innovation referring to the concept of depth, but a large amount of maritime vocabulary is loaned. Words referring to large streams and their banks tend to be loans, but lumë ("river") is native, as is rrymë (the flow of water). Words for smaller streams and stagnant pools of water are more often native, but the word for "pond", pellg is in fact a semantically shifted descendant of the old Greek word for "high sea", suggesting a change in location after Greek contact. Albanian has maintained since Proto-Indo-European a specific term referring to a riverside forest (gjazë), as well as its words for marshes. Curiously, Albanian has maintained native terms for "whirlpool", "water pit" and (aquatic) "deep place", leading Orel to speculate that the Albanian Urheimat likely had an excess of dangerous whirlpools and depths.[163]

Regarding forests, words for most conifers and shrubs are native, as are the terms for "alder", "elm", "oak", "beech", and "linden", while "ash", "chestnut", "birch", "maple", "poplar", and "willow" are loans.[164]

The original kinship terminology of Indo-European was radically reshaped; changes included a shift from "mother" to "sister", and were so thorough that only three terms retained their original function, the words for "son-in-law", "mother-in-law" and "father-in-law". All the words for second-degree blood kinship, including "aunt", "uncle", "nephew", "niece", and terms for grandchildren, are ancient loans from Latin.[165]

The Proto-Albanians appear to have been cattle breeders given the vastness of preserved native vocabulary pertaining to cow breeding, milking and so forth, while words pertaining to dogs tend to be loaned. Many words concerning horses are preserved, but the word for horse itself is a Latin loan.[166]

See also

• Abetare
• Arbëresh language
• Arvanitika
• Gheg Albanian
• Illyrian languages
• IPA/Albanian
• Messapian language
• Thraco-Illyrian
• Tosk Albanian

Notes

1. Kosovo is the subject of a territorial dispute between the Republic of Kosovo and the Republic of Serbia. The Republic of Kosovo unilaterally declared independence on 17 February 2008. Serbia continues to claim it as part of its own sovereign territory. The two governments began to normalise relations in 2013, as part of the 2013 Brussels Agreement. Kosovo is currently recognized as an independent state by 99 out of the 193 United Nations member states. In total, 113 UN member states recognized Kosovo at some point, of which 14 later withdrew their recognition.

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46. In his latest book, Eric Hamp supports the thesis that the Illyrian language belongs to the Northwestern group, that the Albanian language is descended from Illyrian, and that Albanian is related to Messapic which is an earlier Illyrian dialect (Comparative Studies on Albanian, 2007).
47. Roger D. Woodard (2008). The ancient languages of Europe. The modern Albanian language, it has been conjectured, is descendent directly from ancient Illyrian ...
48. Curtis, Matthew Cowan (30 November 2011). Slavic-Albanian Language Contact, Convergence, and Coexistence. p. 16. ISBN 9781267580337. Retrieved 31 March 2017. It is generally accepted that Albanians continue one of the ancient languages of the Balkans, although scholars disagree on which language they spoke and what area of the Balkans they occupied before the Slavs' migration to the Balkans.
49. Curtis, Matthew Cowan (30 November 2011). Slavic-Albanian Language Contact, Convergence, and Coexistence. p. 18. ISBN 9781267580337. Retrieved 31 March 2017. So while linguists may debate about the ties between Albanian and older languages of the Balkans, and while most Albanians may take the genealogical connection to Illyrian as incontrovertible, the fact remains that there is simply insufficient evidence to connect Illyrian, Thracian, or Dacian with any language, including Albanian
50. Ranko Matasovic (2012). "A grammatical sketch of Albanian for students of Indo-European". The most probable predecessor of Albanian was Illyrian, since much of the present-day Albania was inhabited by the Illyrians during the Antiquity, but the comparison of the two languages is impossible because almost nothing is known about Illyrian ... It is a-priori less probable to assume that a single language was spoken in the whole Illyricum, from the river Arsia in Istria, to Epirus in Greece, when such a linguistic uniformity is found nowhere else in Europe before the Roman conquest. Moreover, the examination of personal names and toponyms from Illyricum shows that several onomastic areas can be distinguished, and these onomastic areas just might correspond to different languages spoken in ancient Illyricum. If Illyrians actually spoke several different languages, the question arises – From which Illyrian language did Albanian develop? – and that question cannot be answered until new data are discovered.
51. Ann Taylor; Donald Ringe; Tandy Warnow (2000). "Character based reconstruction of a linguistic cladogram". In John Charles Smith; Delia Bentley (eds.). General issues and non-Germanic Languages. Historical Linguistics 1995. Selected papers from the 12th International Conference on Historical Linguistics, Manchester, August 1995. 1. Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing. p. 400. ISBN 9027236666.
52. Bayraktar, Uğur Bahadır (15 December 2011). "Mythifying the Albanians: A Historiographical Discussion on Vasa Efendi's "Albania and the Albanians"". Balkanologie. Revue d'Études Pluridisciplinaires (Vol. XIII, n° 1–2).
53. Curtis, Matthew Cowan (30 November 2011). Slavic-Albanian Language Contact, Convergence, and Coexistence. p. 17. ISBN 9781267580337. ... for example, argues that from some indeterminate time a pre-Albanian (in Hamp's terms, Albanoid) population inhabited areas stretching from Poland to the current area
54. Tripod.co, Eric Hamp, "The position of Albanian, Ancient IE dialects, Proceedings of the Conference on IE linguistics held at the University of California, Los Angeles, April 25–27, 1963, ed. By Henrik Birnbaum and Jaan Puhvel. "It is clear that in the Middle Ages the Albanians extended farther north (Jokl, Albaner §2); that there are persuasive arguments which have been advanced against their having extended as far as the Adriatic coast—the fact that Scodra 'Scutari' (Shkodër) shows un-Albanian development (see §6 below), that there is no demonstrated old maritime vocabulary (see above), and that there are few ancient Greek loans (Jokl, Albaner §5; but see §5 below)
55. Kazhdan, Alexander (Ed.) (1991). Oxford Dictionary of Byzantium. Oxford University Press. pp. 52–53. ISBN 978-0-19-504652-6.
56. Fortson 2004, p. 392.
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69. Schumacher/Matzinger 2013, p. 267.
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84. Kolgjini, Julie M. (2004). Palatalisation in Albanian : an acoustic investigation of stops and affricates. PhD Dissertation, University of Texas at Arlington. ISBN 0496859366.
85. Orel 2000, p. 3.
86. de Vaan, Michiel. "PIE *e in Albanian" (PDF). p. 72. Retrieved 16 December 2010.
87. Elsie, Robert; London Centre for Albanian Studies (2005). Albanian literature: a short history. I.B.Tauris. p. 16. ISBN 978-1-84511-031-4.
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89. Maxwell, Daniel Newhall. (1979). A Crosslinguistic Correlation between Word Order and Casemarking institution. Bloomington: Indiana University Pub.
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92. Anamali, Skënder (2002). Historia e popullit shqiptar në katër vëllime (in Albanian). I. Botimet Toena. p. 311. OCLC 52411919.
93. Lloshi 2008, p. 97.
94. "Meshari". National Library of Albania. Retrieved 14 May 2010.
95. Demiraj, Shaban. "Albanian". In Ramat and Ramat (2006), The Indo-European Languages. Page 480
96. Dumitru Todericiu, An Albanian text older than the "Christening Formula" of 1462, in "Magazin Istoric", nr. 8, Bucharest, November 1967.
97. Dr. Robert Elsie, The Bellifortis text and early Albanian in "Zeitschrift für Balkanologie", Berlin, 22 February 1986, p. 158-162..
98. Marmullaku, Ramadan (1975). Albania and the Albanians. C. Hurst. p. 17. ISBN 0903983133.
99. Matasovic, Ranko (2018). A Grammatical Sketch of Albanian for students of Indo-European. Page 6.
100. Millar, Robert McColl; Trask, Larry (2015). Trask's Historical Linguistics. Routledge. p. 292. ISBN 9781317541776. Albanian seems to have lost more than 90 per cent of its original vocabulary in favour of loans from Latin, Greek, Hungarian, Slavonic, Italian and Turkish.
101. Joseph, Brian; Costanzo, Angelo; Slocum, Jonathan. "Introduction to Albanian". University of Texas at Austin. Retrieved 27 January 2020.
102. Sawicka, Irena. "A Crossroad Between West, East and Orient–The Case of Albanian Culture." Colloquia Humanistica. No. 2. Instytut Slawistyki Polskiej Akademii Nauk, 2013. Page 97: "Even according to Albanian linguists, Albanian vocabulary is composed in 60 percent of Latin words from different periods... When albanological studies were just emerging, it happened that Albanian was classified as a Romance language. Already there exists the idea of a common origin of both Albanian and Rumanian languages. The Rumanian grammar is almost identical to that of Albanian, but it may be as well the effect of later convergence within the Balkan Sprachbund.."
103. Orel 2000, p. 23.
104. Matasovic, Ranko (2018). Page 35.
105. Orel 2000, p. 191.
106. "Excel File_Lexical-Distance-Matrix". Alternative Transport. 19 November 2016.
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108. Adzanela, Ardian (1 January 1970). "Cultural Treasure of Bosnia and Herzegovina edition-Prehistoric and Ancient Period- Book 2- Illyrian Bosnia and Herzegovina-an Overview of a Cultural Legacy/ Ancient Illyrians of Bosnia and Herzegovina | Ardian Adžanela Adzanela Axhanela". Academia.edu.
109. Suart E. Mann (1977). An Albanian Historical Grammar. Buske. ISBN 978-3-87118-262-4.
110. Sborník prací Filozofické fakulty brněnské univerzity : Řada klasická. 3 June 2008.
111. Ushaku, Ruzhdi, Hulumtime etnoliguistike, chapter: The continuation of Illyrian Bind in Albanian Mythology and Language, Fakulteti filologjise, Prishtine, 2000, p. 46-48
112. Mayani, Zĕchariă (1962). The Etruscans begin to speak. Souvenir Press.
113. "Illyrian Glossary". bizland.com. Archived from the original on 17 June 2011.
114. Stipčević, Aleksandar (1977). The Illyrians: history and culture. Noyes Press. ISBN 9780815550525.
115. Linguistic Society of America (1964). Language, Volumes 1–3. Linguistic Society of America.
116. Diokletian und die Tetrarchie: Aspekte einer Zeitenwende. Millennium Studies. 2004. ISBN 9783110182309.
117. Price, Roberto Salinas (2006). Homeric whispers: intimations of orthodoxy in the Iliad and Odyssey. p. 72. ISBN 9780910865111.
118. Eggebrecht, Arne; Roemer-Museum; Pelizaeus-Museum (1988). Albanien: Schätze aus dem Land der Skipetaren. ISBN 9783805309783.
119. Ancient Indo-European dialects: proceedings, Volume 1963. Millennium Studies. 1966.
120. Suart E., Mann (1977). An Albanian Historical Grammar. Hamburg: Buske. ISBN 9783871182624.
121. Indo-European language and culture: an introduction Blackwell textbooks in linguistics Author Benjamin W. Fortson Edition 2, illustrated, reprint Publisher John Wiley and Sons, 2009 ISBN 1-4051-8896-0, ISBN 978-1-4051-8896-8 p.465
122. Huld, Martin E. (1986). "Accentual Stratification of Ancient Greek Loanwords in Albanian". Zeitschrift für vergleichende Sprachforschung. 99 (2): 245–253.
123. Curtis, Matthew Cowan (30 November 2011). Slavic-Albanian language contact, convergence, and coexistence. p. 16. ISBN 9781267580337. The number of loanwords is not necessarily a compelling argument for geographical placement, as loanwords may be replaced in subsequent developments of the language (especially considering the copious borrowing that Albanian later did from Latin and Slavic before any lexicon of Albanian was ever compiled) ... [regarding the] homeland of the Albanians.
124. Douglas Q. Adams (January 1997). Encyclopedia of Indo-European Culture. Taylor & Francis. p. 11. ISBN 978-1-884964-98-5. The loan words from Greek and Latin date back to before the Christian era and suggest that the ancestors of the Albanians must have occupied Albania by then to have absorbed such loans from their historical neighbours. As the Illyrians occupied the Albanian territory at this time, they are the most likely recipients of such loans.
125. Orel 2000, p. 23: "Latin loanwords are of extreme importance for the history of Albanian phonology, especially its vocalism. The duration of the borrowing was so long that loanwords reflect several distinct chronological stages."
126. Curtis, Matthew Cowan (30 November 2011). Slavic-Albanian language contact, convergence, and coexistence. pp. 17–18. ISBN 9781267580337. One other point that some scholars make is the fact that Albanian and Romanian share many lexical items; this has led some to believe that Albanian originated east of its present geographical spread (Georgiev 1957; Hamp 1994)...it does not necessarily determine the genealogical history of the language, nor does it rule out the possibility of Proto-Albanian being present in both Illyrian and Thracian territory.
127. The Field of Linguistics, Volume 2 Volume 1 of World of linguistics Authors Bernd Kortmann, Johan Van Der Auwera Editors Bernd Kortmann, Johan Van Der Auwera Publisher Walter de Gruyter, 2010 ISBN 3-11-022025-3, ISBN 978-3-11-022025-4 p.412
128. Orel 2000 postulates a Vulgar Latin intermediary for no good reason. Mallory & Adams (1997) erroneously give the word as native, from *melítiā, the protoform underlying Greek mélissa; however, this protoform gave Albanian mjalcë "bee", which is a natural derivative of Proto-Albanian *melita "honey" (mod. mjaltë).
129. Ancient Indo-European dialects: proceedings, Volume 1963 Ancient Indo-European Dialects: Proceedings, University of California, Los Angeles. Center for Research in Languages and Linguistics Authors Henrik Birnbaum, Jaan Puhvel, University of California, Los Angeles. Center for Research in Languages and Linguistics Editors Henrik Birnbaum, Jaan Puhvel Publisher University of California Press, 1966 p.102
130. Orel 2000, p. 23.
131. Orel 2000, p. 102.
132. Bonnet, Guillaum (1998). Les mots latins de l'albanais. Paris: L'Harmattan. p. 324.
133. Orel 2000, p. 264.
134. Kopitar 1829, p. 254.
135. Meyer, Gustav. Die lateinischen Elemente im Albanesischen. (In: Grцbers Grundriss, I; I.Auflage) (1888), p. 805
136. Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm. Rumanisch, romanisch, albanesisch. (Mitteilungen des Romanischen Instituts an der Universitet Wien. I. Heilderberg 1914), p. 32
137. Bardhyl Demiraj (2010). Wir sind die Deinen. Studien zur albanischen Sprache, Literatur und Kulturgeschichte, dem Gedenken an Martin Camaj (1925–1992) gewidmet. Harrassowitz Verlag. ISBN 978-3-447-06221-3.
138. Çabej, Eqrem. Karakteristikat e huazimeve latine të gjuhës shqipe. SF 1974/2 (In German RL 1962/1) pp. 13-51
139. Mihăescu 1966, pp. 1, 30.
140. Mihăescu 1966, pp. 1, 21.
141. Mihăescu 1966, pp. 1–2.
142. A. Rosetti, Istoria limbii române, 1986, pp. 195-197
143. Madgearu, Alexandru; Gordon, Martin. The Wars of the Balkan Peninsula: Their Medieval Origins. pp. 146–147.
144. Jokl, Norbert (1929). "Balkangermanisches und Germanisches in Albanischen". Festschrift der 57. Versammlung deutscher Philologen und Schulmänner in Salzberg. Baden bei Wien: 105-137.
145. Feist, Sigmund (1939). Vergleichendes Wörterbuch der gotischen Sprafche. Leiden: Brill.
146. Orel, Vladimir (1998). Albanian Etymological Dictionary. Page 456-7, 468.
147. Matasovic, Ranko (2019). [A Grammatical Sketch of Albanian for Students of Indo-European]. Zagreb. Page 39
148. Curtis, M.C., 2012. [Slavic-Albanian language contact, convergence, and coexistence]. Page 19
149. Huld, M.E., 1994. [Albanian zverk - Gothic *swairhs]. Historische Sprachforschung/Historical Linguistics, 107(1. H), pp.165-171. Pages 167-8.
150. Orel, Vladimir (1998). Albanian Etymological Dictionary. Page 456-7
151. Matasovic, Ranko (2019). [A Grammatical Sketch of Albanian for Students of Indo-European]. Zagreb. Page 39
152. Orel, Vladimir (1998). Albanian Etymological Dictionary. Page 424
153. Matasovic, Ranko (2019). [A Grammatical Sketch of Albanian for Students of Indo-European]. Zagreb. Page 39
154. Curtis, M.C., 2012. [Slavic-Albanian language contact, convergence, and coexistence]. Page 107
155. Orel, Vladimir (1998). Albanian Etymological Dictionary. Page 110
156. Fortson IV, B. W. (2010). Indo-European Language and Culture: An Introduction. 2nd ed. MA: Blackwell Publishing. Page 449
157. Poruciuc, Adrian. (2009). Linguistic-Historical Implications of an Old Germanic Loan - Romanian gard 'fence, enclosure, weir, garden'. The mankind quarterly. 50. 25-70. 10.46469/mq.2009.50.1.2.
158. Huld, M.E., 1994. [Albanian zverk - Gothic *swairhs]. Historische Sprachforschung/Historical Linguistics, 107(1. H), pp.165-171.
159. Orel, Vladimir (1998). Albanian Etymological Dictionary. Page 526-7
160. Orel, Vladimir (1998). Albanian Etymological Dictionary. Page 150-151.
161. Orel, Vladimir (1998). Albanian Etymological Dictionary. Page 350
162. Orel 2000, p. 263.
163. Orel 2000, pp. 264–265.
164. Orel 2000, pp. 266–267.
165. Orel 2000, p. 262.
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External links

• Albanian Online by Brian Joseph, Angelo Costanzo, and Jonathan Slocum, free online lessons at the Linguistics Research Center at the University of Texas at Austin
• glottothèque - Ancient Indo-European Grammars online, an online collection of introductory videos to Ancient Indo-European languages produced by the University of Göttingen