"The idea of a Kosovan language in Yugoslavia's language politics", "Drejtshkrimi Prishtinë 1964 – Wikisource", "Sugjerime e vërejtje rreth ndryshimeve në drejtshkrim", "Emil Lafe: Këshilli Ndërakademik për Gjuhën Shqipe ecën pa busull, ende pa një platformë shkencore të miratuar njëzëri", "Libri i Mary Motesit për Kosovën: Shqip me paskajore", "Ekonomizimi i pjesores – mundësi për shqipen e përbashkët", "A Crossroad Between West, East and Orient–The Case of Albanian Culture. Albanian Customs and Etiquette, and Values for Kids. That thunder. 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. Contents. Fun facts Although religion is mentioned above, 74 % of Albanian people are atheists. "Considérations sur les traits communs ou parallèles de l'albanais avec les autres langues balkaniques et sur leur étude". [42], However, as Fortson notes, Albanian written works existed before this point; they have simply been lost. It’s hard to learn because the words are … Superstitions are a norm in this country. Fact 8: Albania gained its independence in 1912 but was not recognized by a lot of countries till 1913. In addition to the dynasty that he established, a large part of the former Egyptian and Sudanese aristocracy was of Albanian origin. amicus). The largest number lives in the Republic of Albania. 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]. [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. Despite not knowing a lot about the country before my trip, as soon as I started to read all the interesting facts about Albania I got excited. The cases apply to both definite and indefinite nouns, and there are numerous cases of syncretism. It has two dialects, the Tosk and the Gheg. I think Albania is a fascinating country and I spend a good amount of my free time here reading its history and exploring its past on foot. The verb can optionally occur in sentence-initial position, especially with verbs in the non-active form (forma joveprore): Verbal negation in Albanian is mood-dependent, a trait shared with some fellow Indo-European languages such as Greek. Albanian is the mother tongue of around seven million people worldwide. [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. ", "How much does language change when it travels? London: Routledge, 1998. Çabej, Eqrem. In indicative, conditional, or admirative sentences, negation is expressed by the particles nuk or s' in front of the verb, for example: Subjunctive, imperative, optative, or non-finite forms of verbs are negated with the particle mos: Albanian scripts were produced earlier than the first attested document, "formula e pagëzimit", but none yet have been discovered. The official language, written in a standard roman-style orthography adopted in 1909, was based on the south Gheg dialect of Elbasan from the beginning of the Albanian state until World War II and since has been modelled on Tosk. "Disa vëzhgime mbi elementin Latin të shqipes" [Some observations on the Latin element of the Albanian language], Pisani, Vittore. [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. Interesting facts about Albania: Fact 1: The Albanians call Albania 'Squiperia' or Republika e Shqiperise in full. [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. (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. 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". Table by the river. So, in no particular order, here are my 10 actually interesting facts about Albania. Unique Albania content for tourists, students, business or those interested in our world! 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". As odd as it sounds, Albania has banned all speedboats. Kosovo has two official languages: Albanian and Serbian. [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. The Elbasan subdialect remained in use for administrative purposes and many new writers embraced for creative writing. Gheg n (femën: compare English feminine) changes to r by rhotacism in Tosk (femër). Albanian Children’s Songs. From those primitive beginnings, languages have been born and have died, with complex systems of understanding built on basic foundations. Albanian grammar has five cases – nominative, genitive, dative, accusative and ablative – and gendered nouns. [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. The hundred years between 1750 and 1850 were an age of astounding orthographic diversity in Albania. 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. 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]. Albanian has developed an analytical verbal structure in place of the earlier synthetic system, inherited from Proto-Indo-European. [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). 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. While Albania has a population of a little under 3 million people, it is estimated that there are around 7 million Albanian speakers scattered across the planet. In Ramat and Ramat (2006), Ushaku, Ruzhdi, Hulumtime etnoliguistike, chapter: The continuation of Illyrian Bind in Albanian Mythology and Language, Fakulteti filologjise, Prishtine, 2000, p. 46-48, 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, 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, Ancient Indo-European dialects: proceedings, Volume 1963 Ancient Indo-European Dialects: Proceedings, University of California, Los Angeles. Zagreb, 1989 (also published in Italian as "Gli Illiri"), NGL Hammond The Relations of Illyrian Albania with the Greeks and the Romans. (Source: Britan n ica) 2. The vast majority of nouns are masculine or feminine, though there are a few neuter nouns. Editor: Srđan Rudić. [89] Albanian nouns are categorised by gender (masculine, feminine and neuter) and inflected for number (singular and plural) and case. https://blog.weareteacherfinder.com/blog/interesting-facts-albanian There is almost complete loss of final syllables and very widespread loss of other unstressed syllables (e.g. Not enough is known of these languages to completely prove or disprove the various hypotheses.[12]. [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 rules published in 1917 defined spelling for the Elbasan variety for official purposes. "Dokumente historiko-gjuhësore: vëndi i shqipes ndër gjuhët evropiane". 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]. The Oldest Language The Greek, Latin, German, Celtic, and the Slavic are one of the oldest languages in the World, but they are not even nearly as old as the Lithuanian tongue, which is the most ancient one from them all.. 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. If you’ve traveled in the Balkans, you’ve probably come across rakija or rakia, but the Albanian version is quite unique. [36][37][38], 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]. Albanian is its official language. 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. Viewing divergences with Albania as a threat to their identity, Kosovars arbitrarily adopted the Tosk project that Tirana had published the year before. In their own language, some groups in the north-west are reported to use the term Shqip (Albanian language) to refer to their own language as well as to that of Albanian nationals, and this has sometimes been interpreted as implying that they are ethnically Albanians. Thus, when I read this paltry list entitled “Top 10 facts about Albania” I realized that I could, off the top of my head, create a much more worthwhile list of facts. Albanian (/ælˈbeɪniən/; shqip [ʃcip] or gjuha shqipe [ˈɟuha ˈʃcipɛ]) is an Indo-European language spoken by the Albanians in the Balkans and the Albanian diaspora in the Americas, Europe and Oceania. 52–53. 20+ INTERESTING FACTS ABOUT 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. It is primarily spoken in northern Albania and throughout Montenegro, Kosovo and northwestern North Macedonia. "Struktura dialektore e shqipes e parë në lidhje me historinë e popullit". Albanians are awesome. [citation needed], The centre of Albanian settlement remained the Mat river. On the banks of the river, there are also several dialects spoken which act as a bridge between the two groups, making classifying them somewhat difficult. Albanian Children’s Songs. However, in recent decades, a movement has grown to revive literary Gheg. although it is still uncertain which particular Paleo-Balkan language represents the ancestor of Albanian, or where in Southern Europe that population lived. 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). 1. Desnickaja, Agnija. The official language of Albania is Albanian, and the country’s dialling code is 355. [35] Other linguists linked the Albanian language with Latin, Greek and Armenian, while placing Germanic and Balto-Slavic in another branch of Indo-European. Its official currency is Lek (ALL). The Congress, held at Tirana, authorized the orthography rules that came out the following year, in 1973. These are verb forms that are used solely for surprise or astonishment. [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. 1. [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. http://preparetoserve.com/ALBANIA Interesting facts about Albanian culture. The Albanian language is like no other. In Argentina, there are nearly 40,000 Albanian speakers, mostly in Buenos Aires.[30]. After the Slavs arrived in the Balkans, the Slavic languages became an additional source of loanwords. Pellegrini, Giovan Battista. [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. [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. [71] Two dictionaries were published in 1954: an Albanian language dictionary and a Russian–Albanian dictionary. [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. The following shows the declension of mal (mountain), a masculine noun which takes "i" in the definite singular: The following shows the declension of the masculine noun zog (bird), a masculine noun which takes "u" in the definite singular: The following table shows the declension of the feminine noun vajzë (girl): The definite article is placed after the noun as in many other Balkan languages, like in Romanian, Macedonian and Bulgarian. [citation needed] To say 'Agim ate all the oranges' in Albanian, one may use any of the following orders, with slight pragmatic differences: However, the most common order is subject–verb–object. Shqiperia is Albania in Albanian language. 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. Standard Albanian has seven vowels and 29 consonants. , Leonard, Philip Hubbard, & Peter Prifti rapporti linguistici interadriatici e l'elemento dell'albanese... 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