ALBANIAN LANGUAGE

Indo-European language spoken in Albania and by smaller numbers of ethnic Albanians in other parts of the southern Balkans, along the east coast of Italy and in Sicily, in southern Greece, and in Germany, Sweden, the United States, Ukraine, and Belgium. Albanian is the only modern representative of a distinct branch of the Indo-European language family. The origins of the general name Albanian, which traditionally referred to a restricted area in central Albania, and of the current official name Shqip or Shqipri, which may well be derived from a term meaning pronounce clearly, intelligibly, are still disputed. The name Albanian has been found in records since the time of Ptolemy. In Calabrian Albanian the name is Arbresh, in Modern Greek Arvantis, and in Turkish Arnaut; the name must have been transmitted early through Greek speech. an Indo-European language spoken in Albania and by smaller numbers of ethnic Albanians in other parts of the southern Balkans, along the east coast of Italy, in southern Greece, and in Ukraine. Albanian is the only modern representative of a distinct branch of the Indo-European language family. The Albanian language has two principal dialects, Geg (Gheg) and Tosk, which are mutually intelligible in their most common forms. The Shkumbin River in Albania constitutes a rough dividing line for the dialects, forms of Geg being common to the north and Tosk to the south. Albanian speakers in Italian and Greek villages employ varieties of Tosk. The characteristic sound of Albanian resembles that of Hungarian or Greek, with the Geg dialect having the more unusual sound owing to the number of nasal vowels. Grammatically, Albanian retains many archaic traits but bears similarities to modern Greek and the Romance languages. Nouns are declined into three or four cases and show number and gender. An exceptional feature of Albanian grammar is the inflectional attribute of nouns, with changes occurring to specify either definite or general meaning. Nouns, with few exceptions (numerals are one), are followed by their adjectives, and an agreeing particle is required by the adjective; the particle precedes the noun. Verbs are commonly irregular in stem formation. The Albanian vocabulary has been heavily affected by contacts with other languages, particularly Latin; since the 16th century major influences are also apparent from Italian, Turkish, modern Greek, Serbian, and Slav. The Albanian language is apparently descended from the ancient Illyrian language. The earliest written Albanian records come from the Geg area in makeshift spellings based on Italian or Greek and sometimes in Turko-Arabic characters. The first recorded evidence of the written language is a baptismal formula from 1462. In 1909 an official, standardized Albanian spelling was developed, based on the Geg dialect and employing the Latin alphabet. After World War II the official language changed in that it adopted the Tosk dialect as its model. Albanian is of special interest in the study of languages because it stands alone: it is not a part of a larger subgroup of modern languages. It holds its linguistic place along with other principal branches (e.g., Germanic) of the Indo-European language family, despite the fact that the language is spoken by a relatively small number of the world's people. Additional reading P.L. Horecky (ed.), Southeastern Europe: A Guide to Basic Publications, pp. 102111 (1969), including a compilation by E.P. Hamp of about 50 major annotated items on Albanian scholarship, language, literature, folklore, ethnography, and folk music, with references to other supporting work; E.P. Hamp, Albanian, in Thomas A. Sebeok (ed.), Current Trends in Linguistics, vol. 9 (1972), pp. 162692, a review of work since 1918, with copious bibliography; Leonard Newmark, P. Hubbard, and Peter Prifti, Standard Albanian (1982), a reference grammar. Eric P. Hamp