Aj posto ne gi priznavate ,Grcki ,Srbskite i drugite balkansi tezi eve vi edna od Germanci i Danci....
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 Shqipëri, 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 Arvanítis, and in Turkish Arnaut; the name must have been transmitted early through Greek speech.
History
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. Albanian speakers in Kosovo and in Macedonia speak eastern varieties of Gheg but since 1974 have widely adopted a common orthography with Albania. Before 1909 the little literature that was preserved was written in local makeshift Italianate or Hellenizing orthographies or even in Turko-Arabic characters.
A few brief written records are preserved from the 15th century, the first being a baptismal formula from 1462. The scattering of books produced in the 16th and 17th centuries originated largely in the Gheg area (often in Scutarene north Gheg) and reflect Roman Catholic missionary activities. Much of the small stream of literature in the 19th century was produced by exiles. Perhaps the earliest purely literary work of any extent is the 18th-century poetry of Gjul Variboba, of the enclave at S. Giorgio, in Calabria. Some literary production continued through the 19th century in the Italian enclaves, but no similar activity is recorded in the Greek areas. All these early historical documents show a language that differs little from the current language. Because these documents from different regions and times exhibit marked dialect peculiarities, however, they often have a value for linguistic study that greatly outweighs their literary merit.
Table Of Contents
Classification
That Albanian is of clearly Indo-European origin was recognized by the German philologist Franz Bopp in 1854; the details of the main correspondences of Albanian with Indo-European languages were elaborated by another German philologist, Gustav Meyer, in the 1880s and ’90s. Further linguistic refinements were presented by the Danish linguist Holger Pedersen and the Austrian Norbert Jokl. The following etymologies illustrate the relationship of Albanian to Indo-European (an asterisk preceding a word denotes an unattested, hypothetical Indo-European parent word, which is written in a conventionalized orthography):
pesë “five” (from *
pénkwe);
zjarm “fire” (from *
gwhermos);
natë “night” (from *
nokwt-);
dhëndër “son-in-law” (from *
ǵemə ter-);
gjarpër “snake” (from *
sérpō˘n-);
bjer “bring!” (from *
bhere);
djeg “I burn” (from *
dhegwhō);
kam “I have” (from *
kapmi);
pata “I had” (from *
pot-);
pjek “I roast” (from *
pekwō);
thom, thotë “I say, he says” (from *
k’ēmi, *
k’ēt . . .).
The verb system includes many archaic traits, such as the retention of distinct active and middle personal endings (as in Greek) and the change of a stem vowel
e in the present to
o (from *
ē) in the past tense, a feature shared with the Baltic languages. For example, there is
mbledh “gathers (transitive)” as well as
mblidhet “gathers (intransitive), is gathered” in the present tense, and
mblodha “I gathered” with an
o in the past. Because of the superficial changes in the phonetic shape of the language over 2,000 years and because of the borrowing of words from neighbouring cultures, the continuity of the Indo-European heritage in Albanian has been underrated.
Vocabulary and contacts
Although Albanian has a host of borrowings from its neighbours, it shows exceedingly few evidences of contact with ancient Greek; one such is the Gheg
mokën (Tosk
mokër) “millstone,” from the Greek
mēkhanē´. Obviously close contacts with the Romans gave many
Latin loans—
e.g., mik“friend” from Latin
amicus; këndoj “sing, read” from
cantāre. Furthermore, such loanwords in Albanian attest to the similarities in development of the Latin spoken in the Balkans and of
Romanian, a Balkan Romance tongue. For example, Latin
palūdem “swamp” became
padūlem and then
pădure in Romanian and
pyll in Albanian, both with a modified meaning, “forest.”
Conversely, Romanian also shares some apparently non-Latin indigenous terms with Albanian—
e.g.,Romanian
brad, Albanian
bredh “fir.” Thus these two languages reflect special historical contacts of early date. Early communication with the Goths presumably contributed
tirq “trousers, breeches” (from an old compound “thigh-breech”), while early Slavic contacts gave
gozhdë “nail.” Many Italian, Turkish, Modern Greek, Serbian, and Macedonian-Slav loans can be attributed to cultural contacts of the past 500 years with Venetians, Ottomans, Greeks (to the south), and Slavs (to the east).
