Albanian | |
---|---|
Shqip | |
Arbërisht | |
Pronunciation | [ʃcip] [ˈɟuha ˈʃcipɛ] [aɾbəˈɾiʃt] |
Native to | |
Ethnicity | Albanians |
Native speakers | 7.5 million (2017)[1][2] |
Indo-European
| |
Early form | |
Dialects |
|
Official status | |
Official language in |
|
Recognised minority language in | |
Regulated by | Academy of Sciences of Albania Academy of Sciences and Arts of Kosovo |
Language codes | |
ISO 639-1 | sq |
ISO 639-2 | alb (B) sqi (T) |
ISO 639-3 | sqi – inclusive codeIndividual codes: aae – Arbëreshaat – Arvanitikaaln – Ghegals – Tosk |
Glottolog | alba1267 |
Linguasphere | 55-AAA-aaa to 55-AAA-ahe (25 varieties) |
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Albanian (endonym: shqip [ʃcip] , gjuha shqipe [ˈɟuha ˈʃcipɛ], or arbërisht [aɾbəˈɾiʃt]) is an Indo-European language and the only surviving representative of the Albanoid branch, which belongs to the Paleo-Balkan group.[9] Standard Albanian is the official language of Albania and Kosovo, and a co-official language in North Macedonia and Montenegro, as well as a recognized minority language of Italy, Croatia, Romania and Serbia. It is also spoken in Greece and by the Albanian diaspora, which is generally concentrated in the Americas, Europe and Oceania.[2][10] Albanian is estimated to have as many as 7.5 million native speakers.[1][2]
Albanian and other Paleo-Balkan languages had their formative core in the Balkans after the Indo-European migrations in the region.[11][12] Albanian in antiquity is often thought to have been an Illyrian language for obvious geographic and historical reasons,[13][14][15][16][17][18] or otherwise an unmentioned Balkan Indo-European language that was closely related to Illyrian and Messapic.[19][20][21][22] The Indo-European subfamily that gave rise to Albanian is called Albanoid in reference to a specific ethnolinguistically pertinent and historically compact language group.[23] Whether descendants or sisters of what was called 'Illyrian' by classical sources, Albanian and Messapic, on the basis of shared features and innovations, are grouped together in a common branch in the current phylogenetic classification of the Indo-European language family.[24][19][23][21][22]
The first written mention of Albanian was in 1284 in a witness testimony from the Republic of Ragusa, while a letter written by Dominican Friar Gulielmus Adea in 1332 mentions the Albanians using the Latin alphabet in their writings. The oldest surviving attestation of modern Albanian is from 1462.[25] The two main Albanian dialect groups (or varieties), Gheg and Tosk, are primarily distinguished by phonological differences and are mutually intelligible in their standard varieties,[26][27] with Gheg spoken to the north and Tosk spoken to the south of the Shkumbin river.[28] Their characteristics[29][30] in the treatment of both native words and loanwords provide evidence that the split into the northern and the southern dialects occurred after Christianisation of the region (4th century AD),[31][32] and most likely not later than the 6th century AD,[33][34][35] hence possibly occupying roughly their present area divided by the Shkumbin river since the Post-Roman and Pre-Slavic period, straddling the Jireček Line.[36][37]
Centuries-old communities speaking Albanian dialects can be found scattered in Greece (the Arvanites and some communities in Epirus, Western Macedonia and Western Thrace),[38] Croatia (the Arbanasi), Italy (the Arbëreshë)[39] as well as in Romania, Turkey and Ukraine.[40] The Malsia e Madhe Gheg Albanian[41][42] and two varieties of the Tosk dialect, Arvanitika in Greece and Arbëresh in southern Italy, have preserved archaic elements of the language.[43] 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.[44][45][46]
Standard Albanian is a standardised form of spoken Albanian based on Tosk.
KlBrFr1800
was invoked but never defined (see the help page).Serbian, Bosnian, Albanian and Croatian shall also be in the official use.
Though the origin of the language has been debated, the prevailing opinion in the literature is that it is a descendant of Illyrian (Hetzer 1995).
"...these innovations, as those that are also evident in different varieties of Gheg, are not such as to impede communication between speakers of the two dialects. Furthermore, the major part of the Albanian lexicon is common to the two dialects."
"The river Shkumbin in central Albania historically forms the boundary between those two dialects, with the population on the north speaking varieties of Geg and the population on the south varieties of Tosk."
"It is the case of the evolution of stressed /a-/ and partly stressed /e-/ in front of a nasal consonant to /ë-/ in thee southern dialect. While the evolution /a-/ > /ë/ in front of a nasal consonant has involved the southern dialect, the evolution /e-/ > /-ë/ in the same phonetic conditions has not taken place in the northern part and partly in the eastern part of that dialect (...). This phonetic phenomenon has appeared earlier than rhotacism, as it is clearly evidenced in such examples as llanë > llërë, ranë > rërë etc., in which the evolution /a-/ > /ë-/ could not take place before /-r-/. Since this phonetic change has not appeared in the Slavic loanwords of Albanian, but has involved mainly the I.E. inherited words as well as the loans from Old Greek (compare mokënë > mokërë < mākhanāʼ etc.) and from Latin (compare ranë > rërë > arena etc.), it has generally been acknowledged that it has taken place in the pre-Slavic period of Albanian. Its sporadic appearance in a very reduced number of Slavic loanwords is due to the action of analogy with similar cases of inherited or more ancient loans of Albanian."
"In Tosk /a/ before a nasal has become a central vowel (shwa), and intervocalic /n/ has become /r/. These two sound changes have affected only the pre-Slav stratum of the Albanian lexicon, that is the native words and loanwords from Greek and Latin."
The Greek and Latin loans have undergone most of the far-reaching phonological changes which have so altered the shape of inherited IE words while Slavic and Turkish words do not show these changes. Thus Albanian must have acquired much of its present form by the time Slavs entered into the Balkans in the fifth and sixth centuries AD [middle of p. 11] [...] The loan words from Greek and Latin date back to before the Christian era [p. 9] [...] Even very common words such as mik ʻfriendʼ (< Lat amicus) or këndoj ʻI sing; readʼ (< Lat cantāre) come from Latin and attest to a widespread intermingling of pre-Albanian and Balkan Latin speakers during the Roman period, roughly from the second century BC to the fifth century AD. [before middle of p. 11]
"...such sporadic analogical cases do not reverse the generally acknowledged conclusion that this dialectal peculiarity as a phonetic process has appeared in pre-Slavic period of Albanian and is relatively more ancient than the rhotacism. It has most probably appeared not later than the V-VI centuries A.D."
"And, as it was pointed out in §3, since the dialectal differentiations have appeared in a certain geographical area, one is entitled to draw the conclusion that the speakers of the northern and southern dialects have been present in their actual areas in the Post-Roman and Pre-Slavic period of Albanian."