Albanian

Classification

One a long time regarded Albanian as an isolated Indo-European language, owing to the fact that the ancient language from which it kills us is unknown (although the Albanian linguists regard it as descendant of the Illyrien) and that as well its Phonologie as its Grammaire is at a very advanced stage of the Indo-European. To determine its origin, it initially was thus necessary to rebuild the history of its phonetism, in order to isolate its old lexical bottom from the loans to the close languages. On this basis, one clearly could show that Albanian belonged to the same group as the Slavic and Baltic languages, while being closer to Slavic than the Baltic one (see for example work of Walter Porzig, Eqrem Çabej, Eric Hamp, etc). In addition Albanian developed many common characteristics with the geographically close languages, with which it forms the Balkan linguistic Union.

Geographical distribution

Three million and half of albanophones live in Albania. The other speakers are installed in Serbia, with the Kosovo, in the valley of Preševo, in Macedonia, with the Montenegro and in the North-West of the Greece. One also finds a community albanophone distributed in forty villages in Italy of the south and Sicily, the Arbëresh, which go down from the emigrated Albanians at the 15th century (following the invasion of the Othomans in the Balkan area). He is finally spoken by some small groups in Bulgaria, in Romania, Ukraine, like by a many Diaspora with the the United States and in Australia.

Official statute

Albanian is official language in Albania, Macedonia and with the Kosovo.

Writing

Albanian was written relatively late: the oldest preserved texts date from second half of the 15th century. The current standard written language, in characters of the Latin alphabet, was elaborate on the basis of tosque dialect.

Alphabetical order and value of the Graphèmes

The transcription follows the uses of the International Phonetic Alphabet.

History

This alphabet is used officially since the standardization of 1908. It uses Digramme S and two diacritic S, the Tréma as well as the Cédille (one can also count the Circumflex accent being used for the guègue, often replaced by a Tilde in works of Linguistique). The digraphs and the diacritées letters count for graphèmes independent and not as of the alternatives (what is the case for E , E , E and E in French, alternatives of E for the Alphabetical classification). Albanian was noted before by various original alphabets, like the Elbasan, the Buthakukye and the Argyrokastron, the Greek , the Cyrillique or a modified Latin alphabet different from that which is used nowadays.

The current alphabet is almost phonological: in the absolute, all the letters are read, and always same manner, except for the '' E '' null and void. One gave in the table above the achievements of the letters in the standard pronunciation. There exist dialectal alternatives of course.

Remarks

The Albanian alphabet counts 36 letters. Seven vowels: With, E, E, I, O, U, Y, and twenty-nine consonants: B, C, C, D, Dh, F, G, Gj, H, J, K, L, L, M, NR, Nj, P, Q, R, Rr, S, HS, T, Th, V, X, Xh, Z, Zh.

Vowels

If the guègue has nasalized vowels - noted by circumflexe above the corresponding vowel -, the tosque one lost them. Except that, the representation of the vocalic system Albanian is rather simple.

The vowel E (like the '' E '' null and void French in “I” but more opened and less labialized) is often omitted in the pronunciation when it is in final and dull position after only one consonant: ə [[tonic accent]] > Ø/C_#.

Consonants

The transcription of the phonemes of Albanian according to the standardization installation in 1908 can seem enough diverting. Indeed, several orthographical traditions are concerned:

various languages of Eastern Europe for the value of the simple letters;
the Serbo-Croatian (Latin version) for - J in the digraphs;
the English for - H in the digraphs;
of other Albanian traditions for C and Q .

The Palatalisation of the consonants is noted by - J subsequent ( J only noting J ): gj = ɟ (comparable with the Hungarian gy in Magyar ) and nj = ɲ (French gn in gnon ). When it is necessary to represent and, one replaces the J by I , in order to avoid ambiguity: is thus written gia , gja noting already.

The palatal deaf person C (Hungarian ty ) is however returned historically by Q . The Spirantisation can be noted by a - H subsequent, which is the case for dh 2D (English HT in then ) and HT θ (English HT in thin ), but not for HS ʃ (French CH in dog ), xh ʤ (French J in jeans ) nor zh ʒ (French J in I ). In this case, - H indicates the character postalvéolaire consonants.

The whistling affricate consonants are returned by C , (French ts in tsar ), for the deaf person, and X , (Italian Z in zero ), for the sound one; hushing affricate consonants by C , ʧ (like tch in Czech ), and xh ʤ .

Other notable cases

There exist still two digraphs to be retained: L ɫ ( dark /l/ of English in full ) and rr R (/r/ rolled with several beats as in Castilian perro ), which is opposed to L L and R ɾ (/r/ in short beaten as in Castilian in pero ).

One can find a sequence ng- with the initial one, which is however not a digraph. The play of the combinative variation makes that such a sequence probably decides (like ng in English finger ).

Examples

Lexicon

Albanian contains many terms borrowed from the languages which surround it: Latin, Greek, Italian, Turkish and Slavic.

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