Autumn Mozeliak
What makes Albanian so special?
A language Isolate
If you’re ever travelling the Balkan peninsula, you may notice you can easily maneuver around if you speak any of the Serbian, Croatian, Bosnian and Montenegrin dialects. Though once you’ve made your way into the beautiful country of Albania, you may notice your linguistic luck has run out. You hear very few words that sound familiar and you wonder if you’ve managed to wander into another continent by accident. This is because one of the main wonders of the Albanian language is that it is a language isolate. This means that although it is an Indo-European language, there have been no established languages within the same branch of the Albanian language family tree and that this language sounds nothing like any other surrounding countries’ tongues, or, any country at all for that matter. Many linguists have tried to find a comparable language or have tried to trace Albania’s history back to different migrating groups through the years to figure out how the language was developed. Despite this, nothing has been conclusive. Some speculate that the language is related to Illyrian languages, but tangible evidence of this is yet to be fully established. Whereas, some linguists have partially connected Albanian to Greek, Latin, and Armenian. What we do know is that Albanian is an ancient language and it sounds really cool.
A History
The oldest document in the Albanian language dates back to 1462. However, the exact place or time period that Albanian was formed is unknown and extremely challenging to figure out. Albania, in its antiquity, was known to have been occupied by a variety of groups including the Illyrians, Thracians and Ancient Greeks. The presence of Illyrian tribes are first mentioned in Ancient Greek texts dated back to 4th century BC. During this time the Illyrian tribes resided to the east of modern Albania, Greeks in the south and Thracians in the West. The difficulty in pinpointing the development of the Albanian language can be attributed to this ‘salad bowl’ of groups.
After Illyria was defeated by Rome in 229, the territory was split up just as Rome would be in 395. This inspired migrations and therefore linguistic alterations for the years to come. In the 6th and 7th century, the Slavs crossed the Danube and into the Ancient Greek, Thracian and Illyrian groups, introducing more foreign, ancient linguistics into the region. This would be a reoccurring trend throughout history as the region was also occupied later with Catholicism, the Byzantine Empire, and the Ottoman Empire. This cultural evolution has prevented many from determining where Albanian actually originates from.
The Dialects of Albanian
Albania is comprised of two dialects, Gheg (spoken in the northern part of the country) and Tosk (in the south)- although these dialects hold only phonological differences and are thankfully mutually intelligible! Standard Albanian is based off of the Tosk dialect, spoken by over 2 million in Albania. Gheg, however, is the de facto language of Kosovo. It is also spoken in Montenegro, Serbia and North Macedonia.
Now that we know about the mysterious origins and uniqueness of the language, let’s test out our linguistic skills!
Basics in Albanian
Want to know what Albanian sounds like? Check out this Wikitongues video to hear spoken Arbëresh Albanian, a dialect only spoken by about 100,000 people!
Interested in learning more about uncommon languages? Check out our last blog post on the hidden languages you can find in Europe.
Feeling inspired? Schedule a free consultation with director Christina to get started on your language journey!
