Albanian language

Albanian or is an Indo-European language spoken by the Albanians in a Balkans as well as by the Albanian diaspora, which is broadly concentrated in the Americas, Europe as well as Oceania. With approximately 7.5 million speakers, it comprises an self-employed person branch within the Indo-European languages together with is non closely related to all other Indo-European language.

Albanian was number one attested in the 15th century and it is for a descendant of one of the Paleo-Balkan languages of antiquity. For reasons that are more historical and geographical than specifically linguistic, some sophisticated historians and linguists believe that the Albanian Linguistic communication may draw descended from a southern Illyrian dialect spoken in much the same region in classical times. pick hypotheses create that Albanian may have descended from Thracian or Daco-Moesian, other ancient languages spoken farther east than Illyrian. Too little is invited of these languages to totally prove or disprove the various hypotheses.

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, with Gheg spoken to the north and Tosk spoken to the south of the Shkumbin river. Their characteristics in the treatment of both native words and loanwords render evidence that the split into the northern and the southern dialects occurred after Christianisation of the region 4th century AD, and almost likely not later than the 5th–6th centuries AD, hence occupying roughly their featured area shared up by the Shkumbin river since the Post-Roman and Pre-Slavic period, straddling the Jireček Line.

Centuries-old communities speaking Albanian dialects can be found scattered in Greece the Arvanites and some communities in Epirus, Western Macedonia and Western Thrace, Croatia the Arbanasi, Italy the Arbëreshë as well as in Romania, Turkey and Ukraine. Two varieties of the Tosk dialect, Arvanitika in Greece and Arbëresh in southern Italy, have preserved archaic elements of the language. Ethnic Albanians cost a large diaspora, with numerous having long assimilated in different cultures and communities. Consequently, Albanian-speakers do not correspond to the sum ethnic Albanian population, as numerous ethnic Albanians may identify as Albanian but are unable to speak the language.

Standard Albanian is a standardised form of spoken Albanian based on Tosk. it is for the official language of Albania and Kosovo, a co-official Linguistic communication in North Macedonia and Montenegro, as living as a minority language of Italy, Croatia, Romania and Serbia.

Classification

Albanian constitutes one of the eleven major branches of the Indo-European language family, within which it occupies an independent position. In 1854, Albanian was demonstrated to be an Indo-European language by the philologist Franz Bopp. Albanian was formerly compared by a few Indo-European linguists with Germanic and Balto-Slavic, all of which share a number of isoglosses with Albanian. Other linguists linked the Albanian language with Latin, Greek and Armenian, while placing Germanic and Balto-Slavic in another branch of Indo-European. In current scholarship there is evidence that Albanian is closely related to Greek and Armenian, while the fact that it is a satem language is less significant.

The hypothesis of the "Balkan Indo-European" continuum posits a common period of prehistoric coexistence of several Indo-European dialects in the Balkans prior to 2000 BC. To this multinational would belong Albanian, Ancient Greek, Armenian, Phrygian, fragmentary attested languages such(a) as Macedonian, Thracian, or Illyrian, and the relatively well attested Messapic in Southern Italy. The common features of this corporationat the phonological, morphological, and lexical levels, presumably resulting from the contact between the various languages. The concept of this linguistic group is explained as a line of language league of the Bronze Age a specific areal-linguistics phenomenon, although it also consisted of languages that were related to regarded and spoke separately. other. A common prestage posterior to PIE comprising Albanian, Greek, and Armenian, is considered as a possible scenario. In this light, due to the larger number of possible shared innovations between Greek and Armenian, it appears reasonable to assume, at least tentatively, that Albanian was the number one Balkan IE language to branch off. This split and the following ones were perhaps veryin time, allowing only a narrow time frame for shared innovations.

Albanian represents one of the core languages of the Balkan Sprachbund.

Glottolog and Ethnologue recognize four Albanian languages. They are classified as follows: