Albanian is an Indo-European language, the last representative of the Paleo-Balkan language sub-family. It is a rather unusual language in that, as the last representative of a sub-family of dead languages, it bears no resemblance to any other. In fact, Albanian is a language in a class of its own, using a Latin alphabet since 1908, unlike its Greek and Macedonian neighbors. It is the official language of Albania and Kosovo, co-official in Macedonia and Montenegro, and recognised as a minority language in Serbia, Croatia, Romania and Italy.

Nothing is known about Albanians until the 11th century, when they are mentioned by Byzantine historians. The Albanian language is mentioned for the first time outside Albania, in the Croatian city of Dubrovnik, in the vicinity of which there appears to have been an Albanian community. In 1285, a man named Matthew recorded this sentence in the context of investigation of a robbery : Audivi unam vocem clamantem in monte in lingua Albanesca : I heard a voice crying on the mountain in the Albanian language.

Not long after that, Anonymi descriptio Europae Orientalis, in 1308, states that the Albanian language is not related to any of the neighboring languages, and thus confirms that lingua Albanesca is indeed the predecessor of modern Albanian: Habent enim Albani prefati linguam distinctam a Latinis, Grecis et Sclavis ita quod in nullo se inteligunt cum aliis nationibus : For the aforesaid Albanians have a language distinct from that of the Latins, Greeks, and Slavs, so that they do not at all understand themselves with other nations.

The first sentence of Albanian we have is the baptism formula from 1462: Unte paghesont premenit Atit e birit et sperit senit. In the modern language, this would be Unë të pagezoj për emrit të atit e të birit e të shpirtit shenjtë. The sentence means : I baptize you in the name of the Father, the Son and The Holy Ghost.

The very first Tosk text appeared around 1500. It is the anonymous Perikopeja e Ungjillit të Pashkëve “The Song of the Easter Gospel”.

The first Albanian book is Meshari by Gjon Buzuku (1555, preserved in a single copy). Meshari is written in the Gheg Albanian dialect and uses Latin alphabet

Frang Bardhi (Frangu i Bardhë) is the author of the first Albanian dictionary Dictionarium latino-epiroticum (Latin-Albanian dictionary) published in Rome in 1635, comprising 5,640 entries.

The first grammar of the language (the Gheg dialect) is Osservazioni grammaticali nella lingua albanese, published by Francesco Maria da Lecce in 1716.

In November 1908, the Monastir Congress (Kongresi i Manastirit) was held in the city of Monastir (Bitola), with the aim of standardizing and unifying the Albanian alphabet. Today, 22 November is commemorated in Albania, Kosovo and Macedonia, as well as in the Albanian diaspora, as Alphabet Day (Dita e Alfabetit).

The delegates decided that the Albanian alphabet and its spelling should be as phonemic as possible. Three proposals were put forward: the Stamboll alphabet (from Istanbul), the Bashkimi alphabet proposed by the Union Association, and the Agimi alphabet. While the Bashkimi and Agimi alphabets are based on the Latin alphabet, the Stamboll alphabet is based on the alphabet officially used in the Ottoman Empire and contains Latin characters, supplemented by other symbols. Following the presentation of these three proposals, delegates voted in favor of using a Bashkimi alphabet, with a few modifications. The consensus was fragile.

There are four major eras that make up the history of the Albanian language:

(Possibly first century B.C.) Preproto-Albanian. This is the time before the first Latin and Albanian encounters. Early Proto-Albanian followed (first century B.C.– sixth century). Prior to the first interactions with the Slavs, Albanian had a phase of extensive Latin borrowing. Then, from around the sixth century until the fifteenth century, there was late Proto-Albanian. Now is the time when Slavs and Albanians are in close touch. Then, from the 15th century to about 1800, early Albanian. This roughly corresponds to the earliest written records of Albania and the time when the majority of its Turkish loanwords entered the language. Finally, contemporary Albanian from about 1800 to the present. 

Albanian has two main dialects: Gheg and Tosk. Each of these dialects is made up of sub-dialects. Gheg is made up of North-Western Gheg, spoken in northern Albania and Montenegro, North-Eastern Gheg, spoken in northern Albania and Kosovo, and Central and Southern Gheg, both spoken in northern Albania and Macedonia. The differences between these dialects are minimal. 

In the Macedonian area of Upper Reka, a different kind of Albanian emerged. The Upper Reka sub-region in north-west Macedonia is where most of the dialect’s speakers may be found. The Upper Reka dialect evolved linguistic quirks that set it apart from other varieties of Albanian because of the physical isolation of the region. Along with the dialects of the Kruja, Mati, and Dibra areas, the Upper Reka dialect is categorised as a Central Gheg dialect within the Gheg language family. While literacy abilities in Albanian are nonexistent for all age groups, reading and writing in Macedonian are known by the populace and used by the young.  Among the wider Macedonian population, there is little awareness of the existence of an Orthodox Christian population which uses Albanian as a language of everyday communication.

The Tosk dialect also has minor differences within it. It has also given rise to other dialects in Italy and Greece. Northern Tosk is mainly spoken in Albania and southern Macedonia.There are many different idioms derived from Tosk in Italy and Greece, and their separation from the Albanian language goes back centuries. What makes these languages interesting from a linguistic point of view is that this separation makes it possible to identify features that Old Albanian might have had but did not, but which these languages have retained. 

As Greece borders Albania, there is a large Albanian community in the country. The Arvanites, a population group in Greece, speak an Albanian dialect known as Arvanitika, sometimes known as Arvanitic. Arvanitika speakers are said to number somewhere between 30,000 and 150,000. There are said to be more than 500 settlements with historic Arvanite people. As everyone is now fluent in Greek, there are no Arvanitika speakers who only speak that language. The widespread language shift towards Greek among Arvanitika’s descendants in recent decades has led to the designation of Arvanitika as an endangered language.

The name Arvanites, which in turn derives from the toponym Arbna, which in the Middle Ages referred to an area in what is now Albania, gave rise to the term Avantika and its local counterpart Arbrisht.

In the Middle Ages, people from what is now southern Albania went south and established themselves as Arvanites in Greece. The first mention of these Albanian incursions into Greece dates to the late 13th and early 14th centuries. The causes of this migration may be numerous and are not totally known.

One of the largest Albanian communities outside the Albanian-speaking countries is in Italy. The Arbëresh people of Italy speak a distinct dialect of Albanian known as Arbresh. It is a dialect of Albanian Tosk, which is also spoken by the Arvanites and in Epirus and Albania. Following the founding of the Kingdom of Albania, the passing of Albanian national hero Gjergj Kastrioti Skenderbeu, and the Ottomans’ progressive invasion of the Byzantine Empire throughout the Middle Ages, the Arberesh immigrated to the Kingdom of Naples in waves. Arbrisht speakers had only extremely hazy ideas up until recently about how closely or distantly linked to Albanian their language was. Until the 1980s Arbërisht was exclusively a spoken language, except for its written form used in the Italo-Albanian Church, and Arbëreshë people had no practical affiliation with the Standard Albanian language used in Albania, as they did not use this form in writing or in media. When a large number of immigrants from Albania began to enter Italy in the 1990s, they came into contact with local Arbëreshë communities.

The exact Arbëresh speech population is uncertain, as the Italian national census does not collect data on minority language speakers. 

In conclusion, Albanian is a unique member of the Indo-European language family. Its distinctive character is reinforced by its lack of similarities with other languages. The history of the language dates back to antiquity, but the first written records date from the Middle Ages. Over the centuries, efforts were made to standardize and unify the Albanian alphabet, culminating in the Monastir Congress in 1908. The Albanian diaspora has also maintained and developed dialectal variations in regions such as Croatia, Italy and Greece. Despite the influences and pressures exerted by neighboring languages, Albanian has managed to maintain and develop itself, while retaining unique characteristics that make it a subject of linguistic interest.

Fahim Bounoua

Sources: 

Matasović, Ranko (2019). A Grammatical Sketch of Albanian for Students of Indo European

Euromosaic project (2006). “L’arvanite/albanais en Grèce” (in French). Brussels: European Commission.

Nasse, George Nicholas (1964). The Italo-Albanian Villages of Southern Italy

Orel, Vladimir E. (1998). Albanian Etymological Dictionary. Leiden: Brill