How would albanian sound to a non-ethnic?

Regerding Eqerem Cabej, firstly you should know that in albania it never existed a cultural gap between south and north, and he studied gheg dialects for most of his life, as it is known that the gheg has a more archaic form, and the tosk was developed later. But the gheg and the tosk separated later, for example in the southern italian community of the Arbereshe, which are supposed to be tosk emigrants, we find also many charachteristics of the gheg language. This phenomena happens also in the arvanite comunity of greece, which logically should be the extreme of the tosk dialects.

 

I'a dhashe librin atij - Tosk

I'a dhash' librin atij - Gheg

 

As you see there are not much differences, are there

 

Almost six centuries ago the archbishop of Durres, Pal Engjelli (Paulus Angelus, Pavlo Angelos) wrote the first words in albanian gheg, it was a baptism formula

 

un te paghesonh pr' emenit atit birit et spirtit senit

 

In standard albanian that would be

 

une te pagezoj per emer te atit, birit e te shpirtit te shenjte

 

In tosk that would be

 

Un te pagezonj per emer te atit, birit e te shpirtit te shenjte

 

In gheg

 

Un t'pagzoj per emen te atit, birit e te shpirtit t'shejt

Believe me, I can speak and understand fluently many of the tosk and gheg variances, there are not much differences between tosk and gheg, if you want you can give me a longer text to translate in both languages. And just for your info, it is true that the standard language probably took more from the tosk, but it took also parts of the gheg dialect, and anyway, it is a standard language, it is used only in the medias and in the offices. The tosk is easier to pronunciate (phonetically) while the gheg has at least 140 sounds (phonemes) that you should be able to pronounce if you want to speak it. It is as easy as that, there is no complote inside

Bruno, of course it looks familiar to me. But do not forget that there is also an albanian presence in the southern italy. I believe the parts should have interacted linguistically...and regarding the Hoxha, he is dead now, why the internationall scientific comunity is not classifying albanian as partially neo-latin??Have you ever read any work of Cabej, or are you just using some propaganda stereotypes(everything which happened during communism was mean and evil?).

 

Ok, I know very well albanian, as well as italian (at least 3 dialects) and french. I have some knowledge of spanish and romanian. I suppose so do you. I ll post here a short text in albanian, waiting for your comparative rationale analysis.

 

Shqipja eshte nje gjuhe e vecante, e cila megjithese ka huazuar shume fjale nga gjuhet e tjera te popujve fqinje, mbetet krejtesisht e ndryshme, pasi trungu dhe perberja kryesore eshte vendase. Padyshim qe paraardhes te shqiptareve te sotem jane arberit ose arbereshet, nderkohe qe po te shkojme dhe me ne lashtesi, keta quheshin ilire. Kultura tradicionale, zakonet, kenget e vallet si dhe veshjet e trasheguara nga te paret tane jane teper te lashta, dhe pasqyrojne nje kulture mijera-vjecare, ashtu sic verteton dhe arkeologjia me zbulimet e saj te pafundme ne trevat ku historikisht ka jetuar ky komb i vogel, por i forte ne ruajtjen e vlerave te tij.

 

I believe you can easily understand which of the words have a latin origin, and you can compare also the sintaxe and the morphologie of the entire phrase to the relative in neo-latin languages...

Cabej distinguished himself in the study of the autochtony of the Albanian people and the origins of the albanian language in masterworks like "Etymological studies in the Albanian field", "Introduction to the history of the albanian language", "The spelling rules of the albanian language", etc..  He worked even with A. Xhuvani (University of Athens) in the creation of the "Prefixes and Suffixes of the Albanian language" in 1962, a fundamental book in the field of word-formation in the Albanian language.

"The spelling dictionary" of prof. Cabej heavily influenced the famous Congress on Orthography of the Albanian language held in Tirana in 1972 (the so called congress of the unification of the national albanian language). In this congress was created the "Unified national literary (STANDARD) language" of the Albanian people in the world. The result of the influence of Cabej: the Standard language was mostly based on the literary variant of the south (Tosk), mainly for the phonetic system, even if there are some secundary elements from the Ghego of the north. 

Under the Hoxha regime it was impossible to "survive" without looking eastward in everything: the main critic to prof. Cabej in the international scholar community is his lack of impartiality toward the western languages.

And I am not talking of ridiculous propaganda stereotypes!!

 

Finally, allow me to write a LAST opinion:

All the languages evolve..in the last two centuries the albanian language has benefited from the end of the Turkish empire (without this end, may be the albanian language was going to finish like the greek language in contemporary anatolia), so let's get ready for the entrance of the albanian language in the European Union and LET'S EVOLVE LINGUISTICALLY TOGHETER. Bruno

Thank you, Arber, for your friendly invitation, but I have to travel for work and I cannot keep participating in this interesting Forum. 

Indeed, prof. Xhuvani graduated at the University of Athens and always maintained work relationship with his Alma Mater. 

The Turks (a very prolific people)were starting to settle in force in the Balkan peninsula in the nineteenth century: in other words they were starting to do what they did in the anatolian peninsula from the Middle Ages.... and by 1900 forty percent of the Balkan people were assimilated in the moslem religion! For example, just a few thousand Turks settled in what is now Macedonia before the Napoleonic wars, but in 1890 they already were 1/4 of the macedonian population!      Turks "assimilate" soon or later everybody: ask the moslem Kurds.......

Ah, I forgot:   Italy and France were the western powers that promoted the creation of Albania from the Turkish empire.  As we can see from this old map of 1913 Greece wanted nearly all of central and south Albania, because the Greeks believed that in those areas there was a majority of Greek-speaking people!  Italians entered the WWI even because they were promised (under their leadership) a small Albanian state around Tirana, according to the secret Pact of London. Italy in those year has had a prime minister with albanian roots (from the albanian communities in southern Italy) who always promoted the close relationship between Italian and Albanian people.  Unfortunately in the next years appeared the Fascism with the italian nationalism and Albania was annexed to the Kingdom of Italy between 1939 and 1943.     This provoked the reaction against Italy (and the western world) of the communist Hoxha: when he took control of Albania he started to "erase" everything favorable to Italy that has been created before. Even the creation of an albanian language (based on the Gheg) with neo-latin characteristics, that has been supervised by the "Accademia Italiana della Lingua" during the fascist years. That is why the Hoxha regime created a standard albanian language based on the Tosk, full of Greek influences.  If Italy had won the war, Mussolini had promised to the Albanian fascist leaders the annexation to Albania of all Greek Epirus in his prospected conference of peace after WWII.

Anyway, Albania is not like Bulgaria or Serbia....it is only a few nautical miles from the Italian peninsula and has always been influenced by this proximity, EVEN LINGUISTICALLY. Only during the centuries of the Ottoman rule there was a break in this close relationship. As said before, there was a first influence/relationship during the Roman empire (the Japigi of Apulia were south illyrian) broken by the barbarian invasions of the middle ages, then the second one during the Renaissance Venetian republic, broken by the Turkish invasion, and now the third and actual influence/relationship with the creation of the Albanian state, future member of the Treaty of Rome (European Union). 

Greetings/Saluti/Saludos      Bruno

(sorry: I speak well only english, italian and spanish)

 

Anyway, if someone doubts about your Albanian past, I have borrowed from the Map forum the map of Albania around 1450 and I have posted it for you in this reply.

I have even copied the following Wikipedia section of the Albanian language about the latin roots in your beautiful language:

...."The name Tosk, Alb tosk�, was borrowed from Venetian tosko "rough, crude", literally "Tuscan".

The trouble of a homeland for the Albanians becomes all the more problematic. Despite Albanian nationalist claims to the contrary, the Albanians almost certainly came from farther north and inland than would suggest the present borders of Albania. First, Albanian has few early Greek borrowings, and the very word for Greek, g�rk, was borrowed from South Slavic; cf. Bulg. grŭk, Serb-Croat gr"k. Similarly, the Illyrian coast is not a likely source since Albanian has no inherited nautical or indigenous sea-faring terminology, and has instead supplemented this absence with subsequent borrowing from Latin or Greek or recent metaphorical lexical creations. Also, Albanian is believed to be the source for a number of grammatical and lexical similarities shared by otherwise dissimilar languages including Romanian, Bulgarian, Serbo-Croatian, and to some extent Greek. Also, there is a lack of Proto-Albanian place names in Illyria. Likewise, the word shqa, from Lat Sclavus "Slav" refers only to Bulgarians.

Instead, given the overwhelming amount of shepherding and mountaineering vocabulary as well as the extensive influence of Latin, it is more likely the Albanians come from north of the Jireček line, on the Latin-speaking side, perhaps from the late Roman province of Dardania from the western Balkans. The Northern Albanian Alps are referred to as Bjeshk�t e Namena, and this region's name is believed by some to come from Proto-Albanian be�kai t�i, giving Alb bjeshk� "mountain", borrowed ultimately from Vulgar Latin pastica "pasture".

Yet, one area in the late Roman province of Praevitana (modern northern Albania) seems to show an area where a primarily shepherding, transhumance population of Illyrians retained their culture. This area was based in the Mat district and the region of high mountains in Northern Albania, as well as in Dukagjin, Mirdit�, and the mountains of Drin, from where the population would descend in the summer to the lowlands of western Albania, the Black Drin (Drin i zi) river valley, and into parts of Old Serbia. Indeed, the region's complete lack of Latin place names seems to imply little latinization of any kind and a more likely spot for the origin of Albanian.

The period in which Proto-Albanian and Latin interacted was protracted and drawn out over six centuries, 1st c. AD to 6th or 7th c. AD. This is born out into roughly three layers of borrowings, the largest number belonging to the second or middle layer. The first, with the fewest borrowings, was a time of less important interaction. The final period, probably preceding the Slavic or Germanic invasions, also has a notably smaller amount of borrowings. Each layer is characterized by a different treatment of most vowels, the first layer having several that follow the evolution of Early Proto-Albanian into Albanian; later layers reflect vowel changes indemic to Late Latin and presumably Proto-Romance. Other formative changes include the syncretism of several noun case endings, especially in the plural, as well as the largescale palatalization.........."

 

Finally, allow me to write that my Durazzo friends told me that the Gheg you write is the literary. But the albanian regional dialects are different and often not intelligible between themselves. They speak the Shkodra dialect, influenced by the Venetian domination and by the liturgical use of the Catholic religion.  They say that they cannot understand well some Tosk dialects from the Butrintum area next to Greece. But on the contrary they are able to understand half of the Bari dialect, because of its Japigi/Messapian roots.  For example, "mule" is said in barese "musso" and in ghego "mushk", "car" is said "vetura" like in ghego/albanian, and "king" is said in my dialect " mre" similarly to the ghego "mret".

Furthermore, the forum is about the "sound" of the albanian language, not the grammar and/or syntaxis. And I am talking of similarities in sound and vocabulary ONLY.   Bruno (referring to prof. Trifone) said that the Ghego vocabulary is 55% loanworded from the Latin, and I agree with him. But some regional dialect (like the one of my friends) have more percentage of latin roots. That is why I am able to understand aproximately 2/3 of them, but I am NOT able to understand the Tosk dialects (not the literary language) from other friends I have, who are from the Argirocaster area.

Cordialita'      Maria D.

 

 

 

The English language has more loanwords from Latin -directly or indirectly(through the French, Italian, Spanish, etc..) than Albanian.  This fact, that 58% of the English words are borrowed from Latin, does not "seclude" the classification of the English as a German language.    The same happens with the Albanian language, with the 55% of the albanian words borrowed from Latin -directly or indirectly (through the Italian, French, Venetian, Neapolitan, Vlach, etc..), as Prof. Trifone wrote in 1998, after a two years field-research in Albania. 

 

Of course there are as many linguistic opinions as there are scholars, so some scholars can argue that there are only 40% of loanworded words from Latin in the Albanese language - as states the forumer Theodore Felix.

I believe that the 15% of difference is due to the fact that prof. Trifone (who is the Director of the School of Linguistics at the University of Siena, near Florence) includes even the words that are phonetically loanworded from a previous language borrowing.

Let me explain in plain English: 

1) There are many albanian words loanworded from English, like the words "manager" or "management". 

But these famous english words are loanworded originally from the italian merchants of the Renaissance. Actually, "management" comes from the italian "maneggiamento" that in renaissance lombard dialect is phonetically said "manegmen", because the italian "mano" means in english "hand" and so management =handlement.

2) Furthermore, there are many loanworded words that are syncopated and are difficult to realize from where they are borrowed.  For example, CAPITAL = CAPut ITALiae or head of Italy in syncopated Latin.

But during the Renaissance the word "capital" was extended to the financial area, so when K. Marx wrote his famous "Kapital" in German, he was using a word loaworded from Latin. That word was tranferred to Albanian to define the "Kapitalism", so hated by the Albanese dictator Hoxha.