Anything about Albanian language

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Albanian is a language of the extensive Indo-European family and is thus related to a certain degree to almost all other languages of Europe. At the same time, Albanian shows no particularly close historical affinity to any other language or language group within the Indo-European family, i.e. it forms a language group of its own.

Roman trading settlements on the Illyrian coast and Albania’s absorption into the Roman Empire, left noticeable traces in the language.

The Albanian language is divided into two basic dialect groups: Gheg in the north of the country and Tosk in the south. The Shkumbin River in central Albania, flowing past Elbasan into the Adriatic, forms the approximate boundary between the two dialect regions. Here, in a zone ten to twenty kilometers wide, intermediate dialects are also found.

The Gheg dialect group, characterized by the presence of nasal vowels, by the retention of the older n for Tosk r (e.g., venë “wine” for Tosk verë; Shqypnia “Albania” for Tosk Shqipëria) and by several distinct morphological features, can be further classified into a northwestern, a northeastern, a central and a southern Gheg dialect.

The Tosk dialect group is in general more homogenous, though it can be subdivided into a northern, a Labërian or Lab and a Çamërian or Çam dialect.

The modern literary language (gjuha letrare), agreed upon at the Orthography Congress of 20 to 25 November 1972, is a combination of the two dialect groups, though based about eighty percent on Tosk. It is now a widely accepted standard both in Albania and elsewhere, though there have been increasing tendencies in recent years to revive literary Gheg.

Arbereshe Tosk subdialect

This archaic variant of Albanian is spoken by about 90,000 people in southern Italy. Speakers are to be found, usually in remote mountain villages, in the regions of Calabria, Molise, Puglia, Basilicata, Campagnia, Abruzzi and Sicily.

Arvanitika Tosk subdialect

Arvanitika, also known as Arvanitic, is the variety of Albanian traditionally spoken by the Arvanites, a population group in Greece. Arvanitika is today endangered, as its speakers have been shifting to the use of Greek and most younger members of the community no longer speak it.

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[Ford]

Is the grammar difficult?

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Is the grammar difficult?

Yes but not impossible.

[Ford]

Yes but not impossible.

How would you say it compares to English (or any other language you might be familiar with)? Like in terms of similarity but also difficulty.

[Alboz]

How would you say it compares to English (or any other language you might be familiar with)? Like in terms of similarity but also difficulty.

I think the difficulties are the same as for languages such Italian and French. Also the pronounce maybe it's a little difficult initially.

I don't speak any Slavic language so i don't know how difficult (or not) can be for a Slav to learn Albanian. But we have some examples. This Bosnian dude isn't bad:



Also this Russian have mastered it pretty well (at min 1:00):

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