What does albanian

Time Traveler for Albanian The first known use of Albanian was circa See more words from the same year. Statistics for Albanian Look-up Popularity. Style: MLA. Get Word of the Day daily email! Test Your Vocabulary. Can you spell these 10 commonly misspelled words? Love words? These words are likely derived from the adverb shqip 'clearly' based on Latin excipere whence shqipoj 'speak clearly' , though there are alternative explanations.

In most other languages, a form with the same origin as Eng. Albanian is used e. Albanese , Serb. Albanac , Germ. Albaner , etc. In Turkish, the Albanians are called Arnavut , derived in some way from arvan-. The terms Albania and Albanian are not to be confused with the area in the Caucasus referred to in ancient texts as Albania or the language spoken there referred to as Albanian an ancestor of the modern Udi language spoken in Azerbaijan and a member of a language family with no confirmed connections to the Indo-European language family.

When compared with most of the other Indo-European languages, Albanian's first attestations are rather recent, with the first surviving fragment from the midth century and the first major text from the midth century. For this reason, these lessons cover Albanian from the modern standard language back to earlier attestations, starting with the modern variety to get a grounding in the language and working back to older material. Albanian forms a separate branch of Indo-European and cannot conclusively be closely connected with any other Indo-European language.

There have been attempts to connect Albanian with some of the sparsely attested ancient languages of the Balkans, particularly Illyrian but also Dacian and Thracian.

While this is plausible geographically, given that we know the Illyrians lived in an area that includes the modern Albanian-speaking area, there is no concrete linguistic evidence for any of these proposals. Some have proposed a connection between the ancestor of Albanian without assigning a specific identity to this ancestor and a Latinized variety of that ancestor that may have ultimately yielded Romanian, as there are several shared words not of Latin origin in both languages.

Mention of the Albanian people and the Albanian language appears rather late in the historical record. The first mentions of the Albanian language predate its first attestation by several centuries. Elsie describes a text in which the investigation of a robbery in Ragusa modern Dubrovnik, Croatia refers to a witness who said Audivi unam vocem clamantem in monte in lingua albanesca 'I heard a voice crying in the mountains in the Albanian language'.

In the Anonymi Descriptio Europae Orientalis 'Anonymous description of Eastern Europe', the author writes Habent enim Albani prefati linguam distinctam a Latinis, Grecis et Sclavis ita quod in nullo se inteligunt cum aliis nationibus 'The aformentioned Albanians have a language which is entirely distinct from that of the Latins, Greeks and Slavs such that in no way can they communicate with other peoples'.

While the earliest attested Albanian texts are from over a century later, the existence of Albanian texts is mentioned in in Directorium ad passagium faciendum by a French monk whose identity is uncertain : licet Albanenses aliam omnino linguam a latina habeant et diversam, tamen litteram latinam habent in uso et in omnibus suis libris 'The Albanians have a language different from Latin, although they use Latin letters in their books' note that this could potentially be saying that Albanians just wrote in Latin.

The oldest unambiguous attested Albanian is a single line embedded in a Latin document from Over the following century the attested Albanian "texts" are of similar size, including a single line in a Latin play from and a short list of Albanian words from Again, like the earlier attestations of Albanian, Buzuku's 'Missal' is written in Geg. Most of the early documentation of Albanian is in Geg, as that area was more difficult for the Ottomans to subdue and consequently discourage the use of Albanian.

Albanian dialects are traditionally divided into two groups: Geg dialects in the north, and Tosk dialects in the south. The dividing line is traditionally considered to be the Shkumbin river, which runs east-west though central Albania at approximately the 41st parallel north. Dialects spoken in Kosovo and Macedonia are Geg dialects, while those spoken in northwestern Greece are Tosk dialects. However, Standard Albanian is predominantly based on Tosk. Even though they are predominantly located in Geg-speaking areas, the standard variety used in Kosovo and Macedonia is the same one used in Albania i.

Standard Albanian, while predominantly based on Tosk, does also have some Geg features. For example, the Standard Albanian 1st person singular present verb ending -j is a Geg feature; most Tosk dialects, on the other hand, have the ending -nj. I will sing you an Albanian song,' cried Lord Byron; 'now be sentimental, and give me all your attention.

Albanian : pertaining to Albania, a province of western Turkey. The English consul was an old Albanian gentleman with delightful manners. An Albanian , who spoke Serb, told us to come in and have coffee. A person born or living in Albania. The language spoken in Albania, constituting a branch of the Indo-European family of languages.

Of, from, or pertaining to Albania , the Albanian people or the Albanian language. A person from Albania or of Albanian descent. The languages spoken by the Albanian people, primarily spoken in Albania and Kosovo. Of, from, or pertaining to Caucasian Albania, to its people or language.