Post by Teuta1975 on Jan 25, 2008 18:19:12 GMT -5
Language history.
Albanian was proven to be an Indo-European language in 1854 by the German philologist Franz Bopp. The Albanian language is its own independent branch of the Indo-European language family with no living close relatives. There is no scholarly consensus over its origin. Some scholars maintain that it derives from the Illyrian language, and others claim that it derives from Daco-Thracian (Illyrian and Daco-Thracian however might have been closely related languages). This question is often loaded with political implications, but linguistically, the problem is very open; a recent linguist has even stated that Illyrian and Thracian may have been as close as Czech to Slovak (Paliga, 2002).
Albanian has been written with many different alphabets since the 15th century. Originally, the Tosk dialect was written with the Greek alphabet and the Gheg dialect was written with the Latin alphabet. They have both also been written with the Ottoman Turkish version of the Arabic alphabet, the Cyrillic alphabet, and some local alphabets. The modern Albanian alphabet was standardized in 1909, and is based on the Latin alphabet, with the addition of the letters e,c, and nine digraphs.
There are Albanian words which have cognates (of non-Latin origin) in Romanian and there is a theory that the language spoken by the Dacians before the Romanization was a language related to proto-Albanian. Although there's no documentation on the Albanian language prior to the 15th century AD, it is widely assumed that Greek and Balkan Latin (which was the ancestor of Romanian and other Balkan Romance languages), would exert a great influence on Albanian. After the Slavs arrived in the Balkans, another source of Albanian vocabulary were the Slavic language, especially Bulgarian. The rise of the Ottoman Empire meant an influx of Turkish words; this also entailed the borrowing of Persian and Arabic words through Turkish. Some loanwords from Modern Greek also exist especially in the south of Albania.
Albanian nouns are inflected by gender (masculine, feminine and neuter) and number (singular and plural). There are 4 declensions with 6 cases (nominative, accusative, genitive, dative, ablative and vocative), although the vocative only occurs with a limited number of words. The cases apply to both definite and indefinite nouns and there are numerous cases of syncretism. The equivalent of a genitive is formed by using the prepositions i/e/t/s with the dative.
Albanian has developed an analytical verbal structure in place of the earlier synthetic system, inherited from Proto-Indo-European. Its complex system of moods (6 types) and tenses (3 simple and 5 complex constructions) is distinctive among Balkan languages. There are two general types of conjugation. In Albanian the Constituent Order is Subject Verb Object and negation is expressed by the particles nuk or s' in front of the verb.
Albanian was proven to be an Indo-European language in 1854 by the German philologist Franz Bopp. The Albanian language is its own independent branch of the Indo-European language family with no living close relatives. There is no scholarly consensus over its origin. Some scholars maintain that it derives from the Illyrian language, and others claim that it derives from Daco-Thracian (Illyrian and Daco-Thracian however might have been closely related languages). This question is often loaded with political implications, but linguistically, the problem is very open; a recent linguist has even stated that Illyrian and Thracian may have been as close as Czech to Slovak (Paliga, 2002).
Albanian has been written with many different alphabets since the 15th century. Originally, the Tosk dialect was written with the Greek alphabet and the Gheg dialect was written with the Latin alphabet. They have both also been written with the Ottoman Turkish version of the Arabic alphabet, the Cyrillic alphabet, and some local alphabets. The modern Albanian alphabet was standardized in 1909, and is based on the Latin alphabet, with the addition of the letters e,c, and nine digraphs.
There are Albanian words which have cognates (of non-Latin origin) in Romanian and there is a theory that the language spoken by the Dacians before the Romanization was a language related to proto-Albanian. Although there's no documentation on the Albanian language prior to the 15th century AD, it is widely assumed that Greek and Balkan Latin (which was the ancestor of Romanian and other Balkan Romance languages), would exert a great influence on Albanian. After the Slavs arrived in the Balkans, another source of Albanian vocabulary were the Slavic language, especially Bulgarian. The rise of the Ottoman Empire meant an influx of Turkish words; this also entailed the borrowing of Persian and Arabic words through Turkish. Some loanwords from Modern Greek also exist especially in the south of Albania.
Albanian nouns are inflected by gender (masculine, feminine and neuter) and number (singular and plural). There are 4 declensions with 6 cases (nominative, accusative, genitive, dative, ablative and vocative), although the vocative only occurs with a limited number of words. The cases apply to both definite and indefinite nouns and there are numerous cases of syncretism. The equivalent of a genitive is formed by using the prepositions i/e/t/s with the dative.
Albanian has developed an analytical verbal structure in place of the earlier synthetic system, inherited from Proto-Indo-European. Its complex system of moods (6 types) and tenses (3 simple and 5 complex constructions) is distinctive among Balkan languages. There are two general types of conjugation. In Albanian the Constituent Order is Subject Verb Object and negation is expressed by the particles nuk or s' in front of the verb.