Modern Linguistic LandscapeOn the right is a graphic depicting the first languages in Kosovo. This project will mainly focus on contrasting Albanian and English, as Albanian is the overwhelmingly dominant language in Kosovo.
Russian Miniature depicting the Battle of Kosovo
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*Kosovo's Law on the Use of Language permitted English to be an official language only as long as United Nation's Mission in Kosovo resided in Kosovo (Demaj and Vandenbrouke, 2016, p. 30).
**The Law on the Use of Language also permitted the use of minority languages in municipalities in which the minority group is 5% of the population (Demaj and Vandenbrouke, 2016, p. 30). Origin of the Albanian LanguageThe Albanian Language is a Proto-Indo-European language. Unlike other Proto-Indo-European languages such as Germanic or Italic languages, it is in a family of its own. Despite only being distantly related to other languages, it still experienced major influence from other Proto-Indo-European languages, namely Greek, Latin, and Slavic languages.
Orel (2000) argues that the Greek influence on the language is the least important, because many of the loanwords from Greek are hard to distinguish from words inherited from Proto-Indo-European. Because of the long period of Roman rule, Latin has a much more significant influence on Albanian. The influence is evident in loanwords clearly of Latin origin such as the words below:
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Albanian Dialects
To the right is a graphic depicting the distribution of Albanian dialects in Kosovo. Albanian is split into two primary dialects, Gheg and Tosk, with several sub-dialects within each. As the graphic shows, The "Nororiental", or Northeast Gheg dialect is the dominant dialect in Kosovo, and will therefore be the dialect most addressed in this project.
Mallory and Adams (1997) defined the following features that distinguish the Northeast Gheg dialect from other Dialects of Albanian:
(Bouckaert, 2012)
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(Zikin, 2007)
English vs. AlbanianBoth English and Albanian and Proto-Indo-European languages with considerable influence from Latin. As stated earlier, Albanian is in a family of its own. Ringe et. (2002) all found a number of isoglosses between Old Albanian and Germanic languages. They argue, however, that this fact is insignificant, because Albanian has undergone significant change and has diverged from Germanic languages (p. 400).
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PhonologyConsonantsOn the right are two charts comparing Albanian and English consonants. The highlighted cells indicate consonants that are not present in the other language. Drawing from contrastive analysis, the voiced bilabial glide could be difficult for Albanian speakers to pronounce. Additionally, they may have a tendency to use Albanian phonemes in the place of English phonemes.
Take the example of the fully rolled [rr], compared with the English [r]. Lowman describes that the Albanian [rr] is likely to be unvoiced when in a final position where it become almost like a fricative, as in the Albanian "çimërr" [tʃi:mrr]. This phonological tendency in Albanian may transfer pronouncing the English [r] as [rr] when in the final position, as in the word "father" ([faðər]); however, one must be cautious in using contrastive analysis to predict difficulties in learning English. VowelsLowman identifies six vowels present in both Albanian and English: [i, e, a, o, u, ɛ]. Other sources also document the use of the schwa, which also appears in English. Additionally, Lowman provides Albanian vowels not present in English, such as [y] and [ø].
English also contains vowels that Albanian does not have: [ʊ, æ, ɔ, ɪ]. These vowels could be difficult for Albanian speakers to learn. Of the four diphthongs present in Albanian, [iu, eu, ɛu, and au], only one is present in English ([au]). Albanian does not contain the two other English diphthongs, [ay] and [oy]. SyntaxThe typical order of Albanian syntax is Subject Verb Object (SVO), which is the same as English; however, Kuroni and Trifoni (2014) documented that Albanian has a much more developed flexion. As a result, word order in Albanian is flexible, and will sometimes deviate from the SVO pattern, such as in indicative sentences, in which the verb may precede the subject . Another difference is that, unlike English, the Albanian adjective rarely precedes the noun it modifies, except in poetic language (p. 47).
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Albanian Consonants (Standard Albanian)
English Consonants (Standard American English)
(Lowman, 1932, p. 271-293)
Note: These consonants were documented when Standard Albanian was modeled after the southern Gheg dialect, which is the dialect most present in Kosovo. After World War II, Standard Albanian shifted to a northern Tosk dialect. MorphologyKurani and Muho (2011) describe the similarities and differences between Albanian and English morphology. They concluded that the similarities outnumbered the differences, which may bode well for Albanian speakers learning English. The differences they did note are listed below:
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Lexicon
The overlap in lexicon between English in Albanian primarily stems from inherited Proto-Indo-European words and borrowings from Latin. One example of cognates of Proto-Indo-European origin between the two languages is the Albanian "tre-tri" and the English "three." In the case of English, many of the Latin borrowings are indirect, because they come from French. For example, the English "laurel" comes from the French "laurier," which comes from the Latin "laurus." In contrast, the Albanian word "lar" comes directly from the Latin "laurus" (Orel, 2000, p. 35). As a result, the cognates between the languages may differ greatly, because the English words undergo two stages of change, first from Latin to French, and then from French to English.