OverviewEnglish is increasingly popular among youth in Kosovo as it is seen as a symbol of modernity. Research on the Kosovar character of English is still slim, but analysis of Albanian English can inform on what Kosovar English is like, as Albanian is the overwhelmingly dominant language in the country.
SyntaxRista-Dema (2008) analyzed verb-subject constructions in several English language newspaper articles in Albania. The following is an excerpt from his research:
"In this activity took part many SP and government officials among them the member of the Chairmanship of SP Mr. Luan M. Rama, who is at the same time a deput[e] of Bulqiza" This sentence indicates a transfer of the fluid sentence structure in Albanian to English. Rista-Dema delineated three categories for the use of verb-subject constructions:
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The video above demonstrates students from Kosovo learning various different English idioms. Many of them speak English with a pronunciation that is almost indistinguishable from Standard American English. Notice that at 0:05, the woman shortens "break a leg" to "break leg," deleting the indefinite article. This feature demonstrates a transfer of an Albanian morphological feature identified by Kurani and Muho (2011), which is that in Albanian, the use of an article is not necessary when the predicate is expressed by a noun.
PhonologyOn the left is a video of Hashim Thaçi, the current president of Kosovo. His speech demonstrates features of Kosovar English phonology:
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