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104-585: Albanian ( endonym : shqip [ʃcip] , gjuha shqipe [ˈɟuha ˈʃcipɛ] , or arbërisht [aɾbəˈɾiʃt] ) is an Indo-European language and the only surviving representative of the Albanoid branch , which belongs to the Paleo-Balkan group . It is the native language of the Albanian people . Standard Albanian is the official language of Albania and Kosovo , and

208-636: A dachsprache ("roof language"), in the way dialects of a national language within the same country usually are. There are three main groups of Arvanitic settlements in Greece. Most Arvanites live in the south of Greece, across Attica , Boeotia , the Peloponnese and some neighbouring areas and islands. A second, smaller group live in the northwest of Greece, in a zone contiguous with the Albanian-speaking lands proper. A third, outlying group

312-700: A pejorative way. For example, Romani people often prefer that term to exonyms such as Gypsy (from the name of Egypt ), and the French term bohémien , bohème (from the name of Bohemia ). People may also avoid exonyms for reasons of historical sensitivity, as in the case of German names for Polish and Czech places that, at one time, had been ethnically or politically German (e.g. Danzig/ Gdańsk , Auschwitz/ Oświęcim and Karlsbad/ Karlovy Vary ); and Russian names for non-Russian locations that were subsequently renamed or had their spelling changed (e.g. Kiev/ Kyiv ). In recent years, geographers have sought to reduce

416-676: A Latinis, Grecis et Sclauis ita quod in nullo se intelligunt cum aliis nationibus. (Namely, the above-mentioned Albanians have a language that is different from the languages of Latins, Greeks and Slavs, so that they do not understand each other at all.) The oldest attested document written in Albanian dates to 1462, while the first audio recording in the language was made by Norbert Jokl on 4 April 1914 in Vienna . However, as Fortson notes, Albanian written works existed before this point; they have simply been lost. The existence of written Albanian

520-604: A co-official language in North Macedonia and Montenegro , as well as a recognized minority language of Italy , Croatia , Romania and Serbia . It is also spoken in Greece and by the Albanian diaspora , which is generally concentrated in the Americas , Europe and Oceania . Albanian is estimated to have as many as 7.5 million native speakers. Albanian and other Paleo-Balkan languages had their formative core in

624-531: A common (spoken or written) Standard Arvanitika has taken place. At the same time, Arvanites do not use Standard Albanian as their standard language either, as they are generally not literate in the Latin-based standard Albanian orthography, and are not reported to use spoken-language media in Standard Albanian. In this sense, then, Arvanitika is not functionally subordinated to Standard Albanian as

728-573: A common period of prehistoric coexistence of several Indo-European dialects in the Balkans prior to 2000 BC. To this group would belong Albanian, Ancient Greek , Armenian , Phrygian , fragmentary attested languages such as Macedonian , Thracian , or Illyrian , and the relatively well-attested Messapic in Southern Italy. The common features of this group appear at the phonological, morphological, and lexical levels, presumably resulting from

832-677: A different writing system. For instance, Deutschland is the endonym for the country that is also known by the exonyms Germany and Germania in English and Italian , respectively, Alemania and Allemagne in Spanish and French , respectively, Niemcy in Polish , Saksa and Saksamaa in Finnish and Estonian . The terms autonym , endonym , exonym and xenonym are formed by adding specific prefixes to

936-472: A large amount (or the majority) of their sea environment lexicon. A similar phenomenon could be observed with agricultural terms. While the words for 'arable land', 'wheat', 'cereals', 'vineyard', 'yoke', 'harvesting', 'cattle breeding', etc. are native, the words for 'ploughing', 'farm' and 'farmer', agricultural practices, and some harvesting tools are foreign. This, again, points to intense contact with other languages and people, rather than providing evidence of

1040-559: A neutral name may be preferred so as to not offend anyone. Thus, an exonym such as Brussels in English could be used instead of favoring either one of the local names ( Dutch / Flemish : Brussel ; French : Bruxelles ). Other difficulties with endonyms have to do with pronunciation, spelling, and word category . The endonym may include sounds and spellings that are highly unfamiliar to speakers of other languages, making appropriate usage difficult if not impossible for an outsider. Over

1144-470: A number of isoglosses with Albanian. Other linguists linked the Albanian language with Latin , Greek and Armenian , while placing Germanic and Balto-Slavic in another branch of Indo-European. In current scholarship there is evidence that Albanian is closely related to Greek and Armenian, while the fact that it is a satem language is less significant. Armenian Greek Phrygian (extinct) Messapic (extinct) Gheg Tosk Messapic

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1248-602: A possible linguistic homeland (also known as a Urheimat ). The centre of Albanian settlement remained the Mat River. In 1079, the Albanians were recorded farther south in the valley of the Shkumbin River. The Shkumbin, a 181 km long river that lies near the old Via Egnatia , is approximately the boundary of the primary dialect division for Albanian, Tosk and Gheg . The characteristics of Tosk and Gheg in

1352-513: A relatively moderate number of lexical cognates. Many shared grammatical elements or features of these two branches do not corroborate the lexical isoglosses. Albanian also shares lexical linguistic affinity with Latin and Romance languages. Sharing linguistic features unique to the languages of the Balkans , Albanian also forms a part of the Balkan linguistic area or sprachbund . The place and

1456-535: A sample text in the three language forms. Trudgill (2004: 5) sums up that "[l]inguistically, there is no doubt that [Arvanitika] is a variety of Albanian". In terms of "ausbau" (sociolinguistic "upgrading" towards an autonomous standard language), the strongest indicator of autonomy is the existence of a separate writing system, the Greek-based Arvanitic alphabet . A very similar system was formerly in use also by other Tosk Albanian speakers between

1560-612: A similar form of the Greek alphabet (e.g. [8] ). Texts in Arvanitika have survived in the private correspondence between Arvanites who used the dialect. Such is the correspondence of Ioannis Orlandos with Georgios Kountouriotis and other letters by members of the Kountouriotis family written in the Arvanitika of Hydra with Greek script. In public use, Arvanitika has been used in election pamphlets of Attica and Boeotia in

1664-930: A strong sense of identity and are unique in that they speak an archaic dialect of Tosk Albanian called Arbëresh . In the United States and Canada, there are approximately 250,000 Albanian speakers. It is primarily spoken on the East Coast of the United States, in cities like New York City, Boston, Chicago, Philadelphia, and Detroit, as well as in parts of the states of New Jersey, Ohio, and Connecticut. In Argentina, there are nearly 40,000 Albanian speakers , mostly in Buenos Aires. Approximately 1.3 million people of Albanian ancestry live in Turkey , with more than 500,000 recognizing their ancestry, language and culture . There are other estimates, however, that place

1768-469: Is also closely related to Arbëresh , the dialect of Albanian in Italy , which largely goes back to Arvanite settlers from Greece. Italian Arbëresh has retained some words borrowed from Greek (for instance haristis 'thank you', from ευχαριστώ ; dhrom 'road', from δρόμος ; Ne 'yes', from ναι , in certain villages). Italo-Arbëresh and Graeco-Arvanitika have a mutually intelligible vocabulary base,

1872-562: Is also spoken by 450,000 Albanian immigrants in Greece, making it one of the commonly spoken languages in the country after Greek. Albanian is the third most common mother tongue among foreign residents in Italy . This is due to a substantial Albanian immigration to Italy. Italy has a historical Albanian minority of about 500,000, scattered across southern Italy, known as Arbëreshë . Approximately 1 million Albanians from Kosovo are dispersed throughout Germany , Switzerland and Austria . These are mainly immigrants from Kosovo who migrated during

1976-420: Is an established, non-native name for a group of people, individual person, geographical place, language, or dialect, meaning that it is used primarily outside the particular place inhabited by the group or linguistic community. Exonyms exist not only for historico-geographical reasons but also in consideration of difficulties when pronouncing foreign words, or from non-systematic attempts at transcribing into

2080-604: Is considered the closest language to Albanian, grouped in a common branch titled Illyric in Hyllested & Joseph (2022). Hyllested & Joseph (2022) in agreement with recent bibliography identify Greco-Phrygian as the IE branch closest to the Albanian-Messapic one. These two branches form an areal grouping – which is often called "Balkan IE" – with Armenian. The hypothesis of the " Balkan Indo-European " continuum posits

2184-686: Is explicitly mentioned in a letter attested from 1332, and the first preserved books, including both those in Gheg and in Tosk, share orthographic features that indicate that some form of common literary language had developed. By the Late Middle Ages , during the period of Humanism and the European Renaissance , the term lingua epirotica ' Epirotan language ' was preferred in the intellectual, literary, and clerical circles of

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2288-601: Is found in the northeast of Greece, in a few villages in Thrace . According to some authors, the term "Arvanitika" in its proper sense applies only to the southern group or to the southern and the Thracian groups together i.e. to those dialects that have been separated from the core of Albanian for several centuries. The dialects in the northwest are reported to be more similar to neighbouring Tosk dialects within Albania and to

2392-468: Is most commonly used. The changes to Hanyu Pinyin were not only financially costly but were unpopular with the locals, who opined that the Hanyu Pinyin versions were too difficult for non-Chinese or non-Mandarin speakers to pronounce. The government eventually stopped the changes by the 1990s, which has led to some place names within a locality having differing spellings. For example, Nee Soon Road and

2496-718: Is not its Dutch exonym. Old place names that have become outdated after renaming may afterward still be used as historicisms . For example, even today one would talk about the Siege of Leningrad , not the Siege of St. Petersburg because at that time (1941–1944) the city was called Leningrad. Likewise, one would say that Immanuel Kant was born in Königsberg in 1724, not in Kaliningrad ( Калининград ), as it has been called since 1946. Likewise, Istanbul (Turkish: İstanbul )

2600-563: Is now spelled Xinyi . However, districts like Tamsui and even Taipei itself are not spelled according to Hanyu Pinyin spelling rules. As a matter of fact, most names of Taiwanese cities are still spelled using Chinese postal romanization , including Taipei , Taichung , Taitung , Keelung , and Kaohsiung . During the 1980s, the Singapore Government encouraged the use of Hanyu Pinyin spelling for place names, especially those with Teochew, Hokkien or Cantonese names, as part of

2704-595: Is spoken in North-western Greece, while Arvanitika is spoken by the Arvanites in southern Greece. In addition, Arbëresh is spoken by the Arbëreshë people, descendants of 15th and 16th century migrants who settled in southeastern Italy, in small communities in the regions of Sicily and Calabria . These settlements originated from the (Arvanites) communities probably of Peloponnese known as Morea in

2808-484: Is spoken in the south, and Gheg spoken in the north. Standard Albanian is based on the Tosk dialect. The Shkumbin River is the rough dividing line between the two dialects. Gheg is divided into four sub-dialects: Northwest Gheg, Northeast Gheg, Central Gheg and Southern Gheg. It is primarily spoken in northern Albania, Kosovo , and throughout Montenegro and northwestern North Macedonia . One fairly divergent dialect

2912-497: Is still called Constantinople ( Κωνσταντινούπολη ) in Greek, although the name was changed in Turkish to dissociate the city from its Greek past between 1923 and 1930 (the name Istanbul itself derives from a Medieval Greek phrase ). Prior to Constantinople , the city was known in Greek as Byzantion ( Greek : Βυζάντιον , Latin : Byzantium ), named after its mythical founder, Byzas . Following independence from

3016-576: Is the Upper Reka dialect , which is however classified as Central Gheg. There is also a diaspora dialect in Croatia , the Arbanasi dialect . Tosk is divided into five sub-dialects, including Northern Tosk (the most numerous in speakers), Labërisht , Cham , Arvanitika , and Arbëresh . Tosk is spoken in southern Albania, southwestern North Macedonia and northern and southern Greece. Cham Albanian

3120-572: Is the human tendency towards neighbours to "be pejorative rather than complimentary, especially where there is a real or fancied difference in cultural level between the ingroup and the outgroup ." For example, Matisoff notes, Khang "an opprobrious term indicating mixed race or parentage" is the Palaung name for Jingpo people and the Jingpo name for Chin people ; both the Jingpo and Burmese use

3224-435: Is the most probable. Although Albanian shares lexical isoglosses with Greek , Germanic , and to a lesser extent Balto-Slavic , the vocabulary of Albanian is quite distinct. In 1995, Taylor, Ringe , and Warnow used quantitative linguistic techniques that appeared to obtain an Albanian subgrouping with Germanic, a result which the authors had already reasonably downplayed. Indeed, the Albanian and Germanic branches share

Albanian language - Misplaced Pages Continue

3328-566: Is the official language of Albania and Kosovo and a co-official language in North Macedonia and Montenegro . Albanian is a recognised minority language in Croatia , Italy , Romania and in Serbia . Albanian is also spoken by a minority in Greece , specifically in the Thesprotia and Preveza regional units and in a few villages in Ioannina and Florina regional units in Greece. It

3432-455: Is the variety of Albanian traditionally spoken by the Arvanites , a population group in Greece . Arvanitika was brought to southern Greece during the late Middle Ages by Albanian settlers who moved south from their homeland in present-day Albania in several waves. The dialect preserves elements of medieval Albanian, while also being significantly influenced by the Greek language . Arvanitika

3536-511: 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. The name Arvanítika and its native equivalent Arbërisht are derived from the ethnonym Arvanites , which in turn comes from the toponym Arbën or Arbër (Greek: Άρβανον), which in the Middle Ages referred to a region in modern Albania . Its native equivalents ( Arbërorë, Arbëreshë and others) used to be

3640-573: The Balkans after the Indo-European migrations in the region. Albanian in antiquity is often thought to have been an Illyrian language for obvious geographic and historical reasons, or otherwise an unmentioned Balkan Indo-European language that was closely related to Illyrian and Messapic . The Indo-European subfamily that gave rise to Albanian is called Albanoid in reference to a specific ethnolinguistically pertinent and historically compact language group. Whether descendants or sisters of what

3744-656: The Beijing dialect , became the official romanization method for Mandarin in the 1970s. As the Mandarin pronunciation does not perfectly map to an English phoneme , English speakers using either romanization will not pronounce the names correctly if standard English pronunciation is used. Nonetheless, many older English speakers still refer to the cities by their older English names, and even today they are often used in their traditional associations, such as Peking duck , Peking opera , and Peking University . As for Nanjing,

3848-523: The Congress of Dibra decided that Albanian schools would finally be allowed. Albanian is an isolate within the Indo-European language family; no other language has been conclusively linked to its branch . The only other languages that are the sole surviving members of a branch of Indo-European are Armenian and Greek. The Albanian language is part of the Indo-European language family and

3952-555: The Greek root word ónoma ( ὄνομα , 'name'), from Proto-Indo-European *h₃nómn̥ . The prefixes added to these terms are also derived from Greek: The terms autonym and xenonym also have different applications, thus leaving endonym and exonym as the preferred forms. Marcel Aurousseau , an Australian geographer , first used the term exonym in his work The Rendering of Geographical Names (1957). Endonyms and exonyms can be divided in three main categories: As it pertains to geographical features ,

4056-629: The Janissary of Muhammad Ali Pasha , an Albanian who became Wāli , and self-declared Khedive of Egypt and Sudan . In addition to the dynasty that he established, a large part of the former Egyptian and Sudanese aristocracy was of Albanian origin. In addition to the recent emigrants, there are older diasporic communities around the world. Albanian is also spoken by Albanian diaspora communities residing in Australia and New Zealand . The Albanian language has two distinct dialects, Tosk which

4160-752: The Korçë District , Kamnik in Kolonja , Kolsh in the Kukës District , Rashtan in Librazhd , and Nezir in the Mat District . As in other parts of Europe, these PreIE people joined the migratory Indo-European tribes that entered the Balkans and contributed to the formation of the historical Paleo-Balkan tribes. In terms of linguistics, the pre-Indo-European substrate language spoken in the southern Balkans probably influenced pre-Proto-Albanian ,

4264-863: The League of Prizren and culminated with the Congress of Manastir held by Albanian intellectuals from 14 to 22 November 1908, in Manastir (present day Bitola ), which decided on which alphabet to use, and what the standardised spelling would be for standard Albanian. This is how the literary language remains. The alphabet is the Latin alphabet with the addition of the letters ⟨ ë ⟩ , ⟨ ç ⟩ , and ten digraphs : dh , th , xh , gj , nj , ng , ll , rr , zh and sh . According to Robert Elsie : The hundred years between 1750 and 1850 were an age of astounding orthographic diversity in Albania. In this period,

Albanian language - Misplaced Pages Continue

4368-526: The Roman Empire applied the word " Walha " to foreigners they encountered and this evolved in West Germanic languages as a generic name for speakers of Celtic and later (as Celts became increasingly romanised) Romance languages; thence: During the late 20th century, the use of exonyms often became controversial. Groups often prefer that outsiders avoid exonyms where they have come to be used in

4472-557: The Singapore Armed Forces base Nee Soon Camp are both located in Yishun but retained the old spelling. Matisoff wrote, "A group's autonym is often egocentric, equating the name of the people with 'mankind in general,' or the name of the language with 'human speech'." In Basque , the term erdara/erdera is used for speakers of any language other than Basque (usually Spanish or French). Many millennia earlier,

4576-514: The Slavs are describing Germanic people as "mutes"—in contrast to themselves, "the speaking ones". The most common names of several Indigenous American tribes derive from pejorative exonyms. The name " Apache " most likely derives from a Zuni word meaning "enemy". The name " Sioux ", an abbreviated form of Nadouessioux , most likely derived from a Proto-Algonquian term, * -a·towe· ('foreign-speaking). The name " Comanche " comes from

4680-547: The Speak Mandarin Campaign to promote Mandarin and discourage the use of dialects. For example, the area of Nee Soon, named after Teochew -Peranakan businessman Lim Nee Soon (Hanyu Pinyin: Lín Yìshùn) became Yishun and the neighbourhood schools and places established following the change used the Hanyu Pinyin spelling. In contrast, Hougang is the Hanyu Pinyin spelling but the Hokkien pronunciation au-kang

4784-767: The Tosk dialect spoken in Southern Albania. However, it has received a great deal of influence from Greek , mostly related to the vocabulary and the phonological system. At the same time, it is reported to have preserved some conservative features that were lost in mainstream Albanian Tosk. For example, it has preserved certain syllable-initial consonant clusters which have been simplified in Standard Albanian (cf. Arvanitika gljuhë /ˈɡʎuxə/ ('language/tongue'), vs. Standard Albanian gjuhë /ˈɟuhə/ ). In recent times, linguists have observed signs of accelerated structural convergence towards Greek and structural simplification of

4888-541: The United Nations Group of Experts on Geographical Names defines: For example, India , China , Egypt , and Germany are the English-language exonyms corresponding to the endonyms Bhārat ( भारत ), Zhōngguó ( 中国 ), Masr ( مَصر ), and Deutschland , respectively. There are also typonyms of specific features, for example hydronyms for bodies of water. In

4992-511: The Ute word kɨmantsi meaning "enemy, stranger". The Ancestral Puebloans are also known as the "Anasazi", a Navajo word meaning "ancient enemies", and contemporary Puebloans discourage the use of the exonym. Various Native-American autonyms are sometimes explained to English readers as having literal translations of "original people" or "normal people", with implicit contrast to other first nations as not original or not normal. Although

5096-561: The "language". The term survives to this day in the Slavic languages (e.g. Ukrainian німці (nimtsi); Russian немцы (nemtsy), Slovene Nemčija), and was borrowed into Hungarian , Romanian , and Ottoman Turkish (in which case it referred specifically to Austria ). One of the more prominent theories regarding the origin of the term " Slav " suggests that it comes from the Slavic root slovo (hence " Slovakia " and " Slovenia " for example), meaning 'word' or 'speech'. In this context,

5200-692: The 14th century, but they failed to cite specific words. The oldest surviving documents written in Albanian are the " formula e pagëzimit " (Baptismal formula), Un'te paghesont' pr'emenit t'Atit e t'Birit e t'Spertit Senit . ("I baptize thee in the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit ") recorded by Pal Engjelli, Bishop of Durrës in 1462 in the Gheg dialect, and some New Testament verses from that period. The linguists Stefan Schumacher and Joachim Matzinger (University of Vienna) assert that

5304-545: The 16th and 18th century. However, this script is very rarely used in practice today, as Arvanitika is almost exclusively a spoken language confined to the private sphere. There is also some disagreement amongst Arvanites (as with the Aromanians ) as to whether the Latin alphabet should be used to write their language. Spoken Arvanitika is internally richly diversified into sub-dialects, and no further standardization towards

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5408-409: The 1990s. In Switzerland , the Albanian language is the sixth most spoken language with 176,293 native speakers. Albanian became an official language in North Macedonia on 15 January 2019. There are large numbers of Albanian speakers in the United States, Argentina, Chile, Uruguay, and Canada . Some of the first ethnic Albanians to arrive in the United States were the Arbëreshë. The Arbëreshë have

5512-435: The Albanian language was put to writing in at least ten different alphabets – most certainly a record for European languages. ... the diverse forms in which this old Balkan language was recorded, from the earliest documents to the beginning of the twentieth century ... consist of adaptations of the Latin, Greek, Arabic, and Cyrillic alphabets and (what is even more interesting) a number of locally invented writing systems. Most of

5616-427: The Albanians using the Latin alphabet in their writings. The oldest surviving attestation of modern Albanian is from 1462. The two main Albanian dialect groups (or varieties ), Gheg and Tosk , are primarily distinguished by phonological differences and are mutually intelligible in their standard varieties, with Gheg spoken to the north and Tosk spoken to the south of the Shkumbin river . Their characteristics in

5720-762: The Chinese word yeren ( 野人 ; 'wild men', 'savage', 'rustic people' ) as the name for Lisu people . As exonyms develop for places of significance for speakers of the language of the exonym, consequently, many European capitals have English exonyms, for example: In contrast, historically less-prominent capitals such as Ljubljana and Zagreb do not have English exonyms, but do have exonyms in languages spoken nearby, e.g. German : Laibach and Agram (the latter being obsolete); Italian : Lubiana and Zagabria . Madrid , Berlin , Oslo , and Amsterdam , with identical names in most major European languages , are exceptions. Some European cities might be considered partial exceptions, in that whilst

5824-491: The Greeks thought that all non-Greeks were uncultured and so called them " barbarians ", which eventually gave rise to the exonym " Berber ". Exonyms often describe others as "foreign-speaking", "non-speaking", or "nonsense-speaking". One example is the Slavic term for the Germans, nemtsi , possibly deriving from plural of nemy ("mute"); standard etymology has it that the Slavic peoples referred to their Germanic neighbors as "mutes" because they could not speak

5928-404: The Middle Ages. Among them the Arvanites call themselves Arbëror and sometime Arbëresh. The Arbëresh dialect is closely related to the Arvanites dialect with more Italian vocabulary absorbed during different periods of time. The Albanian language has been written using many alphabets since the earliest records from the 15th century. The history of Albanian language orthography is closely related to

6032-492: The Portuguese Colónia closely reflects the Latin original. In some cases, no standardised spelling is available, either because the language itself is unwritten (even unanalysed) or because there are competing non-standard spellings. Use of a misspelled endonym is perhaps more problematic than the respectful use of an existing exonym. Finally, an endonym may be a plural noun and may not naturally extend itself to adjectival usage in another language like English, which has

6136-419: The Province of Guangdong ( 广东 ; Guǎngdōng ). However, older English exonyms are sometimes used in certain contexts, for example: Peking (Beijing; duck , opera , etc.), Tsingtao (Qingdao), and Canton (Guangdong). In some cases the traditional English exonym is based on a local Chinese variety instead of Mandarin , in the case of Xiamen , where the name Amoy is closer to the Hokkien pronunciation. In

6240-402: The Russians used the village name of Chechen , medieval Europeans took the tribal name Tatar as emblematic for the whole Mongolic confederation (and then confused it with Tartarus , a word for Hell , to produce Tartar ), and the Magyar invaders were equated with the 500-years-earlier Hunnish invaders in the same territory, and were called Hungarians . The Germanic invaders of

6344-411: The Tosk dialect, Arvanitika in Greece and Arbëresh in southern Italy, have preserved archaic elements of the language. Ethnic Albanians constitute a large diaspora , with many having long assimilated in different cultures and communities. Consequently, Albanian-speakers do not correspond to the total ethnic Albanian population, as many ethnic Albanians may identify as Albanian but are unable to speak

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6448-406: The UK in 1947, many regions and cities have been renamed in accordance with local languages, or to change the English spelling to more closely match the indigenous local name. The name Madras , now Chennai , may be a special case . When the city was first settled by English people , in the early 17th century, both names were in use. They possibly referred to different villages which were fused into

6552-444: The ancestor idiom of Albanian. The extent of this linguistic impact cannot be determined with precision due to the uncertain position of Albanian among Paleo-Balkan languages and their scarce attestation. Some loanwords, however, have been proposed, such as shegë ' pomegranate ' or lëpjetë ' orach '; compare Pre-Greek λάπαθον , lápathon ' monk's rhubarb '. Endonym and exonym An exonym (also known as xenonym )

6656-430: The case of Beijing , the adoption of the exonym by media outlets quickly gave rise to a hyperforeignised pronunciation, with the result that many English speakers actualize the j in Beijing as / ʒ / . One exception of Pinyin standardization in mainland China is the spelling of the province Shaanxi , which is the mixed Gwoyeu Romatzyh –Pinyin spelling of the province. That is because if Pinyin were used to spell

6760-409: The case of endonyms and exonyms of language names (glossonyms), Chinese , German , and Dutch , for example, are English-language exonyms for the languages that are endonymously known as Zhōngwén ( 中文 ), Deutsch , and Nederlands , respectively. By their relation to endonyms, all exonyms can be divided into three main categories: Sometimes, a place name may be unable to use many of

6864-544: The contact between the various languages. The concept of this linguistic group is explained as a kind of language league of the Bronze Age (a specific areal-linguistics phenomenon), although it also consisted of languages that were related to each other. A common prestage posterior to PIE comprising Albanian, Greek, and Armenian, is considered as a possible scenario. In this light, due to the larger number of possible shared innovations between Greek and Armenian, it appears reasonable to assume, at least tentatively, that Albanian

6968-577: The cultural orientation and knowledge of certain foreign languages among Albanian writers. The earliest written Albanian records come from the Gheg area in makeshift spellings based on Italian or Greek. Originally, the Tosk dialect was written in the Greek alphabet and the Gheg dialect was written in the Latin script . Both dialects had also been written in the Ottoman Turkish version of the Arabic script , Cyrillic , and some local alphabets ( Elbasan , Vithkuqi , Todhri , Veso Bey, Jan Vellara and others, see original Albanian alphabets ). More specifically,

7072-760: The endonym Nederland is singular, while all the aforementioned translations except Irish are plural. Exonyms can also be divided into native and borrowed, e.g., from a third language. For example, the Slovene exonyms Dunaj ( Vienna ) and Benetke ( Venice ) are native, but the Avar name of Paris, Париж ( Parizh ) is borrowed from Russian Париж ( Parizh ), which comes from Polish Paryż , which comes from Italian Parigi . A substantial proportion of English-language exonyms for places in continental Europe are borrowed (or adapted) from French; for example: Many exonyms result from adaptations of an endonym into another language, mediated by differences in phonetics, while others may result from translation of

7176-404: The endonym, or as a reflection of the specific relationship an outsider group has with a local place or geographical feature. According to James Matisoff , who introduced the term autonym into linguistics , exonyms can also arise from the "egocentric" tendency of in-groups to identify themselves with "mankind in general", producing an endonym that out groups would not use, while another source

7280-409: The first literary records of Albanian date from the 16th century. The oldest known Albanian printed book, Meshari , or "missal", was written in 1555 by Gjon Buzuku , a Roman Catholic cleric. In 1635, Frang Bardhi wrote the first Latin–Albanian dictionary. The first Albanian school is believed to have been opened by Franciscans in 1638 in Pdhanë . One of the earliest Albanian dictionaries

7384-436: The historical event called the Nanking Massacre (1937) uses the city's older name because that was the name of the city at the time of occurrence. Likewise, many Korean cities like Busan and Incheon (formerly Pusan and Inchǒn respectively) also underwent changes in spelling due to changes in romanization, even though the Korean pronunciations have largely stayed the same. Exonyms and endonyms must not be confused with

7488-406: The language, which have been interpreted as signs of "language attrition", i.e. effects of impoverishment leading towards language death . Arvanitika has rarely been written. Reportedly ( GHM 1995 ), it has been written in both the Greek alphabet (often with the addition of the letters b, d, e and j, or diacritics, e.g. [7] ) and the Latin alphabet. Orthodox Tosk Albanians also used to write with

7592-535: The language. Standard Albanian is a standardised form of spoken Albanian based on Tosk . The language is spoken by approximately 6 million people in the Balkans, primarily in Albania, Kosovo , North Macedonia , Serbia , Montenegro and Greece . However, due to old communities in Italy and the large Albanian diaspora , the worldwide total of speakers is much higher than in Southern Europe and numbers approximately 7.5 million. The Albanian language

7696-463: The latter alphabets have now been forgotten and are unknown, even to the Albanians themselves. Albanian constitutes one of the eleven major branches of the Indo-European language family , within which it occupies an independent position. In 1854, Albanian was demonstrated to be an Indo-European language by the philologist Franz Bopp . Albanian was formerly compared by a few Indo-European linguists with Germanic and Balto-Slavic , all of which share

7800-820: The letters when transliterated into an exonym because of the corresponding language's lack of common sounds. Māori , having only one liquid consonant , is an example of this here. London (originally Latin : Londinium ), for example, is known by the cognate exonyms: An example of a translated exonym is the name for the Netherlands ( Nederland in Dutch) used, respectively, in German ( Niederlande ), French ( Pays-Bas ), Italian ( Paesi Bassi ), Spanish ( Países Bajos ), Irish ( An Ísiltír ), Portuguese ( Países Baixos ) and Romanian ( Țările de Jos ), all of which mean " Low Countries ". However,

7904-471: The linguistic systems), linguists' assessment of the degree of mutual intelligibility between Arvanitika and Standard Tosk range from fairly high to only partial (Ethnologue). The Ethnologue also mentions that mutual intelligibility may even be problematic between different subdialects within Arvanitika. Mutual intelligibility between Standard Tosk and Arvanitika is higher than that between the two main dialect groups within Albanian, Tosk and Gheg. See below for

8008-427: The names for fish and for agricultural activities (such as ploughing ) are borrowed from other languages. A deeper analysis of the vocabulary, however, shows that could be a consequence of a prolonged Latin domination of the coastal and plain areas of the country, rather than evidence of the original environment in which the Albanian language was formed. For example, the word for 'fish' is borrowed from Latin, but not

8112-492: The new settlement. In any case, Madras became the exonym, while more recently, Chennai became the endonym. Madrasi, a term for a native of the city, has often been used derogatorily to refer to the people of Dravidian origin from the southern states of India . Arvanitika Arvanitika ( / ˌ ɑːr v ə ˈ n ɪ t ɪ k ə / ; Arvanitika: αρbε̰ρίσ̈τ , romanized : arbërisht ; Greek : αρβανίτικα , romanized : arvanítika ), also known as Arvanitic ,

8216-434: The number of exonyms were over-optimistic and not possible to realise in an intended way. The reason would appear to be that many exonyms have become common words in a language and can be seen as part of the language's cultural heritage. In some situations, the use of exonyms can be preferred. For instance, in multilingual cities such as Brussels , which is known for its linguistic tensions between Dutch- and French-speakers,

8320-517: The number of people in Turkey with Albanian ancestry and or background upward to 5 million. However, the vast majority of this population is assimilated and no longer possesses fluency in the Albanian language, though a vibrant Albanian community maintains its distinct identity in Istanbul to this day. Egypt also lays claim to about 18,000 Albanians, mostly Tosk speakers. Many are descendants of

8424-405: The only surviving representative of its own branch , which belongs to the Paleo-Balkan group . Although it is still uncertain which ancient mentioned language of the Balkans it continues, or where in the region its speakers lived. In general, there is insufficient evidence to connect Albanian with one of those languages, whether Illyrian , Thracian , or Dacian .Among these possibilities, Illyrian

8528-557: The pronunciation for several names of Chinese cities such as Beijing and Nanjing has not changed for quite some time while in Mandarin Chinese (although the prestige dialect shifted from Nanjing dialect to Beijing dialect during the 19th century), they were called Peking and Nanking in English due to the older Chinese postal romanization convention, based largely on the Nanjing dialect . Pinyin , based largely on

8632-520: The propensity to use the adjectives for describing culture and language. Sometimes the government of a country tries to endorse the use of an endonym instead of traditional exonyms outside the country: Following the 1979 declaration of Hanyu Pinyin spelling as the standard romanisation of Chinese , many Chinese endonyms have successfully replaced English exonyms, especially city and most provincial names in mainland China , for example: Beijing ( 北京 ; Běijīng ), Qingdao ( 青岛 ; Qīngdǎo ), and

8736-474: The province, it would be indistinguishable from its neighboring province Shanxi , where the pronunciations of the two provinces only differ by tones, which are usually not written down when used in English. In Taiwan, however, the standardization of Hanyu Pinyin has only seen mixed results. In Taipei , most (but not all) street and district names shifted to Hanyu Pinyin. For example, the Sinyi District

8840-563: The results of geographical renaming as in the case of Saint Petersburg , which became Petrograd ( Петроград ) in 1914, Leningrad ( Ленинград ) in 1924, and again Saint Petersburg ( Санкт-Петербург , Sankt-Peterbúrg ) in 1991. In this case, although Saint Petersburg has a Dutch etymology, it was never a Dutch exonym for the city between 1914 and 1991, just as Nieuw Amsterdam , the Dutch name of New York City until 1664,

8944-441: The self-designation of Albanians in general. In the past Arvanitika had sometimes been described as "Graeco-Albanian" and the like (e.g., Furikis, 1934); although today many Arvanites consider such names offensive, they generally identify nationally and ethnically as Greeks and not Albanians . Arvanitika is part of the Tosk dialect group of Albanian, and as such closely related to the varieties spoken across southern Albania. It

9048-418: The speech of the former Cham Albanians (Çamërishte) , who used to live in the same region. These dialects are classified by Ethnologue as part of core Tosk Albanian, as opposed to "Arvanitika Albanian" in the narrow sense, although Ethnologue notes that the term "Arvanitika" is also often applied indiscriminately to both forms in Greece. In their own language, some groups in the north-west are reported to use

9152-475: The spelling is the same across languages, the pronunciation can differ. For example, the city of Paris is spelled the same way in French and English, but the French pronunciation [ paʁi ] is different from the English pronunciation [ ˈpærɪs ]. For places considered to be of lesser significance, attempts to reproduce local names have been made in English since the time of the Crusades . Livorno , for instance,

9256-706: The term Shqip ( Albanian language ) to refer to their own language as well as to that of Albanian nationals, and this has sometimes been interpreted as implying that they are ethnically Albanians. The Arvanitika of southern Greece is richly sub-divided into local dialects. Sasse (1991) distinguishes as many as eleven dialect groups within that area: West Attic, Southeast Attic, Northeast-Attic-Boeotian, West Boeotian, Central Boeotian, Northeast Peloponnesian, Northwest Peloponnesian, South Peloponnesian, West Peloponnesian, Euboean, and Andriote. Estimated numbers of speakers of Arvanitika vary widely, between 30,000 and 150,000. These figures include "terminal speakers" (Tsitsipis 1998) of

9360-476: The time that the Albanian language was formed are uncertain. The American linguist Eric Hamp has said that during an unknown chronological period a pre-Albanian population (termed as "Albanoid" by Hamp) inhabited areas stretching from Poland to the southwestern Balkans. Further analysis has suggested that it was in a mountainous region rather than on a plain or seacoast. The words for plants and animals characteristic of mountainous regions are entirely original, but

9464-561: The time, and used as a synonym for the Albanian language. Published in Rome in 1635, by the Albanian bishop and writer Frang Bardhi, the first dictionary of the Albanian language was titled Latin : Dictionarium latino-epiroticum ' Latin-Epirotan dictionary ' . During the five-century period of the Ottoman presence in Albania , the language was not officially recognised until 1909, when

9568-1016: The treatment of both native words and loanwords provide evidence that the split into the northern and the southern dialects occurred after Christianisation of the region (4th century AD), and most likely not later than the 6th century AD, hence possibly occupying roughly their present area divided by the Shkumbin river since the Post-Roman and Pre-Slavic period, straddling the Jireček Line . Centuries-old communities speaking Albanian dialects can be found scattered in Greece (the Arvanites and some communities in Epirus , Western Macedonia and Western Thrace ), Croatia (the Arbanasi ), Italy (the Arbëreshë ) as well as in Romania , Turkey and Ukraine . The Malsia e Madhe Gheg Albanian and two varieties of

9672-457: The treatment of the native words and loanwords from other languages are evidence that the dialectal split preceded the Slavic migrations to the Balkans , which means that in that period (the 5th to 6th centuries AD), Albanians were occupying nearly the same area around the Shkumbin river, which straddled the Jireček Line . References to the existence of Albanian as a distinct language survive from

9776-487: The unintelligible elements of the two dialects stem from the usage of Italian or Greek modernisms in the absence of native ones. While linguistic scholarship unanimously describes Arvanitika as a dialect of Albanian many Arvanites are reported to dislike the use of the name "Albanian" to designate it. Sociolinguistic work has described Arvanitika within the conceptual framework of "ausbausprachen" and " abstandssprachen " . In terms of "abstand" (objective difference of

9880-710: The use of exonyms to avoid this kind of problem. For example, it is now common for Spanish speakers to refer to the Turkish capital as Ankara rather than use the Spanish exonym Angora . Another example, it is now common for Italian speakers to refer to some African states as Mauritius and Seychelles rather than use the Italian exonyms Maurizio and Seicelle . According to the United Nations Statistics Division : Time has, however, shown that initial ambitious attempts to rapidly decrease

9984-421: The word for 'gills' which is native. Indigenous are also the words for 'ship', 'raft', 'navigation', 'sea shelves' and a few names of fish kinds, but not the words for 'sail', 'row' and 'harbor'; objects pertaining to navigation itself and a large part of sea fauna. This rather shows that Proto-Albanians were pushed away from coastal areas in early times (probably after the Latin conquest of the region) and thus lost

10088-544: The writers from northern Albania and under the influence of the Catholic Church used Latin letters, those in southern Albania and under the influence of the Greek Orthodox church used Greek letters, while others throughout Albania and under the influence of Islam used Arabic letters. There were initial attempts to create an original Albanian alphabet during the 1750–1850 period. These attempts intensified after

10192-489: The years, the endonym may have undergone phonetic changes, either in the original language or the borrowing language, thus changing an endonym into an exonym, as in the case of Paris , where the s was formerly pronounced in French. Another example is the endonym for the German city of Cologne , where the Latin original of Colonia has evolved into Köln in German, while the Italian and Spanish exonym Colonia or

10296-474: The younger generation, who have only acquired an imperfect command of the language and are unlikely to pass it on to future generations. The number of villages with traditional Arvanite populations is estimated to more than 500. There are no monolingual Arvanitika-speakers, as all are today bilingual in Greek. Arvanitika is considered an endangered language due to the large-scale language shift towards Greek in recent decades. Arvanitika shares many features with

10400-527: Was Leghorn because it was an Italian port essential to English merchants and, by the 18th century, to the British Navy ; not far away, Rapallo , a minor port on the same sea, never received an exonym. In earlier times, the name of the first tribe or village encountered became the exonym for the whole people beyond. Thus, the Romans used the tribal names Graecus (Greek) and Germanus (Germanic),

10504-475: Was called ' Illyrian ' by classical sources, Albanian and Messapic , on the basis of shared features and innovations, are grouped together in a common branch in the current phylogenetic classification of the Indo-European language family. The first written mention of Albanian was in 1284 in a witness testimony from the Republic of Ragusa , while a letter written by Dominican Friar Gulielmus Adea in 1332 mentions

10608-535: Was on 14 July 1284 in Ragusa in modern Croatia ( Dubrovnik ) when a crime witness named Matthew testified: "I heard a voice crying on the mountain in the Albanian language" ( Latin : Audivi unam vocem, clamantem in monte in lingua albanesca ). The Albanian language is also mentioned in the Descriptio Europae Orientalis dated in 1308: Habent enim Albani prefati linguam distinctam

10712-473: Was the first Balkan IE language to branch off. This split and the following ones were perhaps very close in time, allowing only a narrow time frame for shared innovations. Albanian represents one of the core languages of the Balkan Sprachbund . Glottolog and Ethnologue recognize four Albanian languages. They are classified as follows: The first attested written mention of the Albanian language

10816-679: Was written in 1693; it was the Italian manuscript Pratichae Schrivaneschae authored by the Montenegrin sea captain Julije Balović and includes a multilingual dictionary of hundreds of the most frequently used words in everyday life in Italian, Slavic, Greek, Albanian, and Turkish . Pre-Indo-European (PreIE) sites are found throughout the territory of Albania. Such PreIE sites existed in Maliq , Vashtëmi , Burimas , Barç , Dërsnik in

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