Albanian (
Gjuha shqipe pronounced
['?uha '?cip?]) is an
Indo-European language spoken by nearly 6 million people,
[1] primarily in
Albania and
Kosovo but also in other areas of the
Balkans in which there is an Albanian population, including the west of
Republic of Macedonia,
Montenegro, and southern
Serbia. Albanian is also spoken by communities in
Greece, along the eastern coast of southern
Italy, and on the island of
Sicily. Additionally, speakers of Albanian can be found elsewhere throughout the latter two countries resulting from a modern diaspora, originating from the Balkans, that also includes
Scandinavia,
Switzerland,
Germany,
United Kingdom,
Turkey,
Australia,
New Zealand,
Canada and the
United States.
Albanian was proved to be an Indo-European language in 1854 by the German philologist Franz Bopp. The Albanian language constitutes its own branch of the Indo-European language family.
Some scholars believe that Albanian derives from Illyrian[2][3]while others,[4] claim that it derives from Daco-Thracian. (Illyrian and Daco-Thracian, however, may have formed a sprachbund; see Thraco-Illyrian.)
Establishing longer relations, Albanian is often compared to Balto-Slavic on the one hand and Germanic on the other, both of which share a number of isoglosses with Albanian. Moreover, Albanian has undergone a vowel shift in which stressed, long o has fallen to a, much like in the former and opposite the latter. Likewise, Albanian has taken the old relative jos and innovatively used it exclusively to qualify adjectives, much in the way Balto-Slavic has used this word to provide the definite ending of adjectives.
