Learning Albanian

Welcome to Learning Albanian.

Shqiponja është e madhe në Shqipëri. The eagle is big in Albania. është, 3rd pers. sing. for "to be" is a loan word from Latin

The name of the Albanian language in Albanian language is 'shqip' and the name of the country Albania is 'Shqipëri' (indefinite (later indef.)) and 'Shqipëria. (definite (later def.))

Q is the most far-out non-western compliance letter in the Albanian language. It is pronounced a sharp 's' like in chuck.

Both of these could be derived from the word sq.'shqiponja' == en."the eagle" or is it the other way around that shqip is so awesome that the name of the eagle then gotta be shqiponja.

First things to know

Albanian flag is very red and black (kuq e zi) and sq."Shqiponja ka dy kokat!" == en."The eagle has two heads!". ka is the 3rd person singular for 'to have'. dy means two. kokat is definite plural form of kokë, head

Nouns: first things to know

As you may notice the Albanian nouns have their article affixed to the end of the noun and not preceding it. Later-on code like this 'Shqipëri, -a' tells you that the definite form is formed by adding the definite article '-a' to it.

Albanian has 2 grammatical genders: masculine and feminine but worry not, sing. indef. nouns that end in a consonant are masculines and nouns ending in a vowel are feminines. Exceptions are if the noun clearly is of the other gender than the vowel/consonant rule would say.

Verbs: first things to know:

Albanian verbs have no infinite forms so all the dictionaries have them listed by the 1st person singular. This is handy for quickly learning to express what I do or what I would like to do.

Adjectives: first things to know

For those of you who know French you'll feel at home as adjectives and adverbs are placed after the noun also in Albanian.

Nouns and adjectives are connected by an adjectival article. For nominative these are 'i' for masculine and 'e' for feminine.

Building up vocabulary

Ë is not pronounced when it is at the end of a word. When inside a word it is like the syllable "uh".

Knowing the first things to know about nouns and adjectives now would be a good time to consider starting to play the Basic Albanian 1 on Memrise. Memrise programs your brain slightly differently than traditional methods, but hey, how harmful can it be?

Albanian has a lot of loan words but they come from a wide variety of languages including but not limited to Latin, English, Italian, French, Slavic, Germanic, Arabic, Swedish etc.

Jamaican shares from Albanian the word 'I ri'. In Albanian 'i ri' means both new and young for masculine nouns. Corresponding form for feminine nouns is 'e re'.

Lists of loan words

Mots empruntés pour apprenant qualifié en français

These often come via Italian or are originally from Latin by which the words not so magically happen to often be the same in French. Jukeboksi (talk)

1. Ansambël - un ensamble
2. Bursë - une bourse - this word means both, like in French, a stock exchange and a study grant for undergraduates
3. Grevë - une grève - a strike
4. Mur - un mur - a wall
5. Peizazh - un paysage - a scenery
6. Pishinë - une piscine - a swimming pool
7. Pjesë - une pièce - a piece
8. Plazh - une plage - a beach
9. Qiell - le ciel - the sky.
10. Shans - une chance - a chance
11. Shofer - un chauffeur - a driver
12. i,e trishtuar - triste - sad
13. Trupë - une troupe - a troupe, company, band
14. Vlerë - une valeur - a value

Loan words for Swedish speakers / Lån ord för svensktalande

1. Natë - en natt - a night.
2. Provë - ett prov - a test
3. Radhë - en rad - a row
4. Shkumë - en skum - a foam

Loan words for Russian speakers

1. Banjë - ванная - bathroom
2. Televizor - телевизор - television set

Loan words for Turkish speakers

1. Byrek - börek - a savory pie
2. Hamam - hamam - Turkish bath
3. Kolltuk - koltuk - armchair, seat

False friends

1. i,e habitur - surprised, astonished

Resources for learning Albanian

Albanian radio

• There are various streaming apps available in the app stores.
• Live Online Radio is a radio streaming service for the web. It has one of the largest selections of Albanian radios.
• Radio.garden has a beautiful user interface where you tune into radios by spinning a globe to the desired location of transmission.

Albanian TV

• https://albanian.tv/ offers streaming of many of the popular Albanian TV channels. It often works but occasionally the streams have trouble playing out without intermittent interruptions.

Books

• Colloquial Albanian (2012) is an excellent book for anglophones by Linda Mëniku and Héctor Campos. It is concise and well organized. The learning curve gets steeper towards the end. Routledge, the publisher has kindly made audio for all text passages downloadable for free from the book's homepage. As of 2018 the vocabulary of this excellent book have not yet been made to a memrise. A previous edition in the same Colloquial series from the early 90's does have a memrise of the vocabulary.
• Discovering Albanian 1 (2011) is also by Linda Mëniku and Héctor Campos and it consists of a textbook and workbook. As of 2018 there is no Discovering Albanian 2. The audio for the textbook can be accessed only via 2 CD's. Who has CD-players these days? Let's hope The University of Wisconsin Press wakes up and provides streaming and download at no extra charge.

Films with Albanian subtitles

• These you can find on Youtube by searching for 'filma me titra shqip'. Watching movies spoken in a language you understand while reading the subtitles in the language you want to learn is an excellent way to learn and refresh in a low-effort manner.
• There are also Albanian films. These are unfortunately not subtitled and the speech is often really rapid. French do subtitle some of their own films on TV5MONDE to aid the non-natives tackle the 5 words per second pace.
• RTSH Tani Android app offers the canals broadcast by RTSH including RTSH Film.

Wiki literature

• Wikibooks.org, Albanian version may be useful after you have gained the basics. Reading wikibooks of subjects and fields you already know may fast-forward your ability to read some text.
• Albanian Wikipedia Same advice, select subjects this way you have a clear idea of what it is likely to say. Wikipedia writing is less predictable than a textbook.

Online texts

• Foreign Services Institute (FSI) (1965) .pdf book on Albanian. From this I can recommend the history introduction of this text aimed mostly for US armed forces personel though naturally the FSI's work helps also non-military government workers to gain knowledge too. Albanian language has changed so much since 1965 that this cannot really be used to learn contemporary albanian but the intro is good if you are a history and culture puff.

Learning games

• Some flashcard software may be useful for learning specialized vocabulary. See the Wikipedia list of flashcard software for options.

• https://memrise.com is a spaced repetition flashcard and beyond language learning game and it has various memrises of varying quality. Memrise programs your brain slightly differently than traditional methods of vocabulary acquisition.

• Basic Albanian 1 (~170 things to learn) and
• Basic Albanian 2 (~210 things to learn) are of high quality, simple intros to the basic building blocks made by BaaS, an apparent memrise genius if you look at his productivity, scope and quality of his work.
• (No typing) Albanian Menu (~110 things to learn). " For people intending to travel to Albania this memrise obviously highly recommendable as we all gotta eat. No typing"-courses are fun because they are faster to play so you also get points faster.
• Discovering Albanian 1 (~1800 things to learn) a professional quality memrise based on the vocabulary lists of the book of the same name. This memrise contains audio in high quality, consistency and precision for practically all words and phrases to be learned. This memrise has over 1800 things to learn so it is the biggest available. The makers of this memrise have used sensible notation: For nouns indefinite and definite singular and indefinite plural are given etc. etc.