The Case for Albanian

A friend of mine has posted a very interesting article from The Economist on his Facebook page (thank you, A. S.), which discusses the difficulty of learning certain languages. English with its very irregular pronunciation and spelling makes the list, as well as highly inflected languages such as German, Latin, and Slavic languages. Here, I would like to make a short case for Albanian, which did not appear in that list and, in my opinion, should have.... :(

Albanian is, at the origin, and Indo-European language, though it has evolved to such an extent that it was not proven to be Indo-European until the XIX century. Part of the argument for the Indo-European origin are also its numerous inflections.

Albanian has three genders, masculine, feminine, and neuter. The first two are the most common and they comprise almost all the words in Albanian. The last is mostly used for words related to the body and its conditions, such as 'dhjamët' (hernia), 'të verdhët' (jaundice), 'të ftohtët' (cold), etc.. Masculine or feminine nouns can be singular or plural (if logic dictates) and they are declined into five primary cases (rasa): nominative (emërore), genitive (gjinore), dative (dhanore), accusative (kallëzore), and ablative (rrjedhore). There is also a vocative case (thirrore), but it is so infrequently used that it is not even taught in grammar cases; it mostly consists of an 'O' before the non-declined form of the noun, which is a form of its own. In general, then, every noun (proper ones included in the singular) has twelve primary and common forms to be remembered by, though some may be identical.

e.g.: punë (work, singular / plural)

Undeclined: punë / punë

Nominative: puna / punët

Genitive: i/e/të punës / i/e/të punëve

Dative: punës / punëve

Accusative: punën / punët

Ablative: prej pune / prej punësh

The same cases exist for personal pronouns as well as adjectives, which have to agree with the noun they modify not only in gender and number, but also in case. Moreover, there are many endings to feminine or masculine nouns and they all require their own method of transforming them into plural or of declining them into the five cases.

Verbs are also quirky and highly inflected. First of all, when asking someone to conjugate a verb, we never use the infinitive (as in, conjugate the verb 'to be'); instead we use the 'representative form of the verb' (formën përfaqësuese të foljes), which is the verb in its present indicative, first person singular form. There are eight tenses in the indicative mood (mënyra dëftore) in Albanian: simple present (e tashme), imperfect (e pakryer), simple past (e kryer e thjeshtë), present perfect (e kryer), pluperfect (më se e kryer), past anterior (e kryer e tejshkuar), simple future (e ardhme), and future anterior (e ardhme e përparme). Besides the indicative, there are five other moods in Albanian: subjunctive (lidhore), conditional (kushtore), imperative (urdhërore), admirative (habitore), and optative (dëshirore). The good news is that some of these moods do not have forms in all the tenses or persons (mostly for logical reasons).

Like many other languages, Albanian also has three unconjugated forms of the verb: the infinitive (paskajore), present participle (përcjellore), and past participle (pjesore). Verbs also have transitive/intransitive and reflexive/non-reflexive forms, as well as a passive and active voice.

There is also something to be said about pronunciation. Standard Albanian has thirty-six sounds, each represented by a letter (or digraphs with their own place in the alphabet). Although most are shared by English and other western languages, two (Q [c] and Gj [ɟ]) are unique to Albanian (and, some say, Hungarian, though I'd have to hear them pronounce them). You can find the rest on Wikipedia or something.

Spoken Albanian is highly varied, too, depending on the region where you find yourself. Although all Albanians are educated in standard Albanian, most use regional sounds, words, expressions, and inflections. The two main dialects comprising these regional 'accents' are mutually intelligible for Albanians, though I don't know how a foreigner will fare with them.

That's it.... I'll add more if I think of anything.