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Tosk
Tosk ( sq-definite, toskërishtja) is the southern group of dialects of the Albanian language, spoken by the ethnographic group known as Tosks. The line of demarcation between Tosk and Gheg (the northern variety) is the Shkumbin River. Tosk is the basis of the standard Albanian language. Major Tosk-speaking groups include the Myzeqars of Myzeqe, Labs of Labëria, Chams of Çamëria, Arvanites of Greece and the Arbëreshë of Italy, as well as the original inhabitants of Mandritsa in Bulgaria. In North Macedonia, there were approximately 3000 speakers in the early 1980s. Tosk features * Rhotacism: Proto-Albanian ''*-n-'' becomes ''-r-'' (e.g. ''rëra'' "sand") * Tosk dialects preserve groups ''mb'', ''ngj'' and ''nd'' assimilated to ''m'', ''nj'' and ''n'' in Geg. * Proto-Albanian ''*ō'' becomes ''va''. * Nasal vowels: There is a lack of nasal vowels in Tosk (e.g. ''sy'' "eye") and Late Proto-Albanian ''*â'' plus a nasal becomes ''ë'' (e.g. ''nëntë'' "nine"). * e-vowel: ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Tosks
Tosks ( sq, Toskët) are one of two major dialectal subgroups of Albanians (the other being the Ghegs) differentiated by their cultural, linguistic, social and religious characteristics. Territory ''Tosk'' may refer to the Tosk-speaking Albanian population of southern Albania and internal subgroups include the Myzeqars of Myzeqe. The Labs of Labëria (name version in sq, sing: Lab, pl. Lebër, also dial. sing.: Lap) and Chams of Çamëria are separate southern Albanian subgroups "In fact the Liaps and Tsams claimed to be autonomous tribes, distinct and separate from the Gegs and Tosks" "The Albanians are divided into two subgroups: southerners (Tosks, Labs and Chams) and northerners (Gegs), with a border formed by the river Shkumbin." "In historical literature the Chams are thought to form one of the four Albanian tribes (the Labs, Tosks and Gegs are the other three)." which at times are also included in the category of Tosks due to ethno-cultural and dialectal similarities. The ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Albanian Language
Albanian ( endonym: or ) is an Indo-European language and an independent branch of that family of languages. It is spoken by the Albanians in the Balkans and by the Albanian diaspora, which is generally concentrated in the Americas, Europe and Oceania. With about 7.5 million speakers, it comprises an independent branch within the Indo-European languages and is not closely related to any other modern Indo-European language. Albanian was first attested in the 15th century and it is a descendant of one of the Paleo-Balkan languages of antiquity. For historical and geographical reasons,: "It is often thought (for obvious geographic reasons) that Albanian descends from ancient Illyrian (see above), but this cannot be ascertained as we know next to nothing about Illyrian itself." the prevailing opinion among modern historians and linguists is that the Albanian language is a descendant of a southern Illyrian dialect spoken in much the same region in classical times. Alternativ ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Proto-Albanian Language
The Proto-Albanian language is the unattested language from which Albanian later developed. Albanian evolved from an ancient Paleo-Balkan language, traditionally thought to be Illyrian, or otherwise a totally unattested Balkan Indo-European language that was closely related to Illyrian and Messapic,; which is sometimes also referred to as Albanoid. Proto-Albanian is reconstructed by way of the comparative method between the Tosk and Gheg dialects, as well as the treatment of loanwords, the most important of which are those from Latin (dated by De Vaan to the period 167 BCE to 400 CE) and from Slavic (dated from 600 CE onward). The evidence from loanwords allows linguists to construct in great detail the shape of native words at the points of major influxes of loans from well-attested languages. Proto-Albanian is broken up into different stages which are usually delimited by the onset of contact with different well-attested languages. Its earliest stages are dated to the ear ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Arvanitika
Arvanitika (; Arvanitika: , ; Greek: , ), also known as Arvanitic, is the variety of Albanian traditionally spoken by the Arvanites, a population group in Greece. Arvanitika 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. Name The name ''Arvanítika'' and its native equivalent Arbërisht are derived from the ethnonym ''Arvanites'', which in turn comes from the toponym Arbëna (Greek: Άρβανα), which in the Middle Ages referred to a region in what is today Albania. Its native equivalents (''Arbërorë, Arbëreshë'' and others) used to be 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. Classification Arvanitika was brought to southern Gr ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Gheg Albanian
Gheg (also spelled Geg; Gheg Albanian: ''gegnishtja'', Standard sq, gegërishtja) is one of the two major varieties of Albanian, the other being Tosk. The geographic dividing line between the two varieties is the Shkumbin River, which winds its way through central Albania. Gheg is spoken in northern and central Albania, Kosovo, northwestern North Macedonia, southeastern Montenegro and southern Serbia by the Albanian dialectal subgroup known as Ghegs.Joseph 2003, When Languages Collide: Perspectives on Language Conflict, Language Competition, and Language Coexistence, p. 266: "Northeastern Geg" Gheg does not have any official status as a written language in any country. Publications in Kosovo and North Macedonia are in Standard Albanian, which is based on Tosk. However, some authors continue to write in Gheg. History Before World War II, there had been no official attempt to enforce a unified Albanian literary language; both literary Gheg and literary Tosk were used. The comm ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Arbëresh Language
Arbëresh (, also known as ''Arbërisht'', ''Arbreshi'', ''Arbërishtja'' or ''Tarbrisht'') is the variety of Albanian spoken by the Arbëreshë people of Italy. It is derived from the Albanian Tosk spoken in Albania, in Epirus and is also spoken by the Arvanites, with endonym Arvanitika. History Between the 11th and 14th centuries, Albanian-speaking mercenaries from the areas of Albania, Epirus and now Greece, were often recruited by the Franks, Aragonese, Italians and Byzantines. The invasion of the Balkans by the Ottoman Turks in the 15th century caused large waves of emigration from the Balkans to southern Italy. In 1448, the King of Naples, Alfonso V of Aragon, asked the Albanian noble Skanderbeg to transfer to his service ethnic Albanian mercenaries. Led by Demetrio Reres and his two sons, these men and their families were settled in twelve villages in the Catanzaro area of Calabria. The following year, some of their relatives and other Albanians were settled in fou ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Çamëria
Chameria ( sq, Çamëria; el, Τσαμουριά, ''Tsamouriá''; tr, Çamlık) is a term used today mostly by Albanians to refer to parts of the coastal region of Epirus in southern Albania and Greece, traditionally associated with the Albanian ethnic subgroup of the Chams.Elsie, Robert and Bejtullah D. Destani (2012). ''The Cham Albanians of Greece: A Documentary History''. IB Tauris. . p. XXIX. "Chameria is a mountainous region of the southwestern Balkan Peninsula that now straddles the Greek-Albanian border. Most of Chameria is in the Greek Province of Epirus, corresponding largely to the prefectures of Thesprotia and Preveza, but it also includes the southernmost part of Albania, the area around Konispol. It is approximately 10,000 square kilometres in size and has a current, mostly Greek-speaking population of about 150,000. As an historical region, Chameria, also spelled Chamuria, Chamouria or Tsiamouria, is sometimes confused with Epirus which is in fact a much larger ar ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Cham Albanians
Cham Albanians or Chams ( sq, Çamë; el, Τσάμηδες, ''Tsámidhes''), are a sub-group of Albanians who originally resided in the western part of the region of Epirus in northwestern Greece, an area known among Albanians as Chameria. The Chams have their own particular cultural identity, which is a mixture of Albanian and Greek influences as well as many specifically Cham elements.See Hasluk, 'Christianity and Islam under the Sultans', London, 1927. A number of Chams contributed to the Albanian national identity and played an important role in starting the renaissance of the Albanian culture in the 19th century. The Chams speak their own dialect of the Albanian language, the Cham Albanian dialect, which is a Southern Tosk Albanian dialect and one of the two most conservative ones; the other being Arvanitika. During the late 1930s Chams suffered from intimidation and persecution under the dictatorship of General Metaxas. Following the Italian occupation of Albania in ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Cham Albanian Dialect
The Cham Albanian dialect ( sq, Çamërisht, Dialekti çam), also called ''Cham Tosk'' or ''Arvanitika'' , is the dialect of the Albanian language spoken by the Cham Albanians, an ethnic Albanian minority in the Epirus (region), Epirus region of northwestern Greece and in Konispol, southern Albania. Features Cham Albanian is part of Tosk Albanian and is the second-southernmost variety of Albanian language, the other being Arvanitika, which is also part of Tosk Albanian. As such, Arvanitika and Cham dialect retain a number of common features. It also thus closely related to Arbëresh and Lab Albanian dialect, Lab. The dialect has been affected by language contact from the nearby Greek dialects much more compared to any other adjacent Albanian dialect. Linguistic conservatism Linguists say the Cham dialect has a conservative character, which is due to the close proximity and its continuous contacts with the Greek language. They argue that this conservative character, which is r ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Albanian Alphabet
The Albanian alphabet ( sq, alfabeti shqip) is a variant of the Latin alphabet used to write the Albanian language. It consists of 36 letters: ''Note:'' The vowels are shown in bold. The letters are named simply by their sounds, followed by ë for consonants (e.g. fë). to the pronunciation of the 36 letters. History The earliest known mention of Albanian writings comes from a French Catholic church document from 1332. Written either by archbishop Guillaume Adam or the monk Brocardus Monacus the report notes that ''Licet Albanenses aliam omnino linguam a latina habeant et diversam, tamen litteram latinam habent in usu et in omnibus suis libris'' ("Though the Albanians have a language entirely their own and different from Latin, they nevertheless use Latin letters in all their books"). Scholars warn that this could mean Albanians also wrote in the Latin language, not necessarily just Albanian with a Latin script. The history of the later Albanian alphabet is closely linked w ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Arvanites
Arvanites (; Arvanitika: , or , ; Greek: , ) are a bilingual population group in Greece of Albanian origin. They traditionally speak Arvanitika, an Albanian language variety, along with Greek. Their ancestors were first recorded as settlers who came to what is today southern Greece in the late 13th and early 14th century. They were the dominant population element in parts of the Peloponnese, Attica and Boeotia until the 19th century.Trudgill (2000: 255). They call themselves Arvanites (in Greek) and Arbëror (in their language). Arvanites today self-identify as Greeks as a result of a process of cultural assimilation,GHM (1995). and do not consider themselves Albanian.Trudgill/Tzavaras (1977). Arvanitika is in a state of attrition due to language shift towards Greek and large-scale internal migration to the cities and subsequent intermingling of the population during the 20th century. Names The name Arvanites and its equivalents are today used both in Greek (, singular form ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Mandritsa
Mandritsa ( bg, Мандрица, "Small dairy"; ) is a village in southernmost Bulgaria, part of Ivaylovgrad municipality, Haskovo Province. It is known as the only Albanian village in Bulgaria. As of 14 December 2006, Mandritsa has a population of 75. It lies at , 93 m above sea level. Mandritsa is located on the right bank of the Byala Reka in the easternmost Rhodope Mountains, 15 km south of Ivaylovgrad and 2 km west of the Luda reka, which forms the border with Greece. History Ottoman rule The village was founded in 1636 by Eastern Orthodox Albanian dairymen who supplied the Ottoman Army. They were allowed to pick a tract of land and were freed from taxes. The bulk of the local Albanian speakers arrived in the 18th century from around Korçë and in the 19th century from the region of Souli in Epirus. The locals preserved their Souliot national dress until the 19th century, when the fustanella was substituted by Thracian breeches. However, the female dress was pres ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
