Gheg Albanian

"Geg" redirects here. For Spokane International Airport (IATA: GEG), see Spokane International Airport.
Gheg
Region Albania, Kosovo, Macedonia, Montenegro, Serbia
Native speakers
 3.45 million to 3.47[1][2][3][4] (2000[5] – 2001 censuses)[6]
Language codes
ISO 639-3 aln
Glottolog gheg1238[7]
Linguasphere 55-AAA-aaa to 55-AAA-aag

A map showing Gheg speakers in green

Gheg (or Geg) (Albanian: Gegë) is one of the two major varieties of Albanian. The other one is Tosk, on which standard Albanian is based. The geographic dividing line between these two varieties is the Shkumbin River, which winds its way through central Albania.

Gheg is spoken in Northern Albania, Kosovo, northwestern Republic of Macedonia, southeastern Montenegro and southern Serbia, by the ethnographic group known as Ghegs.

Gheg does not have any official status as a written language in any country. Publications in Kosovo and Macedonia are in standard Albanian, which is based on Tosk. However, some authors continue to write in Gheg.

History

The Ghegs speak "Gheg Albanian", one of the two main Albanian dialects. The Albanian communist regime based the standard Albanian language mostly on Tosk Albanian. This practice has been criticized, notably by Arshi Pipa, who claimed that this decision deprived the Albanian language of its richness at the expense of the Ghegs,[8] and referred to the literary Albanian language as a "monstrosity" produced by the Tosk communist leadership that conquered anti-communist northern Albania militarily, and imposed their Tosk Albanian dialect on the Ghegs.[9] Although Albanian writers in former Yugoslavia were almost all Ghegs, they chose to write in Tosk for political reasons.[10] This change of literary language has significant political and cultural consequences because the language is the main criterion for self-identification of the Albanians.[11]

Dialects

Gheg has several dialects, notably:

Southern Gheg

Southern Gheg is spoken in Albania (Durrës, Elbasan, Tiranë) and western Macedonia.[12]

A subdialect is Central Gheg, spoken in Tiranë, Krujë and Burrel.[12]

Northern Gheg

The Italian linguist Carlo Tagliavini puts the Gheg of Kosovo and Macedonia in Eastern Gheg.[13]

Phonology

Assimilations are common in Gheg, but are not part of the Albanian literary language, which is a standardized form of Tosk Albanian.[14]

Vowels

Oral

IPA Written as
[ə] ë (nër: 'under')
[a] a (mas: 'after')
[ɑ] â (prâpë: 'back')
[ɒ] ä (knäqët: 'having fun')
[e] e (dere: 'door')
[ɛ] ê (mênôj: 'I think')
[i] i (dritë: 'light')
[o] o (kos: 'yoghurt')
[u] u (kur: 'when')
[y] y (ylli: 'star')
[ɔ] ô (dôrë: 'hand')

Nasalized

IPA Written as[15]
[ĩ] ĩ (hĩna: 'I entered')
[ɛ̃] ẽ (mrẽna: 'within')
[ɑ̃] ã (hãna: 'moon')
[ɔ̃] õ (some dialects)
[ỹ] ỹ (gjỹs: 'half')
[i] ũ (hũna: 'nose')

See also

References

  1. ↑ "South Serbia Albanians Seek Community of Municipalities". Retrieved 17 July 2013. South Serbia is home to 50,000 or so Albanians.
  2. ↑ . BBC http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/1043583.stm. Retrieved 24 October 2013. Initially, the guerrillas' publicly acknowledged objective was to protect the local ethnic Albanian population of some 70,000 people from the repressive actions of the Serb security forces. Missing or empty |title= (help)
  3. ↑ "The Presevo Valley of Southern Serbia alongside Kosovo The Case for Decentralisation and Minority Protection" (PDF). Retrieved 24 October 2013. The total population of the Valley is around 86,000 inhabitants of whom around 57,000 are Albanians and the rest are Serbs and Roma
  4. ↑ "Yugoslavia: Serbia Offers Peace Plan For Presevo Valley". Retrieved 24 October 2013. The Serbian peace proposal calls for integrating the Presevo valley's 70,000 ethnic Albanian residents into mainstream Serbian political and social life.
  5. ↑ Figure for Serbia appears to be taken from 2000 figure for Serbia and Montenegro.
    Gheg Albanian at Ethnologue (15th ed., 2005)
  6. ↑ Gheg at Ethnologue (18th ed., 2015)
  7. ↑ Nordhoff, Sebastian; Hammarström, Harald; Forkel, Robert; Haspelmath, Martin, eds. (2013). "Gheg Albanian". Glottolog. Leipzig: Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology.
  8. ↑ Canadian review of studies in nationalism: Revue canadienne des études sur le nationalisme, Volume 19. University of Prince Edward Island. 1992. p. 206. Retrieved 10 January 2012.
  9. ↑ Canadian review of studies in nationalism: Revue canadienne des études sur le nationalisme, Volume 19. University of Prince Edward Island. 1992. p. 207. Retrieved 10 January 2012.
  10. ↑ Arshi Pipa (1978). Albanian literature: social perspectives. R. Trofenik. p. 173. ISBN 978-3-87828-106-1. Retrieved 15 July 2013. Although the Albanian population in Yugoslavia is almost exclusively Gheg, the Albanian writers there have chosen, for sheer political reasons, to write in Tosk
  11. ↑ Telos. Telos Press. 1989. p. 1. Retrieved 16 July 2013. The political-cultural relevance of the abolition of literary Gheg with literary Tosk....Albanians identify themselves with language...
  12. 1 2 Hinrichs, Uwe; Buttner, Uwe (1999). Handbuch der Sudosteuropa-Linguistik. Otto Harrassowitz Verlag. p. 285. ISBN 978-3-447-03939-0. Retrieved 5 April 2011.
  13. ↑ Carlo Tagliavini (1942), Le parlate albanesi di tipo Ghego orientale: Dardania e Macedonia nord-occidentale
  14. ↑ Camaj 1984, p. 4
  15. ↑ Fialuur i voghel Sccyp e ltinisct [sic] (Small Dictionary of Albanian and Latin), 1895, Shkodër

Bibliography

External links

Gheg Albanian test of Wikipedia at Wikimedia Incubator
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