Albanian
The Albanian language is an Indo-European language spoken mainly in south-eastern Europe and in the diaspora. It is an Indo-European language and is called Shqip (pronounced [ʃcip]) in Albanian. There are two main dialects: Gheg and Tosk, and an intermediate dialect between them. The dialects are further subdivided into numerous sub-dialects, with Geg being the most diverse. The Shkumbin River is used as the dividing line between the two dialects. Tosk is spoken south of the river, including in some villages in Italy and Greece, while Geg is spoken north of the Shkumbin River, covering central and northern Albania, as well as Albanians living in Kosova (Kosovo) and northern Macedonia. There is a continuum of dialects between the two. This tutorial deals with standard literary Albanian, called "gjuha letrare shqipe" in Albanian, which was taught in Albania after the Second World War (and also in Yugoslavia from about 1974). Since 1974, almost all written texts in Albanian have been in Standard Albanian, which is largely based on the Tosk dialect.
It's also important to note that Albanian is not closely related to any other extant Indo-European language, making a branch of its own. Over time it has accumulated a number of loanwords from the several languages in the region, with Latin making up the largest corpus of loanwords, due to the millennial rule of the Roman, and later Byzantine Empire in the area. The grammar, word formation and sentence structure resemble other Indo-European languages to some extent, like for example having a default SVO word order; however it can also differ, such as when the word order is flexible in cases of emphasis.
Introduction
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