Gheg Albanian

History

The Ghegs speak Gheg, one of the two main Albanian dialects. Before World War II, there was no official attempt at legislating a unified Albanian literary language; both literary Gheg and literary Tosk was used. The communist regime imposed a Tosk-based unified standard with basis in the Korçë speech, in all of Albania. The same standard was adopted by the Albanians in Yugoslavia, who had until then used the Gheg standard, in a process that began in 1968, with culmination in 1972 when the first unified Albanian orthographic handbook and dictionary was agreed upon in 1972.

The Albanian communist regime based Standard Albanian mostly on Tosk. That practice has been criticized, notably by Arshi Pipa, who claimed that this decision deprived Albanian of its richness at the expense of the Ghegs, and he referred to the literary Albanian language as a "monstrosity" produced by the Tosk communist leadership that conquered anti-communist northern Albania militarily and imposed its Tosk Albanian dialect on the Ghegs.

Although Albanian writers in former Yugoslavia were almost all Ghegs, they chose to write in Tosk for political reasons. The change of literary language has significant political and cultural consequences because the Albanian language is the main criterion for self-identification of the Albanians.

Dialects

The Gheg dialect is divided by four sub-dialects: Central Gheg, Southern Gheg, Northwestern Gheg (or Western Gheg), and Northeastern Gheg (or Eastern Gheg).

Southern Gheg

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

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

Northern Gheg

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

Northeastern Gheg

Northeastern Gheg, sometimes known as Eastern Gheg, is a variant or sub-dialect of Gheg Albanian spoken in Northeastern Albania, Kosovo, and Serbia.

The Northeastern Gheg dialectal area begins roughly down from the eastern Montenegrin-Albanian border, including the Albanian districts (Second-level administrative country subdivisions) of Tropojë, Pukë, Has, Mirditë and Kukës; the whole of Kosovo, and the municipalities of Bujanovac and Preševo in Serbia. The tribes in Albania speaking the dialect include Nikaj-Merturi, Puka, Gashi, and Tropoja.

The Albanian speech in roughly around Tetovo and Skopska Crna Gora, in the Republic of Macedonia, is sometimes regarded part of Northeastern Gheg.

Calques of Serbian origin are evident in the areas of syntax and morphology. The Northeastern Gheg is significantly different from Northwestern Gheg (spoken in Shkodër), and it has been considered an autonomous branch of Gheg Albanian. In turn, the Northeastern Gheg dialects themselves differ greatly among themselves.

The dialect is also split in a few other minority dialects, where the phoneme [y] of standard Albanian is pronounced as [i], i.e "ylberi" to "ilberi" (both meaning rainbow); "dy" to "di" (both meaning two). In Northeastern Gheg, the palatal stops of standard Albanian, such as [c] (as in qen, "dog") and [ɟ] (as in gjumë, "sleep"), are realised as palato-alveolar affricates, [t͡ʃ] and [d͡ʒ] respectively.

Phonology

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