Talk:Albanian language/Archive 4

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Archive 4

"q" and "gj" are not plosives

@Fdom5997: The current version is misleading. Please, have a look at this [1]: The consonants represented by ⟨q⟩ and ⟨gj⟩ in writing are traditionally described as plosives (Newmark 1957; Bevington 1971; Newmark, Hubbard & Prifti 1982; Dodi 1996; Memushaj 2005, 2011; Jubani-Bengu 2011, 2012), though Lowman (1932) classifies them as affricates and Belluscio (2014) reports that they are realised with strong frication. In our data, in fact, they are never realised as plosives and are instead clearly affricated for all speakers. The waveforms and spectrograms of qava ‘I cried’ and gjaku ‘blood’ as produced by speaker S04 are provided in Figure 6. From these it can be seen that the plosive closure in word-initial position is followed by a period of frication of substantial duration. (Coretta, Stefano; Riverin-Coutlée, Josiane; Kapia, Enkeleida; Nichols, Stephen (2022). Northern Tosk Albanian. Illustration of the IPA: Journal of the International Phonetic Association. pp. 1–23.)

As we are not aware of any study that has specifically addressed the stress and intonation system of Northern Tosk in particular, we will review here those that exist on Standard Albanian, given that Standard Albanian is based primarily on Northern Tosk (Kostallari 1984). (Coretta, Stefano; Riverin-Coutlée, Josiane; Kapia, Enkeleida; Nichols, Stephen (2022). Northern Tosk Albanian. Illustration of the IPA: Journal of the International Phonetic Association. pp. 1–23.)

"They are clearly affricated for all speakers". The lack of serious studies and the ambiguity should be reflected in the article and given proper weight. I think that other Albanian editors here on Wiki are not disputing the last changes simply because they ignore the affricate nature of "q" and "gj".

Said so, I want to thank you for your contributions on the Albanian language article. FierakuiVërtet (talk) 16:28, 17 October 2022 (UTC)

@Fdom5997 On second thought, maybe you have already read this abstract and precisely for this reason you decided to make the last edits on "q" and "gj", but i'm insisting that they are misleading. FierakuiVërtet (talk) 16:34, 17 October 2022 (UTC)

A few observations/questions:

• Is this meant to be a phonemic or a phonetic table? If we are representing phonemes, /c/ and /ɟ/ are not necessarily a bad choice, as long as we comment in prose that many varieties (if not all?), these are not pure stops but affricates.
• Never take notations at face value when the main concern is not detailed phonetic accuracy, but something else. I'm referring to de Vaan (2018, p. 1743 in the Handbook of IE languages), who uses ⟨c⟩ and ⟨ɟ⟩ and has been mentioned by @Fdom5997, but who actually discusses historical phonology and not acoustic phonetics. I wouldn't read any commitment of the author into this notation.
• Rusakov (2018) (listed among our references) also uses ⟨c⟩ and ⟨ɟ⟩, but he notes in prose: "The palatal phonemes c, ɟ (orthographic q, gj) manifest in most of the Gheg dialects as affricates (and in some places as fricatives); in some eastern northern Gheg dialects (in Kosovo) they merged with the affricates tʃ, dʒ (orthographic ç, xh)."
• Ideally, we shouldn't make blanket statements when our sources specify context, e.g. when Kostallari (1984) Coretta et al. (2022) say "in our data", representing Northern Tosk speech. And obviously, we should add Kostallari (1984) to our sources.
• The full complexity of the matter is covered in this dissertation. Apparently, the degree of affrication not only a regional thing, but also has a generational factor.

–Austronesier (talk) 17:15, 17 October 2022 (UTC)

I agree with many of your points.

But Kostallari (1984) did not say "in our data". I admit my quote wasn't clear and i'll fix it. All the text quoted was taken from this journal [2]. The Kostallari part was added by me to prove why we should give Northern Tosk pronunciation the right weight. FierakuiVërtet (talk) 17:43, 17 October 2022 (UTC)

Oh yes, my dumb. I meant Coretta et al. (2022). –Austronesier (talk) 17:50, 17 October 2022 (UTC)

Ah, ok... You can see my point then. Northen Tosk speech has strongly imposed itself during the communist era and all national media outlets, public institutions, teachers and others pronunce "q" and "gj" as affricates.

Regarding the first question: Is this meant to be a phonemic or a phonetic table? This is meant to be a phonetic table and precisely for this reason we should not put /c/ and /ɟ/ in place of /c͡ç/ and /ɟ͡ʝ/ since they are distinct consonants. I can understant that for non-Albanian speakers the distinction between these sounds could be seen as (an irrelevant) phonemic one, but to Albanian speakers they sound clearly different.

I am aware that Albanian phonology is rich and has not been standardized but we should give to the hegemonic speech the right weight in the article.

P.S. I want to thank you too for your contributions on the Albanian language article. I hope you can understand my English. FierakuiVërtet (talk) 18:12, 17 October 2022 (UTC)

I'm fine ether way, so if there is consensus for using exact [c͡ç] and [ɟ͡ʝ], we can keep the current table. Note however that Coretta et al. (2022) use a different notation for the q and gj sounds. And confusing enough, they put them in the same column as sh and zh. Btw, wouldn't it be fun to expand Albanian phonology into a page of its own? We could then give more space to details like regional variation or different interpretations among diverse scholars. –Austronesier (talk) 18:54, 17 October 2022 (UTC)

That would be perfect but i have not enough proficiency in English to create a new page on Albanian phonology. However, i think that if we keep inserting new information about Albanian phonologycal differences someone would eventually create it. FierakuiVërtet (talk) 19:23, 17 October 2022 (UTC)

Yeah, i noted the different notation for "q" and "gj", but i think we should focus on the explanation they provided on the paragraph "Affricates". Let's see what @Fdom5997 thinks about this. FierakuiVërtet (talk) 19:34, 17 October 2022 (UTC)

I’m honestly fine with either or. If most sources describe the sounds as affricates (and not just Coretta et al. (2022)) then I think it should be fine. I think the main question here is, “how should they be transcribed phonemically?”. I also listed how they may allophonically be heard as standard plosives across dialects. Fdom5997 (talk) 19:48, 17 October 2022 (UTC)

Since they are traditionally described as plosives,

i'm fine reinstating /c/ and /ɟ/ (even if i cannot personally accept it) if we make it clear that there is a debate concerning these two sounds and that in Northern Tosk (the basis of Standard Albanian) they are pronounced as affricates. Therefore, i find the note on the bottom referring to various dialects is too little.

Moreover we should notice that Belluscio (2014) and Coretta (2022) are more recent sources... FierakuiVërtet (talk) 20:07, 17 October 2022 (UTC)

Besides, i think we should consider what @Austronesier said "Never take notations at face value when the main concern is not detailed phonetic accuracy, but something else.".

I do not have access to this tradition: Newmark 1957; Bevington 1971; Newmark, Hubbard & Prifti 1982; Dodi 1996; Memushaj 2005, 2011; Jubani-Bengu 2011, 2012. But we should even examine the attention these works gave to the phonology or phonetics of Albanian. FierakuiVërtet (talk) 20:20, 17 October 2022 (UTC)

"ng" as a digraph?

The article states that Albanian alphabet includes "ten digraphs: dh, th, xh, gj, nj, ng, ll, rr, zh and sh". This is inconsistent with the information given elsewhere e.g. in Albanian alphabet, where only nine digraphs are listed. So which one is it? -- 37.26.86.210 (talk) 13:53, 25 October 2022 (UTC)

"ng" is not in the Albanian alphabet. Does it have to be in the alphabet to make it a digraph? For example, in Italian, "gn" and "ch" are not in the alphabet, but they are still digraphs. Have a look here [3] FierakuiVërtet (talk) 14:17, 25 October 2022 (UTC)

Thank you for your reply. -- 37.26.86.210 (talk) 14:54, 25 October 2022 (UTC)

Illyrian

@Local hero: Can you quote me the parts of this wiki article which are contradicted by the Cambridge journal? FierakuiVërtet (talk) 00:46, 10 December 2022 (UTC)

@Local hero: This is the journal quote: Though the origin of the language has been debated, the prevailing opinion in the literature is that it is a descendant of Illyrian (Hetzer 1995). FierakuiVërtet (talk) 00:49, 10 December 2022 (UTC)

@Alexikoua: Above there is the quote. I don't think a Cambridge journal would be superficial whith such affirmations. Could you not just check this Hetzer(1995)? FierakuiVërtet (talk) 01:18, 10 December 2022 (UTC)

@Alexikoua: And remember that this is 2022 issue. FierakuiVërtet (talk) 01:20, 10 December 2022 (UTC)

Paleo-Balkan is already mentioned, adding also Illyrian makes it completely POV. In case of Illyrian we need to add all possibilities. By the way Illyrian is a very abstract term we don't even know if those heterogeneous groups spoke a common language (most probably they didn't) .Alexikoua (talk) 16:02, 10 December 2022 (UTC)

Demonstration as Indo-European: Franz Bopp or Gustav Meyer?

Is not the attribution of the scientific demonstration of Albanian belonging to the Indo-European family ascribed to Gustav Meyer? 184.148.19.249 (talk) 04:13, 31 December 2022 (UTC)

Lumë

'lumë ("river") is native' : I thought it was close to Latin 'flumen' (Italian 'fiume') ? 2A01:E0A:C75:4180:6DF9:699B:E1D:D786 (talk) 13:53, 26 March 2023 (UTC)

isoglosses

Albanian was formerly compared by a few Indo-European linguists with Germanic and Balto-Slavic, all of which share a number of isoglosses with Albanian.

I guess this means Albanian has features in common with each of those, contrasting with the rest of IE. But my first thought was of a feature boundary cutting through both Albanian and South Slavic, a wave effect in a sprachbund – which obviously cannot involve Germanic, as Albanian and Germanic are nowhere neighbors. To avoid that mental "huh?!", perhaps another term could be used? —Tamfang (talk) 04:30, 14 March 2023 (UTC)

Tamfang AFAIK linguists use the term "isoglosses". It appeara that at some point in the distant past speakers of the languages that would eventially evolve into Albanian, Slavic and Germanic lived near each other. However, recent top quality linguistics highlights that Albanian has more shared features (including isoglosses and common innovations) with Greek. A "Paleo-Balkan" group of languages has been proposed involving Albanian, Greek and Armenian plus extinct Messapic (most closely related with Albanian) and Phrygian (most closely related with Greek). So maybe in the future linguists will be able to be more clear on any kind of relation between Albanian and Germanic & Slavic. Ktrimi991 (talk) 15:51, 23 April 2023 (UTC)

Debatable

why albanian is belonged to indo european language family despite not being an isolated language family?114.122.117.84 (talk) 15:23, 23 April 2023 (UTC)

Do you mean you believe it is an isolate? —Tamfang (talk) 17:32, 23 April 2023 (UTC)

Messapic

@Maleschreiber: You have copied a piece from Proto-Albanian language (which you had added there a few months ago) into this article. Just an observation: the authors of the source (Hyllested & Joseph 2022) state in their conclusion:

Technically speaking, from a genealogical standpoint, Messapic likely is the closest IE language to Albanian (Matzinger 2005). However, in the absence of sufficient evidence, that connection must remain speculative.

which changes in Wikivoice into the following:

The closest language to Albanian is Messapic, with which it forms a common branch titled Illyric in Hyllested & Joseph (2022).

Maybe it's just me, but it feels that it's more than nuance that is lost here. Also the naive 1:1 copy of the tree diagram is problematic, since the authors themselves caution readers not to take the label "Illyric" (NB in scare quotes) at face value (footnote 24):

In the absence of linguistic data about ancient Illyrian, we feel caution is in order about the connection between Illyrian, whatever that label might have meant to the ancients, and Albanian, even if that connection might be reasonable from a geographic and archaeological perspective.

The information is certainly important, but should be presented with all necessary caveats mentioned in the source. Austronesier (talk) 21:37, 24 June 2023 (UTC)

Yes, I am aware of the conditions are required for the argument to stand in itself. I changed the statement to

The closest language to Albanian is likely Messapic

I didn't link the term Illyric to Illyrian as a means to avoid any connotations and a wider discussion about the term itself, hence I don't know what more could be added since there is no direct reference to Illyrian. In this case, Illyric is equivalent to saying western Balkan in roughly the same area as historical Illyria.--Maleschreiber (talk) 21:44, 24 June 2023 (UTC)

Maybe explicit attribution of this hypothesis to Matzinger might help too, just as Hyllested & Joseph do. I just looked up in the Handbook of IE Languages: while Matzinger writes in ch. 98: "Albanian is closely related to Illyrian and also Messapic", the author of ch. 103 "Messapic" (Carlo De Simone) says: "At the present time, realistically speaking, it is not possible to situate Messapic within the framework of the Indo-European language family" (NB being well aware of Matzinger's 2005 paper). –Austronesier (talk) 21:59, 24 June 2023 (UTC)

The family tree is provided by Hyllested & Joseph as their new proposal for the phylogenetic tree of the Albanian language in The Indo-European Language Family: A Phylogenetic Perspective (2022), based on current scholarship, although they have cited only Matzinger (2005). The links with Messapic are many, despite the fact that some scholars who have been cited above neglected them. The consensus in the previous two decades was that Messapic and Albanian are related either genetically or within an areal group, which has also been clarified into the article. But in the new decade the linguistic genetic relation is gaining more prominence. – Βατο (talk) 22:32, 24 June 2023 (UTC)

Many? The lexical links are 'cloud', 'deer', 'field' and the Messapic horse-sacrifice god mentioned by Sextus Pompeius Festus. There are some phonemic points of agreement, which are however shared by other Paleo-Balkan languages. Btw, Matzinger comments on his own hypothesis in his 2014 monograph on Messapic as follows:

"Andererseits wurden in Matzinger 2005 auch einige wenige Fälle vorgestellt, die als mögl. Übereinstimmung zwischen einer messap. sowie einer alban. Form gewertet werden könnten, deren Aussagekraft insgesamt aber doch als eher gering betrachtet werden muss." (On the other hand, Matzinger (2005) presented a few cases that could be interpreted as a potential correspondence between a Messapic form and an Albanian forms, although the significance of these [correspondences] must be considered as rather low.)

The connection has been proposed and looks promising, but little has been really added since Matzinger's original proposal. All authors that mention the Messapic-Albanian link cite Matzinger, so I don't see how "the linguistic genetic relation is gaining more prominence", especially when most recent source (Hyllested & Joseph 2022) calls the whole idea "speculatve"? –Austronesier (talk) 18:57, 25 June 2023 (UTC)

His view has evolved in several directions since 2014 as expressed in his 2019 monograph on Messapic and his latest conference presentation/upcoming paper (2022) The Indo-Europeanization of the Balkans: Some new insights at the interface of archaeology, archaeogenetics and historical linguistics (with K. Ackermann and M. Gavranović). It was proposed that Proto-Albanians and Proto-Messapians formed a common branch in the period after the IE-speaking migrations towards the Balkans but before the era of Proto-Messapian migrations towards Italy. According to this view, they "split" around 2000-1700 BCE in the southern Balkans (presentation slide).We can't cite it because it's unpublished.--Maleschreiber (talk) 20:04, 25 June 2023 (UTC)

Yes, many, read Messapic language. Linguistic research is not limited only to the handbook you mention and to previous publications by Matzinger. As explained by @Maleschreiber above, Matzinger and other linguists are increasingly proposing a sibling relationship between Albanian and Messapic, and since Messapic is sufficiently attested to be studied and classified with accuracy, we will soon find out. I am citing some examples of leading experts of the previous decade:

Friedman 2020, p. 338:

Without going into the details of the debate (see Fine, 1983, pp. 10—11; Woodard, 2008, pp. 7—9), Albanian is unquestionably descended from one of the ancient Indo-European Balkan languages mentioned in ancient sources. How-ever, the attestations for these languages range from a few ill-understood inscriptions to a few glosses and anthroponyms to a single word or nothing at all. Hamp (2013, pp. 8—9) has, on the basis of shared innovations with Messapic, argued that Albanian is indeed related to Illyrian (as opposed to, e.g., Thracian or Daco-Moesian), but it descended from a sibling of Illyrian that was, at one time, closer to the Danube and in contact with Daco-Moesian (Hamp, 1982). Be that as it may, Albanian and Greek represent the two language systems spoken today that were spoken in the Balkans prior to the arrival of Latin speakers.

Trumper 2018, p. 385:

"Overall, the complex of Albanian dialects remains a solid block of the Albanoid group still relatable with Messapic (observed in place naming in Apulia: some towns have no etymon outside Albanoid sources, for example in toponyms such as Manduria”). Any label such as 'Illyrian' only creates embarrassment for its conceptual paucity. Albanoid is perhaps a better term, referring to a specific ethnolinguistically pertinent and historically compact language group, as Mallory (1999:76) had stated, of "linguistically related tribal groups which we must somewhat uncomfortably label as Illyrian". We try not to be uncomfortable."

Anyway, I didn't understand what exactly are you proposing for the article. – Βατο (talk) 21:56, 25 June 2023 (UTC)

It is only Hamp and Matzinger. The few sources that bother to talk about the relationship directly rely either on one or the other. And Matzinger (2005) builds on a critical evaluation of Hamp (1957). So we should a) attribute the hypothesis to the correct authors (Hyllested & Joseph are merely a secondary source) and b) reflect in Wikivoice what the secondary source actually says. And an essential part of their statement (NB from 2022) is: However, in the absence of sufficient evidence, that connection must remain speculative (as cited in the opening of this section). Don't get me wrong: the proposed connection is well-argued and – given the scarcity of intelligible Messapic corpus material – not disproportionally weak with only 4 or 5 exclusively shared innovations (ESIs). We just need to cite the right sources (Friedman and Trumper are only peripherially related to the topic) and cite them exactly for what they say. I have a copy of Hamp's article now, so I can rework the passages here and in Messapic language from a historical linguist's point of view.

@Maleschreiber: Do you know if Matzinger's 2022 presentation is available on repository? Based on his undoubted subject-matter expert status, I wouldn't hesitate to cite his latest ideas on the topic even if not yet peer-reviewed. The 2019 monograph does not go very deep into question of Messapic as a sibling of Proto-Albanian.

@Βατο: The comparison tables in Messapic language are ill-construed (and so is the table in this article in the section Cognates with Illyrian), as they don't differentiate between ESIs (of which there are very few, believe me) and retentions from Proto-IE. Amassing cognates between two languages that are actually also shared by many other languages of the same family says little about a special relationship involving only these two languages. The latter can only be proven based on ESIs. –Austronesier (talk) 20:29, 11 July 2023 (UTC)

While the issue of the origin of Albanian and its evolution (phonology, word reconstrcutions etc) have attracted lots of attention, the relation between Albanian and Messapic has not been examined by more than a tiny number of academics. Those specializing in Albanian who have made in-depth research indeed say that Messapic likely is (was?) closely related to Albanian (Proto-Albanian?). That does not need any attribution because:

1. the word "likely" itself makes it clear it is not sth accepted as an unquestionable fact

2. there is no linguist specializing in Albanian that rejects that hypothesis. Ktrimi991 (talk) 21:21, 11 July 2023 (UTC)

Hamp and Matzinger have done extensive research on Albanian and Messapic, but also Pisani's work is remarkable. Nevertheless, specialized linguists on the Albanian language like Trumper, Hyllested and Joseph, Friedman, etc. can't be regarded as "merely a secondary source". No need for attribution for a statement that is supported by many scholars which is not contrasted in current linguistics. As for the table in Messapic language, it does not include lexical isoglosses with other languages, it includes examples of terms attested in Messapic inscriptions that are considered to be inherited from PIE. You are free to add properly sourced cognates in other IE languages as well. – Βατο (talk) 21:48, 11 July 2023 (UTC)

Wrong year?

The article says "The oldest attested document written in Albanian dates back to 1462"

For the oldest language in the world there must be books from 8,000 years ago!? 79.106.203.100 (talk) 16:18, 12 September 2023 (UTC)

even if that date is incorrect, Albanian is nowhere near the oldest language in the world. scholars debate when language was first used, but it was long before Albanian. From what I've gathered, Proto-Indo-European was spoken ~5000 years ago, and as Albanian is Indo-European, it could not have been spoken earlier than that. Albanian likely took a good amount of time after that to separate from other indo european languages. when it had separated, it took a very long time for it to be written. 104.225.240.196 (talk) 18:51, 19 December 2023 (UTC)

Epirote language

@Brikcity: "Epirote language" is rare and obsolete. Google books finds a total of 11 mentions for the phrase ["epirote language"]; it finds hundreds for ["albanian language"]. Many of the mentions of Epirote language are talking about the ancient language, which may or may not be Albanian. For example, Badlands by Tom Winnifrith says "...nor is there any way of showing whether the [ancient] Epirote language was Indo-European or, like Basque, a pre-Indo-European fragment...". I see no evidence that "Epirote" is used in modern English to mean Albanian -- the Latin-Epirote dictionary you mention dates to 1635. So it make perfect sense to mention this usage in the body of the article, but not in the lead. --Macrakis (talk) 15:12, 3 January 2024 (UTC)

Not just "rare and obsolete". Was it ever called such in English? There are just a handful (<10) scholarly texts in English that mention "lingua epirotica" and variously translate it ad hoc as "Epirote/Epirotan/Epirotic" language. This hardly justifies to include the historical Italian/Latin usage in the opening sentence of the lede. There are no hard rules about when an alternative name is WP:DUE for inclusion in the most prominent position it can get, but obsolete usage in other languages (this is English WP, after all) is not sufficient. –Austronesier (talk) 17:30, 3 January 2024 (UTC)

Schools

Article currently reads:

"During the five-century period of the Ottoman presence in Albania, the language was not officially recognised until 1909, when the Congress of Dibra decided that Albanian schools would finally be allowed."

The Ottoman government wasn't in the business of "recognizing" languages. They recognized millets, which were organized around religion, not language. Almost all education was millet-based, thus there were Muslim schools, Orthodox Christian schools, Jewish schools, Armenian schools, etc.; see Education in the Ottoman Empire. Muslim Albanians would go to Muslim schools and learn Arabic, Persian, and Ottoman Turkish; Christian Orthodox Albanians would go to Orthodox schools and learn Greek. For that matter, there was at least one Albanian-language school before 1909, which is in fact documented here on Wikipedia: Mësonjëtorja (1887). The Education in Albania article also mentions an Albanian school in Shkodër in 1861 and possibly in Pdhanë in 1638. Is there any evidence that the Ottoman rulers prohibited teaching Albanian? --Macrakis (talk) 20:18, 3 January 2024 (UTC)

It’s a pretty well-known fact amongst Albanians that Albanian-language schools were discouraged and even closed at times, hence why education in the Albanian language was covertly carried out in Bektashi teqes and other places away from the eyes of Ottoman authorities and even Greek Orthodox religious authorities as well. The Bektashism in Albania article I linked here should be able to direct you towards a few specific pieces of evidence of Ottoman authorities disrupting Albanian-language education; a few sources on that article, such as Elsie, also have specific documented accounts of Ottoman authorities disrupting or threatening Albanian-language education that was carried out in secret.

In fact, Ottoman rulers, such as Abdul Hamid II even prohibited publication in the Albanian language (books, alphabets etc) and allied with the Greek Orthodox Church to inhibit Albanian education efforts. Sources are also pretty clear on this. Albanian education was a major topic in the late 19th-early 20th century, hence why promises of Albanian-language schools and Albanian-language education were made towards Albanian groups by the CUP and others as a way of gathering their support. Botushali (talk) 00:23, 4 January 2024 (UTC)

All that may be true, but this article has no sources supporting those claims. "It’s a pretty well-known fact amongst Albanians" doesn't suffice. After all, "it's a pretty well-known fact among Greeks" that teaching Greek was illegal under the Ottomans, but that turns out to be false. And "look at the Bektashism in Albania article" isn't enough -- if Elsie supports these points, Elsie needs to be cited in this article, with relevant page numbers. --Macrakis (talk) 15:22, 4 January 2024 (UTC)

Ahh, now I get your point. There’s plenty of sources that can be cited to that end, when time permits, I’ll try and get around to it. Botushali (talk) 16:02, 4 January 2024 (UTC)