Albanian is an Indo-European language spoken by about 6,400,000 inhabitants of the eastern Adriatic coast in Albania and also in neighbouring Yugoslavia, principally in Kosova and Macedonia, west of a line from near Leskovac to Lake Ohri. There are perhaps 300,000 more speakers in isolated villages in southern Italy (Abruzzi, Molise, Basilicata, Puglia, and Calabria), and Sicily, and southern Greece (in Voiot'a, Attica, fvvoia, çndros, and the Pelop-nnesos)

The origins of the general name Albanian, which traditionally referred to a restricted area in central Albania, and of the current official name Shqip or Shqip'ri, which may well be derived from a term meaning "pronounce clearly, intelligibly," are still disputed. The name Albanian has been found in records since the time of Ptolemy. In Calabrian Albanian the name is Arbresh, in Modern Greek Arvan'tis, and in Turkish Arnaut; the name must have been transmitted early through Greek speech.

The two principal dialects, Gheg in the north and Tosk in the south, are separated roughly by the Shkumbin River. Gheg and Tosk have been diverging for at least a millennium, and their less extreme forms are mutually intelligible.

Gheg has the more marked subvarieties, the most striking of which are the northernmost and eastern types, which include those of the city of Shkod‘r (Scutari), the neighbouring mountains along the Montenegro border, Kosova, Macedonia, and the isolated village of Arbanasi (formerly Borgo Erizzo) on the Croatian coast of Dalmatia outside Zara (Zadar). Arbanasi, founded in the early 18th century by refugees from near Tivar (formerly Antivari, Bar), has about 2,000 speakers.

All of the Albanian dialects spoken in Italian and Greek enclaves are of the Tosk variety, and seem to be related most closely to the dialect of ‚am‘ria in the extreme south of Albania. These dialects resulted from incompletely understood population movements of the 13th and 15th centuries.

The Italian enclaves--nearly 50 scattered villages-- probably were founded by emigrants from Turkish rule in Greece. A few isolated outlying dialects of south Tosk origin are spoken in Bulgaria and Turkish Thrace but are of unclear date.

The language is still in use in Mandritsa, Bulgaria, at the border near Edirne, and in an offshoot of this village surviving in M‡ndres, near Kilk’s in Greece, that dates from the Balkan Wars. A Tosk enclave near Melitopol in the Ukraine appears to be of moderately recent settlement from Bulgaria. The Albanian dialects of Istria, for which a text exists, and of Syrmia (Srem), for which there is none, have become extinct.

The official language, written in a standard roman-style orthography adopted in 1909, was based on the south Gheg dialect of Elbasan from the beginning of the Albanian state until World War II, and since has been modelled on Tosk. Albanian speakers in Kosova and in Macedonia speak eastern varieties of Gheg but since 1974 have widely adopted a common orthography with Albania. Before 1909, the little literature that was preserved, was written in local makeshift Italianate or Hellenizing orthographies, or even in Turko-Arabic characters.

A few brief written records are preserved from the 15th century, the first being a baptismal formula from 1462. The scattering of books produced in the 16th and 17th centuries originated largely in the Gheg area (often in Scutarene north Gheg) and reflect Roman Catholic missionary activities. Much of the small stream of literature in the 19th century was produced by exiles. Perhaps the earliest purely literary work of any extent is the 18th-century poetry of Jul Variboba, of the enclave at S.Giorgio, in Calabria.

Some literary production continued through the 19th century in the Italian enclaves, but no similar activity is recorded in the Greek areas. All these early historical documents show a language that differs little from the current language. Because these documents from different regions and times exhibit marked dialect peculiarities, however, they often have a value for linguistic study that greatly outweighs their literary merit.

Bibliography: Eric P. Hamp: Readings in Linguistics, Languages of the World