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Albanian and Italian Log...and French... | ||
Tags: Albanian | Dabbling | Wanderlust | Michel Thomas | Pimsleur | Beginner | Italian | Assimil | French | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| mr_chinnery Senior Member England Joined 5748 days ago 202 posts - 297 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: French | Message 1 of 35 01 March 2011 at 5:43pm | IP Logged |
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So yesterday I decided to start learning Albanian. A strange choice perhaps, because it
is a language of only 8 million speakers, many of whom don't even live in the country. On top of that, Albanian has two main dialects, Tosk and Gheg. The 'standard' version I'll be learning is a revised form of the Tosk dialect. It also has it's own 'branch' on the 'tree' of Indo-European languages, but has similarities to Greek, Germanic and Balto-Slavic languages, none of which I have any knowledge of. To my untrained ear it sounds like a mixture of Russian, Greek and Italian and none of them at the same time, which is definitely not a bad thing. The most interesting thing for me about the language is that it is thought to have descended from one of the ancient languages of the area, Dacian, Thracian or Illyrian. I'm also studying Italian, which is pretty easy and sounds quite familiar, so I thought I'd try something unusual. What inspired me was a brief visit to the country last year. It has SO much potential, that I thought I would learn a bit of the language in case I ever went back to make my fortune :) Anyway...The resources I'm using at the moment are the book2 website, and the Albanian channels on wwitv.com. I'm also waiting to receive a book from Amazon called 'Spoken Albanian', which I shall get stuck into as soon as it arrives. I must thank Torbyrne for telling me about the book2 site which is fantastic, and for helping me make an informed decision as to which is better out of 'Spoken Albanian' and 'Colloquial Albanian'. I won't have a rigid system of learning, apart from making sure I memorise as much of each daily book2 lesson as I can. I think it will be very important to get the basics right and well embedded in Albanian. Apart from that, I'll listen to radio/watch tv in Albanian when I can. I'll still be spending the majority of my free time studying Italian, but I think a little Albanian will compliment it and stop me getting bored. Oh...and you've got to love the Albanian flag! Edited by mr_chinnery on 17 April 2011 at 1:55am 2 persons have voted this message useful | |
| TixhiiDon Tetraglot Senior Member Japan Joined 5455 days ago 772 posts - 1474 votes Speaks: English*, Japanese, German, Russian Studies: Georgian | Message 2 of 35 01 March 2011 at 11:15pm | IP Logged |
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Ah, I have been slightly obsessed with this obscure little country at the edge of Europe
since I was about 12 years old, and although I went with Georgian this time round, Albanian is most definitely one of the languages I want to learn before I go to meet the great polyglot in the sky. I will therefore be reading your blog avidly. By the way, if you don't already think Albania is amazing enough as it is, read "The Successor" and "The Concert" by Ismail Kadare to be convinced. Edited by TixhiiDon on 01 March 2011 at 11:16pm 3 persons have voted this message useful | |
| mr_chinnery Senior Member England Joined 5748 days ago 202 posts - 297 votes Speaks: English* Studies: French | Message 3 of 35 02 March 2011 at 6:07pm | IP Logged |
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I will definitely track those books down, thanks Tixhiidon!
The past two days have been spent trying to get a handle on the sound of Albanian, and memorise a few simnple words. A couple of consonants have been causing me trouble: one of the 'r' sounds, and the 'dh' sound. The 'dh' is quite puzzling, its somewhere between the 'th' in 'them', and the 'v' in 'vice', but neither at the same time. The 'r' is strange because it seems you have to pull your tongue quite far back in the mouth to produce it, definitely not something required in English! Albanian is written very phonetically, just like Italian, so it's just going to be a matter of cracking each phonemes pronunciation and I'll be able to speak whatever I can read pretty soon. Even if I can't understand it :D Stress tends to fall on the last syllable of a word so that's not going to be a difficulty. Vocabulary wise I'm taking it slowly, but it seems to be going in well, perhaps because Albanian or 'Shqip', is so different to English. I've been studying the first two chapters of book 2 and listening to a chat show that always seems to be on the Albanian channel Vizion Plus. I'll get a chance for some limited speaking practice tonight when I bore my girlfriend with what I've learnt :) 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| mr_chinnery Senior Member England Joined 5748 days ago 202 posts - 297 votes Speaks: English* Studies: French | Message 4 of 35 02 March 2011 at 6:33pm | IP Logged |
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I just found
this guide to Albanian grammar. It looks thoroughly technical, but very informative so I'd better start googling all the linguistic terminology therein! Edited by mr_chinnery on 02 March 2011 at 6:33pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| mr_chinnery Senior Member England Joined 5748 days ago 202 posts - 297 votes Speaks: English* Studies: French | Message 6 of 35 03 March 2011 at 5:01pm | IP Logged |
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'Spoken Albanian' arrived in the post today. The introduction is emphatic about the
importance of listening when learning a language. I didn;t realise, but the course originally came with an audio element, which unfortunately I don't have. The course is broken into units, with a dialogue at the beginning of each one. The writer advises to listen to this at least thirty times, and repeat it until you can keep pace with the Albanian voice on the recording, and 'mean what you say'. It theN then says 'Look at THE Albanian version of the dialogue in the book only after you are able to produce it orally given only the English equivalent as a cue'. So sadly I'm not going to be able to use this course as it was intended, but I'll still work through it somehow. However, this method can easily be applied to the book2 site, as you have to click on each line of Albanian writing to reveal it. Each unit is 6 hours work, and there are 30 units, so about 180 hours all in all. I'll get cracking on it tomorrow, and if I can spend a couple of hours a day on it (unlikely) I should be done in a year! Exciting :) 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| polyglossia Senior Member FranceRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5395 days ago 205 posts - 255 votes Speaks: French* | Message 7 of 35 05 March 2011 at 12:04am | IP Logged |
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I'm really interested in Etruscan language... Some days ago, I was reading some paper on wiki about the origin of etruscan language and there seems to be a kind of relationship between albanian and etruscan... Though etruscans totally disappeared in the mid 5th century, would be interesting to compare both languages.... BTW, albanese is an isolate amongst the indo-european family... Ever heard about this similarity between them both?
Good luck with albanese!!! 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| akkadboy Triglot Senior Member France Joined 5399 days ago 264 posts - 497 votes Speaks: French*, English, Yiddish Studies: Latin, Ancient Egyptian, Welsh | Message 8 of 35 05 March 2011 at 12:17am | IP Logged |
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Albanian does sound interesting, good luck with it !
1 person has voted this message useful |
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