Talk:Albanian languages

Unintelligibility

"The dialects of Arvanitika and Arbëresh are unintelligible even among themselves.": This is, to the best of my knowledge, incorrect, and apparently a misunderstanding spread by "Ethnologue" or similar sources on the basis of a misreading of one of the seminal sociolinguistic studies, Trudgill+Tzavaras 1977. Tr+Tz indeed report in their study that native informants repeatedly claimed they found the dialects of other Arvanite areas hard to understand. However, in their discussion, Tzavaras (who was himself a native speaker), leaves no doubt about it that he himself considers this information incorrect. He analyses these claims as a discoursive strategy related to linguistic self-deprecation, where speakers try to position themselves with respect to the low ideological prestige of Arvanitic, by constructing clines of perceived "broad" versus more "refined" dialects. Later, post-1990 studies that deal with the renewed linguistic contacts between local Arvanites and Albanian immigrant workers uniformly report that there are no difficulties of communication even between local Arvanitic and any form of mainland Albanian. Fut.Perf. ☼ 08:35, 9 April 2009 (UTC)

Ah, good to know. I'm wrapping up for the day, so either you can take care of this or I'll do it tomorrow. Do you have any refs handy? (Especially if we claim "E claims X, but that has been falsified by Y". kwami (talk) 08:44, 9 April 2009 (UTC)

Trudgill + Tzavaras is cited at the Arvanitika page. For the recent studies, a good example is Botsi, also cited there. (That one is online, but in German). Not sure if I can dig out exact quotes from T+T, I read it years ago. Fut.Perf. ☼ 08:49, 9 April 2009 (UTC)

Languages?

Is there even a need for this page? Albanian language isnt enaugh? We should redirect it.Balkanian`s word (talk) 10:35, 9 April 2009 (UTC)

The same could be argued for Gheg and Tosk. But as with all other language families, this article concentrates on Albanian as a branch of Indoeuropean rather than on the language itself. kwami (talk) 11:21, 9 April 2009 (UTC)

Why? Is there any difference? You could just add in Albanian language`s lead that this is also a indo-european subbranch. Why should we create 2 articles about the exact same thing?Balkanian`s word (talk) 11:24, 9 April 2009 (UTC)

Why don't you pick one page to have this discussion on, rather than hopping back and forth on 2 articles with the exact same questions?

We shouldn't create "2 articles about the exact same thing", of course. What does that have to do with this article? kwami (talk) 11:39, 9 April 2009 (UTC)

It is not the case, Gheg Albanian, Tosk Albanian, and Arvanitika, either are languges of Albanian macrolanguage, or dialects of Albanian language, should have separate articles in order to show their distinct features. On the other hand Albanian language wither is a language or a macro-language, in both cases it is the same. There is no Albanian language which is a subbranch of an Albanian macro-language. In contrast Gheg, Tosk, Arvanitika and Arbereshe (Cham, Lab, Northwest Gheg, etc) are subbranches of Albanian language, either it is considered as a language family or a single language.Balkanian`s word (talk) 11:39, 9 April 2009 (UTC)

Well, it's basically a similar issue here as in the Greek case, and I have to say B.w. has a point: the actual referents of what this article is about and what the Albanian language article is about are precisely the same. It's the same linguistic entity, the same node in the tree. The intro currently says: "Albanian is the Albanian language", which, well, does come across as a bit tautological, don't you think? Okay, it then adds "... as a branch of IE", but that doesn't really make it a new topic. It does have something slightly forkish about it. Well, personally, I won't fight you over this, I just think we've lived with single-article structures for these one-language branches quite well for a long time, and while I don't necessarily consider the new articles harmful, I can't really see the big advantage in them either. Fut.Perf. ☼ 11:46, 9 April 2009 (UTC)

A related thing is that I hate having these entries in the tree fragments of the infoboxes. Why should Tosk Albanian say it's "a dialect of [[Albanian language|Albanian]] in its intro sentence, but then link to a different article, but under the same display title, [[Albanian languages|Albanian]], in its infobox? I imagine that must be highly confusing to the uninitiated reader. And having "Indo-European - Albanian - Albanian" in the infobox of Albanian language itself is really just plain ugly, and not useful at all. Fut.Perf. ☼ 11:51, 9 April 2009 (UTC)

It makes more sense if you consider Tosk and Gheg to be two literary Albanian languages. I haven't yet gone through and fixed them up so it all hangs together. kwami (talk) 11:59, 9 April 2009 (UTC)

I think that we totally agree that Gheg and Tosk may be seen as languages or dialects (although I personally see no huge distinction between them, being an Albanian speaker). But this may be treated in Albanian language page, not in a different article.Balkanian`s word (talk) 12:04, 9 April 2009 (UTC)

Not just ugly but incorrect, because Albanian language is not a subbranch of Albanian languages. There is no distinction between Albanian (seen by some as a single language) and Albanian (seen by others as a macrolanguage). It is just two different viewpoints of the same object.Balkanian`s word (talk) 11:56, 9 April 2009 (UTC)

It was more for navigation. But it can be taken out easily enough, which I'll do now. kwami (talk) 11:59, 9 April 2009 (UTC)

In every case thanks for the expantion of this part. I am going to add it as a section in Albanian language. Thanks, Balkanian`s word (talk) 11:58, 9 April 2009 (UTC)

It seems odd to me to treat Serbian, Croatian, and even Bosnian as separate languages, or Hindi and Urdu, or Malaysian and Indonesian, when they are practically identical, just because they have separate literary standards, yet not extend the same courtesy to Gheg and Tosk. But then I was under the impression that there were severe difficulties in comprehension between the two varieties. Are you saying that this is not the case? kwami (talk) 12:25, 9 April 2009 (UTC)

Per your merge just now, this article here would also be the place to discuss whether Ethnologue were wrong in claiming that there are nine Albanian languages, as in the discussion above. kwami (talk) 12:29, 9 April 2009 (UTC)

m. 4 languages per ethnologue. Per your argument: (1) there is no different separate literary standards for Gheg and Tosk (2) there are differences between the two dialects, but they are intelligible (3) Ethnologue may be right, but what Ethnologue states may/should be used in Albanian language page. As I explained before there is no Albanian language which is a subbranch of Albanian language family. Albanian language is either a macrolanguage or a single language, in every case it is the same Albanian language.Balkanian`s word (talk) 12:33, 9 April 2009 (UTC)

AFAIK, there are separate literary standards. Gheg was once official, and I believe is the current standard for Kosovo. I can only take your word that they are mutually intelligible. But by your argument, Gheg and Tosk should by merged into Albanian, since they are either part of a macrolanguage or of a single language. kwami (talk) 12:42, 9 April 2009 (UTC)

Gheg was never a official standard in Albania and is not a official standard in Kosovo. Varieties of Gheg were used in pre-communist Albania, but without an official regulation. The official regulation took place only in 1972, when the current standard was proposed, which is primary based on Tosk, with some influence from Gheg.Balkanian`s word (talk) 12:44, 9 April 2009 (UTC)

My bad, I should've said 'literary standard'. I've read that Gheg was the basis of the standard written language a century ago, and that it is still used for books and newspapers.

And BTW, it is nine Albanian languages in Ethnologue per mutual intelligibility, if you read the text, though only four with ISO codes. kwami (talk) 12:51, 9 April 2009 (UTC)

Which on hell are this nine: Gheg, Tosk, Arvanitika, Arbereshe and....?Balkanian`s word (talk) 12:53, 9 April 2009 (UTC)

Per E, Arvanitika is 3 languages, and Arberesh is 4. I removed that after Fut.Perf. informed me that E was simply wrong, and that all were mutually intelligible with standard Tosk. kwami (talk) 12:57, 9 April 2009 (UTC)

Per my argument, Toks and Gheg should not be merged, because wiki uses pages for dialects, or for languages. Tosk and Gheg are either dialects or languages, and they are part of Albanian language, but not the Albanian language. If you would create a page Tosk dialect and another Tosk language then they should be redirected to one of them. This is the case, you create a page about Albanian language and Albanian languages which is the exactly same thing.Balkanian`s word (talk) 12:47, 9 April 2009 (UTC)

Kwami, I can't follow your argument about merging: Separate Gheg and Tosk articles make sense because they are different entities, no matter whether each of them is a dialect or a separate language. But "Albanian language" and "Albanian languages" don't make two different articles, because they refer to one and the same entity, no matter what its status or that of its subdivisions. Fut.Perf. ☼ 12:48, 9 April 2009 (UTC)

We don't normally discuss comparative IE stuff in single language articles. That's usually reserved for an article on Germanic, Slavic, etc. kwami (talk) 12:53, 9 April 2009 (UTC)

Which is the difference between Albanian language and Albanian languages?Balkanian`s word (talk) 12:55, 9 April 2009 (UTC)

Well, but there's no such "normally" for single-language branches, such as Greek or Albanian. We discuss the comparative status of each lingustic node in the tree in the article about that node. Comparative status of Germanic goes into Germanic languages, comparative status of Albanian goes into Albanian language, because that's the article about that node in the tree. Fut.Perf. ☼ 13:03, 9 April 2009 (UTC)

The issue is whether Albanian is a single language. Greek is not. I thought Gheg and Tosk were mutually unintelligible, but Balkanian`s word informs me they aren't. Without mutual unintelligibility or some other criterion for separate language status, then Albanian is the equivalent of Armenian, where I believe the dialects are also all mutually intelligible, and conflating the language with the branch of IE is appropriate. kwami (talk) 00:28, 10 April 2009 (UTC)

Ethnologue seems to be unreliable it states that Gheg is "Official regional language in Kossovo", which is simply not true and that speakers of gheg are called "Kossovar", while Gheg is the language even in Tirana, who of course are not in the region of Kosovo.Balkanian`s word (talk) 13:00, 9 April 2009 (UTC)