Volume 2006, Issue 178

Vor wenigen Jahren, genauer gesagt im Studienjahr 1994–1995, wurde für die Studenten der Fachrichtung Sprache und Literaturwissenschaft der Fakultät für Geschichte und Philologie der Universität Tirana neben dem traditionell unterrichteten Fach ‘Dialektologie’ das Fach ‘Soziolinguistik’ eingeführt. Einige Jahre davor wurde eine Einführung in die Soziolinguistik in Form von Spezialkursen an der Universität Tirana angeboten. Die Soziolinguistik ist in Albanien ein neues Studienfeld. 1996 wurde zum ersten Mal das Buch Soziolingustika Shkurtaj (1996) in einer Auflage von 1000 Exemplaren als Studienbuch veröffentlicht. Drei Jahre später folgte eine zweite, verbesserte Ausgabe. Es ist verständlich, dass dieses Buch eher als eine Einführung gedacht war, um die Aufmerksamkeit auf die theoretischen Probleme der Soziolinguistik zu lenken. Dort wurden unter anderem solche Probleme diskutiert wie das Verhältnis zwischen der Standardsprache und den Dialekten oder die durch extralinguistische Faktoren verursachten semantischen Veränderungen solcher Wörter wie Zot ‘Gott’, Perëndi ‘Herrgott’, oder Allah ‘Allah’. Weiterhin haben wir versucht in diesem Buch eine Antwort auf die von Joshua Fishman (1965) gestellte Frage: Who speaks, with whom, where, why and what language variety? zu geben. Kenntnisse über die Soziolinguistik wurden auch in einem besonderen Kapitel in der Neuauflage des Albanisch-Lehrbuches für die Gymnasien unter dem Titel “Ethnographie des Sprechens” (Hysa, E. et al. 2003: 23–47) einbezogen.

Although Shkodra, the biggest city of the Northern part of Albania, is regarded as a stronghold of Catholicism, the two other religions of Albania (Islam and the Orthodox Church) are represented there as well. In Venetian sources, Shkodra was described as a Catholic town until 1479, when it was conquered by the Turks. During this period a number of the native Catholics emigrated to Venice, while another, smaller part of them was forcefully converted to Islam. Since then, the population of the city of Shkodra has always been dominated by a higher percentage of Muslims. Currently, 65–70% of the population are Muslims, 25–30% are Catholic, and a smaller percentage consists of Orthodox Christians. These historical events and the corresponding demographic changes have favored the formation of some distinctions in customs, clothing, and speech between the Catholic and Muslim population groups. The aim of this article is to present the linguistic distinctions in the speech of these two population groups, on the phonetic level.

The numeral primes and combinations form a useful morphophonemic and semanto-syntactic closed corpus drawn from micro-enclaves of Italy, Italo- Albanian (Arbëresh) and neighboring western Romance, with known genetic reconstructed linguistic histories. These subcorpora show instructive feature configurations as correlated with intensity, direction, and linguistic typology within social contact diffusion.

This article discusses the nature of the attrition of the Arbresh dialect of Piana degli Albanesi. It investigates the state of language use, the state of structural decay, and the linguistic attitude of Arbresh speakers. It concludes that this Arbresh dialect is undergoing a process of “dysfunctional attrition,” which consists of a progressive shrinkage of linguistic domains and functions, a decrease in the number of speakers, and a decline in linguistic competence as the speakers’ age diminishes. Unlike previous views, it maintains that dysfunctional attrition is not necessarily characterized by stigmatization and rejection of the language. The study emphasizes that a positive attitude towards the language is not a guarantee of linguistic survival, and that other aspects of language deterioration and loss must not be neglected in the process of linguistic revitalization.

The differences between the varieties of the Albanian language as spoken both within the Albanian state and outside have usually been investigated under dialectological aspects. From this point of view there are two main dialects of Albanian: Gheg and Tosk. The aim of this article is to investigate certain socio-historical differences between the Albanian spoken in Albania and Kosovo. The topics we are concerned with are differences in the vocabulary of the public sphere and politics, technology, and terminology. Notable differences can however be ascertained in the use of words (also such words that belong to the basic vocabulary of Albanian) and idiomatic expressions which are used in Kosovo with a meaning different from that which they have in Albania. There exists also a series of words which are totally unknown in the speech of the other community. Certain calques from Serbo-Croatian will also be discussed. The reader’s attention will also be drawn to some of the peculiarities of Kosovo Albanian syntax, which may have arisen from interferences through contact with Serbo-Croatian.

The extent to which the many Albanian-speaking children and adolescents in Switzerland apply a bilingual mode differs considerably. As part of a larger project, a quantitative exploratory study seeks to understand whether the frequency of code-switching is determined by demographic, individual, and peer-group-related factors. The fact that no striking relationships between these factors can be observed will be discussed with a view to the specificity of Albanian migration. Furthermore, these results raise questions with regard to the determinants of bilingual practice and the characteristics of “prototypical code-switch-speakers.”

The status of Albanian as a national standard has become a matter of serious debate. In 1972 Standard Albanian (SA) was adopted in public communications and in schools. But after the political changes in Albania in 1991–1992 the language question was reopened, calling into question the SA. The roots of the present-day debate are to be found in the dialectal division of Albanian, the historical establishment of a number of written varieties, and the standardization achieved during the years of the Communist regime. This article describes how Standard Albanian was established and the recent developments. For the future it poses the question: Will there be one Albanian national identity, or two Albanian national identities? The answer is that Albanians already have a good standard language, though with many problems, of course, and much work needs to be done for its enrichment and improvement, but Albanians have no need to create a new standard, or to undergo a glosso-ectomy.

In the past decade the Albanian language has undergone a period of significant change in terms of lexical development. These developments are almost entirely attributable to extralinguistic factors. The turbulent transition from a centralized socialist system to a market economy in the 1990s was accompanied by an immediate opening of Albania to the outside world. This upheaval also brought about a social and intellectual liberation, a change in mental outlook, and freedom from the weight of dictatorship and the totalitarian mindset. The transformation from collectivized property to private property and the birth of political and cultural pluralism constituted a novel variable within Albanian society. The pluralism of press and broadcast media and the phenomenal growth in the number of political parties are two important constituents for change in the lexical norm of the Albanian language, both in a positive and negative sense. A predisposition towards direct contact with Western languages and cultures, interpreted as a sign of the “Europeanization” of Albania, led to the proliferation of many foreign words, primarily English, into the lexicon of Albanian, especially in the domains of economics, trade, jurisprudence, information technology, politics, and administration. This study concerns itself with interpretation, classification, and examples of these changes.

In one of his papers devoted to the study of the “First Congress” phenomenon, J. Fishman points out that, in order to define a sound typology, many more such congresses need to be studied. Albanian researchers have had many discussions on the topic of congresses for the standardization of the Albanian language, but the Fishman project has not concluded any study to date of the “First Congress” phenomenon as pertains specifically to the Albanian language. This article studies this phenomenon according to criteria he set out. We use as our basis for analysis, linguistic meetings, conferences, and material extrapolated from Albanian associations over the last two centuries in order to identify which of them fulfill the criteria and thus enable a robust designation as the first congress of the Albanian language.

Rexhep Ismajli: “Në gjuhë” dhe ”për gjuhë” ( Rrjedhat e planifikimit të shqipes në Kosovë 1945–1968 ) [“In language” and “for language” (The course of language planning in Kosovo Albanian 1945–1968)]. Peja: Dukagjini, 1998. 330 pp. (Wilfried Fiedler)

Northern Khmer is a variety of Khmer spoken in several provinces of northeastern Thailand. With over a million speakers, it is not normally regarded as an endangered language. However, the effectiveness of Thai state penetration into the countryside, Thai language policy, changing modes of production in rural villages, the rise of mass media, and increased social mobility are leading speakers to shift to the national language, Thai. This shift is exacerbated by an apathetic attitude towards Khmer identity, which arose in part as a cultural reaction to the troubled political history of neighboring Cambodia. Given current trends in Northern Khmer language use and broader sociocultural forces, it is argued that even a language with as many speakers as Northern Khmer may prove to be more endangered than generally assumed.