How Difficult is it to Learn Albanian?

Many people define Albanian as one of the ten most difficult languages to learn. But what makes it difficult and is it really that hard to learn?

Learning Albanian is often a challenge for native English speakers. Albanian is unique, borrowing some vocabulary and grammatical rules from Greek, Latin, and other extinct Indo-European languages such as Thracian, Illyrian, and Dacian. But with a little practice, anyone can learn it.

Why do people say Albanian is difficult to learn?

Although Albanian has some words that sound similar to Latin, Greek, English and other Romance languages, it is also unique. Many scholars speculate that it may have evolved from dead languages such as Thracian, Illyrian, or Dacian.

Albanian is an Indo-European language that forms its own branch of language. Many people find Albanian challenging because it is vulnerable, has a lot of tenses and inflections, and has a lot of unique grammar rules and words.

People say that Albanian is difficult to learn because it is not comparable to other languages. When you learn Albanian, most words in the language don’t sound the same as their English synonyms, which can make it difficult for English speakers to memorize a dictionary.

There are also different nouns and verbs, which make them very different from English.

Let’s talk more about what these mean and why these traits can make learning difficult at first. Now we will look at the different parts of the Albanian language. I’ll give you a basic summary of how to make sentences in Albanian and see how difficult each part of speech can be to use.

Albanian nouns have gender

If you have studied other Romance languages, you should be familiar with the concept of gendered nouns. Albanian nouns also have gender and each gender noun follows certain rules. You need to remember the gender of each noun as you learn vocabulary.

Albanian is a retrograde language, which means that every noun has a maturity. These cases mark the grammatical use of each noun in a sentence (eg subject, direct object). The suffix of the noun in each case differs according to gender. There are five prominent cases in Albania:

Maturity of a noun: It indicates the subject of the sentence.

Genitive: It distinguishes possessive nouns (formed with dative + preposition i / e / të / së).
Dative: It distinguishes the indirect object of the verb (malit = towards the mountain).
Accusative: It distinguishes the direct object from the verb.
Ablative: Marks a prepositional clause (me librin = by book).

A feature of Albanian nouns that can complicate language learning is that they have a definite and indefinite form. In English we use “a/an” to denote an indefinite noun and “the” to denote a definite noun. In Albanian, certain nouns end in a consonant such as “t” or “n”.

When it comes to nouns, learning them for the first time can be challenging. You need to remember the gender, the mature ending for each derivation of the noun, and the indefinite and definite ending for each case. However, once you learn the rules of grammar, making sentences should be easy.

Albanian verbs have different conjugations

Albanian verbs can get tricky when the only language you know is English. This is because Albanian verbs have a base that you need to add a suffix to when constructing a sentence.

Suffixes usually consist of two or three letters that indicate the tense, person, number, voice, and mood of the verb.

Memorizing all of these endings is one of the most difficult parts of learning Albanian because there is so much to remember.

Because each verb expresses a person, number, tense, sound, and mood, it also means that each verb has multiple forms that tell you who the subject of the sentence is, when the action occurred, and who performed the action.

Learning and memorizing the endings of each verb may seem daunting at first. But once you get to know them, they can make nouns that are understandable and their running time a lot more manageable.

Albanian verb endings can demarcate:

Three people, each ending in a singular and a plural: the first person (me, we), the second person (you, all of you) and the third person (he, they).
Seven times: present, future, definite past, imperfect, perfect present, perfect past and multi-perfect.
Four voices: active, middle passive and reflexive.
Seven tendencies: Indicative, Imperative, Conditional, Judicial, Submissive, Optative, Admirable.
The face of the verb tells you who the subject of the sentence is.

The tense system in Albanian is very complex because there are five different past tenses. Now let’s separate it with the verb lexoj (read):

Past tense: Unë lexoja, I read.
Present Perfect: Lexova, read.
Perfection in the past: Come lexuar, I read.
Pluperfect: Pata lexuar, I read.

So all these past tenses serve to make the action of the verb as concrete as possible.

The voice tells you who is doing the action of the verb in the sentence, just like in English. Passive-medium bets work the same as English passives (e.g., active “paint” versus passive “I’m drawing”). However, reflexive sound indicates that the subject and object of the sentence are the same. For example, a reflexive English sentence would be “I paint myself”.

Then comes the mood. The atmosphere can be very confusing for English-speaking students, but don’t let that discourage you. Here is a basic summary of verb inflection in Albanian:

Indicators indicate that something is being, has been or will be done, such as: B. “I have learned Albanian”.
An imperative means the verb is a command, such as “Learn Albanian!”
Fake means something has been done or not, “I may have learned Albanian.”
Jussive means something that needs to be done, like “learn Albanian”.
Optative express wishes, such as “only if it was easy to learn Albanian!”

Admiring expresses surprise or amazement at something like “I can’t believe you learned Albanian!”
There’s a lot you need to learn about Albanian verbs. It takes time to master the many verb endings, tenses, and moods. Yet most of the work takes place in written memorization. With dedication and practice, I believe anyone can learn this language.