albanian

Albanian can refer to the people or the language. The Albanians are a Southeast European ethnic group native to the western Balkans, primarily in Albania and Kosovo, with sizable communities in North Macedonia, Montenegro, Greece, and Serbia, and a large diaspora across Europe and beyond.

The Albanian language is an Indo-European language that forms its own branch within the family. It has two major dialect groups, Gheg in the north and Tosk in the south; the standard literary language is based largely on the Tosk dialect. The language uses the Latin alphabet, consisting of 36 letters, which was standardized in 1908 at the Congress of Monastir. It is the official language of Albania and Kosovo, and is widely used in education and media there; in other countries it is spoken as a minority language with varying official recognition.

Origins and history: Albanian is generally viewed as an independent branch of the Indo-European language family. The precise historical links to ancient languages such as Illyrian or Thracian remain uncertain. The earliest surviving Albanian writings date to the late medieval period, with a modern standardized form developed in the 20th century during the Albanian Renaissance and the efforts to promote national literacy and identity.