The Open court . dwork,so far as it can be ascertained, and grammar are Indo-European,but a large number of words have been borrowed from the Latinor Italian and Greek, and it is not always easy to decide whether themutilated and curtailed forms now in use represent adopted wordsor belong to the original vocabulary. There is also a considerablemixture of Turkish and Slavonic words. Notwithstanding certainpoints of resemblance in structure and phonetics. Albanian is en- 72 THE OPEN COURT. tirely distinct from the neighboring languages; in its relation toearly Latin and Greek it may be regarded
The Open court . dwork,so far as it can be ascertained, and grammar are Indo-European,but a large number of words have been borrowed from the Latinor Italian and Greek, and it is not always easy to decide whether themutilated and curtailed forms now in use represent adopted wordsor belong to the original vocabulary. There is also a considerablemixture of Turkish and Slavonic words. Notwithstanding certainpoints of resemblance in structure and phonetics. Albanian is en- 72 THE OPEN COURT. tirely distinct from the neighboring languages; in its relation toearly Latin and Greek it may be regarded as a coordinate memberof the Aryan stock. It possesses seven vowels; among the conso-nants are the aspirated d and t as in Greek, and many other soundssuch as b, d, sh, sh (French /), and hard g, which are wanting inGreek but exist in the Slavonic languages. There are three declen-sions, each with a definite and indefinite form; the genitive, dativeand ablative are usually represented by a single termination; the. MALSIA WOMEN WITH SPINDLE AND PITCHER. vocative is formed by a final o as mcuimo from mcmme, neuter gender is absent. There are two conjugations; thepassive formation, now wanting in most European languages, hasbeen retained as in Greek; thus kerko-iy, T seek, forms kcrko-n-em,I am sought. The infinitive is not found; as in Greek, Roumanianand Bulgarian, it is replaced by the subjunctive with a two auxiliary verbs are kam, T have, and yam, T am. Aninteresting and characteristic feature of the language is the definitearticle, which is attached to the end of the word: e. g., mik (friend, ALBANIA. 73 amicits), mik-u (the friend) ; kien (dog), kien-i; Shkumb,Shkunib-i. The suffix article Hkewise appears in Roumanian andBulgarian, but in no other Latin or Slavonic language; it is in eachcase a form of the demonstrative pronoun. Another remarkableanalogy between the Albanian and neighboring languages is theformation of the future; the Albanian do (3d
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Keywords: ., bookcentury1800, bookdecade188, booksubjectreligion, bookyear1887
