Story
I met an Albanian at Toastmasters. Smiling and good looking. Always smiling. I like Albanians.
He was a builder. Then I met another man. He was a plumber.
He asked me, "What do you do."
I said, "I am an author, and I teach English, and I'm learning other languages.
I asked the plumber, What's your language."
He said,"It's Albanian."
Hm. For once I was lost for words.
Problem
I don't speak one word of Albanian. He was ahead of me, speaking both Albanian and English, some French, a bit of Greek. He spoke my language fluently. But I was a teacher and could not speak one word of his language.
Answer
I could learn one word from him. I could get a free lesson.
Keep it simple. I asked, "Is it easy to read Albanian, if you speak English? Are the letters the same?"
Tips
"The Albanian alphabet? Yes, the letters are the same. But Albanian has more of them."
That sounds very Alice in Wonderland. I asked, "Please explain."
"The Albanian language has 36 letters, mostly the same as in English, but double letters are counted."
Ch sounds like Russian, looks like Russian, has a cedilla and pronounced ch as in the English word Chance.
SH as in should counts as one letter.
xh - pronounced J as in Jack.
For example:
uncle in English is written in Albanian as - xhaxhi - pronounced judge ee
th - a new letter. "A little th as in thing think, fifth."
dh - "a strong th as in the or this, themselves, leather".
What about sentence structure?
"I am reading a book:
un - i
yam
duke
ledur," says my Albanian friend.
I could not grasp that the first time, let alone remember it. Let's make life easy. I asked, "Which words are the same in both languages?"
"Many Words Are The same:
hotel
taxi
train."
Now, let's try some everyday word,s such as hello and goodbye, and yes and no, and please and thank you.
thank you - f a l i m i n d e r e t (sounds longer in Albanian). Sound like Ali but it start f a l i (memory aid for thank you, thank you, Ali, I can't fail FALI; mind / minder / et / tete.
hello
goodbye - l a m t u m i r ë
What does the double dot on the ë mean?
If you click on the sound symbol underneath the word at the bottom of the text box in Google translate you can hear that the ë sound like er, a short version of err.
To type the e with the double dot above, press down the e key on your laptop keyboard; up pops a list of possible accents - see that the one you want is number 4; continue to hold down the e key and with your other hand, your right hand, tap the number four key at the top of the keyboard. Release both fingers and you should see the e with the two dots. If you get an ordinary e, or double ee, you have mistimed it by holding or release one finger. Just try again.
How are you? Ok.
c u ok
mir - ok
t mir - you ok
"You ask about the whole family, your father ok, your mother ok and so on. So you hear, '... mir ... mir ... mir?' "
They also use OK because they learn English as a second language in school, so no problem speaking to Albanians. They have similar words such as:
stress - stress
What about yes and no?
Yes - po
no - yo
How confusing. Both end with o, and the no starts with a ye like the English yes.
rr (rolled r)
r r u g is road or street
table - same as English and French
Story
My plumber said: "The school teacher of French in Albania made us write everything in French fifty times, but I never learned. If you don't want to learn, you don't learn. It was a communist time and we thought, 'we are never going to use it, so why waste the time?'
"I don't know why they taught it. You would be classed as a traitor if you said anything about foreigners. It was a communist country for forty years. You were scared to say anything. People got sent to prison.
"Now it's a democratic country. You can do anything. Learn anything. Since 1989. We changed then. 1985 or four, I don't remember exactly, the emperor, died. He was a friend of Lenin, Stalin, Tito of Yugoslavia. He was one of them, communist countries, all influenced by Russia or China.
"Now we have no influence from Russia. We don't get on with the Russians.
"We are run by Tony Blair."
What do you mean by that?
"He set the rules for us. The rules, and the borders we use now, were influenced by him.
"Albania is such a small country but an interest for everybody. It's bang slap in the middle of Europe.
"Tony Blair saved the Kosovans from getting slaughtered. He sent the troops to stop the Serbians - or rather the European Union, NATO, he sent them to stop the Serbs. In the mix he killed a lot of innocent people, too, but the idea was to stop the Serbs. And they did.
"Greeks, Serbs, they are still with Russia. That's the way it goes in Europe. Greeks and Serbs, friends with Russia. Cos the Greeks are scared of Turks. So they always keep friends with Russia."
"Why didn't you learn Russian at school?"
"Some other schools learned Russian. Other schools had different things. The year I was in school they just started, in around those years when we started to break off, 1986 or 97. I left home when I was 13 to work in Greece. We had no choice. In a communist country we had nothing."
"They controlled everything. They took the land off us. They give us each three thousand square metres as a home owner.
"You were not allowed more than one cow. If you had a second cow, they would take it away.
"You had to work for them. You could have potatoes, small things. They would sell you bread. You have to work for peanuts to buy bread from them. A very strict regime."
"Who benefited?"
"The government. They don't want you to be rich in any kind of sense. They want to control you. We keep you fed, enough to survive, and that's it.
"If you said something against the leader, you'll be in prison next day. You have spies. Loads of spies. You never knew who was a spy. But if you said something, you would be in prison next day. Even in your extended family, you could not trust anybody. There must have been money involved, something involved. For me the regime was very bad. They never let you thrive. They want to lock you in a cupboard and this is what you are going to do."
One man's view.
Author
Angela Lansbury, travel writer and photographer, teacher of English and learner of languages.
Please share posts.
