Language Information

The Albanian alphabet is based on the Latin alphabet, with the addition of the letters ë, ç, and nine digraphs to account for certain sounds in pronunciations. The Albanian alphabet consists of 36 letters:

Albanian pronunciation

Albanian has seven vowels: /i ɛ a ə ɔ y u/.

Vowels

Phoneme	Written as...	Pronunciation as in...
/i/	i	English bead
/ɛ/	e	English let
/a/	a	Spanish la
/ə/	ë	English alone
/ɔ/	o	English four
/y/	y	French du
/u/	u	English doom

Consonants

The following is a table of the Albanian phonemic consonants.

Phoneme	Written as...	Pronunciation as in...
/p/	p	English pen
/b/	b	English bat
/t/	t	English tan
/d/	d	English debt
/c/	q	similar to English hot year
/ɟ/	gj	similar to English did you
/k/	k	English car
/g/	g	English go
/ts/	c	similar to English hats, Japanese tsuki
/dz/	x	similar to English goods
/tʃ/	ç	English chat
/dʒ/	xh	English jet
/θ/	th	English thin
/ð/	dh	English this
/f/	f	English far
/v/	v	English van
/s/	s	English son
/z/	z	English zip
/ʃ/	sh	English show
/ʒ/	zh	English vision, French jour
/h/	h	English hat
/m/	m	English man
/n/	n	English none
/ɲ/	nj	similar to English canyon, Spanish ñ
/l/	l	English law
/j/	j	English yes, German j
/lˠ/	ll	English mill
/r/	rr	Spanish rosa, hierro (trilled)
/ɾ/	r	Spanish aro, Japanese hara (flapped)

Grammar

Albanian nouns show overt gender, number, and three or four cases. An unusual feature is that nouns are further inflected obligatorily with suffixes to show definite or indefinite meaning: for example buk‘ means "bread," buka means "the bread." Noun plurals are also notable for the irregularity of a large number of them.

Adjectives, except numerals and certain quantifying expressions, and dependent nouns follow the noun they modify.

Verbs have the number and variety of forms and are quite irregular in forming their stems.

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