Albania Languages

Albanian is the only language in its own distinctive branch of the Indo-European language family. It is divided into the dialects of Geg and Tosk. Albanian was formerly written in the Arabic Turkish, Greek, and Latin alphabets in the various parts of the country. In 1908 a standard orthography of Latin characters was adopted. During the centuries of Ottoman rule, the Albanian language was not commonly used in writing. The records of Albania are mostly in Turkish, Italian, Greek, and Latin. It is important to note that Turkish was written in the Arabic alphabet until the 1920s. Today the Tosk dialect of Albanian is the official language but both dialects, Geg and Tosk, are used in everyday speech. A few other languages are spoken by minority groups, the major one being Greek in the southern part of Albania.