Old Albanian – Introduction, Part 2
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de Vaan, Michiel
The lecture features a presentation of the earliest known Albanian authors.
 Hello again, welcome to the second session of our series on Old Albanian. In this video I will introduce you to the main Old Albanian authors and their texts. Our roadmap shows you who they are. We start with the pre-literary fragments, then we move on to the Old Gag authors, to Buzuku, Budi, to Bardi, Bogdani, also to Dalicje, and finally to two Old Tosk authors, Matranga and Varebova. The oldest sentence in Albanian is the so-called baptismal formula, cited in a Latin letter by the Archbishop of Durres or Duradzo. It means I baptize you in the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit. The form Peremonit shows that this is a variety of Old Gag dialect. Transposed into modern Albanian, the sentence would read more or less Unte pagasoi per emrit, te atit, ete birrit, etes birrit, etes birrit, etet shant. Another interesting 15th century source is the word list made by the German Arnold von Harf, who is travelling to the Holy Land and visited the town of Durres. His spelling is of course inexperienced, but we clearly recognize the Old Gag dialect. The table gives four examples of words registered by von Harf. Let's have a look at them. There's the word Veine, which means wine, modern Gag veine. Next is the word Drek for the devil, modern Gag drek. The word Kale for horse, modern Gag kale. And the word for five, Bessa, modern Gag bens. The next set of fragments, a translation of the Easter Gospel into a southern Tosk variety, is dated around 1500. Here we give the text in its original Greek spelling, and a phonological interpretation with modern Albanian spelling, which runs Ata prathon lausid seungre sevdecorit. The text contains many Greek loanwords, such as here the word laus, which means people. The first complete book to have been written and published in Albanian is John Bozouk's Meshari from 1555. Its language is more archaic than that of the subsequent old Albanian books. Bozouk was a Catholic priest who wrote in a Northwest Gag dialect. More than just a missile, the Meshari can be called a lethargic manual for priests. Only one single copy of this work is known to exist. The spelling of the Meshari presents some interesting features, which have paved the way for, or maybe stand in an earlier tradition of writing Albanian with an alphabet, that is based on Italian, but takes some additional signs from Bosanchica, that is from the Bosnian variant of the Cyrillic alphabet, as used on the Dalmatian coast. A single Bosanchica sign is often used to render two or three different Albanian phonemes. Let's have a look at these signs. First we have the complicated sign, which can stand for the sound th and also for the. Then the sound that looks like a capital sigma, which stands for t and also for t. The sign, which looks like epsilon, can stand for z, for d and also for d. And finally, the sign that looks like an h can stand for the palatostops c and d and also for g. Under specification, that is the use of one sign for several different phonemes, is also found in the spelling of the vowels. The letter u can render the vowels u and u, but the same is also true of the Bosanchica letter, which looks like an eight with the head cut off. This one here, which also can stand for u and u. If you look into the letter a, it can render a and a. Long vowels are in principle written with a digraph, such as double r for a, double e for e, etc. Short vowels receive a single vowel sign, except in word final position, where Busuoku often adds a final h without being completely consistent. Here are examples of the double spelling for long vowels and an example of the variation between a final vowel and a final vowel plus h for a short final vowel. On the next slide, we have a facsimile from a page of the edition of Busuoku's Mishari, where you can try to find the different signs that we've just been discussing. In the close-up, you see it more clearly. Just to give you one example. Here we have the word Jezu with the zi and the final sign, which can stand for u or u, over here. And you can scroll through the text and try to find other signs yourself. The next old gag author in chronological order is Pieter Boudi, who was a bishop in northern Albania. He has translated Latin and Italian texts, published in three books, the Christian doctrine, the Roman ritual and the Confession mirror. Among these are more than 3,000 lines of spiritual poetry, really the first poems in Albanian. Of the Cyrillic letters used by Busuoku, Boudi retains 3, but he now makes a systematic distinction between single v and double th. Furthermore, his spelling more closely follows the contemporary spelling of Italian, for instance with Z-Fozze and with S-C-I-Fo-Sz. On this page you see Faximile from the edition of the Dottrina Cristiana by Boudi, where again you can see some of the signs that are used by Boudi in his edition. Actually on the left side you see a cutout from the right hand side, like this, and again some of the signs to give you just one example. The word fan, saying to be fan, with the double Xilike sign, which indicates the letter th in Albanian. The first dictionary of Albanian was made by Frank Barthi, whose name would translate in English as Frank White. His dictionarium latino epiruticum from 1635 contains 2,500 words in Latin and Old Gag, plus 113 proverbs and a number of phrases useful to travelers in Albanian lands, including even some phrases in Turkish. Here are a few of the travel phrases found at the end of the dictionary. The first sentence, mir se er de mi ko, literally means it is good that you came, oh friend. The second sentence, aşt ki o u da ki vön krü, mentions the citadel of Krüya in northern Albania, famous for its resistance to the Turks in the 15th century and still a tourist destination today. The third sentence, jo o vola e haruike lark, shows that vola already meant comrade in 1635 and it also contains the admirative imperfect form. Haruike, you heard. You can discover more on this exciting topic in the separate video on the admirative. On the next slide you see two more travel phrases from Bardi. The first one, ku ve vola hoy, or ku ve o i arbenis, shows the two possible placements of the vocative particles o and oi before and after the adresi. And it also shows the gag variant of the noun for Albanian, arbenis. The second sentence shows the name of the city of Istanbul and the date of Dinozod, the date of our lord. The most elaborate original work in Old Gag, with eastern features, is Bogdanis Kuneius Profetarium, or Band of Prophets. According to the late Robert Elsie, this work is considered to be the masterpiece of early Albanian literature and is the first work in Albanian of full artistic and literary quality. Besides the Albanian text in prose and some of it in verse, the edition also contains a translation in Italian. As you can see, to the right on the facsimile page, Bogdani was Archie Upeshkep Skoupse, or Archbishop of the city of Skopje. The spelling used by Bogdani uses the by now traditional features of gag Catholic authors, with a special sign for the, the, the and the vowel, y. The signs you see on the left. A special feature of Bogdani's is his rendering of the untressed vowel schwa by a plus gravies in alternation with the simple a. The usage is not fully consistent though. The other features of his spelling, of which some examples are given to the right on the screen, are more systematically calc on Italian than with previous authors. In the early 18th century, two works were produced by Francesco Maria Dallecce, an Arborage missionary from Italy, who worked in northern Albania. With some exaggeration, we might call him the first linguist of Albanian. Chronologically, his earlier work is his Italo-Albanian dictionary from 172, which however did not pass the manuscript stage until it finally appeared in a critical edition by Egesiem Gurga in 2009. Here you see a page from the manuscript of the dictionary. Whereas Dallecce's dictionary was not the first dictionary of Albanian, his grammar, modestly called grammatical observations on Albanian and published in 1716, is the oldest grammar of Albanian that we know of. The examples to the right show the first page of his treatment of spelling on the left-hand side and phonology on the right-hand side and a page from the morphology concerning the possessive pronoun m-e-me-tem, meaning mine. With the next author, we turn to the old Tosque variety, from which much less textual material has been preserved. The first author is Luca Matranga, who came from the Arborage village of Piana del Ialbine, Albanese in Sicily. His 1592 translation of the Latin catechism into Albanian is called Imbesueme Ecris Deire. The 28-page text is rather short, but it does give us an impression of what old Tosque looked like. In the example on the screen, you can see, for example, that the Tosque vowel ə is spelled by the r-e-digraph æ, this one here, and that the author does not use the Cyrillic signs for specific sounds of Albanian, such as the fricatives th and the. The letter d can indicate the sounds d and the, whereas for the sound th Matranga uses the combination th like modern Albanian. In this passage, furthermore, we find the nominative of a l'od, inna zod, right here, and the word nom for l'or, which was borrowed from the Greek religious tradition. Unfortunately, no old texts are known from the 17th century, but we do have some works from the 18th century. Most famously, Giulio Varibobas, Giolla, Isian, Marie's, Virger, or the life of the Virgin St. Mary. It is a rhyming poem of nearly 5,000 verses in Albano-Calabrian dialect. The spelling is based on Italian, but not Varibobas' use of the upside down ə. For instance here, to indicate the Albanian schwa. You find it here in the words Marie's for Mary, and also at the end of the word, Virger for Virgin, on the title page, which you now see. This concludes our survey on the old Albanian authors and their texts. In the next video, we will delve into the dialectology of Albanian. I thank you for your attention, or as the authors we just encountered might say, I'm in the read-pervam engine to I. Take care and goodbye.
 Hello again, welcome to the second session of our series on Old Albanian.  In this video I will introduce you to the main Old Albanian authors and their texts.  Our roadmap shows you who they are.  We start with the pre-literary fragments,  then we move on to the Old Gag authors, to Buzuku, Budi, to Bardi, Bogdani, also to Dalicje,  and finally to two Old Tosk authors, Matranga and Varebova.  The oldest sentence in Albanian is the so-called baptismal formula,  cited in a Latin letter by the Archbishop of Durres or Duradzo.  It means I baptize you in the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit.  The form Peremonit shows that this is a variety of Old Gag dialect.  Transposed into modern Albanian, the sentence would read more or less  Unte pagasoi per emrit, te atit, ete birrit, etes birrit, etes birrit, etet shant.  Another interesting 15th century source is the word list made by the German Arnold von Harf,  who is travelling to the Holy Land and visited the town of Durres.  His spelling is of course inexperienced, but we clearly recognize the Old Gag dialect.  The table gives four examples of words registered by von Harf.  Let's have a look at them. There's the word Veine, which means wine, modern Gag veine.  Next is the word Drek for the devil, modern Gag drek.  The word Kale for horse, modern Gag kale.  And the word for five, Bessa, modern Gag bens.  The next set of fragments, a translation of the Easter Gospel into a southern Tosk variety, is dated around 1500.  Here we give the text in its original Greek spelling, and a phonological interpretation with modern Albanian spelling,  which runs Ata prathon lausid seungre sevdecorit.  The text contains many Greek loanwords, such as here the word laus, which means people.  The first complete book to have been written and published in Albanian is John Bozouk's Meshari from 1555.  Its language is more archaic than that of the subsequent old Albanian books.  Bozouk was a Catholic priest who wrote in a Northwest Gag dialect.  More than just a missile, the Meshari can be called a lethargic manual for priests.  Only one single copy of this work is known to exist.  The spelling of the Meshari presents some interesting features, which have paved the way for, or maybe stand in an earlier tradition of writing Albanian with an alphabet,  that is based on Italian, but takes some additional signs from Bosanchica, that is from the Bosnian variant of the Cyrillic alphabet, as used on the Dalmatian coast.  A single Bosanchica sign is often used to render two or three different Albanian phonemes.  Let's have a look at these signs.  First we have the complicated sign, which can stand for the sound th and also for the.  Then the sound that looks like a capital sigma, which stands for t and also for t.  The sign, which looks like epsilon, can stand for z, for d and also for d.  And finally, the sign that looks like an h can stand for the palatostops c and d and also for g.  Under specification, that is the use of one sign for several different phonemes, is also found in the spelling of the vowels.  The letter u can render the vowels u and u, but the same is also true of the Bosanchica letter, which looks like an eight with the head cut off.  This one here, which also can stand for u and u.  If you look into the letter a, it can render a and a.  Long vowels are in principle written with a digraph, such as double r for a, double e for e, etc.  Short vowels receive a single vowel sign, except in word final position, where Busuoku often adds a final h without being completely consistent.  Here are examples of the double spelling for long vowels and an example of the variation between a final vowel and a final vowel plus h for a short final vowel.  On the next slide, we have a facsimile from a page of the edition of Busuoku's Mishari, where you can try to find the different signs that we've just been discussing.  In the close-up, you see it more clearly. Just to give you one example.  Here we have the word Jezu with the zi and the final sign, which can stand for u or u, over here.  And you can scroll through the text and try to find other signs yourself.  The next old gag author in chronological order is Pieter Boudi, who was a bishop in northern Albania.  He has translated Latin and Italian texts, published in three books, the Christian doctrine, the Roman ritual and the Confession mirror.  Among these are more than 3,000 lines of spiritual poetry, really the first poems in Albanian.  Of the Cyrillic letters used by Busuoku, Boudi retains 3, but he now makes a systematic distinction between single v and double th.  Furthermore, his spelling more closely follows the contemporary spelling of Italian, for instance with Z-Fozze and with S-C-I-Fo-Sz.  On this page you see Faximile from the edition of the Dottrina Cristiana by Boudi, where again you can see some of the signs that are used by Boudi in his edition.  Actually on the left side you see a cutout from the right hand side, like this, and again some of the signs to give you just one example.  The word fan, saying to be fan, with the double Xilike sign, which indicates the letter th in Albanian.  The first dictionary of Albanian was made by Frank Barthi, whose name would translate in English as Frank White.  His dictionarium latino epiruticum from 1635 contains 2,500 words in Latin and Old Gag, plus 113 proverbs and a number of phrases useful to travelers in Albanian lands, including even some phrases in Turkish.  Here are a few of the travel phrases found at the end of the dictionary.  The first sentence, mir se er de mi ko, literally means it is good that you came, oh friend.  The second sentence, aşt ki o u da ki vön krü, mentions the citadel of Krüya in northern Albania, famous for its resistance to the Turks in the 15th century and still a tourist destination today.  The third sentence, jo o vola e haruike lark, shows that vola already meant comrade in 1635 and it also contains the admirative imperfect form.  Haruike, you heard.  You can discover more on this exciting topic in the separate video on the admirative.  On the next slide you see two more travel phrases from Bardi.  The first one, ku ve vola hoy, or ku ve o i arbenis, shows the two possible placements of the vocative particles o and oi before and after the adresi.  And it also shows the gag variant of the noun for Albanian, arbenis.  The second sentence shows the name of the city of Istanbul and the date of Dinozod, the date of our lord.  The most elaborate original work in Old Gag, with eastern features, is Bogdanis Kuneius Profetarium, or Band of Prophets.  According to the late Robert Elsie, this work is considered to be the masterpiece of early Albanian literature and is the first work in Albanian of full artistic and literary quality.  Besides the Albanian text in prose and some of it in verse, the edition also contains a translation in Italian.  As you can see, to the right on the facsimile page, Bogdani was Archie Upeshkep Skoupse, or Archbishop of the city of Skopje.  The spelling used by Bogdani uses the by now traditional features of gag Catholic authors, with a special sign for the, the, the and the vowel, y.  The signs you see on the left.  A special feature of Bogdani's is his rendering of the untressed vowel schwa by a plus gravies in alternation with the simple a.  The usage is not fully consistent though.  The other features of his spelling, of which some examples are given to the right on the screen, are more systematically calc on Italian than with previous authors.  In the early 18th century, two works were produced by Francesco Maria Dallecce, an Arborage missionary from Italy, who worked in northern Albania.  With some exaggeration, we might call him the first linguist of Albanian.  Chronologically, his earlier work is his Italo-Albanian dictionary from 172, which however did not pass the manuscript stage until it finally appeared in a critical edition by Egesiem Gurga in 2009.  Here you see a page from the manuscript of the dictionary.  Whereas Dallecce's dictionary was not the first dictionary of Albanian, his grammar, modestly called grammatical observations on Albanian and published in 1716, is the oldest grammar of Albanian that we know of.  The examples to the right show the first page of his treatment of spelling on the left-hand side and phonology on the right-hand side and a page from the morphology concerning the possessive pronoun m-e-me-tem, meaning mine.  With the next author, we turn to the old Tosque variety, from which much less textual material has been preserved.  The first author is Luca Matranga, who came from the Arborage village of Piana del Ialbine, Albanese in Sicily.  His 1592 translation of the Latin catechism into Albanian is called Imbesueme Ecris Deire.  The 28-page text is rather short, but it does give us an impression of what old Tosque looked like.  In the example on the screen, you can see, for example, that the Tosque vowel ə is spelled by the r-e-digraph æ, this one here,  and that the author does not use the Cyrillic signs for specific sounds of Albanian, such as the fricatives th and the.  The letter d can indicate the sounds d and the, whereas for the sound th Matranga uses the combination th like modern Albanian.  In this passage, furthermore, we find the nominative of a l'od, inna zod, right here, and the word nom for l'or,  which was borrowed from the Greek religious tradition.  Unfortunately, no old texts are known from the 17th century, but we do have some works from the 18th century.  Most famously, Giulio Varibobas, Giolla, Isian, Marie's, Virger, or the life of the Virgin St. Mary.  It is a rhyming poem of nearly 5,000 verses in Albano-Calabrian dialect.  The spelling is based on Italian, but not Varibobas' use of the upside down ə.  For instance here, to indicate the Albanian schwa.  You find it here in the words Marie's for Mary,  and also at the end of the word, Virger for Virgin, on the title page, which you now see.  This concludes our survey on the old Albanian authors and their texts.  In the next video, we will delve into the dialectology of Albanian.  I thank you for your attention, or as the authors we just encountered might say,  I'm in the read-pervam engine to I. Take care and goodbye.
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