Albanian Dialectology

Variants in (i) word terminations and (ii) the letter ë (presence or omission of and metathesis with preceding consonants/digraphs)..

Between 1968 and 1989, the orthographical representation of Albanian was largely standardized in the wake of the Linguistic Conference of Prishtinë, and this was reflected in subsequent publications by the Institute of Linguistics and Literature. Everything in official publication had to be standardized, including art-forms such as film, theatre and literature. Since 1989, however, dialectal variants have crept steadily back into the picture, and publishing, generously smattered once more with the vulgar vernacular, is a (linguistically) free activity.

There are actually many variants in both spoken and written Albanian, and although in many cases caused by alternative inflectional endings following confusion or disagreement over gender or a largely disparate linguistic map of word terminations, it is certainly worth treating the variable ë [ë] on its own:

Atonic [ë] is virtually unpronounced and consonant + ë + r may become consonant + r + ë by metathesis. l, ll, rr, m, n, k, t, s and z are also prone to follow this pattern. If a suffix has a vowel in initial position, then ë is lost at the end of a stem. Interconsonantal, atonic ë is dropped in some cases and retained in others, depending on the variety of Albanian in question. If final ë is retained in northern dialects, then this is probably indicative of a vowel lengthening in the spoken language, in the preceding syllable.

Even amongst Albanians, such orthographical matters are still often unresolved - even following the great twenty-year standardization of the language - but let us not imagine that Albanian is in any way inferior or on its own in this sense; even in the Celtic languages (the oldest in Europe), one often runs into dialectal variation in mutations for example.