A Word about the Language

I thought for this entry, I’d talk a little bit about the language. At this point, Albanian may be one of the harder languages that I’ve learned. But I can use a lot of things I learned in other languages to help me with my current studies.

Here’s why it’s so hard (and it’s not because it has 36 letters, which most Albanians will cite as the key reason that the language is difficult):
1. Definite and indefinite. Albanian has no “a” or “the” like we do in English. Instead, you can tell by the ending of a word whether you are talking about “an apple,” “the apple,” “some apples,” or “the apples.” It’s a lot to wrap your head around. Definite nouns also apply to names. For example, you can say either Ervin (an Albanian name) or Ervinit. The difference? The second literally means, “The Ervin” and you use it for stress purposes.

2. Every other verb we learn seems to be irregular. Sometimes you have verbs that are regular in the present tense but irregular in the past. Great, guys. The think about irregular verbs is that you just have to memorize them to learn.

3. Adjectives follow nouns and match the gender and number of the noun they describe. I know that already because it’s the same in Italian, but it’s still a little difficult to grasp.

We’ve spent the last week on these two items in particular, which has lead to a lot of mind blowing in our Albanian classes. I feel like a parrot sometimes: I have memorized phrases and can respond to certain questions, but the minute conversation strays to something that wasn’t covered in my book, it’s back to the deer in headlights look.

However, most people know what you’re talking about. Here are some recent gems I made up on the fly in the grocery store: “Can buy 6 or 7 potatoes?” or “Can buy little cheese?” Or creating sentences using two words, as in: “Montenegro, good?” when I asked my host dad about his recent trip. We can’t forget the classic maneuver of using the present tense to talk about the past, as in “Today I go to school,” instead of “today I went to school.”

Although I go around sounding like a moron most of the time, using my limited language and miming skills gets me through most daily communication.