SEEU Review vol. 5 Nr. 2 (pdf) - South East European University

SEEU Review Volume 5, No. 2, 2009
interpret all phonemes of the spoken Albanian language, a total of 36, it uses
the same number of letters, namely graphemes 30 .
Since the Latin alphabet has 26 letters, insufficient to represent all 36
phonemes of the Albanian language, the 25 Latin letters (without ‘ë’) are
combined with other letters. The decision to use these rules was made at the
Congress of the Alphabet, held in Manastir (Bitola) on 1908, where all the
letters of the Albanian alphabet were defined with the following order [4]: a,
b, c, ç, d, dh, e, ë, f, g, gj, h, i, j, k, l, ll, m, n, nj, o, p, q, r, rr, s, sh, t, th, u, v,
x, xh, y, z, zh.
We can evaluate the graphical system of the Albanian language, viewed
generally as a system among the most simple ones (compared to other
languages) and the issue of writing is solved in the following form: 36
phonemes of the language are interpreted with 36 different letters, among
which 25 are simple letters, 9 are letters containing two characters and two
are letters differentiated by diacritical signs (‘ë’ and ‘ç’). In this manner, we
can say that the elementary rules of graphy are respected, and the same
phonem can be defined in all possible situations with the same letter (simple
or in combination of two characters) [5].
It must be noted that our proposed solution handles the practical
typewriting of the texts in Albanian. The simple Latin alphabet uses
homogenous letters, easily written and very useful in a printed form since it
does not require any printing press with supporting special characters [6].
II. Syllables in the Albanian language
As a general rule in most languages, each vowel creates a syllable on its
own. [8]. There are, however, some languages where besides the vowels
some sonar consonants can create syllables as well.
In the Albanian language the number of syllables always corresponds to
the number of vowels in a word. This is why in Albanian vowels are syllable
forming characters, and consonants on their own cannot create syllables. So,
syllables can be individual vowels or vowels combined with consonants. In
this case consonants are very important, since the whole information is
focused on them. Vowels on the other hand are used to represent the vocal
30
On the phoenetic writing, as a minimal differentiating unit are used letters, same as phonemes on
the phonological system. Thus, in analogy with phonemes, letters of a system are called
graphemes.
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