Learning Albanian language

@cortom Thank you! Well, I managed to buy an Albanian textbook, plus I have downloaded Albanian grammar (too bad it's not in English, so it won't be of help to you..). And I have been studying Albanian for half a year

Verbs with "C" pattern:

hap - to open, mbyll - to close, jap - to give etc.

btw, I found this link not long ago http://www.geocities.com/mesonishqip/, haven't tried it yet, but it looks very interesting.

I edited my last post. Are there other verbs than those ending on '-hem' that follow the third pattern? And who could explain to me how the imperative is constructed? Interesting link, Haydee!

hey hey today our friend haydee has birthday, so I think we should tell her happy birthday in Albanian but unfortunately I have no idea how it is said... so maybe somebody can write it first? ))

Originally Posted by tedinkyyy

hey hey today our friend haydee has birthday, so I think we should tell her happy birthday in Albanian but unfortunately I have no idea how it is said... so maybe somebody can write it first? ))

Urime Ditëlindjen Haydee

Faleminderit shumë, RrushiiTushii

tedinkyyy, you rock!!

Urime Ditëlindjen e dashura(?) Ljuba

Originally Posted by tedinkyyy

Urime Ditëlindjen e dashura(?) Ljuba

if you wanna say Happy Birthday darling (to a girl), e dashura is feminine, e dashur is masculine

Originally Posted by cortom

I edited my last post. Are there other verbs than those ending on '-hem' that follow the third pattern? And who could explain to me how the imperative is constructed? Interesting link, Haydee!

Mmm, since our albanian friends are silent, I'll try...

Words that end with -oj have this pattern

shikoj (to look) - shiko! (look! sing.) - shikoni! (pl.) - mos shiko! (don't look sing.)

But other words don't seem to have any pattern, you have to just memorize them I guess.

Examples from my textbook:

bëj - bëj! - bëni! (do)
shkruaj - shkruaj! - shkruani! (write)
hyj - hyr! - hyni! (enter)
hap - hap! - hapni! (open)
flas - fol! - flitni! (speak)
marr - merr! - merrni! (take)
rri - rri! - rrini! (stay)

my bad! Have a very Happy Birthday haydeee : D

Balkaneuro, faleminderit

@Haydee: those few examples in this thread worked miracles. Some tables (e.g. about pronouns) in my grammar that have been puzzling to me for over a year actually start to make sense. It would be a great help if you could tell me the meaning of some grammatical terms that label those tables.

What do these terms mean:

Emërore - Kallëzore - gjinore - dhanore - rrjedhore?

My dictionary remains silent, except for the first, which is translated as 'nominative'.

I found all words except rrjedhore in online dictionary, Kallëzore=accusative, gjinore=genitive, dhanore=dative. So these words refer to cases. And to my surprise I found rrjedhore in Wikipedia, it says it's ablative case.
Is your grammar in Albanian??

rrjedh means to pour so rrjedhore form of pouring or streaming maybe? not sure..

Originally Posted by haydee

I found all words except rrjedhore in online dictionary, Kallëzore=accusative, gjinore=genitive, dhanore=dative. So these words refer to cases. And to my surprise I found rrjedhore in Wikipedia, it says it's ablative case.
Is your grammar in Albanian??

I must have made some stupid typing errors, since I couldn't find them yesterday, but now I can. Thanks for the ablative though. Too bad I haven't the foggiest idea what that means. The languages I know don't have an ablative. Should have listened to my mum and studied Latin. But I have a handle now.

That grammar I have is a strange mixture of Albanian and English. It is chock-full of cryptic abbreviations. I have the impression that it is a first draft of a grammar that found it's way on the internet but never got finished. Or maybe I haven't located the finished product yet.

@cortom, haha, well I don't know about ablative either.
btw, it would be nice if someone explains imperative mood for -hem words, I can't find these rules anywhere.

Originally Posted by haydee

@cortom, haha, well I don't know about ablative either.
btw, it would be nice if someone explains imperative mood for -hem words, I can't find these rules anywhere.

I've been reading some wiki-stuff. Ablative (chiefly) expresses the idea of where(from), when or how an action is performed. If I understand it right, when you say you are walking in the street, 'street' would be inflected in ablative (I'm just guessing here).

Here's the complete information about imperative in my grammar:

{j}([-])<u>
{}=diphth-impv / mono-aor, pt

(As I said it is very concise.) But maybe I'm beginning to understand what it means. () refers to (V) (vowel ending), [] refers to [C] (consonant ending), <> to <M> (the -hem case). So the imperative of 'shkoj' and 'jap' would be just 'shko' and 'jap', while the imperative of 'afrohem' would be 'afrohu'???. Again, just guessing. I wonder if BE or RT could confirm this.

The {j}-case must have something to do with diphthongs or double vowels, but I can't make any sense of that since I don't have an example of verb with diphthong ending.

I found list of prepositions that require ablative after them.
They are prej, afër, pranë, gjatë, rreth, jashtë, ndërmjet, brenda, pas, midis, prapa, .
Well at least endings of this case are similar to ones in genitive and dative, only in plural indefinite form a -sh is added. So maybe it's not that difficult as it seems

Woah, this grammar takes a decypherer to read it

Diphthong ending... hmm, I can only think about dua. Maybe it's what they mean?

And I've recently found out that imperative of kthehem is kthehu, so you are right about afrohu.

I'll call that the Haydee-rule:
.. plural indefinite + -sh indicates ablative

For me that's very useful information! It helps to make sense of a sentence. So many times I can guess the meaning of the separate words, but I fail to put them together in a meaningful way.

The verb 'dua' is a mystery to me. It's probably very irregular? And it seems to blend 'to love' and 'to want'. I'll let the diphthongs alone for a while and try to concentrate on the easy cases. But if you find a nice example of an imperative with -j ending, please let me know.

If I may offer you a suggestion for learning Albanian: try to read pieces of the bible! You can find it for free on the internet, and the odds are you know the translation already. I'm still too much of a beginner to do so myself, but you are learning very quickly it seems. Even I could understand the first pages of Genesis, and that was a year ago.

Look, I've found great and detailed Albanian grammar! It's big (366 .jpg files) and difficult at first sight, but it's sure worth downloading! And all our questions about imperative are answered there.

http://rapidshare.com/files/18117607...iaGrammar1.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/18118174...anGrammar2.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/18119280...n_Grammar3.rar

Password: uz-translations

Hmm, imperative of dua is duaj/doni. And it's irregular, yes, it goes like this: une dua, ti do, ai/ajo do, ne duam, ju doni, ata/ato duan.

Reading the bible sounds like a good idea, because correct translation is always available. I only fear that it might be written in old language, that's not used in real life (like Russian version of the bible is). Anyway I'll try it

How long have you been studying Albanian? And why?

Originally Posted by haydee

Look, I've found great and detailed Albanian grammar! [...] How long have you been studying Albanian? And why?

Great find! Thanks!

I wouldn't say I'm actually STUDYING Albanian. Just dabbling around with song lyrics, and the occasional comment on YouTube. I heard my first Albanian pop songs two years ago, in May to be precise. At first I was not very enthousiastic, but then I was hit like I was seldom hit before (it was Tingulli 3nt's song "Të dy" that dit it). And I just HAD to know what it was about. Since then Albanian music has been a mild obsession of mine (some might argue the word mild). I've grown to love Albanian. I think it's a very romantic and musical language. That it is very exotic (to me) adds to its charm of course. And another thing: translating Albanian beats solving sudokus (by far) in terms of intellectual rewards.