Thursday, March 17, 2005
« Another language puzzle | Main | Happy St. Gertude's Day »
Shqip in London
The previous entry refers, of course, to the Shqip language, more known to non-Shqip speakers as Albanian. My shame in failing to identify it is somewhat reduced, because it is not closely related to any other language: although Indo-European it appears to be "the sole modern survivor of its subgroup". The comment by bdw is probably correct, as Albanian has quite a bit of Latin influence (although more closely related to Romanian). The Albanian alphabet has a lot of extras (despite having a similar appearance to English); the Wikipedia entry (linked above) lists these:

vowels: A, E, Ë, I, O, U, Y.
consonants: B, C, Ç, D, Dh, F, G, Gj, H, J, K, L, Ll, M, N, Nj, P, Q, R, Rr, S, Sh, T, Th, V, X, Xh, Z, Zh.

This, however, says little about Albanians in London. I took a confusing diversion into transport history with Albanian Coaches Ltd. (incorporated 1934). Quite early indeed; however, few of the residents of St. Albans at the time were Shqiptarë.

News coverage of Albanians in London tends to be heavy on the Albanian mafia, people trafficking and prostitution, both from sources that seem rather propagandistic as well as those that are less so.

As it turns out, however, most of the Albanians in London are not from Albania but instead from Kosovo, where Gheg (the northern dialect of the Albanian language) is spoken. Suddenly it makes a lot more sense, given Milosevic's efforts to expel ethnic Albanians from Kosovo. The resulting humanitarian crisis led to a UK commitment to accept refugees from Kosovo, and in 1999 more refugees came to the UK from the former Yugoslavia than from any other nation (PDF link) (second rank: Somalia). This site gives an indication of the geographical clustering of Kosovan refugees/evacuees and some of the issues raised by their arrival.
Thursday, March 17, 2005 12:22:55 PM (GMT Standard Time, UTC+00:00)  #    Disclaimer  |  Comments [0]  |