Gjuha standarde dhe dialektet - Rast i shqipes
Standard language and dialects - Albanian case

Summary/Abstract: In any ideology, in every regime, there is a special way of perceiving the writing, the meaning and the value of words. Each time has its own speech (language form/thought), and the first job that a new Government embarks on is to‘overthrow’ the existing order of speech and the function thereof so as to introduce a ‘new speech’, which suits its own interests of course. The current standard Albanian variety is anew speech, because, being arbitrary, as any standard is, it has overturned the previous speech/discourse. Standard language always stands against natural language. Being an external, arbitrary interference with the normal course of language, it overrides the existing diversities of a language, and, despite tendencies to qualify it as the ‘the only true language there is’, it only remains one of the many language varieties. In the Albanian case, at least in terms of communication competency as per applied language, it turns out that the ‘true language’ is not that‘true’! 45 years on from the Albanian Congress of Spelling of 1972, the standard Albanian variety, or the Unified Standard Language (USL), as the linguists of the former communist system use to dub it, remains a ‘new language’, an ‘official language’ (G. Orwell). This variety, therefore, is more a language of practitioners, for ordinary Albanian speakers do not have the communication competency that complies with the norm, with the standard.

• Details
• Contents