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Albanian, or shqip Albanian pronunciation: [ʃcip]) is an Indo-European language spoken by approximately 7.6 million people, primarily in Albania and Kosovo but also in other areas of the Balkans in which there is an indigenous Albanian population, including western Macedonia, southern Montenegro, southern Serbia and northwestern Greece.

1. Albanian forms its own unique branch in the Indo-European language family, with no close relatives.
2. The language is divided into two main dialects: Gheg (spoken in the north) and Tosk (spoken in the south). Standard Albanian is based on the Tosk dialect.
3. It is one of the oldest languages in Europe, with origins tracing back over 2,500 years.
4. Albanian shares features with other Balkan languages like Greek, Macedonian, and Bulgarian due to geographic proximity and historical interactions.
5. Despite its ancient roots, Albanian has many loanwords from Latin, a result of Roman occupation.

Origin of the Albanians

The origin of the Albanians has been the subject of historical, linguistic, archaeological and genetic studies. The first mention of the ethnonym Albanoi occurred in the 2nd century AD by Ptolemy describing an Illyrian tribe who lived around present-day central Albania. The first attestation of medieval Albanians as an ethnic group is in the 11th century.

Albanians have a western Paleo-Balkan origin. Besides the Illyrians, theories regarding which specific ancient Paleo-Balkan group had participated in the origin of the Albanians vary between attributing Thracian, Dacian, or another Paleo-Balkan component whose language was unattested. Among those scholars who support an exclusively Illyrian origin, there is a distinction between those who propose a direct continuity from Illyrian times, and those who propose an in-migration of a different Illyrian population. However, these propositions are not mutually exclusive. The Albanians are also one of Europe's ethnic groups with the highest number of common ancestors within their own ethnic group even though they share ancestors with other ethnic groups.

Albanian is an Indo-European language and the only surviving representative of its own branch, which belongs to the Paleo-Balkan group, having its formative core in the Balkans after the Indo-European migrations in the region. Early Proto-Albanian speakers came into contact with Doric Greek (West Greek) since the 7th century BCE, and with Ancient Macedonian during the 5th–4th centuries BCE. Thereafter they also had contacts with Koine Greek. Proto-Albanian speakers came into contact with Latin after the Roman conquest of the Western Balkans in the 2nd century BCE, but the major Latin influence in Proto-Albanian occurred during the first years of the common era onwards, when the Western Balkans were eventually incorporated into the Roman Empire after the Great Illyrian Revolt (6–9 CE). Latin loanwords were borrowed through the entire period of spoken Latin in the Western Balkans, reflecting different chronological layers and penetrating into almost all semantic fields. Proto-Albanian speakers were Christianized under the Latin sphere of influence, specifically in the 4th century CE.

All aspects of Albanian tribal society have been directed by the Albanian traditional law code, which is of interest to Indo-European studies as it reflects many legal practices of great antiquity that find precise echoes in Vedic India and ancient Greece and Rome. The surviving pre-Christian elements of Albanian culture indicate that Albanian mythology and folklore are of pagan Paleo-Balkanic origin.

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