Gheg Albanian

Gheg (or Geg) (Albanian: Gegë) is one of the two major varieties of Albanian. The other one is Tosk, on which standard Albanian is based. The geographic dividing line between these two varieties is the Shkumbin River, which winds its way through central Albania.

Gheg is spoken in Northern Albania, Kosovo, northwestern Republic of Macedonia, southeastern Montenegro and southern Serbia, by the ethnographic group known as Ghegs.

Gheg does not have any official status as a written language in any country. Publications in Kosovo and Macedonia are in standard Albanian, which is based on Tosk. However, some authors continue to write in Gheg.

History

The Ghegs speak "Gheg Albanian", one of the two main Albanian dialects. The Albanian communist regime based the standard Albanian language mostly on Tosk Albanian. This practice has been criticized, notably by Arshi Pipa, who claimed that this decision deprived the Albanian language of its richness at the expense of the Ghegs, and referred to the literary Albanian language as a "monstrosity" produced by the Tosk communist leadership that conquered anti-communist northern Albania militarily, and imposed their Tosk Albanian dialect on the Ghegs. Although Albanian writers in former Yugoslavia were almost all Ghegs, they chose to write in Tosk for political reasons. This change of literary language has significant political and cultural consequences because the language is the main criterion for self-identification of the Albanians.