Bilingual Areas within the Territory of the Republic of Albania

Abstract

Due to historical, territorial, cultural and social relationships with other countries of the Balkans, various linguistic “islands” have been formed within the Albanian land, which are typically, although not exclusively, to be found in border regions. In these communities, not only do we find bilingualism, but also diglossia resulting in the emergence of some linguistic phenomena such as code-switching, code-mixing, borrowings, etc. These linguistic islands have different geographical expansion ranging from an entire region, a particular village, to a specific neighbourhood, perhaps. The present paper will attempt to make an accurate overview of these zones, which will mainly be focused on issues that have to do with their locations, linguistic contacts with the Albanian language, number of bilingual speakers, etc.