This clip is of an idiot ISIS jihadi giving an impromtu speech on a street in Aavaz, Syria. But he’s definitely speaking Albanian from what I can figure out. The jihadi is an Albanian Muslim from Kosovo.
This language is quite interesting. Don’t believe I have ever heard it before. But what does it sound like? I would say it sounds like a mixture of these three languages in descending order:
Slavic (especially Russian)
Romanian
Turkish
Beyond that, what does it sound like? I get the vibe of the following languages in descending order:
Classical or Ecclesiastical Latin
Italian (especially Neapolitan Italian and in particular Barese spoken around the city of Bari in Puglia on the southeastern coast)
That’s about it. Doesn’t sound much like Greek at all, despite the proximity to Greece.
As far as roots go, Albanian is an ancient Indo-European tongue, probably derived from a Hittite-Armenian-Greek base long ago. There were other Illyrian languages spoken in the Dinaric region, but they have all gone extinct. Contrary to what Albanian nationalists say, Albanians almost certainly came from the north, probably the region around Romania, Bulgaria and Serbia.
The Latin/Romanian sound is because Albanian underwent massive Latinization, and ~55% of the roots are Latinate. It shares many of these roots with Romanian, but the words are often different because Romanian and Albanian were Latinized at different stages in the language’s development.
The Barese resemblance is very odd, but Barese has many roots that are not found in Italian at all. Both the southeast coast of Italy and Albania shared an influence from the ancient extinct Messapian language, and this may be where the similarity comes from.
The Slavic sound probably derives from Slavic influences in that Albania has a number of Slavic countries around it.
Turkish influence is easy to explain as most languages in that region have been influenced by Turkish.
It’s a pretty interesting language, easy on the ears. At the end of the day though, I do not think this language sounds very close to any other language on Earth.
