Linear B and Other Ancient Scripts

I’ve been doing a bit of background reading on Linear B and other early writing systems for an essay for my Later Prehistory course. Long-time readers will probably have heard me mention that I’m taking a series of introductory archaeology courses offered by the University of Leicester. The current course, Later Prehistory, tackles a rather wide range of cultures, including the Minoans, the Bronze age cultures of Europe, the early urban civilisations of Mesopotamia, the Indus Valley and China, and the early states of the Americas (e.g. Olmecs, Maya).

Although I am only 1 week into this 12-week course, I have already begun to do some background reading and research for my essay. Students are given a small selection of essay titles to choose from and I’ve decided to choose the title which I felt would be an excellent way for me to combine my love for languages with my passion for archaeology : How did early writing systems differ in their material form and use within society? Discuss in relation to at least three writing systems. I haven’t made any firm decisions on the writing systems I’m choosing to focus on for this essay but Linear B is one of them. Other candidates include the oracle bone script of Shang Dynasty China, Egyptian hieroglyphs and Mesopotamian cuneiform.

I’m currently reading through John Chadwick’s Linear B and Related Scripts to get a better idea of how the Linear B script was used in Minoan society. One thing that becomes clear very early on in the book is that Linear B was used almost exclusively for administrative purposes. There is no evidence as yet to suggest that the script was ever used for historical or “recreational” purposes, which sets it apart from other ancient languages such as cuneiform and Ancient Greek, which were used for writing down their myths and were used for diplomatic affairs. The decipherment  of Linear B was quite a breakthrough in the understanding of the rise (and fall) of Minoan civilization. I found a copy of Andrew Robinson’s biography of Michael Ventris, The Man Who Deciphered Linear B, in the Amsterdam Public Library (Openbare Bibliotheek Amsterdam), which I will read as soon as I have finished reading Chadwick’s book. Once I have finished reading both of those books, I will move on to Steven Roger Fischer’s A History of Writing and Lesley Adkin’s book Empires of the Plain. Needless to say, I’m going to be quite busy for the next few weeks!

A to Z Challenge Update – I’m still working through Alan R. King’s The Basque Language. I’m trying to memorise some of the dialogues he’s used in the book using the sentence method and am trying to dissect each sentence in order to consolidate everything I’ve learnt so far. It’s good to see that I can finally understand basic sentences and am getting to grips with the case endings. If only the verbs were as straightforward…

The A to Z Challenge – Albanian – Summary

About Albanian :

Albanian is an Indo-European language spoken by around 6 million people in Albania, Kosovo and other parts of the Balkan peninsula. It is written with a modified Latin alphabet and is believed to descend from Illyrian and/or Daco-Thracian. Standard Albanian is a revised form of the Tosk dialect but several other dialects exist, including Gheg and Arbëresh.

Initial Thoughts :

Before embarking on this challenge, I knew very little about Albanian. I knew it was an Indo-European language and that the Albanian name for the language was “Shqip” but I hadn’t made any attempts to study the language before I made it the “A” language in my 26-language challenge. I had no knowledge of its grammar and my vocabulary was limited to “Tungjatjeta” (Hello) and “verdhë” (yellow).

Topics Covered :

During my 2 weeks of studying Albanian, I covered the following topics and lessons :

- 7 lessons of the Pimsleur Albanian (Compact) course.
- Basic sentence structures and travel phrases, including numbers (1 to 100), self-introductions, and greetings.
- Basic grammar, including articles (indefinite and definite), cases, conjunctions and comparative/superlative adjectives.

Challenges :

The biggest challenge for me was memorising declinations and working with cases. I’ve never studied a language with a case system in any real depth so learning how to decline nouns was quite new to me. I wouldn’t go as far as to say Albanian grammar is complicated (it shares some similar features with English and Greek) but I would certainly need to spend a lot more time getting to grips with the various declensions.

Vocabulary was another hurdle. Although Albanian is an Indo-European language, its vocabulary is very different to that of the other IE languages I’ve studied. There are some cognates due to Romance and Germanic influences on the language over the centuries, but on the whole, Albanian vocabulary is quite alien. There is little transparency between Albanian and English so a lot of effort would need to be focussed on learning new vocabulary (and their declensions!)

Last but not least, the lack of resources for learning the language is probably one of the biggest obstacles facing the language learner. Unless you’re able to find a native speaker or spend some time in Albania, you’ll be limited to the resources I mentioned yesterday and perhaps a few other out-dated courses which can be found at the ERIC website. The Pimsleur course is a good introduction to the spoken language and the Peace Corps manuals can be quite helpful but there isn’t a Teach Yourself Albanian course (or is there?) and the Colloquial Albanian course was quite disappointing. The general lack of interest in the language means that we won’t be seeing an Albanianpod.com any time soon..

Final Thoughts :

Two weeks is not enough time to master even the basics of the language but it has given me enough time to get a feel for the written and spoken language. I liked the sound of the spoken language and it was quite rewarding to be able to understand simple conversations after working through the first seven lessons of the Pimsleur course. I didn’t make as much progress with the written language as I would have liked to, though this was mostly due to a very limited vocabulary base. As I mentioned above, there are some cognates but even simple texts were difficult to work through as most of the vocabulary was foreign to me.

Albanian was an interesting language to study but I have little reason to continue studying it after I have completed my “A to Z Challenge”. The lack of resources for learning the language is one of the key reasons I won’t be returning to Albanian, at least not for the time being. Nevertheless, it has been an educational two weeks and I don’t rule out the possibility that I may return to Shqip in future.

By the way, if anyone is interested, I’d be happy to post my Albanian notes online. The notes aren’t very detailed and are probably riddled with errors but they might be of some use to those of you who are interested in learning a bit more about the language.

That’s all for now. It’s on to Basque tomorrow. Natën e mirë.

The A to Z Challenge – Albanian – Resources

It’s been two weeks since I embarked on my “A to Z Challenge”. I’ve spent the last two weeks studying Albanian at a (very) basic level and I thought I’d share my thoughts on some of the resources available for learning this language.

Albanian Language Competencies for Peace Corps Volunteers in Albania :

I found this course via a search on the ERIC website and it was perhaps one of the most useful resources I was able to find for learning Albanian. The course is designed for Peace Corps volunteers living and working in Albania but there’s no reason why this course wouldn’t be useful for casual learners who want to acquaint themselves with the language.

The course focuses on the spoken language and contains plenty of example dialogues and useful vocabulary. Each lesson focuses on a particular theme, such as food and drink and buying train tickets, and there is a handy grammar overview and an Albanian-English word list after the main course text. My only complaint about this course is the quality of the scanned images. Some of the text is a little hard to read but it is otherwise a comprehensive and well-designed course for anyone who wants to gain basic proficiency in the Albanian language.

Colloquial Albanian by Isa Zymberi :

I wasn’t able to obtain a copy of this book at my local library but I managed to find a preview copy on Google Books. While it is one of the few textbooks around for learning Albanian, I found it lacking in quality and didn’t like the way that the lessons were arranged. The grammar explanations did not go into much detail and I found the lack of English translations somewhat unhelpful. I had to keep referring back to the word lists to see what each word and phrase meant, which got tedious after a while.

The book may have been more useful if I had a copy of the CD that comes with it but I would rather use the Peace Corps course mentioned above than choose this book as my main resource for learning the language.

Albanian World :

One of the few good websites for learning basic Albanian. If you ignore the bright red background of its main page, you’ll find that the lessons are actually quite useful and are very easy to follow. A lot of vocabulary is covered in the ten or so lessons which are on the website and the course author makes use of simple dialogues to teach you basic sentence structures and conversational Albanian.

Its key flaw is that there aren’t that many lessons online and that the lessons jump from lesson 8 to lesson 38, which limits the learner’s progress. Anyone wishing to follow the full course could consider buying the author’s book.

Pimsleur Albanian (Compact) :

I chose this course as my key audio course simply because it is the only one that I know of. The compact course consists of ten 30-minute lessons and covers a lot of the basic phrases and sentence structures that a tourist or visiting businessman would want to know, including self-introductions and ordering drinks at a local bar.

I listened to 7 lessons during my 2-week Albanian adventure and would recommend this course to anyone who wants to get a feel for spoken Albanian. The course only covers the bare basics of the language but it is a good platform for further study.

Moving On :

Tomorrow I will be posting a review of my 2 weeks of studying the Albanian language. After that, it’ll be time to move on to language B, Basque.

The A to Z Challenge – Albanian (Days 3-8)

Apologies for the lack of updates over the past few days. I had a very nice and well-deserved long weekend. Last Thursday was a public holiday, Koninginnedag (“Queen’s Day”), and my company also decided to give us the Friday off so I’ve had a four-day weekend. So much free time and yet so little time for language learning. Between catching up with friends, attending an anime convention and hours of non-stop walking at the Burgers Zoo in Arnhem, I’ve found it almost impossible to set aside some time for my A to Z Challenge, or my formal language studies for that matter.

I thought I’d give a quick update on my progress in the A to Z Challenge. I’ve covered a few basic grammar points and have made some notes about negation (nuk/s’) and forming questions in Albanian. I’ve also written down a few more basic sentence structures and useful phrases in my notebook, which I hope to revise tomorrow. To be honest, I haven’t covered much ground in this past week so I will try and see how much I can get done this week. Once I’ve spent a few more hours on the language, I’ll be in a much better position to write a summary of my thoughts on learning Albanian so that other language learners know what to expect if they want (or have) to learn Albanian. And then on to my “B” language, Basque…

The A to Z Challenge – Albanian (Days 1 and 2)

I kicked off my A to Z Challenge yesterday with the letter “A”. I was originally going to chose Armenian as my “A” language but I swapped it for Albanian when I found that there are just not enough resources for learning Armenian. There aren’t that many either for learning Albanian but I managed to track down some useful PDFs on the ERIC site and I’ve found a fairly good beginner’s course at Albanian World. I was also able to find a copy of the Pimsleur Albanian course, which was one of the precious few audio courses that you will find for learning this language.

I haven’t made a great deal of progress in the past two days due to an increased workload (our office is closed on Thursday and Friday so it means I have to get 5 days’ work done in just 3) but I did manage to listen to the first 3 lessons of the Pimsleur course during my commute to and from work.  I’ve only learnt a few basic words and phrases so far, including :

• Mirëdita (Good day) and Mirëmbrëma (Good evening)
• Ju lutem (Please)
• Falemnderit (Thank you)
• Unë jam.. (I am), Ju jeni… (You are)
• Zonya (Mrs), Zonyusha (Miss)
• Unë nuk jam… (I’m not..)
• Flisni anglisht? (Do you speak English?)
• Nuk kuptoj (I don’t understand)
• Unë flas anglisht (I speak English)
• Shqip (Albanian)
• Po/Jo (Yes/No)

Its pronunciation seems to be fairly straightforward. There aren’t any sounds in Albanian which are unfamiliar to native English speakers, though there are some unusual combinations of sounds (such as the “Shq” in “Shqip”) and it’s hard to remember when to pronounce the “ë” and when it should be silent. Most, if not all, of the Albanian letters have an English equivalent so pronunciation is not too challenging for the English speaker.

Albanian vocabulary is a little trickier. While it’s an Indo-European language, a lot of the vocabulary is quite new to me. For example, the Albanian word for “language”, gjuhë, is foreign to me as it bears little resemblance to the word for “language” in any other major European language. A quick glance at an Albanian news article soon showed me that a background in English, Dutch and the Romance languages doesn’t help you understand written Albanian any better. This is something I should have taken from granted, given that Albanian is hidden away on its own little branch on the Indo-European family tree. There are also some very peculiar “false friends”, such as verdhë, which sounds remarkably similar to “verde”, the Spanish word for “green” but which actually is the Albanian word for “yellow”. Another stumbling block is motër, which one may assume might be the Albanian word for “mother” but is actually the word for “sister” (the Albanian word for “mother” is nënë). So one can’t be too careful with “false friends” when learning Albanian.

My plans for tomorrow are to revise lessons 1 to 3 of the Pimsleur course and work through some of the lessons on the Albanian World website. I might also have a look at some basic grammar rules so that I can have a better overview of how the language “works”. Albanian seems to be a highly inflected language with three genders (male, female and neuter) and six cases (nominative, accusative, genitive, dative, ablative and vocative). I’ve never studied a language with a case system so this will be a real challenge…