Preface by the authors
Writing such a book has been a long intention of ours. It has also been a great desire of some of our friends who have continuously urged us to start and finish this work. "Let's Learn Albanian" is designed to give practical knowledge of both spoken and written standard Albanian. The course is ideal for beginners and for those who want to deepen and consolidate their language knowledge.
This course can be used for self-study or by those learning with a class. It is hopped that by the end of this course, the students have the confidence to effectively communicate in Albanian. This book may be a useful resource to Albanians that live and work abroad, who wish to keep Albanian alive, or to study and learn Albanian as a second language.
This one is a new revised and updated edition. As you may notice, there are big changes, if compared with the first edition ("Pegi", 2005, Tirana/Albania). Emphasis is given to nouns (indefinite and definite, singular and plural), in which area, students find difficulties, to cases, to usage and features of i, e, të, së proclitic articles, etc. Because of these big changes, this edition cannot be used alongside with the edition of 2005.This course contains 52 lessons.
Clear and comprehensive explanations of grammatical aspects of Albanian, and a wide variety of exerciseswith answer keys, make this course a very useful tool for students having different levels of education.First of all, the students will be introduced to the Albanian alphabet, to phonetic features of Albanian sounds (vowels, consonants, diphthongs), stress, intonation, etc.
Particular attention has been given to the explanations of grammatical categories, such as, noun, verb, adjective, adverb, preposition, etc."Albanian Grammar at a Glance", as a special section, will help students learn the grammar of the Albanian language, and become familiar with grammatical categories, terms and grammar explanations of Albanian used in this course. On the other hand, it will help the students remember all what they have learned in school regarding grammar.
After the grammar section, the students is given a verb list according to the verb conjugation groups.A list of more than 800 most frequently used words is placed just after the grammatical terms. The students will get a list of antonyms (Albanian-English), and a list of some common idiomatic expressions (Albanian-English).Answers to selected exercises can be found at the back of the book.
Finally, the students is given an up-to-date vocabulary (about 1,200 words), regarding words which appear in every new lesson, and words used throughout this course.We also recommend students to refer to "Albanian Verbs" (The art of conjugation: An overview of features and usage of Albanian verbs),printed by "Pegi", 2007, Tirana/Albania, which, to our opinion, might be very helpful for students, teachers and scholars who study and make researches regarding the Albanian language. This book is not error-free, and we take responsibility for the errors. For further information and comments, please contact us.
Note: Audio CD included in the price of the book
