The Balkan region is very rich and combines low context and high context languages.
The languages in question may be wholly unrelated, belonging to various branches of Indo-European (such as Slavic, Greek, Romance, Albanian and Indo-Aryan) or even outside of Indo-European (such as Turkish). Some of the languages use these features for their standard language whilst other populations to whom the land is not a cultural pivot (as they have wider communities outside of it) may still adopt the features for their local register.
The languages of this region are:
- Albanian – an Indo-European language ; it is the only spoken Illyrian language in the world and includes two dialects; the spoken “Tosk” dialect, and the literary language of Albania “Gheg”. For extended information about this language and basic words and phrases click here!
- Hellenic (Greek) – this particular language is a member of the Indo-European family as well, native to the southern Balkans; it continues to use the Greek alphabet.
- Slavic (Bulgarian, Macedonian, Serbo-Croatian, Slovenian) – specific countries such as Serbia, Bosnia, Montenegro and Croatia speak this, however, while the Croats use a Latin alphabet, the Serbs use a Cyrillic (Greek-derived) alphabet very similar to the Russian alphabet; there are three dialects included in this language family: the Shtokavian (spoken by most Serbs, Croats, Bosnians and Montenegrins), Chakavian (spoken mostly in the Adriatic islands and along the coast) and Kajkavian (spoken in north-western Croatia and a dialect of Slovenian too). For more on the Bosnian language click here, for Montenegrin language basics click here, whereas for Macedonian language follow this link!
- Indo-Aryan (Romani) – also known as the language of Romance, which means it is based on Latin; it is similar to the modern Italian language but has influences of other languages such as Albanian, Serbian and Greek.
- Turkish – is the most widely-spoken language. This language belongs to the same family that also includes Azerbaijani, Uzbek and Kazakh. There is basically no cross-over between English and Turkish in terms of vocabulary or grammar. Turkish is considered harder to learn than French or German, from which English originates.
It’s important to note that tourists can find online information that the term “Balkan language area” was coined by the Romanian linguist Alexandru Rosetti in 1958, when he claimed that the shared features conferred the Balkan languages a special similarity. Theodor Capidan went further, claiming that the structure of Balkan languages could be reduced to a standard language.