A Note On Pronunciation

 

Albanian is an almost entirely phonetically regular language.This means that once you have learned the sounds made by each of the Albanian letters (very similar to English in most cases) you would be able to read a newspaper out loud – even if with very little clue of what it means.

For the Albanian names in the book, the following alphabet equiv- alences will be helpful:

 

A like ar in car

B like b in blood

C like ts in cats

Ç like ch in church

D like d in drone

Dh like th in with

E like e in egg

F like f in freedom

G like g in gold

Gj like j in jug

H like h in honey

I like ee in bee

J like y in yacht

K like k in kite

L like lly in fill your boots

Ll like l in like

M like m in microphone

N like n in microphone

O like or in for

P like p in prince

Q like ch in church

R like r in rock

Rr a rolled r that we don’t have in English

S like s in something

Sh like sh in hush

T like t in top

Th like th in thing

U like oo in cook

V like v in violin

X like ds in kids

Xh like j in jug

Y like the French u in ‘tu’

Z like zz in buzz

Zh like s in pleasure