Turkisms in Zadar Arbanasi as a reflection of Turkisms in 18th-century Albanian

Abstract

The Arbanasi speech of Zadar is a peripheral variety of Northwestern Albanian spoken by Catholic who in the 18th century were displaced from their homeland in the Ottoman Empire and settled in Dalmatia. This variety with around 200 speakers in total, includes different layers of borrowing, among which are some Turkisms brought from their homeland in the territory of present-day Montenegro. The research on these Turkisms provides an overview that might help with the periodization of Turkish borrowings in the Albanian language in general. Studies of the old Albanian authors of the 16th and 17th centuries so far provide a relatively clear picture of the periodization of Turkish elements in Albanian, but this topic can also be clarified through the spoken “documents”, the Turkisms of the Albanian settlements, including Arbanasi. The research in this community shows that Arbanasi speakers use a small number of Turkisms, including Turkisms that come through Croatian. However, among them there are also some figurative ones that are not found in other varieties of Albanian or in Turkish itself. This study aims to determine how much the Turkish elements have been accommodated in the Albanian of the 18th-century, and how they have developed further in a peripheral Albanian dialect.