Gheg Albanian

Gheg is the northern half of Albanian, spoken above the Shkumbin river in northern Albania, across Kosovo, in north-western North Macedonia, Montenegro and the Preševo valley of Serbia. It keeps two things standard Albanian gave up: phonemic nasal vowels, written with a circumflex (hânë 'moon', nânë 'mother', dhâmb 'tooth'), and a genuine infinitive built from the particle me plus a participle — me ngranë 'to eat', me pi 'to drink' — where Tosk must use a subjunctive. It also escaped Tosk rhotacism, so 'name' is emën rather than emër and 'love' is dashni rather than dashuri, and it drops final unstressed ë with compensatory lengthening, giving shpi for shtëpi 'house'. Standard Albanian was built on Tosk in 1972, leaving Gheg with no official standing despite being spoken by more people. It remains fully vigorous in speech, in Kosovar media and music, and in a literary tradition running from Buzuku's 1555 missal through Gjergj Fishta.