Is Albanian Hard To Learn? (Helpful Content!)

Albanian is relatively difficult for English speakers to learn. It’s a language very different from English in many ways, meaning there’s a lot more you have to learn from the ground up. Learning any language is never easy, but you will have more of an uphill battle with Albanian. But it’s still well worth it.

Albanian is not the most difficult language to learn for an English speaker, but it’s certainly a lot more difficult than many other languages.

Learning it will take time, patience, and perseverance, but the rewards are more than proportionate to the effort you’ll put into learning.

Let’s find out more.

How difficult is Albanian to learn?

Albanian is a relatively difficult language for English speakers, and it presents a number of difficulties that you’ll have to get to grips with in the learning process.

Firstly, it’s important to note that it is never easy to learn a language—some are certainly a lot easier than others, but any language is going to take a lot of time, patience, commitment and perseverance to learn.

At the same time, everyone has more or less the same capacity to learn a language if they put their mind to it.

With this in mind, learning Albanian is difficult, but it is entirely possible for anyone.

Many before you have learned to speak Albanian, so you are just as capable as them of learning Albanian.

One helpful way to understand the rough difficulty of learning a particular language is understanding its relationship to other languages in its family tree.

English is a Germanic language, related most closely to languages like Swedish, Norwegian, and Dutch.

Germanic languages are all Indo-European, as are the vast majority of European languages.

Albanian is also Indo-European, but where English is Germanic, Albanian is Paleo-Balkan.

The Balkan languages in general are quite far removed from English, which is one simple, broad explanation for why the language is difficult to learn.

Albanian is much more closely related to languages like Greek and Armenian.

It naturally does share a lot of common features with English, but in many ways it is much more different than it is similar.

Albanian itself is quite distinct from almost all languages, and it is hard in pronunciation, spelling, and grammar.

Dedication is going to be really important and you aren’t going to become fluent in the language casually—you’ll have to try every single day to better your skills if you want to become fluent.

How long should the learning process take, then?

How long does it take to learn Albanian?

This question can be answered in a variety of different ways. there are, of course, varying levels of language acquisition, so the answer to this depends on how well you want to speak the language.

For the broadest view, then, one metric we can look to is the FSI language categories, which rank languages based on how difficult they are for English speakers to learn.

There are five categories, with category five being the most difficult language to learn.

Albanian is a category 3 language, meaning it’s middling in terms of its difficulty to learn and also the time that you’ll take to learn it.

Category three languages usually take around 44 weeks of continuous study to be at the point where you’re able to conduct yourself in the language and use it on a day-to-day basis.

However, if you are going for full fluency, this is going to take a good deal longer.

Ideally, what you would do after your initial period of study is go and live in Albanian and speak the language every single day.

This will allow you to hone your skills to the point of full fluency, usually within 3-5 years.

So, the answer can vary from just under a year to as much as five years.

Is Albanian a useful language to learn?

Albanian is definitely a useful language to learn.

There are over 6.1 million speakers of the language in the Balkans, and it is an official language of Albanian, Kosovo, North Macedonia, Montenegro, and a recognized minority language in many other countries.

There is a thriving culture of Albanian speakers and living in areas where it is spoken is a deeply rewarding thing to do.

Of course, this always depends on what you are looking for out of language acquisition, but in general, it certainly is a useful language.

Is Albanian one of the oldest languages?

Albanian is recognized as being one of the oldest languages in Europe, though in the world at large, there are many languages that are far older.

It really depends on what you mean by “oldest”—it has undergone a lot of change over the years although a lot less than most other languages do.

Our first attested mention of the modern Albanian language comes from 1284, but linguistic studies show that it goes back much further than this—some claim to as far back as the first or second century AD.

Either way, it is indeed a very old language.

So, Albanian is a fascinating language with many centuries of history that you’ll benefit enormously from learning.

While it is far from the hardest language to learn, it’s also very far from being easy, too. Learning it is going to test your commitment, especially if you’ve never learned another language before.

But if you’ve got the will, then learning Albanian is entirely within your grasp, however tough it might be.