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Oxford Albanian-English Dictionary
The largest and most comprehensive bilingual dictionary of Albanian, The Albanian-English Dictionary is an essential reference for all those concerned with modern Albanian, whether students, scholars, translators, or in professional contexts. Over 75,000 entries cover idioms and scientific definitions as well as modern Albanian and the book includes pronunciation guidance and generous examples of usage.
1056 pages, Paperback
First published July 30, 1998
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September 18, 2017
Leonard Newmark, a longtime teacher of Albanian in the United States, produced this Albanian-English dictionary in over the course of many years of work in the late 1980s and 1990s. As I write this, it is *the* reference work for English speakers wanting to read Albanian, and it offers helpful features like marking stress and instances of the vowel ë that tend to delete. The only real competition to the Oxford are the Albanian-English dictionaries produced by Pavli Qesku (one gigantic dictionary and then many different editions abridging it down to various lengths). However, the Qesku dictionary was conceived for Albanians wanting to learn English, and so it isn’t completely ideal for students coming from the other direction.
The modern Albanian literary standard is not all that old: only in the 1950s did the Communist regime of Albania start promoting a new standard based on the Tosk dialect of Southern Albania, which was soon taken up by the Albanians of Kosovo even if their Geg speech was vastly different. However, it took time for the standard to promulgate, and much Albanian written material predates the standard or includes dialectal material for written purposes. Therefore, Newmark sought to include as wide a range of variant forms as possible, though he marks those now seen as very unstandard. Some reviewers have complained about the lack of Geg forms here, but this is very specifically a dictionary of written Albanian focused mainly on works in the standard language.
Newmark included at the beginning of the book a very brief grammar of Albanian, claiming that the dictionary should be accessible to anyone, even those who know hardly anything yet about Albanian. However, readers are unlikely to want to use this. Not only is this grammar very bare-bones and students of Albanian are likely to have a better textbook or reference grammar at hand, but this section is printed in microscopic type and very unpleasant to read – and I’m not at an age where I have to resort to reading glasses.
Anyone learning Albanian should get this Oxford dictionary. (A Qesku dictionary may still be worth having, but as a backup.) However, I strongly recommend purchasing the original hardback version, occasionally available on the used market. It is reliably bound and printed on fine paper. The paperback version, on the other hand, has a very cheap binding and low-quality paper that yellows instantly, and it is frankly an embarrassment to a legendary academic publisher like Oxford. Furthermore, the paperback version is a photographic reproduction of the hardcover but at much smaller dimensions, so not only is the early grammar section difficult to read (shrunk now to minuscule proportions) but so is the dictionary itself.
The modern Albanian literary standard is not all that old: only in the 1950s did the Communist regime of Albania start promoting a new standard based on the Tosk dialect of Southern Albania, which was soon taken up by the Albanians of Kosovo even if their Geg speech was vastly different. However, it took time for the standard to promulgate, and much Albanian written material predates the standard or includes dialectal material for written purposes. Therefore, Newmark sought to include as wide a range of variant forms as possible, though he marks those now seen as very unstandard. Some reviewers have complained about the lack of Geg forms here, but this is very specifically a dictionary of written Albanian focused mainly on works in the standard language.
Newmark included at the beginning of the book a very brief grammar of Albanian, claiming that the dictionary should be accessible to anyone, even those who know hardly anything yet about Albanian. However, readers are unlikely to want to use this. Not only is this grammar very bare-bones and students of Albanian are likely to have a better textbook or reference grammar at hand, but this section is printed in microscopic type and very unpleasant to read – and I’m not at an age where I have to resort to reading glasses.
Anyone learning Albanian should get this Oxford dictionary. (A Qesku dictionary may still be worth having, but as a backup.) However, I strongly recommend purchasing the original hardback version, occasionally available on the used market. It is reliably bound and printed on fine paper. The paperback version, on the other hand, has a very cheap binding and low-quality paper that yellows instantly, and it is frankly an embarrassment to a legendary academic publisher like Oxford. Furthermore, the paperback version is a photographic reproduction of the hardcover but at much smaller dimensions, so not only is the early grammar section difficult to read (shrunk now to minuscule proportions) but so is the dictionary itself.
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