Albanian is the official language of Albania and Kosovo and it is a co-official language in Macedonia. In the Balkan region there are about 6 million speakers of Albanian and about 7.5 million speakers around the world. Albanian is considered a minority language in Croatia, Italy, Serbia, Romania, Montenegro. There are older forms of Albanian spoken in Greece and Italy as well. The opening of Albania in the 1990s to broader trading and diplomatic relations with other nations has created a need for better knowledge and understanding of this beautiful and old language and culture. Albania applied to access the EU in 2009 and accession talks started in 2020.

This course, DISCOVERINGALBANIAN 1 - Part I, is an introduction to Standard Albanian. In this first part, we will study lessons 3-5 of the textbook DISCOVERINGALBANIAN1 by Linda Mëniku and Héctor Campos and published by the University of Wisconsin Press (ISBN 978-0299 25084). Lessons 1 and 2 can be studied for free in the course ALBANIAN FORBEGINNERS by Héctor Campos here in Udemy. It is highly recommended that participants get hold of this book where all dialogs, vocabulary and grammar explained in the videos here in Udemy can be found. In this book you can also find additional exercises (with answers) to practice further all the grammatical points taught in the videos. Exercises from the workbook that accompanies that book are included with this course under the RESOURCESfor Lesson 3A. To access the transcript for the Listening Comprehension texts found in this course, participants should get COLLOQUIALALBANIAN by the same authors and published by Routledge (ISBN 978-0-415-59796-8). Additional exercises for grammar, vocabulary and listening comprehension can also be found in this textbook.

In the full course to be published here in Udemy you will learn to talk about school, work, vacations, travel, health, entertainment, movies, etc. After you´ve completed all the lessons in the book DISCOVERINGALBANIAN 1, you will have reached level B1 in the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (CEFR). The full course will be equivalent to one-year study at the college level.