Travels in Southeastern Europe

The burden of the Balkans / by M. Edith Durham.

232 THE BURDEN OF THE BALKANS. nouns. The adjective follows the indefinite form, and is placed after the noun, and between noun and adjective comes what the grammar calls a 'characteristic ' —a kind of article which agrees in gender with the noun and has a declension of its own. Thus: ' diale i mire,' a good boy; ' diali i mire,' the good boy. The comparison of adjectives is formed, not by inflection, but merely by prefixing 'more' ('ma') or 'very' ('shum'). The verbs are capable of expressing very subtle shades of meaning, and have, according to the latest grammar, no less than eleven moods and fifty-five cases. Many of these, however, are compounds with 'to have' or 'to be.' No written line exists to show how the tongue grew or changed. Its past is wrapped in darkness. Long historical ballads have been passed from memory to memory. Literature, save of to-day, there is none. A uniform method of writing has not yet been adopted, and Albanian is awaiting an author to crystallize it. There is a tradition of an old Albanian alphabet both at Elbasan and at Skodra, but no successful attempt to find an alphabet in which the language could be printed was made till I879. A special alphabet was then arbitrarily constructed, a sadly mongrel affair compounded of Greek, Latin, and Cyrillic characters and-some specially invented letters. With modifications it is still used by the press at Sofia, which publishes the Drita, a paper in the Tosk dialect, and various books; also by the British
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Title
The burden of the Balkans / by M. Edith Durham.
Author
Durham, Mary Edith, 1863-1944.
Canvas
Page 232
Publication
London :: Nelson,
[1905]
Subject terms
Eastern question (Balkan)
Balkan Peninsula -- Description and travel.

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"The burden of the Balkans / by M. Edith Durham." In the digital collection Travels in Southeastern Europe. https://name.umdl.umich.edu/ans3900.0001.001. University of Michigan Library Digital Collections. Accessed April 30, 2025.
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