Has anyone else noticed how Albanian and English phonologies are very similar, almost exactly the same? I thought it was really interesting, especially since they're not closely related.

I'm not sure what you mean. The vowel inventories are totally distinct (Albanian has a 7-vowel system; several varieties of English have twice that many distinctive vowels before you even begin to count diphthongs). In the consonants, Albanian has a whole palatal series lacking in English as well as phonemic distinction between trilled and flapped r and "light" and "dark" l.

Sure you're not just making too much of the presence of a couple of dental fricatives? Arabic has those, too, you know.

albanian is on it's own language family branch

this is not by accident

Yes, I know. But they're still both Indo-European. I did say that they weren't closely related..



I wasn't talking about just vowels, and I was talking about sounds not spelling. English has "light" and "dark" l as well. Also, a lot of English accents have a flapped r and also, I've heard Albanian accents with a rhotic r. You can look at the phonology of each language. Which looks closer to English, the Albanian or the Dutch, which is closely related to English?
English: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_phonology
Albanian: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albanian_language
Dutch: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dutch_phonology

The charts of English and Albanian look fairly similar if you ask me.



I'm aware of dental fricatives in other languages Greek, Welsh, Spanish...etc.

I wasn't talking about spelling either, but I was discussing phonemes where you seem to be focussing on phones.


As far as vowels go, I don't think you're considering them at all. There's clearly more resemblance between the vowel systems of English and Dutch than between either of them and Albanian.

I have a flapped [ɾ] in my English, but as an allophone of /d/ and /t/. Moreover, that's a pretty specifically American English feature.

as are these...what's your point?

I doubt many of the shared features are of common origin. Even the interdental fricatives aren't included in PIE. (Strangely, they seem to be a peripheral feature around Europe.)

I just meant, you seemed to be mentioning it like I wasn't considering it.

no...

their vowels systems aren't similar, and you mentioning them both being indo-european was non sequitur