Slavic Loanwords in the Speech of Inhabitants of Skopje Villages Originating from Upper Reka

Abstract

The Albanians in the Republic of North Macedonia have always been in constant contact with the Slavic peoples of the Balkans - with the Macedonians, Serbs, Bulgarians, etc., and as a result of these contacts, the lexis of the Albanians from this region owns many Slavic loanwords.
As it follows from the title itself, the subject of this paper is the influence of Slavic languages on the Albanian language, with a special reference to the lexis of Slavic origin in the speech of the Skopje villages that speak in Upper Reka dialect.
In this paper, we pay a special attention to the increased presence of the Slavic linguistic element in the speech of the villages that are the subject of our research.
The main goal of this paper is to prove that the lexis of the speech of the above-mentioned villages is very rich with Slavic loanwords, which to date consist the active layer of this lexis.
In order to carry out this research in the best possible way, we used the interviewing method. From several conducted interviews in the field, we collected considerable lexical material. For interviewing, we chose elderly people due to the fact that it is the older generation that uses words of Slavic origin.
During the development of the lexical material, beside the collected material from the field, we consulted monographs and published works by well-known Albanian dialectologists and lexicologists, whose research is related to the speech area of the language we are researching.
We hope that the results we obtained will be of interest of not only in the field of Albanian dialectology and lexicology, but also in the field of mutual Albanian-Slavic linguistic influences.