‚Die albanische Mauer‘ Grenzbegriffe im Albanischen

Abstract

This article explores border terms in Albanian using the example of the
Dibra region. Dibra is an Albanian-Macedonian border region that originally formed a
cultural, linguistic-dialectal and (extended) family unit and developed manifold
divergences with the drawing of the borders in 1913 resp. 1925, including border
terms. The article elaborates a great linguistic diversity to express spatial demarcations
until the drawing of state borders at the beginning of the 20th century on a national
basis, which was very foreign to local cultures. Therefore, no existing term proved
suitable to express the new type of demarcation – the state borders. The local
languages or dialects – in this case Dibra – still developed a number of new terms,
most of which were borrowed. However, it also integrated the German term Mauer
(‚wall‘) by means of a loan translation. This is because the borders of the state of
Albania are perceived by the Albanians in a similar way to the German-German border
as an internal national border that was drawn unjustly and therefore had to fall like its
model in Berlin. The analysis of border terms in this article traces this development
with the help of historical sociosemantics.