Albanian is a unique Indo-European language that constitutes its own branch of the family — the Albanian branch — with no close living relatives. It is believed to descend from either ancient Illyrian or Thracian, though the precise ancestor is debated among linguists due to the scarcity of written records from those ancient languages. Albanian first appears in written form in 1462 in a baptismal formula, making it one of the last major European languages to develop a written tradition. The language has two main dialects — Gheg (spoken in northern Albania, Kosovo, and North Macedonia) and Tosk (spoken in southern Albania) — which differ significantly in phonology and vocabulary. Standard Albanian, codified in 1972, is based primarily on the Tosk dialect. Albanian's vocabulary contains a remarkably high proportion of native words with no clear cognates in other Indo-European languages, preserving a pre-Roman Balkan linguistic substrate.
