The Albanian language is increasingly fading, largely due to the growing influence of foreign languages. This trend is especially noticeable among parents eager to teach their children English from a very early age — a practice that is now creating significant issues with reading, writing, and pronunciation in Albanian.

Euronews Albania visited a primary school in Tirana and asked third-grade students to write the phrase “Mirë se vini” (Welcome) — none of them spelled it correctly. When sixth graders were asked the same, two out of several still made mistakes. Some students even struggle to recognize or write basic letters. For example, one sixth-grader incorrectly spelled the phrase “Gëzuar ditëlindjen” (Happy birthday) on the classroom board.

Experts warn that English is deeply influencing Albanian, not only through early exposure via social media, but also by being introduced as a subject as early as first grade.

“We’re being heavily influenced by English in pronunciation, morphology, syntactic structure, and even intonation,” said linguist Rami Memushaj. “The intonation no longer sounds natural for Albanian — it’s a hybrid between English and Albanian. Who are we preparing these kids for? The UK? The US? Most of them — about 80% — will live and work in Albania, where they’ll need to write and speak Albanian. Introducing English too early, before Albanian fluency is solid, harms the development of their native language,” he added.