An alternative dictionary of post-war terms in the Albanian language
Basic war and post-war terms and concepts.
By Qerim Ondozi | 30 September, 2024
True Event I
Waiting in a long queue for a short-term Slovenian visa, on an idyllic sunny afternoon, somewhere in the center of Prishtina, among the lucky ones who had the “right” documents, there were those missing a document or didn’t have a compelling reason for a visa. One of the latter, clearly frustrated by the response, vented and cursed as they left the embassy:
“Ah, they are worse than shkije [a derogatory term for Serbs].”
True Event II
In a multilingual and multi-national environment, in a high school in the beautiful coastal city of Valencia, eastern Spain, while the students were discussing various political and social issues with their professor, a young Spanish girl said:
“I’m not racist, but I just can’t stand these Romanians.”
The dictionary
I’m sure many readers will find that their own experiences resonate with the descriptions in this illustrated dictionary. This dictionary is just a fragment of an ongoing project that aims to shed light on some of the basic notions and concepts surrounding the 1998-99 war in Kosovo and the post-war period, as used in the Albanian language.
Explaining the need for such a dictionary could fill entire books, but let’s mention a couple of reasons.
First, Kosovo’s society is a (post)war society, and every society affected by war confronts, experiences and lives with these notions. Since these notions are often misunderstood or seen as problems, they can lead to conflict, trauma, misunderstanding and persistent divisions.
Second, these notions and terms are frequently confused with one another. As a result, killing can be seen as liberation, chauvinism as patriotism, xenophobia as national pride and territorial claims as indigenous rights.
The third reason, which is no less important but often forgotten — especially by professors, policymakers, journalists and educators — is that those born in 1998-99 are now over 20 years old. Some have started families and some hold various administrative and political positions. The war and its narrative have been passed on to them. Or, they might not be familiar with the notions mentioned here, which often emerge in post-war societies.
There are many other reasons, but these are enough to start such work. Since this is a special dictionary and a segment of a larger project, the entries will not be arranged alphabetically. A full dictionary would require hundreds of words, so only some are listed in this text. This selection does not imply that they are more or less important than others. Rather, these selected words may pave the way for a more comprehensive vocabulary on this topic.
The text is designed so that each entry begins with the word and its primary meaning as found in Albanian dictionaries, followed by an authorial description that incorporates satire, sarcasm and irony regarding the word and its use in social contexts.
Let’s start with the letter A.
Autochthonous (adjective; also used as a noun): A member of the original population of a country; an inhabitant of a country where their ancestors have lived since ancient times; related to a place, side, or root.
In Kosovo, Albanians are considered autochthonous, while for all other peoples, we need to find scientific evidence to prove they are settlers or allochthonous. Serbs, Turks, Bosnians, Roma, Ashkali, Egyptians, Gorans — all must be portrayed as allochthonous. If we don’t find scientific facts, we will invent them. We have plenty of historians. After all, our Serbian neighbors (read “shkije“) do the same thing against us, presenting theories that we are not of Illyrian or Pelasgian origin, that we arrived at the end of the 19th century, that we are an Asian people, and so on. Why are they allowed to do so and we don’t?
Patriotism (noun): Love for the homeland and its people. The willingness to serve them faithfully, a high sense of duty to selflessly protect the interests of the homeland and its people; the patriot.
We have seen this in war especially, when giving one’s life for one’s homeland is added to this definition.
But is there patriotism in times of peace?
In times of peace, we litter wherever we please because we feel liberated, and the police do not penalize us — it all belongs to us. We test our car’s tires, pushing the gas pedal to the limit in our neighborhood because the roads are ours, and so are the cops.
We don’t offer our seat to anyone on the bus because we feel entitled to it, thanks to the freedom we enjoy. We think we shouldn’t have to wait in line for services because we’ve waited long enough, having “fought for this day.” We bribe doctors to move our names to the top of the list because now, the doctors are ours. We get documents from the administration quickly because we know someone there. The administration, too, is ours.
Victims of other ethnicities? They may have endured difficult times, but they are not as deserving as we are. They simply aren’t.
Wave the flag at parties, make the eagle with your hands football games — be the patriots. The war is over, and now, in times of peace, the country no longer needs different kinds of love. It no longer requires loyalty, selflessness, or a sense of duty. Now, there is only freedom, to do as we please. We have faced enough challenges and loved our country enough.
Racism (noun): The unscientific belief that races have fundamental differences, with some races deemed “superior” and others “inferior.” It posits that the “superior” race has the right to oppress and exploit other races and involves contempt for and oppression of other races.
Since this label carries a negative connotation, none of us will admit to being racist. After all, how could we admit to possessing such vile traits when we see ourselves as noble, loyal and beautiful — and especially as white? Yes, white. Not that black people have less value. They are people too, just less human. Anyway.
Xenophobia (noun): The fear or hatred of everything foreign; denying and rejecting everything foreign.
As with racism, no one will admit to being a xenophobe. In fact, when we are accused of being xenophobic, we often provide examples to illustrate how we are not. We might mention that we worked with an international organization in Prishtina immediately after the war, and that the manager was from Africa, although we don’t remember which country. They are people too. Or we might point out that during our temporary stays in Germany, Austria, or Switzerland, we had Afghan, Turkish, or Polish friends. And of course, they are all human, but we believe we have the best customs. We are simply better.
“Oh, it is so good to be Albanian,” has become the slogan of the millennium. But beyond the colors of the flag and the two-headed Albanian eagle, we have not been given empirical evidence as to why it is so good to be Albanian. Or why is it better than being, let’s say, Uzbek?
Territorial claim (noun): The claim of territorial ownership by a group or individual. This expression is usually used in relation to contested or unresolved land claims.
It is upsetting to wake up on a beautiful sunny morning, order an espresso at your favorite coffee shop, take the first sip, and realize that the “great” part in “Greater Albania” is not only characteristic of the country and your people. There are many other countries that have had similar ambitions to make their states “great.”
For example, take our neighboring country, Serbia, which wants to be great. Its aspirations to be great even reach as far as Tokyo, Japan (Srbija do Tokija), yet it bears the burden of the greatest atrocities that have occurred in this part of the Balkans since World War II. Serbia is responsible for the war in Croatia, the genocide in Bosnia and Herzegovina and the massacres in Kosovo. All this is in the name of being “great.” And all this is in the name of territorial claims, among other things.
It is better to critically analyze all this every time we think that our country, or another country created by the union of two or more territories, deserves to be great, as it has always been considered. Until the mountain turns to ashes.
Fascism (noun): A far-right authoritarian and nationalist governmental and social system.
There are no fascists either, or at least very few. Loving your own is not fascism. Pushing aside neighbors who belong to another ethnicity or religion is not fascism. If you annihilate them and burn their house, how can it be fascism when the intention is good? When you burn their house, they will have nowhere to go and so they return to their own people and we all live happily. There would be no more war and the world would live in peace, right?
This is not fascism, this is common sense. Historically, we have not been fascists. Even if, at times, we have sided with authoritarian regimes, we have had other goals — by no means fascist goals. Do you understand? We are not fascists. WE ARE NOT FASCISTS. PERIOD. BYE!
Fanaticism (noun): Extraordinary zeal to defend and implement an opinion, idea, etc., without concessions and without wavering. To guard (protect, enforce) fanatically.
We hear this word often, both in the media and in daily public discourse. Fanaticism can take many forms.
Fanaticism leads us to justify our political, social, national and religious beliefs, and then we are certain that our way is RIGHT, that ONLY our way of thinking is right. Of course, this conviction gives us the right to invite others into our path, sometimes — or more often than sometimes — using psychological or physical force. But our intentions are good. We do this to help others, naturally. Because we want the best for others. Because we are better than others.
The Other (noun): A person or group of people that is alien to oneself, that does not belong to or is not considered one of us.
Dictionaries are lost treasures because they hide ways that languages and people think. They reveal what we know and what it means. But we often overlook the first, most straightforward definition of a word. We forget it and look for the second and third meanings. When we return to the first meaning, we see that we never really understood the word’s true meaning.
The late Bosnian philosopher and playwright, Dževad Karahasan, in his war diary “Diary of an Exodus,” writes: “Every member of dramatic cultural system needs the Other as proof of its own identity, because one’s own particularity is being proven and articulated in relationship to the particularities of the Other. But within a dialectical system an Other is only seemingly the Other, while it is actually the masked I, or the Other contained in myself. That is so because within a dialectical system, as well as in the dialectical way of thinking, opposite facts are actually One.”
So, in other words, maybe our fear and hatred, our desire to annihilate the other, to put the other in their place, is nothing more than our fear of facing the other (ourselves). We realize that others are just like us, and we fear that we will lose all we have built with our bodies and souls over the centuries.
Language (noun): A special system of sounds, words, forms and rules for forming words and relating them in sentences. This is the basic and most important tool that serves people to protect and express thoughts and to understand each other in society.
Our mother tongue is the most beautiful language in the world. It is an acquired language, not learned, which is why it is spoken with the heart and not with the mouth, and so on. In honoring the mother tongue, we also have a couple of proverbs about the importance of knowing foreign languages, such as: “The more you know, the more you’re worth,” and so on. But our language is our language. The debate should end there. Period.
It seems that the Albanian revivalists, in an effort to unite the people who lived in this part of the Ottoman Empire, in the vortex created by the nationalist appetites of countries like Greece and Serbia, saw the great danger that was threatening this part of the Balkans. They saw the need to awaken as a people, as a single unit. Sometimes, they may have gone too far, both by revealing historical facts and by romanticizing everything.
Of course, this megalomania (I apologize to the readers for this expression, I do not mean it badly) can be understood in that place and time — in that context. So, if it is contextualized, it is also justified. Do not waste time on the church and mosque, and so on…
But when the momentum of this national awakening continues to this day, in a COMPLETELY DIFFERENT context, in a COMPLETELY DIFFERENT time and place, under COMPLETELY DIFFERENT political and social circumstances, then it represents a big problem. Because it’s out of context, because it’s anachronistic, because it’s ridiculous. We can keep doing this until tomorrow.
And so, with this style, some “historians” and “linguists” emerge who tell us that we are the origin of everything and that our language is a holy language, the origin of every language. As for our revivalists, I am almost certain that they were not crazy and foolish. But about these others, I have doubts. I don’t want to believe that they are malicious, I want to believe that they are stupid and brainless. I am almost convinced that they are.
Pelasgian, Illyrian, Albanian (noun, adjective)
Pelasgian: A member of the population that lived mainly in the Aegean basin and in the southern regions of the Balkans before the Hellenes and Illyrians.
Illyrian: A member of the old population of Illyria, known as the ancestors of the Albanian people, inhabitant of Illyria. Southern Illyrians.
Albanian: A native of Albania or one of Albanian origin; member of the Albanian population. A true Albanian. Exiled Albanians. The Besa (word of honor) of Albanians. The honor (character) of the Albanian. The bravery (generosity, hospitality) of the Albanians. Albanians’ struggles for freedom and independence. The longing of the Albanian for the motherland.
Note: These words deserve a place in this vocabulary, perhaps they should even be the first words, but the author feels powerless to provide illustrations for them, as the description would be too limited.
These were just some examples from the evolving vocabulary.
And now you can stop. Read the text again from beginning to end. Pause at each term. Be honest with yourself and determine how many times you’ve felt the emotions described above. Consider how many times you have justified them to yourself or others, by using euphemisms or more flattering terms.
Doing everything just to justify yourself and your actions, in front of yourself and others.
Feature Image: K2.0.
This publication was produced with the support of forumZFD. The contents are the sole responsibility of Kosovo 2.0 and do not necessarily reflect the views of forumZFD.