Gorani language | |
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Našinski Jezik | |
Native to | Kosovo, Albania |
Native speakers
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60,000 (2011 census) (date missing) |
Indo-European
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Official status | |
Recognised minority
language in |
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Language codes | |
ISO 639-3 | – |
Glottolog | None |
Area where Torlakian dialects are spoken. Number 4 (in southern Kosovo) indicates the Gora dialect area.
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The Gorani or Našinski (literally meaning "our language") language is the variety of South Slavic spoken by the Gorani people in the border area between Kosovo, Albania, and Macedonia. It is part of the Torlakian dialect group, which is transitional between Eastern and Western South Slavic languages.
Spoken across the Gora region in 19 villages in Kosovo, 11 in Albania, and 2 in the Republic of Macedonia. In Kosovo and Macedonia, it is sometimes written in either the Serbian or Macedonian Cyrillic Alphabets, whereas in Albania, the Latin Albanian alphabet is used. In the 1991 Yugoslav census, 54.8% of the inhabitants of the Gora municipality said that they spoke the Gorani language, roughly in proportion to the number who considered themselves ethnic Gorani. In the same census, a little less than half of the inhabitants of Gora considered their language Serbian.
Related to the neighbouring Torlak language varieties spoken in the Prizren–South Morava area to the northeast, also spoken in the southern half of Kosovo and in southeastern Serbia, as well as to the northernmost dialects of Macedonia. In relation to Macedonian dialectology, it is described as having particular close links to the Lower Polog dialect of the Polog and Tetovo regions, which are situated just opposite the Gora area on the other side of the Šar Mountains.