How does Albanian sound to you as a foreigner?

Now that was surprising.

I thought I heard clear accent differences in the broadcast, jumping around.

The intonation was familiar to me from northern Greece. And Arvanitika certainly sounds to me like dialectal Greek + schwas. I’ve heard Albanian on the radio in Australia once or twice, and it sounded familiar too.

But this didn’t. The <ll> and <sh> were much clearer, the vowels more mushy sounding, I even thought I heard some Russian-style palatals. The Albanian I’ve heard before sounded zingy, a bit like Greek; this didn’t. (And I have no idea if I’m just fantasising this.)

If I had to pick a language it reminded me of, I’d pick Polish.

EDIT for User-13249930999434776143. The reporter on the second video sounded much more like I expected Albanian to be. Clear schwas, crisp, and clear palatal / alveolar contrasts.

The hosts sounded crisp as well, but because they spoke very fast, they still sounded very sibilant. Not Polish at all, but perhaps Bulgarian.

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