Albanian (gjuha shqipe, pronounced [ˈɟuha ˈʃcipɛ], or shqip Albanian pronunciation: [ʃcip]) is an Indo-European language spoken by approximately 7.6 million people, primarily in Albania and Kosovo but also in other areas of the Balkans in which there is an indigenous Albanian population, including western Macedonia, southern Montenegro, southern Serbia and northwestern Greece. Albanian is also spoken in centuries-old Albanian colonies in southern Greece, southern Italy,Sicily, and Ukraine. Additionally, speakers of Albanian can be found elsewhere throughout the latter two countries resulting from a modern diaspora, originating from the Balkans, that also includes Scandinavia, Switzerland, Germany, United Kingdom, Turkey, Australia, New Zealand, Netherlands, Singapore, Brazil, Canada and the United States.

The Albanian language is a distinct Indo-European language that does not belong to any other existing branch; the other extant Indo-European isolate is Armenian. Sharing lexical isoglosses with Greek, Balto-Slavic, and Germanic, the word stock of Albanian is quite distinct. Once hastily grouped with Germanic and Balto-Slavic by the merger of PIE *ǒ and *ǎ into *ǎ in a supposed "northern group", Albanian has proven to be distinct from these two, as this vowel shift is only part of a larger push chain that affected all long vowels. Albanian does share with Balto-Slavic two features: (1) a lengthening of syllabic consonants before voiced obstruents and (2) a distinct treatment of long syllables ending in a sonorant. Conservative features of Albanian include the retention of the distinction between active and middle voice, present tense and aorist.