Can it read Albanian written in Greek or Arabic letters, or in an invented alphabet like Vithkuqi?

Yes, when you say which script the page uses. Greek-lettered and Arabic-lettered Albanian, and the Elbasan, Todhri and Vithkuqi alphabets, are each read on their own terms rather than assumed to be the modern Latin alphabet.

How does it handle Albanian’s digraphs?

Dh, gj, ll, nj, rr, sh, th, xh and zh are recognised as single letters, each standing for one sound, rather than read and alphabetised as two separate letters.

What happens with ë and ç?

They are kept as the distinct letters they are rather than dropped or replaced with plain e and c, which matters because the difference changes both spelling and meaning.

Can it transcribe a document that mixes scripts, like the 1912 Declaration of Independence?

Yes. Albanian Latin script, Ottoman Turkish in Arabic script, and signatures in either script are transcribed as separate blocks in the order they appear, rather than merged into one passage.

Does it know the difference between pre- and post-1908 Albanian spelling?

Yes, when you flag the material as pre-standardisation. Older spelling conventions and script choices are read as period-correct rather than corrected to the alphabet fixed at the Congress of Manastir in 1908.

Albanian

Albanian handwriting, print and signage turned into text, whatever alphabet it was written in

Until the 1908 Congress of Manastir settled on a single Latin alphabet, Albanian had been written in Greek and Arabic letters and in at least three invented alphabets of its own, so a page from before that date can turn up in a script no other Albanian document uses. Modern Albanian solves the same problem the other way round, spelling sounds Latin never had with digraphs such as sh, zh, nj and rr and with the extra letters ë and ç. Evidano reads both ends of that range and sets the transcription beside the image so every unfamiliar letter or digraph can be checked.

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Sample pages

Ornately decorated title page with vine borders and calligraphic angular lettering in the invented Vithkuqi alphabet, dated 1845 — Sample 1. The decorated title page of Naum Veqilharxhi’s Ëvetar shqip për djelm nismëtorë, printed in 1845 in Vithkuqi, the alphabet Veqilharxhi had designed a few years earlier to give Albanian letters of its own rather than borrowed Greek, Arabic or Latin ones. Vine-scroll borders and a calligraphic title frame lines of Vithkuqi’s angular, loop-tailed letterforms, none of which resemble the Latin alphabet Albanian would adopt six decades later.

Handwritten page with Albanian Latin-script paragraphs at the top, two lines of Arabic-script Ottoman Turkish below, and dozens of signatures in Latin and Arabic script filling the rest of the page — Sample 2. The Vlorë declaration of Albanian independence of 28 November 1912, in this widely reproduced facsimile. The opening lines, recording Ismail Qemali’s address to the assembly, are written in Albanian Latin script; beneath them two lines of Ottoman Turkish in Arabic script record the same proceedings for the imperial administration, and dozens of delegates sign below in Latin or Arabic script according to their own hand.

Dense three-column newspaper front page in printed Latin-script Albanian under the masthead Ura e Shkuminit, dated 23 March 1923 — Sample 3. The front page of Ura e Shkuminit, a political, literary and economic gazette published in Elbasan, first issue dated 23 March 1923, digitised by the town’s Qemal Baholli Public Library. Three dense columns of Latin-script Albanian carry a leading article, a folk tale and a column on economic policy, set in the standard post-1908 orthography with its digraphs and ë.

Blue backlit clinic sign reading Endodent, Klinika Specialistike e Dhëmbëve, with a phone number and the specialist’s name — Sample 4. A backlit clinic sign in Pristina, Kosovo, for the dental practice Endodent, giving its name in Albanian, “Klinika Specialistike e Dhëmbëve”, with a phone number, email address and the specialist’s name. The word dhëmbëve shows both the dh digraph and the letter ë in ordinary modern signage.

Book page with a capitalised Albanian title above fourteen lines of verse set in an unfamiliar nineteenth-century alphabet mixing Latin and Greek-derived letters — Sample 5. The first page of Naim Frashëri’s pastoral poem Bagëti e Bujqësija, printed in Bucharest in 1886. Title, rule and fourteen lines of verse are set in the Istanbul alphabet Frashëri used: ε does the work of ë, λ of ll, ŋ of nj and ð of dh, and a letter shaped like a figure six stands for sh, so a page of ordinary Albanian looks unlike anything printed after 1908.

What Albanian text looks like on the page

Centuries of Ottoman rule left Albanian without an official alphabet, so where it was written down at all before the twentieth century, a writer typically reached for whichever script their own religious and educational tradition used: Greek letters among Orthodox Albanians in the south, the Arabic script among Muslim Albanians and in dealings with Ottoman administration, and Latin letters, in a range of competing spelling systems, among Catholic Albanians in the north and the Italian-facing diaspora. Alongside these borrowed alphabets, Albanians also invented scripts built for the language itself: Elbasan, known from an anonymous eighteenth-century gospel manuscript; Todhri, devised in the early nineteenth century by Todhri Haxhifilipi of Elbasan; and Vithkuqi, designed in the 1840s by Naum Veqilharxhi specifically to give Albanian letters owing nothing to Greek, Turkish or Slavic tradition.

The Congress of Manastir, held in November 1908, ended the competition by adopting a Latin alphabet for Albanian, essentially the one still in use, and every one of the older scripts fell out of use within a generation. That alphabet solves the mismatch between Albanian’s sounds and the Latin letter set with nine two-letter digraphs — dh, gj, ll, nj, rr, sh, th, xh and zh — each standing for one sound and each alphabetised as a single letter, plus two additional letters of its own, ë for the central vowel and ç for a sound close to English ch.

Everyday modern material is printed or written in that standard orthography, but reading it still means recognising the digraphs and the two extra letters reliably: a worn photocopy, a strict ASCII keyboard or a foreign typesetter can drop ë and ç first, and a document from the transitional years around independence can still mix Albanian Latin script with Ottoman Turkish in Arabic script on the same page, a reminder that the 1908 standard took time to reach every kind of document.

Why ordinary OCR struggles here

A pre-1908 page could be in almost any script

Older Albanian material cannot be assumed to be in Latin letters at all: a document might be in Greek-lettered Albanian, Arabic-lettered Albanian, or one of the invented Elbasan, Todhri or Vithkuqi alphabets, none of which share letterforms with each other or with the modern alphabet.

Digraphs that are really one letter

Sh, zh, nj, rr, dh, gj, ll, th and xh each spell a single sound and are alphabetised as one letter, but a system reading letter by letter can split them at the wrong point or fail to treat them as the units they are.

Ë and ç easily lost or swapped

The two letters Albanian added to the Latin alphabet are often the first casualties of a worn scan, a keyboard without the right key, or a system that quietly falls back to plain e and c, and losing either one changes the spelling and often the meaning of a word.

Mixed scripts on one official page

A document from the transition years, such as the 1912 Vlorë declaration, can carry Albanian in Latin letters, a line of Ottoman Turkish in Arabic script, and signatures in either script side by side, so a transcription has to keep each block in its own script rather than merge them into one.

Who works with this material

Albanian genealogists and local historians

Church, school and land records survive in Greek-lettered, Arabic-lettered, Latin-lettered and invented-alphabet Albanian depending on the region and religion of the writer, so working out which alphabet a record uses is often the first step in reading it at all.

Historians of Albanian nationalism and the Rilindja

The movement to give Albanian a single national alphabet is documented in exactly the kind of primers, pamphlets and congress records this page draws its earliest sample from, and reading them means recognising scripts that fell out of use within a generation.

Archivists of early twentieth-century Albanian institutions

Newspapers, gazette notices and official correspondence from the years around independence often mix scripts and spelling conventions within a single archive, and cataloguing them accurately depends on transcribing each block in the script it was actually written in.

Diaspora and community organisations

Shop signs, notices and correspondence in Albanian communities abroad need ë, ç and the digraphs read correctly before they can be translated, indexed or searched.

Getting the best transcription

Step 1

Identify the alphabet before transcribing

Say whether a page is in Latin, Greek, Arabic script, or one of the invented Elbasan, Todhri or Vithkuqi alphabets, since none of them share a letter set with any of the others.

Step 2

Ask for digraphs to be kept as single units

Specify that dh, gj, ll, nj, rr, sh, th, xh and zh should be transcribed and, where relevant, alphabetised as the single letters they represent rather than as two separate ones.

Step 3

Confirm ë and ç are preserved

Tell the model that ë and ç are distinct letters in modern Albanian, not accented variants that can be dropped or replaced with plain e and c when a font or keyboard makes that easier.

Step 4

Flag documents that mix scripts

On a transitional document, ask for each script to be transcribed as its own block, so an Albanian Latin passage, a line of Ottoman Arabic script and a set of signatures are not run together as if they were one continuous text.

Frequently asked questions

Can it read Albanian written in Greek or Arabic letters, or in an invented alphabet like Vithkuqi?: Yes, when you say which script the page uses. Greek-lettered and Arabic-lettered Albanian, and the Elbasan, Todhri and Vithkuqi alphabets, are each read on their own terms rather than assumed to be the modern Latin alphabet.
How does it handle Albanian’s digraphs?: Dh, gj, ll, nj, rr, sh, th, xh and zh are recognised as single letters, each standing for one sound, rather than read and alphabetised as two separate letters.
What happens with ë and ç?: They are kept as the distinct letters they are rather than dropped or replaced with plain e and c, which matters because the difference changes both spelling and meaning.
Can it transcribe a document that mixes scripts, like the 1912 Declaration of Independence?: Yes. Albanian Latin script, Ottoman Turkish in Arabic script, and signatures in either script are transcribed as separate blocks in the order they appear, rather than merged into one passage.
Does it know the difference between pre- and post-1908 Albanian spelling?: Yes, when you flag the material as pre-standardisation. Older spelling conventions and script choices are read as period-correct rather than corrected to the alphabet fixed at the Congress of Manastir in 1908.

Related scripts and pages

Ottoman Turkish image to textThe Arabic-script administrative language that shares a page with Albanian on documents from the same transitional years.Greek image to textThe script Orthodox Albanian writers borrowed before 1908, still found in early religious and school texts.Macedonian image to textA neighbouring Balkan language whose modern alphabet was also fixed only in the twentieth century.Image to TextSearch all supported languages, scripts and document types.

Transcribe your Albanian documents

Upload a document, a newspaper page or a sign, in Latin, Greek, Arabic or an older Albanian alphabet, and check the transcription line by line before you export it.

Albanian handwriting, print and signage turned into text, whatever alphabet it was written in

Sample pages

Evidano Transcription

Evidano Transcription

Evidano Transcription

Evidano Transcription

Evidano Transcription

What Albanian text looks like on the page

Why ordinary OCR struggles here

A pre-1908 page could be in almost any script

Digraphs that are really one letter

Ë and ç easily lost or swapped

Mixed scripts on one official page

Who works with this material

Albanian genealogists and local historians

Historians of Albanian nationalism and the Rilindja

Archivists of early twentieth-century Albanian institutions

Diaspora and community organisations

Getting the best transcription

Identify the alphabet before transcribing

Ask for digraphs to be kept as single units

Confirm ë and ç are preserved

Flag documents that mix scripts

Frequently asked questions

Related scripts and pages

Transcribe your Albanian documents

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