South-East European Research Centre (SEERC)

From a linguistic standpoint, Kosovo is a diverse country. At a national level, Albanian and Serbian share the status of official languages, whilst the languages of other minority communities such as Romani, Bosnian, Turkish, and Gorani share the status of official languages in municipality level if they meet specific criteria, as regulated by the Law on the Use of Languages of the Republic of Kosovo. With the change of the political situation following the 1999 war, numerous papers and reports have been published regarding the position and integration of minority communities, the protection and promotion of their rights, and the language legislation and its implementation in the country. Yet, none of the studies conducted so far have analysed the attitudes of people towards the minority languages. Hence, this study aims to explore the attitudes of Kosovo Albanians as the majority population in the country, towards Serbian, Romani, Bosnian, Turkish and the Gorani language. Moreover, it seeks to find out whether there are differences in language attitudes between older and younger generations, as well as whether other social factors play any significant role in language attitudes.