Albanian Americans are Americans of full or partial Albanian ancestry and heritage in the United States. They trace their ancestry to the territories with a large Albanian population in the Balkans and southern Europe, including Albania, Italy, Kosovo, North Macedonia and Montenegro. They are adherents of different religions and are predominantly Muslims and Christians, while some are irreligious.
The New York City Metropolitan Area is home to by far the largest Albanian population in the United States.
Paterson, New Jersey, is home to the second largest Albanian American population, after New York City.
Lakewood, Ohio and the West Side of Cleveland are home to a significant Albanian population.
Jacksonville is home to the most Albanian Americans in the state of Florida.
Albanian is an Indo-European language and the only surviving representative of the Albanoid branch, which belongs to the Paleo-Balkan group. Standard Albanian is the official language of Albania and Kosovo, and a co-official language in North Macedonia and Montenegro, as well as a recognized minority language of Italy, Croatia, Romania and Serbia. It is also spoken in Greece and by the Albanian diaspora, which is generally concentrated in the Americas, Europe and Oceania. Albanian is estimated to have as many as 7.5 million native speakers.
Albanian within Indo-European language family tree based on "Ancestry-constrained phylogenetic analysis of Indo-European languages" by Chang et al. (January 2015).
1905 issue of the magazine Albania, the most important Albanian periodical of the early 20th century
Meshari of Gjon Buzuku 1554–1555
Possibly the oldest surviving Albanian text, highlighted in red, from the Bellifortis manuscript, written by Konrad Kyeser around 1402–1405.
