|Region||Albania, Kosovo,[a] Greece, Prespa in Republic of Macedonia, Turkey|
|1.8 million (2011 census)|
A map showing Tosk speakers in Red and Orange (19th century)
Tosk is the southern dialect group of the Albanian language, spoken by the ethnographic group known as Tosks. The line of demarcation between Tosk and Gheg (the northern dialect) is the Shkumbin River. Tosk is the basis of the standard Albanian language.
Tosk may also refer to the Tosk-speaking Albanian population of southern Albania, subgroups of which include the Myzeqars of Myzeqe, Labs of Labëria and Chams of Çamëria. The Arvanites of Greece and Arbëreshë of Italy are descendants of Tosk-speaking settlers, as are the original inhabitants of Mandritsa in Bulgaria.
Tosk, in its narrowest sense, may be applied to the people of Toskëria, the region to the north of the Vjosë river and south of the Shkumbin river, in the territory of Fier County. However, the name Toskëria itself is often used to name entire Tosk-speaking parts of Albania, in contrast to northern Gegëria.
- R. Macedonia: approximately 3,000 speakers (early 1980s).
|a.||^ Kosovo is the subject of a territorial dispute between the Republic of Serbia and the Republic of Kosovo. The Republic of Kosovo unilaterally declared independence on 17 February 2008, but Serbia claims it as part of its own sovereign territory. The two governments began to normalize relations in 2013, as part of the Brussels Agreement. Kosovo has been recognised by 108 out of 193 United Nations member states.|
- Tosk at Ethnologue (18th ed., 2015)
- Nordhoff, Sebastian; Hammarström, Harald; Forkel, Robert; Haspelmath, Martin, eds. (2013). "Tosk Albanian". Glottolog. Leipzig: Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology.
- Language Contact - Language Conflict. p. 36.
Thus, for example, even the small numbers of Tosk Albanians of southern Macedonia (only approximately 3,000 in the early 1980s)
|Tosk Albanian edition of Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia|