Indefinite and definite? what's that?

So, if you're not quite to sure of what indefinite and definite mean in terms of grammar and language, you're like me. I'm not sure how I was taught grammar in school, or how I was supposed to learn it. But it's actually pretty simple, I think.  In definite you include "the" before the item, in the indefinite, the "the" is not there.  Like: Can you give me "the" socks vs. Can you buy me socks.  My friend Matthew wrote a great blog about the language very early on, here.

I digress, my point was, when I came here I didn't know much about grammar rules in terms of "terms" or knowledge, but I did know how to speak English, which can be helpful, except for the fact that many of the grammar rules are different in English and Albanian.  Aside from Matthew's eloquent example, another instance is the word for "the municipality", bashkia.  Depending on where it is in the sentence, and whether you are talking about "the" municipality, or "a" municipality, the municipalities, or some municipalities there are many different ways to use the word "bashkia."  *Off the top of my head I can think of bashkia, bashki, bashkise, bashkiake.  I may not have spelled them all correctly, and I'm sure I missed some, but you get the idea.  Needless to say when I began studying the language, and we got to this point in the lesson I nearly broke down in tears.  I decided to continue on though, but ignoring these slight changes in the word, and instead just studying my flash cards to no end.  I figured as long as I knew the base version of the words I needed to use, I could be understood.  While that wasn't always the case, it was good enough.


*I'm pretty sure I'm missing something here, but that's ok.

I'll never forget the day I was riding in a furgon (van taxi) with my buddy John and he repeated at least three times "Thane Shkolle" finally, one person in the furgon understood.  I don't know exactly what he was supposed to say, maybe "Shkolla Thane" (using the definite, and putting the noun before the adjective (?)), but we both just sat there in awe when one guy understood, and we thought repeated exactly what John said, at which time the driver immediately.


It was moments like that which also kept me from being complacent about the language.  One day I'd be on top of the world, thinking I knew so much, then a person wouldn't understand me when I said the simplest thing.  The graph below captures my perceived ability, and my actual ability taken over time.

Anyway, I was thinking of all of this because we just had our COS conference which included our language test.  Which, when we began, I never imagined I'd be able to take without studying.

In general my experience went like this.  Usually my confidence fell after I spoke to an Albanian who couldn't understand me, or one who said that I should've learned more up to that point.  But, over time I became more aware of my level.  Also, you'll notice larger jumps in actual knowledge at the beginning, then as concepts got more advanced, more casual jumps.  Toward the end my improvement mostly came from conversation and recognition.  Finally, you'll notice, there is no "scale" for actual ability, haha.  End of longest caption ever.