The Congress of Manastir, held in November 1908 in what is now Bitola, North Macedonia, standardized the Albanian alphabet — ending decades of regional fragmentation in which different communities wrote the language in Arabic, Greek, Latin, or Cyrillic scripts. The political timing was deliberate: convened under the relative loosening of Ottoman control following the Young Turk Revolution, Albanian intellectuals moved quickly to consolidate a unified national written identity before the window closed.
The 28-character Latin-based alphabet ratified there remains the official Albanian script to this day.
The Congress of Manastir, held in November 1908 in what is now Bitola, North Macedonia, standardized the Albanian alphabet — ending decades of regional fragmentation in which different communities wrote the language in Arabic, Greek, Latin, or Cyrillic scripts. The political timing was deliberate: convened under the relative loosening of Ottoman control following the Young Turk Revolution, Albanian intellectuals moved quickly to consolidate a unified national written identity before the window closed.
The 28-character Latin-based alphabet ratified there remains the official Albanian script to this day.