Today Albania celebrates the birthday of Kostadin Kristoforidhi, one of the most prominent scholars of the nineteenth century. He was born in a family of goldsmiths in Elbasan, on March 7th, 1827. He has studied in “Zosimea” school of Ioannina. In 1860 he translated into Albanian language the “New Testament” in the version Gheg dialect of Latin alphabet and Tosk variant of the Greek alphabet, thus laying the first stones of the foundation of the translation in Albanian and mother tongue preaching in our churches. For linguistic values Albania was called “father of the Albanian school”. Kristoforidhi is the author of an Albanian language grammar, written in Greek and published in Athens in 1882 and Albanian-Greek dictionary, published in the Greek capital after his death. Till late he was the best dictionary of Albanian language. For children he wrote ” Historia e shenjtës shkronjë për dile ” published in Istanbul in 1870 and the story ” Gjahu i malësorëve “, which is one of the first works of the artistic prose.
