Shkije

Shkije, Shkje or Shkavell, is a pejorative    term used in the Gheg dialect of Albanian to refer to non-Albanian Slavs such as Serbs, Macedonians, Montenegrins, to a lesser extent Croats and Bosniaks, and also simply non-Albanians such as Greeks and Italians.

The Arvanites in Greece use the version shkla to refer to the Greek population, Tsitsipis, Lukas (1981). Language change and language death in Albanian speech communities in Greece: A sociolinguistic study. (Thesis). University of Wisconsin. pp. 100-101. "The term /evjeni̇́stika/ meaning “polite”, used by the young speaker to refer to Greek, is offered as synonymous to /shkljiri̇́shtika/ one of the various morphological shapes of the Arvanitika word /shkljeri̇́shtë/ which refers to “the Greek language”. Thus, Greek is equated with the more refined, soft, and polite talk. The concept of politeness is occasionally extended from the language to its speakers who are the representatives of the urban culture. In conversations in Kiriaki, I heard the word /shklji̇́ra/ (fem.) referring to a city women who exhibits polite and fancy behavior according to the local view. As I stated in the introduction to this dissertation, most of the occurrences of the term /shkljeri̇́shtë/ are not socially marked, and simply refer to the Greek language. But a few are so marked and these are the ones that reflect the speakers’ attitudes. The term /shkljeri̇́shtë/ is ambiguous. This ambiguity offers a valuable clue to the gradual shift in attitudes. It points to the more prestigious Greek language and culture, and also has a derogatory sense. In my data only the first meaning of the socially marked senses of the word occurs."; pp. 101-102. "The second meaning is offered by Kazazis in his description of the Arvanitika community of Sofikó, in the Peloponnese (1976:48):. . . two older people from Sofiko told me independently that, to the not-so-remote past, it was those who spoke Greek with their fellow-Arvanites who were ridiculed. Even today, if an older inhabitant of Sofiko were to speak predominantly in Greek with his fellow villagers of the same age, he would be called i shkljerishtúarë, literally “Hellenized” but used here as a derogatory term denoting affectation. One of those two informants, a woman, said that, until about 1950, it was a shame for a girl in Sofiko to speak Greek with her peers, for that was considered as “putting on airs.” In Spata, /shkljeri̇́shtë/ is used only to refer to “the Greek language” although speakers are aware of the other meanings of the word." while the Arbereshe in Italy, a substantial part of which originates from the Arvanites, use the words shklan and shklerisht which mean "that does not speak Arbereshe", or "that speaks an incomprehensible language", referring to the Latin languages.

It is derived from the Latin term "Sclaveni", which contained the traditional meaning of “the neighbouring foreigner”.

It was widely used in the Albanian literature as well, i.e. Lahuta e Malcís (1937) of Gjergj Fishta (1871–1940). Sami Frasheri also used the term in his works.

During the Yugoslav Wars, Albanian newspapers often called Serbs "Shkja". Șchei was also a word that Romanians used to name Slavs (Bulgarians).