Arvanitika
| Arvanitika | |
|---|---|
| Arbërisht | |
| Pronunciation | [aɾbəˈɾiʃt] |
| Native to | Greece |
| Region | Attica, Boeotia, South Euboea, Saronic Islands; Western Thrace; Peloponnese; some villages in NW of Greece; N of island of Andros; more than 500 villages in total |
| Ethnicity | 150,000 Arvanites (2000) |
|
Native speakers
|
50,000 (2007) (may be republished older data) |
|
Greek (Arvanitic alphabet) Latin |
|
| Language codes | |
| ISO 639-3 | |
| Glottolog | arva1236 |
| Linguasphere | 55-AAA-aea to 55-AAA-aed |
Arvanitika /ˌɑːrvəˈnɪtᵻkə/ (Arvanitika: αρbε̰ρίσ̈τ arbërisht; Greek: αρβανίτικα), also known as Arvanitic, is the variety of Albanian traditionally spoken by the Arvanites, a population group in Greece. Arvanitika is today an endangered form of speech, as its speakers have been shifting to the use of Greek and most younger members of the community no longer speak it.
The name Arvanítika and its native equivalent Arbërisht are derived from the ethnonym Arvanites, which in turn comes from the toponym Arbëna (Greek: Άρβανα), which in the Middle Ages referred to a region in what is today Albania. Its native equivalents (Arbërorë, Arbëreshë and others) used to be the self-designation of Albanians in general. In the past Arvanitika had sometimes been described as "Graeco-Albanian" and the like (e.g., Furikis, 1934), although today many Arvanites consider such names offensive, they generally identify nationally and ethnically as Greeks and not Albanians.
Arvanitika was brought to southern Greece during the late Middle Ages by settlers from what is today Albania. Arvanitika is also closely related to Arbëresh, the dialect of Albanian in Italy, which largely goes back to Arvanite settlers from Greece. Italian Arbëresh has retained some words borrowed from Greek (for instance haristis 'thank you', from ευχαριστώ; dhrom 'road', from δρόμος; Ne 'yes', from ναι, in certain villages). Italo-Arbëresh and Graeco-Arvanitika have a mutually intelligible vocabulary base, the unintelligible elements of the two dialects stem from the usage of Italian or Greek modernisms in the absence of native ones.
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Wikipedia