Arvanitic language

Categories: Languages of Greece | Minority languages | Endangered languages | Albanian language | Island languages in diaspora

Arvanitic language or Arvanitika (Αρbε̰ρίσ̈τε / Arbëríshte, Greek: Αρβανίτικα / Arvanítika) is a language usually grouped with the Tosk dialect of the Albanian language.

Name

The word "Arvanitika" is the corruption of the word "Albanian" related to the fact that Modern Greek language does not have the consonant "b" (Greek 'β' denotes the consonant 'v'); see also Albania: Origin and history of the name article about the "l/r" conversion (rhotacism).

Classification

Since Albanian is the most widely spoken of the group of related languages, it is the most common name used by linguists to denote the branch of the Indo-European language family which, in addition to the Tosk and Gheg dialects of Albanian, includes the Arbëreshë language of Italy and the Arvanitic language of Greece. The latter two are widely regarded by their speakers as separate languages. Arvanitic is partially intelligible with Tosk but not intelligible with Gheg. Arvanitika has been spoken by the Arvanite people of Greece for more than five centuries.

Geographic distribution

Speakers of Arvanitika inhabit more than 300 villages in Greece. According to Ethnologue there are 150,000 speakers of Arvanitika, the 1951 official Greek census (the last census which included data about mother tongues) gave a number of 23,000 and Peter Trudgill wrote that they were about 30,000 in 1977.

There are no monolingual Arvanitic-speakers; all are bilingual in Greek, and the language has been influenced by Greek over the centuries. Arvanitic is considered an endangered language as the descendants of Arvanite speakers have not been learning it. Consequently it is only used by some septuagenarians and octogenarians, when trying to communicate with Albanian immigrants who have not learned Greek yet.

Writing system

Arvainitic is traditionally a spoken rather than a written language. However an Arvanitic alphabet adapted from the Greek alphabet has been developed for Arvanitic. This is in contrast with standard Albanian which is written with the Albanian alphabet, an extension of the Latin alphabet.

Bibliography

• Joseph, Brian D. "Comparative perspectives on the place of Arvanitika within Greece and the Greek environment", 1999
• Trudgill, Peter and Tzavaras, George "Why Albanian-Greeks are not Albanians: Language shift in Attica and Biotia", 1977

External links

• Ethnologue entry
• UNESCO's entry on Arvanitika Albanian