Arvanitic or Arvanitika (Greek: Αρβανίτικα; native name: Arbëríshte; spelled Αρbε̰ρίσ̈τε in the Greek-based Arvanitic alphabet) is the variety of Albanian traditionally spoken by the Arvanites, a population group in Greece. Arvanitic is sometimes also described as Graeco-Albanian or similarly,^[1] although today such designations are considered offensive by many Arvanites themselves, who identify nationally and ethnically as Greeks and not Albanians (GHM 1995). Arvanitic is today an endangered language, as its speakers have been shifting to the use of Greek and most younger members of the community no longer speak it fluently. The International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) is a system of phonetic notation devised by linguists to accurately and uniquely represent each of the wide variety of sounds (phones or phonemes) used in spoken human language. ... Attica (in Greek: Αττική, Attike; see also List of traditional Greek place names) is a periphery (subdivision) in Greece, containing Athens, the capital of Greece. ... Boeotia or Beotia (//, (Greek Βοιωτια; see also list of traditional Greek place names) was the central area of ancient Greece. ... Euboea or Negropont (Modern Greek: Εύβοια Evia, Ancient Greek Εúβοια Eúboia; see also List of traditional Greek place names), is the largest island of the Greek archipelago. ... Salamis may refer to Salamis Island in the Saronic Gulf of the Aegean Sea, near Athens, Greece, where the Battle of Salamis was fought in 480 B.C.. Salamis, Cyprus, an ancient city on the east coast of Cyprus. ... Thrace (Romanian Tracia or Thrachia, Greek Θράκη, ThrákÄ“, Bulgarian Тракия, Trakija, Turkish Trakya; Latin: Thracia or Threcia) is a historical and geographic area in southeast Europe. ... This article discusses Arcadia, a region of Greece. ... Athens (Greek: Αθήνα, Athína IPA: , formerly known as Turkish: Atina) is the capital of Greece and one of the most famous cities in the world, named after goddess Athena. ... Though Peloponnese is used to refer to the entire peninsula, the periphery with that name includes only part of that landmass. ... Andros, or Andro (Greek: )Άνδρος, an island of the Greek archipelago, the most northerly of the Cyclades, approximately 10 km (6 miles) south east of Euboea, and about 3 km (about 2 miles) north of Tinos. ... Current distribution of Human Language Families Most languages are known to belong to language families. ... The Indo-European languages comprise a family of several hundred languages and dialects (443 according to the SIL estimate), including most of the major languages of Europe, as well as many in Southwest Asia, Central Asia and Southern Asia. ... Tosk is the southern dialect of Albanian language, spoken by about 3 million people. ... Writing Systems of the World today A Specimen of typeset fonts and languages, by William Caslon, letter founder; from the 1728 Cyclopaedia. ... Due to technical limitations, some web browsers may not display some special characters in this article. ... The Arvanitic alphabet is an adapted version of the Greek alphabet and is used to write Arvanitic. ... The Latin alphabet, also called the Roman alphabet, is the most widely used alphabetic writing system in the world today. ... ISO 639-1 is the first part of the ISO 639 international-standard language-code family. ... ISO 639-2:1998 Codes for the representation of names of languages — Part 2: Alpha-3 code Twenty-two of the languages have two three-letter codes: a code for bibliographic use (ISO 639-2/B) a code for terminological use (ISO 639-2/T). ... ISO 639-3 is in process of development as an international standard for language codes. ... The International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) is a system of phonetic notation devised by linguists to accurately and uniquely represent each of the wide variety of sounds (phones or phonemes) used in spoken human language. ... Phonetics (from the Greek word φωνή, phone = sound/voice) is the study of sounds (voice). ... Due to technical limitations, some web browsers may not display some special characters in this article. ... This is a concise version of the International Phonetic Alphabet for English sounds. ... The English language is a West Germanic language that originates in England. ... The Arvanitic alphabet is an adapted version of the Greek alphabet and is used to write Arvanitic. ... Arvanites (Greek: Αρβανίτες, see below for more about names) are a population group in Greece whose linguistic heritage is Arvanitic, a form of Albanian. ...

Name

Main articles: Albania (toponym) and Arvanites#Names

The name "Arvanítika" and its native equivalent Arberishtë^[2] 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 (Babiniotis 1998). Its native equivalents (Arbërorë, Arbëreshë and others) formerly were the self-designation of Albanians in general. Both "Arbëna" and "Albania/Albanian" go further back to name forms attested since antiquity, and may be ultimately variants of the same root, although this is debated. The toponym Albania may indicate several different geographical regions: a country in the Balkans; an ancient land in the Caucasus; as well as Scotland, Albania being a Latinization of a Gaelic name for Scotland, Alba. ... Arvanites (Greek: Αρβανίτες, see below for more about names) are a population group in Greece whose linguistic heritage is Arvanitic, a form of Albanian. ...

Classification

The place of Arvanitic within Albanian

It is generally agreed that Arvanitic, historically, has grown out of the medieval continuum of emerging Albanian dialects, more specifically of the Tosk branch. They were brought to southern Greece during the late Middle Ages by settlers from what is today southern Albania and Epirus. Arvanitic is also closely related to Arbërisht, the diaspora dialects of Albanian in Italy, which also belong to the Tosk group. It is believed that some of the Albanophone settlers in Italy came from the Arvanitic groups in Greece, and therefore Italian Arbërisht has retained some Greek loanwords and other effects of language contact. Image File history File links Download high resolution version (917x521, 20 KB) Summary Status of en:Arvanitic language within Albanian dialect continuum Licensing File links The following pages on the English Wikipedia link to this file (pages on other projects are not listed): Arvanitic language User:LukasPietsch/Arvanitic ... Image File history File links Download high resolution version (917x521, 20 KB) Summary Status of en:Arvanitic language within Albanian dialect continuum Licensing File links The following pages on the English Wikipedia link to this file (pages on other projects are not listed): Arvanitic language User:LukasPietsch/Arvanitic ... Tosk may refer to several things: Tosk, a dialect of Albanian. ... Epirus (Greek Ήπειρος, Ípiros) is a geographical and historical region of the Balkan peninsula in south-eastern Europe. ... Arbëreshë are Albanians living in southern Italy. ...

There is some disagreement over the present-day status of Arvanitic as a dialect of Albanian or as a separate language. The view of Arvanitic as a separate language is today widely held in Greece, and it is propagated by Arvanitic associations.^[3] Many Arvanites are reported to find the designation of their language as Albanian offensive, as they feel it implies a denial of their ethnic Greek identity (GHM 1995). The claim to separate-language status is currently reflected in the existence of separate entries for Arvanitic in some international language classification standards. However, these standards still agree in describing it also as a part of "Albanian" as a larger unit.^[4]

Despite the popular perception of separateness,^[5] mainstream linguistic scholarship unanimously describes Arvanitic as a dialect of Albanian. This is true both for international^[6] and for Greek authors.^[7] Sociolinguistic work^[8] has described Arvanitic within the conceptual framework of "ausbausprachen" and "abstandssprachen".^[9] In terms of "abstand" (objective difference of the linguistic systems), linguists' assessment of the degree of mutual intelligibility between Arvanitic and Standard Tosk range from fairly high (Trudgill 2004: 5, Botsi 2003) to only partial (Ethnologue). The Ethnologue also mentions that mutual intelligibility may even be problematic between different subdialects within Arvanitic. Mutual intelligibility between Standard Tosk and Arvanitic is higher than that between the two main dialect groups within Albanian, Tosk and Gheg. See below for a sample text in the three language forms. Trudgill (2004: 5) sums up that "[l]inguistically, there is no doubt that [Arvanitic] is a variety of Albanian". A dialect (from the Greek word διάλεκτος, dialektos) is a variety of a language used by people from a particular geographic area. ... The Ausbausprache - Abstandsprache - Dachsprache framework is a tool developed by sociolinguists, e. ...

In terms of "ausbau" (sociolinguistic "upgrading" towards an autonomous standard language), the strongest indicator of autonomy is the existence of a separate writing system, the Greek-based Arvanitic alphabet. However, this script is very rarely used in practice, as Arvanitic is almost exclusively a spoken language confined to the private sphere although, it should be noted [7] that Tosk speakers also used a variant of the Greek alphabet extremely similar to the Arvanitic Greek script, and written documents have been written using this script from the 16th until the 18th centuries. There is some disagreement amongst Arvanites (as with the Aromanians) as to whether the Latin alphabet should be used to write their language (GHM 1995). Spoken Arvanitic is internally richly diversified into sub-dialects, and no further standardization towards a common (spoken or written) Standard Arvanitic has taken place. At the same time, Arvanites do not use Standard Albanian as their standard language either, as they are generally not literate in the Latin-based standard Albanian orthography, and are not reported to use spoken-language media in Standard Albanian. In this sense, then, Arvanitic is not functionally subordinated to Standard Albanian as a dachsprache ("roof language"), in the way dialects of a national language within the same country usually are. The Arvanitic alphabet is an adapted version of the Greek alphabet and is used to write Arvanitic. ... Tosk is the southern dialect of Albanian language, spoken by about 3 million people. ... Aromanians (also called: Arumanians or Macedo-Romanians; in Aromanian they call themselves Arumâni, Armâni, Ramani, Rumâni or Aromâni) are a people living throughout the southern Balkans, especially in northern Greece, Albania, the Republic of Macedonia and Bulgaria, and as an emigrant community in Romania (Dobrogea). ... The Latin alphabet, also called the Roman alphabet, is the most widely used alphabetic writing system in the world today. ... Dachsprache means a language form that serves as standard language for different dialects, mostly in a dialect continuum, even though these dialects may be so different that mutual intellegibility is not possible on the basilectal level between all dialects. ...

Geographic distribution

There are three main groups of Arvanitic settlements in Greece. Most Arvanites live in the south of Greece, across Attica, Boeotia, the Peloponnese and some neighbouring areas and islands. A second, smaller group live in the northwest of Greece, in a zone contiguous with the Albanian-speaking lands proper. A third, outlying group is found in the northeast of Greece, in a few villages in Thrace. Arvanites (Greek: Αρβανίτες, see below for more about names) are a population group in Greece whose linguistic heritage is Arvanitic, a form of Albanian. ... Attica (in Greek: Αττική, Attike; see also List of traditional Greek place names) is a periphery (subdivision) in Greece, containing Athens, the capital of Greece. ... Boeotia or Beotia (//, (Greek Βοιωτια; see also list of traditional Greek place names) was the central area of ancient Greece. ... Though Peloponnese is used to refer to the entire peninsula, the periphery with that name includes only part of that landmass. ...

According to some authors, the term "Arvanitic" in its proper sense applies only to the southern group (Botsi 2003: 21) or to the southern and the Thracian groups together (Gordon 2005), i.e. to those dialects that have been separated from the core of Albanian for several centuries. The dialects in the northwest are reported to be more similar to neighbouring Tosk dialects within Albania and to the speech of the former Muslim Cham Albanians (Çamërishte), who used to live in the same region (Euromosaic 1996). These dialects are classified by Ethnologue as part of core "Tosk Albanian", as opposed to "Arvanitic Albanian" in the narrow sense, although Ethnologue notes that the term "Arvanitic" is also often applied indiscriminately to both forms in Greece (Gordon 2005). In their own language, the groups in the north-west are reported to use the term "Shqip" ("Albanian") to refer to their own language as well as to that of Albanian nationals, and this has sometimes been interpreted as implying that they are ethnically Albanians (GHM 1995, quoting Banfi 1994). Cham Albanians (In Albanian: Çamë or Shqiptarë, in Greek: Τσάμηδες Tsámidhes or Αλβανοί Alvaní) are a group of ethnic Albanians traditionally from Çamëria (the Greek region of Epirus) and live in Albania, Greece and Turkey. ...

The Arvanitic of southern Greece is richly sub-divided into local dialects. Sasse (1991) distinguishes as many as eleven dialect groups within that area: West Attic, Southeast Attic, Northeast-Attic-Boeotian, West Boeotian, Central Boeotian, Northeast Peloponnesian, Northwest Peloponnesian, South Peloponnesian, West Peloponnesian, Euboean, and Andriote.

Estimated numbers of speakers of Arvanitic vary widely, between c.30,000 and 150,000. These figures include "terminal speakers" (Tsitsipis 1998) of the younger generation, who have only acquired an imperfect command of the language and are unlikely to pass it on to future generations. The number of villages with traditional Arvanitic populations is estimated to c.300. There are no monolingual Arvanitic-speakers, as all are today bilingual in Greek. Arvanitic is considered an endangered language due to the large-scale language shift towards Greek among the descendants of Arvanitic-speakers in recent decades.^[10] An endangered language is a language with so few surviving speakers that it is in danger of falling out of use. ...

Characteristics

Arvanitic shares many features with the Tosk dialect spoken in Southern Albania. However, it has received a great deal of influence from Greek, mostly related to the vocabulary and the phonological system. At the same time, it is reported to have preserved some conservative features that were lost in mainstream Albanian Tosk. For example, it has preserved certain syllable-initial consonant clusters which have been simplified in Standard Albanian (cf. Arvanitic gljuhë /'glju.hə/ ('language/tongue'), vs. Standard Albanian gjuhë /'ɟu.hə/). In recent times, linguists have observed signs of accelerated structural convergence towards Greek and structural simplification of the language, which have been interpreted as signs of language attrition, i.e. effects of impoverishment leading towards language death (Trudgill 1976/77; Thomason 2001, quoting Sasse 1992). In linguistics, language death (also language extinction, linguistic extinction) can be thought of as a process that affects speech communities where the level of linguistic competence that speakers possess of a given language idiom is decreased. ...

Language samples

Grammar

Source: Arvanitikos Syndesmos Ellados

Pronouns

Verb paradigms

Comparison with other forms of Albanian

Some common phrases

Source: 'Arvanitikos Syndesmos Ellados

Footnotes

ISO 639 is one of several international standards that lists short codes for language names. ... Ethnologue: Languages of the World is a web and print publication of SIL International (formerly known as the Summer Institute of Linguistics), a Christian linguistic service organization which studies lesser-known languages primarily to provide the speakers with native language biblical texts. ... ISO 639-3 is in process of development as an international standard for language codes. ...

References

• Babiniotis, Georgios (1985): Συνοπτική Ιστορία της ελληνικής γλώσσας με εισαγωγή στην ιστορικοσυγκριτική γλωσσολογία. ["A concise history of the Greek language, with an introduction to historical-comparative linguistics] Athens: Ellinika Grammata.
• Babiniotis, Georgios (1998), Λεξικό της Νέας Ελληνικής Γλώσσας ["Dictionary of Modern Greek"]. Athens: Kentro Lexikologias.
• Banfi, Emanuele (1994): "Minorités linguistiques en Grèce: Langues cachées, idéologie nationale, religion." ["Linguistic minorities in Greece: Hidden languages, national ideology, religion."] Paper presented at the Mercator Program Seminar at the Maison des Sciences de l’ Homme, on 6 June 1994, in Paris.
• Banfi, Emanuele (1996), "Minoranze linguistiche in Grecia: problemi storico- e sociolinguistici" ["Linguistic minorities in Greece: Historical and sociolinguistic problems"]. In: C. Vallini (ed.), Minoranze e lingue minoritarie: convegno internazionale. Naples: Universtario Orientale. 89-115.
• Botsi, Eleni (2003): Die sprachliche Selbst- und Fremdkonstruktion am Beispiel eines arvanitischen Dorfes Griechenlands: Eine soziolinguistische Studie. ("Linguistic construction of the self and the other in an Arvanitic village in Greece: A sociolinguistic study"). PhD dissertation, University of Konstanz, Germany. Online text
• Breu, Walter (1990): "Sprachliche Minderheiten in Italien und Griechenland." ["Linguistic minorities in Italy and Greece"]. In: B. Spillner (ed.), Interkulturelle Kommunikation. Frankfurt: Lang. 169-170.
• Euromosaic (1996): "L'arvanite / albanais en Grèce". Report published by the Institut de Sociolingüística Catalana. Online version
• Furikis, Petros (1934): "Η εν Αττική ελληνοαλβανική διάλεκτος". ["The Greek-Albanian dialect in Attica"] Αθήνα 45: 49-181.
• GHM (=Greek Helsinki Monitor) (1995): "Report: The Arvanites". Online report
• Gordon, Raymond G. (ed.) (2005): Ethnologue: Languages of the world. 15th edition. Dallas: SIL International. Online database
• Haebler, Claus (1965): Grammatik der albanischen Mundarten von Salamis. ["Grammar of the Albanian dialects of Salamis"]. Wiesbaden: Harassowitz.
• Hammarström, Harald (2005): Review of Ethnologue: Languages of the World, 15th Edition. LINGUIST List 16.2637 (5 Sept 2005). Online article
• Joseph, Brian D. "Comparative perspectives on the place of Arvanitika within Greece and the Greek environment", 1999, pp. 208-214 in L. Tsitsipis (ed.), Arvanitika ke Elinika: Zitimata Poliglosikon ke Polipolitismikon Kinotiton Vol. II. Livadia: Exandas, 1999 PDF.
• Η Καινή Διαθήκη στα Αρβανίτικα: Διάτα ε Ρε ['The New Testament in Arvanitic']. Athens: Ekdoseis Gerou. No date.
• Kloss, Heinz (1967): "Abstand-languages and Ausbau-languages". Anthropological linguistics 9.
• Salminen, Tapani (1993-1999): Unesco Red Book on Endangered Languages: Europe. [8].
• Sasse, Hans-Jürgen (1985): "Sprachkontakt und Sprachwandel: Die Gräzisierung der albanischen Mundarten Griechenlands" ["Language contact and language change: The Hellenization of the Albanian dialects of Greece"]. Papiere zur Linguistik 32(1). 37-95.
• Sasse, Hans-Jürgen (1991): Arvanitika: Die albanischen Sprachreste in Griechenland. ["Arvanitic: The Albanian language relics in Greece"]. Wiesbaden.
• Sasse, Hans-Jürgen (1992): "Theory of language death". In: M. Brenzinger (ed.), Language death: Factual and theoretical explorations with special reference to East Africa. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. 7-30.
• Sella-Mazi, Eleni (1997): "Διγλωσσία και ολιγώτερο ομιλούμενες γλώσσες στην Ελλάδα" ["Diglossia and lesser-spoken languages in Greece"]. In: K. Tsitselikis, D. Christopoulos (eds.), Το μειονοτικό φαινόμενο στην Ελλάδα ["The minority phenomenon in Greece"]. Athens: Ekdoseis Kritiki. 349-413.
• Strauss, Dietrich (1978): "Scots is not alone: Further comparative considerations". Actes du 2^e Colloque de Language et de Litterature Ecossaises, Strasbourg 1978. 80-97.
• Thomason, Sarah G. (2001): Language contact: An introduction. Washington: Georgetown University Press. Online chapter
• Trudgill, Peter (1976-77): "Creolization in reverse: reduction and simplification in the Albanian dialects of Greece", Transactions of the Philological Society, 32-50.
• Trudgill, Peter (2004): "Glocalisation [sic] and the Ausbau sociolinguistics of modern Europe". In: A. Duszak, U. Okulska (eds.), Speaking from the margin: Global English from a European perspective. Frankfurt: Peter Lang. Online article
• Trudgill, Peter, George A. Tzavaras (1977): "Why Albanian-Greeks are not Albanians: Language shift in Attika and Biotia." In: H. Giles (ed.), Language, ethnicity and intergroup relations. London: Academic Press. 171-184.
• Tsitsipis, Lukas (1981): Language change and language death in Albanian speech communities in Greece: A sociolinguistic study. PhD dissertation, University of Wisconsin, Madison.
• Tsitsipis, Lukas (1983): "Language shift among the Albanian speakers of Greece." Anthropological Linguisitcs 25(3): 288-308.
• Tsitsipis, Lukas (1995): "The coding of linguistic ideology in Arvanitika (Albanian): Language shift, congruent and contradictory discourse." Anthropological Linguistics 37: 541-577.
• Tsitsipis, Lukas (1998a): Αρβανίτικα και Ελληνικά: Ζητήματα πολυγλωσσικών και πολυπολιτισμικών κοινοτήτων. ["Arvanitic and Greek: Issues of multilingual and multicultural communities"]. Vol. 1. Livadeia.
• Tsitsipis, Lukas (1998b): A Linguistic Anthropology of Praxis and Language Shift: Arvanitika (Albanian) and Greek in Contact. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0198237316. (Review by Alexander Rusakov on Linguist List.)
• The bilingual New Testament: H καινη Διαθηκη του Κυριου και Σωτηρος ημων Iησου Χριστου, διγλωττος, τουτεστι γραικικη και αλβανιτικη. Dhjata e re e Zotit sonë që na shpëtoi, Iisu Hrishtoit mbë di gjuhë, do me thënë gërqishte e dhe shqipëtarçe. Epistasia Grêgoriou Archiepiskopou tês Euboias. Korfoi. En tê typografia tês Dioikêseôs. 1827

John 21:1 Jesus Appears to His Disciples--Alessandro Mantovani: the Vatican, Rome. ...

External links

• Ethnologue entry
• UNESCO's entry on Arvanitika Albanian
• Arvanitic dialogues - Arvanite League of Greece (in Arvanitika and in Greek)
• [9] Study of the pronoun in the arvanitic dialect of Hydra.