#grecanico

I wasn't very familiar with the dialects of the Griko community, the Greek minority of Italy, residing mostly in Calabria and Apulia. Once in a travel show I had seen a grandpa speaking in one of them but it was so fast and idiomatic that I could only catch one word or two and I consequently thought the Griko dialects had grown really distant from Greece's or Eastern Greek dialects.

Recently I watched this Griko song performance in Italy and it moved me deeply. First of all, it impressed me how it could seamlessly pass as a Modern Greek music style. Of course, Italy and Greece do share a lot of similar sounds, so it perhaps was to be expected. Even the la-la-le-o-la-la pattern, I have heard it in many familiar Greek urban songs (as in, not folk).

I just read that there are in fact two Italiot Greek dialects, Griko (spoken by ~ 45,000 people) and the smaller one, Grecanico (severely endangered and spoken only by ~ 2,000 people). The latter is believed to have incorporated more Italian influences. According to Wikipedia, there are many similarities with Standard Modern Greek, although linguists assert they evolved independently from either Ancient or Koine Greek. If you ask me, judging from the song, there is no way they evolved independently from Ancient Greek. Not only that but if the linguists did not only examine the Ancient and Koine theories, I would have thought they evolved independently from early Modern or super late Koine at most. This could be explained by an influx of Greeks to Italy as a consequence of the Crusader conquests or the Fall of the Eastern Roman (Byzantine) Empire to the Ottoman Turks because - fun fact - the type of Greek spoken during both those periods was Modern Greek. Very early Modern Greek at the times of the Fourth Crusade (1202 - 1204), yet modern nonetheless. So the Greeks that might have fled the Latin and the Ottoman blows to the East Roman Empire may have perhaps influenced the language of the ancient and medieval Greek communities of Italy. Then, this late koine - early modern Greek dialect also got influenced by Latin / Italian, especially in the pronunciation and some of the vocabulary. That’s my theory that’s just on me. Perhaps they indeed developed independently from Koine Greek because the Greek language is pretty conservative after all. But Ancient, as in prior to 200 BC, no fricking the frick way.

The song is in Grecanico of Apulia. The video of this performance had the lyrics in Grecanico (they use the Latin alphabet) and a translation in Standard Modern Greek. I was shocked by how much more I could understand in the slower way they were singing compared to the mumbling grandpa. It was deeply touching so I decided to share the video and I even decided to offer the Standard Modern Greek equivalent version in a Latin transliteration, in case any of you is interested in the study of the evolution between Standard Modern Demotic Greek and the Grecanico of Italy.

Lyrics in Grecanico and Standard Modern Greek (with Latin characters) below the cut:

Bova, Calabria, Italy: People, Language and Land

How many words do you know to describe the land? Language reveals a lot about a people. In the village of Bova, in Southern Italy's Calabria, the Museo della Lingua Greco-Calabra “Gerhard Rohlfs” takes a closer look at this connection between the calabresi and their land, specifically the community that speaks an ancient Calabrian Greek language in the Aspromonte Mountains, way down south in the toe of Italy.

BOVESIA: GRECO-CALABRO– CALABRIAN GREEK IN BOVA, CALABRIA

Bova, at the heart of the Bovesia, is the last bastion of Greek speakers in the Province of Reggio Calabria. (The other Southern Italian enclave of historically Greek-language communities is the Grecìa Salentina near Lecce in the Salento peninsula on the heel of the boot.) In Calabria, the dialect spoken by an ever-dwindling handful of people is called grecanico or greco-calabro. This Greek dialect is one of Italy’s official minority languages.

How long have they been speaking Greek in Calabria? Does this language stem from the time of Greater Greece, beginning in the 8th century BC or from the Byzantine Period from the 6th to 12th centuries AD? Scholars differ on this point. Although Calabrian Greek has followed its own developmental path, it is categorized as a modern Greek language with Calabrian and Italian influences. Interesting to note, however, that the grecanico in Calabria also contains numerous ancient-Greek words, which have long disappeared from the language spoken in Greece today.

The Museum of the Calabrian Greek Languag

The Museum of the Calabrian Greek Language in Bova explores different aspects of the language through photos, historic documents and artifacts, as well as audio-visual material. Gerhard Rohlfs (1892 – 1986) was a German linguist, whose area of study was Romance languages, in particular, those spoken in Southern Italy. Often referred to as an “archeologist of words,” he asserted that Italian-Greek descended directly from the days of Magna Graecia, contending that the ancient Romans had not been able to Latinize the entire Italian peninsula.

The museum is located in what is often referred to as Bova Superiore, the old town located on the top of a hill, complete with numerous churches and castle ruins. Along the streets of historic Bova and down a hillside trail, the farmer’s life is also remembered in the Sentiero della Civiltà Contadina – Path of Rural Culture, with large millstones, olive and bergamot oil presses, drinking troughs, and other objects relating to the agrarian existence of the bovesi (people from Bova) not so long ago.

Museums and even the attractions help keep memories of the old town and the old life alive. Many bovesi moved to the coastal town of Bova Marina and much further beyond.

Today, Bova, Calabria counts fewer than 500 residents. Although it has its fair share of abandoned houses, many have been renovated to the point that the historic center has been named one of the Borghi più belli d’Italia (Italy’s most beautiful villages) as well as one of only eighteen in Italy to be named a Gioiello d’Italia (Jewel of Italy).

Will grecanico survive?

Very few young people speak their native tongue, and with the focus on English and other languages, Latin and even ancient Greece in the schools, the prospects are less than rosy. Several cultural groups and schools offer classes, but learning a modern language is difficult, no less an ancient one. To dedicate the proper amount of time and energy, there must be a very strong motivation.

Written by Karen Haid