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Griko people

Griko people
Griko people in the Grecia Calabra area of Calabria, Southern Italy.
Total population
c. 80,000
Regions with significant populations
Southern Italy (especially Bovesia and Salento)
 Apulia54,278 (2005)[1]
 Calabria22,636 (2010)
 Sicily500 (2012)[2][3]
Languages
Greek (Griko and Calabrian dialects), Italian, Salentino, Calabrese
Religion
Latin Church
Related ethnic groups
other Greeks, Sicilians, Italians
a Total population count only includes Griko people from Bovesia and Grecia Salentina regions. The number of Griko people from outside these regions remains undetermined.
Griko people at a cultural event in Aspromonte, Calabria, Italy

The Griko people (Greek: Γκρίκο), also known as Grecanici in Calabria,[4][5][6][7][8][9] are an ethnic Greek community of Southern Italy.[10][11][12][13] They are found principally in the regions of Calabria and Apulia (peninsula of Salento).[14] The Griko are believed to be remnants of the once large Ancient[13] and Medieval Greek communities of Southern Italy (the ancient Magna Graecia region), although there is some dispute among scholars as to whether the Griko community is directly descended from Ancient Greeks, from more recent medieval migrations during the Byzantine period, or a combination of both.[15][16]

A long-standing debate over the origin of the Griko dialect has produced two main theories about the origins of Griko. According to the first theory, developed by Giuseppe Morosi in 1870,[17] Griko originated from the Hellenistic Koine when in the Byzantine era [...] waves of immigrants arrived from Greece to Salento. Some decades after Morosi, Gerhard Rohlfs, in the wake of Hatzidakis,[citation needed] claimed instead that Griko was a local variety evolved directly from the ancient Greek.[18]

Greek people have been living in Southern Italy for millennia, initially arriving in Southern Italy in numerous waves of migrations, from the ancient Greek colonisation of Southern Italy and Sicily in the 8th century BC through to the Byzantine Greek migrations of the 15th century caused by the Ottoman conquest. In the Middle Ages, Greek regional communities were reduced to isolated enclaves. Although most Greek inhabitants of Southern Italy were Italianized and absorbed by the local Romance-speaking population over the centuries,[19] the Griko community has been able to preserve their original Greek identity, heritage, language and distinct culture,[12][14] although exposure to mass media has progressively eroded their culture and language.[20] A recent study on the genetics of Calabrian Greeks from Aspromonte found them to be isolated and distinct from other populations of southern Italy. Furthermore, both the Griko and other southern Italian populations were found to have ancestry from the ancient Greek settlement of Magna Graecia.[21]

The Griko people traditionally speak Italiot Greek (the Griko or Grecanico dialects), which is a form of the Greek language. In recent years, the number of Griko who speak the Griko language has been greatly reduced; most of the younger Griko have shifted to Italian.[22] Today, the Griko are Catholics.

  1. ^ "Unione dei comuni della Grecia Salentina - Grecia Salentina official site (in Italian)". www.comune.melpignano.le.it/melpignano-nella-grecia-salentina. Archived from the original on 2014-08-19. Retrieved 2011-01-17. La popolazione complessiva dell'Unione è di 54278 residenti così distribuiti (Dati Istat al 31° dicembre 2005. Comune Popolazione Calimera 7351 Carpignano Salentino 3868 Castrignano dei Greci 4164 Corigliano d'Otranto 5762 Cutrofiano 9250 Martano 9588 Martignano 1784 Melpignano 2234 Soleto 5551 Sternatia 2583 Zollino 2143 Totale 54278
  2. ^ Cfr. delibera della giunta comunale di Messina n. 339 del 27/04/2012 avente come oggetto: «Progetto "Mazì" finalizzato al mantenimento identità linguistica della comunità minoritaria greco-sicula sul terr. com. L.N. 482 del 15.12.99 a tutela delle minoranze linguistiche. Approv. progetto, della scheda identificativa, dell'autocerti. e delle schede relative al quadro economico».
  3. ^ "Delimitazione ambito territoriale della minoranza linguistica greca di Messina" (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on 3 September 2013. Retrieved 2 March 2012.
  4. ^ Brisbane, Albert; Mellen, Abigail; Stallsmith, Allaire Brisbane (2005). The European travel diaries of Albert Brisbane, 1830-1832: discovering Fourierism for America. Edwin Mellen Press. p. 111. ISBN 9780773460706. In Calabria there still exist people called Grecanici, who speak a dialect of Greek and practice the Orthodox Christian faith
  5. ^ F. Violi, Lessico Grecanico-Italiano-Grecanico, Apodiafàzzi, Reggio Calabria, 1997.
  6. ^ Paolo Martino, L'isola grecanica dell'Aspromonte. Aspetti sociolinguistici, 1980. Risultati di un'inchiesta del 1977
  7. ^ Filippo Violi, Storia degli studi e della letteratura popolare grecanica, C.S.E. Bova (RC), 1992
  8. ^ Filippo Condemi, Grammatica Grecanica, Coop. Contezza, Reggio Calabria, 1987;
  9. ^ In Salento e Calabria le voci della minoranza linguistica greca | Treccani, il portale del sapere
  10. ^ Bornträger, Ekkehard W. (1999). Borders, ethnicity, and national self-determination. Braumüller. p. 16. ISBN 9783700312413. …the process of socio-cultural alienation is still much further advanced those ethnic groups that are not (or only "symbolically") protected. This also applies to the southern Italian Grecanici (ethnic Greeks), who at least cannot complain of any lack of linguistic publicity.
  11. ^ PARDO-DE-SANTAYANA, MANUEL; Pieroni, Andrea; Puri, Rajindra K. (2010). Ethnobotany in the new Europe: people, health, and wild plant resources. Berghahn Books. pp. 173–174. ISBN 9781845454562. The ethnic Greek minorities living in southern Italy today exemplify the establishment of independent and permanent colonial settlements of Greeks in history.
  12. ^ a b Bekerman Zvi; Kopelowitz, Ezra (2008). Cultural education -- cultural sustainability: minority, diaspora, indigenous, and ethno-religious groups in multicultural societies. Routledge. p. 390. ISBN 9780805857245. Griko Milume - This reaction was even more pronounced in the southern Italian communities of Greek origins. There are two distinct clusters, in Apulia and Calabria, which have managed to preserve their language, Griko or Grecanico, all through the historical events that have shaped Italy. While being Italian citizens, they are actually aware of their Greek roots and again the defense of their language is the key to their identity.
  13. ^ a b Danver, Steven L. (2015). Native Peoples of the World: An Encyclopedia of Groups, Cultures and Contemporary Issues. Routledge. p. 316. ISBN 9781317464006. Some 46,000 ethnic Greeks in Italy are descendants of the Greek settlers that colonized Sicily and southern Italy up to the Gulf of Naples in antiquity. At that time, most of the Greek population lived in what is now Italian territory, in areas of settlement that were referred to as Magna Graecia or "Greater Greece." Of the modern Greeks living in that region, only about one-third still speak Greek, while the rest have adopted Italian as their first language.
  14. ^ a b Hardy, Paula; Hole, Abigail; Pozzan, Olivia (2008). Puglia & Basilicata. Lonely Planet. pp. 153–154. ISBN 9781741790894. THE GREEK SALENTINE – The Greek Salentine is a historical oddity, left over from a time when the Byzantine Empire controlled southern Italy and Greek culture was the order of the day. It is a cluster of nine towns – Calimera, Castrignano dei Greci, Corigliano d'Otranto, Martano, Martignano, Melpignano, Soleto, Sternatia and Zollino – in the heart of Terra d'Otranto. Why this pocket of Apulia has retained its Greek heritage is not altogether clear.
  15. ^ Genetic history of Calabrian Greeks reveals ancient events and long term isolation in the Aspromonte area of Southern Italy
  16. ^ Commission of the European Communities, Istituto della Enciclopedia italiana (1986). Linguistic minorities in countries belonging to the European community: summary report. Commission of the European Communities. p. 87. ISBN 9789282558508. In Italy, Greek (known locally as Griko) is spoken today in two small linguistic islands of southern Italy…The dialects of these two linguistic islands correspond for the most part, as regards morphology, phonetics, syntax and lexis to the neoclassical dialects of Greece, but they also present some interesting archaic characteristics. This has led to much discussion on the origins of the Greek-speaking community in southern Italy: according to some scholars (G. Morosi and C. Battisti), Greek in this area is not a direct continuation of the ancient Greek community but is due to Byzantine domination (535-1071); whereas for other scholars (Rohlfs, etc.), the Greek community of southern Italy is directly linked to the community of Magna Grecia.
  17. ^ Morosi, Giuseppe (1870). Sui dialetti greci della terra d'Otranto. Lecce: Editrice Salentina.
  18. ^ Douri De Santis (2015). "Griko and Modern Greek in Grecìa Salentina: an overview". Idomeneo. 19: 187–198.
  19. ^ Jaeger, Werner Wilhelm (1960). Scripta minora, Volume 2. Edizioni di storia e letteratura. p. 361. OCLC 311270347. It began to dwindle in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries when the South became more and more Italianized and the Greek civilization of Calabria no longer found moral and political support in Constantinople and the Byzantine Empire.
  20. ^ Calcagno, Anne; Morris, Jan (2001). Travelers' Tales Italy: True Stories. Travelers' Tales. p. 319. ISBN 9781885211729. Mass media has steadily eroded the Grecanico language and culture, which the Italian government — despite Article 6 of the Italian Constitution that mandates the preservation of ethnic minorities — does little to protect.
  21. ^ Genetic history of Calabrian Greeks reveals ancient events and long term isolation in the Aspromonte area of Southern Italy "Comparisons with modern and ancient populations highlighted ancient, long-lasting genetic links with Eastern Mediterranean and Caucasian/Near-Eastern groups as ancestral sources of Southern Italians. Our results suggest that the Aspromonte communities might be interpreted as genetically drifted remnants that departed from such ancient genetic background as a consequence of long-term isolation. Specific patterns of population structuring and higher levels of genetic drift were indeed observed in these populations, reflecting geographic isolation amplified by cultural differences in the groups that still conserve the Greco language."
  22. ^ Moseley, Christopher (2007). Encyclopedia of the world's endangered languages. Routledge. p. 248. ISBN 9780700711970. Griko (also called Italiot Greek) Italy: spoken in the Salento peninsula in Lecce Province in southern Apulia and in a few villages near Reggio di Calabria in southern Calabria. Griko is an outlying dialect of Greek largely deriving from Byzantine times. The Salentine dialect is still used relatively widely, and there may be a few child speakers, but a shift to South Italian has proceeded rapidly, and active speakers tend to be over fifty years old. The Calabrian dialect is only used more actively in the village of Gaddhiciano, but even there youngest speakers are over thirty years old. The number of speakers lies in the range of 20,000. South Italian influence has been strong for a long time. Severely Endangered.

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