Griko
Griko | ||
---|---|---|
Spoken in |
Italy , ( Calabria and Apulia ) | |
speaker | <20,000 | |
Linguistic classification |
|
|
particularities | Minority status in Italy | |
Language codes | ||
ISO 639 -1 |
el (modern Greek) |
|
ISO 639 -2 | ( B ) gre (Modern Greek) | ( T ) ell (Modern Greek) |
ISO 639-3 |
ell (modern Greek) |
Griko , often called Katoitaliótika in Greek ( Κατωιταλιώτικα : "Lower Italian"), is a language that has ancient Greek , Byzantine-Greek and Italian elements and is spoken in the Magna-Graecia region in southern Italian Apulia and occasionally in Sicily .
Today there are two small Griko speaking communities in Calabria and Apulia . The Apulian Griko-speaking area comprises nine small towns with a population of 40,000 people in the Grecia Salentina (see also Salento ): Calimera , Martano , Castrignano de 'Greci , Corigliano d'Otranto , Melpignano , Soleto , Sternatia , Zollino and Martignano . The Calabrian-speaking area, in which the Greek-Calabrian dialect is spoken, also includes nine places, but they have fewer inhabitants. Since the language is mainly spoken by older people and hardly passed on to children, the number of speakers is well below the population.
There are two theories about the origin and creation of Griko:
- The theory of Gerhard Rohlfs and Georgios N. Chatzidakis says that the roots of Griko go back to antiquity , when the Greeks in the 8th century BC. Founded colonies in southern Italy. Rohlfs justifies this, among other things, with the peculiar negation and affirmation particles denge and umme , which do not appear in any modern Greek dialect, but can be derived from ancient Greek.
- Morosi's theory (1870) says Griko originated from the language of Byzantine settlers who settled in the region around the 9th century.
The former theory is based on linguistic features of the Griko, e.g. B. Doric words and other ancient Greek elements that are still included.
Griko is a minority language recognized by the Italian Parliament .
See also
literature
- G. Horrocks: Greek: A history of the language and its speakers . London: Longman 1997 (Chapters 4.4.3 and 14.2.3).
- G. Morosi: Studi sui dialetti greci della Terra d'Otranto . Lecce, 1870.
- Gerhard Rohlfs : Lexicon graecanicum Italiae inferioris . 2., ext. u. completely reworked. Aufl. Tübingen: Niemeyer 1964 (1st ed. UdT: Etymological Dictionary of Lower Italian Graecity ).
- Gerhard Rohlfs: Greeks and Romans in Lower Italy . 1924.
- Vincenzo Rotolo : Neogreco, Grico e Grecanico. Il problema dell'insegnamento , in: I Fonì Dikìma. Anno II, September 2007, pp. 5-7, online (PDF).
- Norbert A. Przesang : Magna Graecia, The Greeks in Lower Italy and Sicily. Handbook for study travelers and students , Projekt-Verlag Cornelius, Halle 2009, ISBN 978-3-86634-832-5 .
Web links
- Official site of Grecìa Salentina (Italian and griko)
- Glossa Grika o Griko Derentinò (in Griko, Italian, Standard Greek and French)
Individual evidence
- ^ Endangered Languages in Europe Report
- ^ G. Rohlfs: Grammatica storica dei dialetti italogreci: Calabria, Salento. (Trad. Del manoscritto tedesco di Salvatore Sicuro) . Munich: Beck 1977.