The Greeks of Italy

" ... Italy, a land of distinctive culture, is also full of linguistic diversity. The language officially spoken today is a convention of the 19th century Accademia della Crusca, which emerged after the wars of unification (Risorgimento, circa 1848-1861). At that time, the intent was to forge an Italian people by forcing them to speak one standard language. This effort was only partially successful. Today within Italy's borders one can find pockets of minority languages like Sardinian, Albanian, and Friulan. Furthermore, while many Italians have a strong sense of Italian identity, they hold allegiances to their own towns and local dialects. An example is Griko, a near-extinct variant of Greek and other interspersed elements, spoken in a few villages in Salento (the Salentine plain), in Puglie, and in Calabria. These regions are located in Southern Italy, the ancient Magna Graecia, colonized by many Greek cities from 600 B.C.E. onward.

Speakers of Griko, who live and operate in Italy as fully assimilated Italians, call themselves Griki. This is not a paradox to them: although they are full-fledged Italian citizens, they are acutely aware of their Greek roots and they maintain multiple identities. They easily switch back and forth between Italian and the two local dialects, Romanzo, which is Italian based, and Griko. A key to their identity, and a factor that makes them unique, is their strong defense of Griko.

In the Magna Graecia of antiquity, Greek was the language of preference; it was, however, interchanged with Latin and other languages. There, in busy day-to-day interactions, migrants, merchants, and clerks were familiar with several tongues. The consensus of most linguists is that ancestors of present-day speakers were migrant workers who came to southern Italy from impoverished mainland Greece and surrounding islands to work the rich estates of Roman landowners. Over the centuries, these farmhands were ignored by policy-makers, soldiers, and other invaders who "conquered" Italy. Ironically, the low status of the Griki may, in the long run, have served to "save" their language and culture. ... "

~ From The Greeks of Italy by Lucia Clark ~