Italiot Greek, also known as Italic-Greek, Salentino-Calabrian Greek or Apulia-Calabrian Greek, is a pair of
varieties of Modern Greek
The linguistic varieties of Modern Greek can be classified along two principal dimensions. First, there is a long tradition of sociolectal variation between the natural, popular spoken language on the one hand and archaizing, learned written form ...
spoken in
Italy
Italy, officially the Italian Republic, is a country in Southern Europe, Southern and Western Europe, Western Europe. It consists of Italian Peninsula, a peninsula that extends into the Mediterranean Sea, with the Alps on its northern land b ...
by the
Griko people
The Griko people (), also known as Grecanici in Calabria, are an ethnic Greek community of Southern Italy. They are found principally in the regions of Calabria and Apulia (peninsula of Salento). The Griko are believed to be remnants of the once ...
.
The Italiot Greek varieties are spoken in areas of southern Italy, a historical remnant of
Magna Graecia
Magna Graecia refers to the Greek-speaking areas of southern Italy, encompassing the modern Regions of Italy, Italian regions of Calabria, Apulia, Basilicata, Campania, and Sicily. These regions were Greek colonisation, extensively settled by G ...
. There are two small Griko-speaking communities known as the Griko people who live in the Italian regions of Calabria, the southern tip of the Italian peninsula, and in Apulia, its southeasternmost corner. These varieties too are thought to have developed on the basis of an originally Doric ancient dialect, and have preserved some elements of it, though to a lesser extent than Tsakonian. They subsequently adopted influences from ancient Koiné, but became isolated from the rest of the Greek-speaking world after the decline of Byzantine rule in Italy during the Middle Ages. Among their linguistic peculiarities, besides influences from local Romance languages, is the preservation of the infinitive, which was lost in the modern Greek of the Balkans. Like Greek dialects in Asia Minor, the adjectival syntax of demonstratives is being lost in Italiot Greek.
The dialects are:
*
Griko
Griko (endonym: /), sometimes spelled Grico, is one of the two dialects of Italiot Greek (the other being Calabrian Greek or ), spoken by Griko people in Salento, province of Lecce, Italy. Some Greek linguists consider it to be a Modern Greek ...