Vaccarizzo Albanian, or Calabria Arbëresh, is a

subdialect Subdialect (from Latin , "under", and Ancient Greek , ''diálektos'', "discourse") is a linguistic term designating a dialectological category between the levels of dialect and idiolect. Subdialects are basic subdivisions of a dialect. Subdialect ...

of the Arbëresh dialect of the

Albanian language Albanian (Endonym and exonym, endonym: , , or ) is an Indo-European languages, Indo-European language and the only surviving representative of the Albanoid, Albanoid branch, which belongs to the Paleo-Balkan languages, Paleo-Balkan group. It ...

. Spoken in the villages of Vaccarizzo Albanese and San Giorgio Albanese in southern

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 approximately 3,000 people, Vaccarizzo Albanian has retained many archaic features of the

Tosk Tosk ( sq-definite, toskërishtja) is the southern group of dialects of the Albanian language, spoken by the ethnographic group known as Tosks. The line of demarcation between Tosk and Gheg (the northern variety) is the Shkumbin River. Tosk is ...

dialect, on which the Standard Albanian is based.

Classification

Vaccarizzo Albanian is a dialect of Arbëresh, which is a dialect of Tosk, one of the two major dialects of the Albanian language. Within Arbëresh along with the subdialects of Macchia, San Cosmo Albanese, San Demetrio Corone, Santa Sofia d'Epiro it belongs to a group of dialects spoken in the region of Cosenza. Although it is a part of the Tosk dialects, Vaccarizo Albanian also contains a few Gheg elements.

Features

The communes of Vaccarizzo Albanese and San Giorgio Albanese were founded by Albanian refugees after the conquest of

Albania Albania ( ; or ), officially the Republic of Albania (), is a country in Southeast Europe. It is located in the Balkans, on the Adriatic Sea, Adriatic and Ionian Seas within the Mediterranean Sea, and shares land borders with Montenegro to ...

by the

Ottoman Empire The Ottoman Empire (), also called the Turkish Empire, was an empire, imperial realm that controlled much of Southeast Europe, West Asia, and North Africa from the 14th to early 20th centuries; it also controlled parts of southeastern Centr ...

and the subsequent mass migration of Albanians to Italy. As all Arbëresh dialects, Vaccarizzo Albanian exhibits many medieval elements of the Albanian language. However, unlike other Arbëresh dialects, which under southern Italian dialectal influence have undergone a process of partial or total fricativization resulting in the change of the intervocalic

voiced velar plosive The voiced velar plosive or stop is a type of consonantal sound used in many Speech communication, spoken languages. Some languages have the voiced pre-velar plosive, which is articulated slightly more front compared with the place of articulat ...

() to a

voiced velar fricative The voiced velar fricative is a type of consonantal sound that is used in various spoken languages. It is not found in most varieties of Modern English but existed in Old English. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents ...

(), Vaccarizzo Albanian has retained the initial . Another feature of the Vaccarizzo dialect is the sonorization of the

voiceless velar fricative The voiceless velar fricative is a type of consonantal sound used in some spoken languages. It was part of the consonant inventory of Old English and can still be found in some dialects of English, most notably in Scottish English, e.g. in ''lo ...

, which also occurs in the Arbëresh dialects of the region. As Albanian dialects of the Balkans it exhibits doubly articulated consonants; however, unlike in Balkan Tosk dialects, the final unstressed schwa rarely appears in Vaccarizzo.

Sources

{{Albanian language, state=expanded Albanian dialects San Giorgio Albanese