Dialect refers to two distinctly different types of linguistic relationships.
Calabria is a region in Southern Italy. It is a peninsula bordered by Basilicata to the north, the Ionian Sea to the east, the Strait of Messina to the southwest, which separates it from Sicily, and the Tyrrhenian Sea to the west. It has almost 2 million residents across a total area of 15,222 km2 (5,877 sq mi). Catanzaro is the region's capital.
Magna Graecia was the name given by the Romans to the Greek-speaking coastal areas of Southern Italy in the present-day Italian regions of Calabria, Apulia, Basilicata, Campania and Sicily; these regions were extensively populated by Greek settlers starting from the 8th century BC.
Modern Greek, generally referred to by speakers simply as Greek, refers collectively to the dialects of the Greek language spoken in the modern era, including the official standardized form of the language sometimes referred to as Standard Modern Greek. The end of the Medieval Greek period and the beginning of Modern Greek is often symbolically assigned to the fall of the Byzantine Empire in 1453, even though that date marks no clear linguistic boundary and many characteristic features of the modern language arose centuries earlier, beginning around the fourth century AD.
Sicilian is a Romance language that is spoken on the island of Sicily and its satellite islands. It belongs to the broader Extreme Southern Italian language group.
Griko, sometimes spelled Grico, is the dialect of Italiot Greek spoken by Griko people in Salento, and also called Grecanico, in Calabria. Some Greek linguists consider it to be a Modern Greek dialect and often call it Katoitaliótika or Grekanika (Γραικάνικα), whereas its own speakers call it Greko or Griko. Griko is spoken in Salento while Greko is spoken in Calabria. Griko and Standard Modern Greek are partially mutually intelligible.
The languages of Italy include Italian, which serves as the country's national language, in its standard and regional forms, as well as numerous local and regional languages, most of which, like Italian, belong to the broader Romance group. The majority of languages often labeled as regional are distributed in a continuum across the regions' administrative boundaries, with speakers from one locale within a single region being typically aware of the features distinguishing their own variety from one of the other places nearby.
The primary languages of Calabria are the Italian language as well as regional varieties of Extreme Southern Italian and Neapolitan languages, all collectively known as Calabrian. In addition, there are speakers of the Arbëresh variety of Albanian, as well as Calabrian Greek speakers and pockets of Occitan.
Italo-Western is, in some classifications, the largest branch of the Romance languages. It comprises two of the branches of Romance languages: Italo-Dalmatian and Western Romance. It excludes the Sardinian language and Eastern Romance.
Africo is a comune in the province of Reggio Calabria, in the Southern Italian region of Calabria located 74 kilometres (46 mi) from Reggio Calabria.
The Calabrian dialect of Greek is the variety of Italiot Greek used by the ethnic Griko people in Calabria, as opposed to the Italiot Greek dialect spoken in the Grecìa Salentina. Both are remnants of the Ancient and Byzantine Greek colonization of the region.
Arbëresh is the variety of Albanian spoken by the Arbëreshë people of Italy. It is derived from the Albanian Tosk spoken in Albania, in Epirus and is also spoken by the Arvanites, with endonym Arvanitika.
Bova is a comune (municipality) in the Province of Reggio Calabria in the Italian region Calabria, located about 120 kilometres (75 mi) southwest of Catanzaro and about 25 kilometres (16 mi) southeast of Reggio. It is one of the Greek-Bovesian speaking villages of Bovesia, one of the two Griko-speaking areas of southern Italy. It is a member of the I Borghi più belli d'Italia association.
Palizzi is a comune (municipality) in the Province of Reggio Calabria in the Italian region Calabria, located about 120 kilometres (75 mi) southwest of Catanzaro and about 30 kilometres (19 mi) southeast of Reggio Calabria. The southernmost point in mainland Italy lies in Palizzi.
Roghudi is a comune (municipality) in the Metropolitan City of Reggio Calabria in the Italian region Calabria, located about 130 kilometres (81 mi) southwest of Catanzaro and about 20 kilometres (12 mi) southeast of Reggio Calabria.
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 forms on the other. Second, there is regional variation between dialects. The competition between the popular and the learned registers culminated in the struggle between Dimotiki and Katharevousa during the 19th and 20th centuries. As for regional dialects, variation within the bulk of dialects of present-day Greece is not particularly strong, except for a number of outlying, highly divergent dialects spoken by isolated communities.
Salentino is a dialect of the Extreme Southern Italian spoken in the Salento peninsula, which is the southern part of the region of Apulia at the southern "heel" of the Italian peninsula.
Greek presence in Italy began with the migrations of traders and colonial foundations in the 8th century BC, continuing down to the present time. Nowadays, there is an ethnic minority known as the Griko people, who live in the Southern Italian regions of Calabria and Apulia, especially the peninsula of Salento, within the ancient Magna Graecia region, who speak a distinctive dialect of Greek called Griko. They are believed to be remnants of the ancient and medieval Greek communities, who have lived in the south of Italy for centuries. A Greek community has long existed in Venice as well, the current centre of the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of Italy and Malta, which in addition was a Byzantine province until the 10th century and held territory in Morea and Crete until the 17th century. Alongside this group, a smaller number of more recent migrants from Greece lives in Italy, forming an expatriate community in the country. Today many Greeks in Southern Italy follow Italian customs and culture, experiencing assimilation.
The Griko people, also known as Grecanici in Calabria, are an ethnic Greek community of Southern Italy. They are found principally in regions of Calabria and Apulia. The Griko are believed to be remnants of the once large Ancient and Medieval Greek communities of southern Italy, although there is dispute among scholars as to whether the Griko community is directly descended from Ancient Greeks or from more recent medieval migrations during the Byzantine domination.
The Extreme Southern Italian dialects are a set of languages spoken in Salento, Calabria, Sicily and southern Cilento with common phonetic and syntactic characteristics such as to constitute a single group. These languages derive, without exception, from vulgar Latin and not from Tuscan; therefore it follows that the name "Italian" is a purely geographical reference.
