Vaccarizzo Albanian
Native toItaly
RegionCalabria (Vaccarizzo Albanese and San Giorgio Albanese)
Native speakers
(undated figure of c. 3,000)
Latin
Language codes
ISO 639-3–
Glottologcala1254
Linguasphere55-AAA-ahd

Vaccarizzo Albanian, or Calabria Arbëresh,[1] is a subdialect of the Arbëresh dialect of the Albanian language. Spoken in the villages of Vaccarizzo Albanese and San Giorgio Albanese in southern Italy by approximately 3,000 people, Vaccarizzo Albanian has retained many archaic features of the Tosk 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.[2] Although it is a part of the Tosk dialects, Vaccarizo Albanian also contains a few Gheg elements.[3]

Features

The communes of Vaccarizzo Albanese and San Giorgio Albanese were founded by Albanian refugees after the conquest of Albania by the Ottoman Empire 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 ([ɡ]) to a voiced velar fricative ([ɣ]), Vaccarizzo Albanian has retained the initial [ɡ].[4]

Another feature of the Vaccarizzo dialect is the sonorization of the voiceless velar fricative [x], which also occurs in the Arbëresh dialects of the region.[5] 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

  1. ↑ Lingua Sphere Register (PDF) (2 ed.). p. 448. Retrieved 10 November 2018.
  2. ↑ Pipa, Arshi (1978). Albanian folk verse: structure and genre. Trofenik. p. 97. ISBN 978-3-87828-119-1. Retrieved 28 March 2011.
  3. ↑ Çabej, Eqrem (1972). Studime Filologjike. Akademia e Shkencave e RPSSH. p. 29. Retrieved 28 March 2011.
  4. ↑ Sawicka, Irena (1991). Studies in the phonetic typology of the Slavic languages. Sławistyczny Ośrodek Wydawniczy. p. 57. ISBN 978-83-85262-08-4. Retrieved 28 March 2011.
  5. ↑ Slavia Meridonalis. Slawistyczny Ośrodek Wydawniczy. 1994. p. 68. ISBN 978-83-901394-8-7. Retrieved 30 March 2011.
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