Presentation of the issue

Tito Squillaci, Hellenophonic Association "Jalò tu Vua"

Formally, the Greeks of Calabria are one of the 12 linguistic groups recognized by the Italian Republic as a minority subject to legislative protection. In practice, however, for Calabria they represent much more.

The Greek language, in fact, introduced in our region in the 8th century B.C., was spoken throughout the Magna Grecia era (over half a millennium), continued to be spoken after the Roman conquest and regained great vigor during the Byzantine era (which lasted another half millennium).

In the eleventh century, when the Normans entered Reggio, they found an intact Greek population with its own culture and expression of religious faith, using the Greek language. Following the Latinization initiated by the Normans, increasingly large areas of the region began to speak the Romance dialect, to the detriment of the Greek language, the use of which became eventually confined to increasingly limited areas, until arriving at the current situation, which finds the Greek language used only by a small populace composed of most elderly in Gallicianò, Roghudi, Bova and its Marina.

Other Hellenophones, mostly originating from these territories, live in Reggio, Condofuri and other towns on the Ionian coast.

From this historical reconstruction it appears evident, therefore, that the Greeks of Calabria are not an enclave of people who immigrated from Greece at a particular time, but rather they are an indigenous population.

They are Calabrians who still retain the use of the oldest language of our land, namely Greek. They, therefore, share all their cultural heritage with the rest of southern Calabria, differing only in the fact that they have continued to speak the language, originally common, that the other areas have slowly abandoned, century after century.

For this reason, Prof. Domenico Minuto, referring to our region, writes: "The Greeks of Calabria are a linguistic minority, but a cultural majority". Today, in our land, Greek is a language at high risk of extinction Because Greek continues to be handed down to new generations as a living language, numerous cultural associations have been campaigning for its salvation for over 50 years.

Among these, the association "Jalò tu Vua" is especially dedicated to the teaching of the language and thanks to a summer school carried out for 6 years (To ddomàdi greko), has succeeded in forming a group of young people who speak fluently and use our Greek on a daily basis.

It is a reversal of trend that opens a glimmer of hope for the future of greko (written with k to differentiate it from the Greek of Greece).

The experience of Cristina Battaglia

Greek Calabria is a lively reality thanks to the commitment of many young people who, even though they do not have roots in the Hellenic-speaking territory, collaborate with the native speakers and work concretely to preserve the language.

The most intense and authentic experience you can have is to participate in the "to ddomàdi greko", namely the Greek week, that much anticipated part of the summer vacation where you can immerse yourself in the contagious enthusiasm of the activists.

If many have come to know about it through the new and powerful media, I, on the other hand, have greeted the invitation of "ela, ela mu condà", sung by Francesca Prestia in my high school in Praia a Mare, at the opposite end of Calabria, following the professor and poet Salvino Nucera.

The emotion of hearing a traditional song in an unfamiliar language was immediately linked to the nostalgia of Aspromonte, where my roots are, unfortunately severed by the plight of emigration and never really taken root elsewhere. And I, therefore, could never have observed Greko through the lens of an aspiring classicist, without hiding the trepidation of one in search of her own identity.

I remember that one evening, returning from one of the excursions of the to ddomadi, on the van, in the curves that descend from Bova, with Etna and the sunset in the background, while we sang the verse "su donno tin glossa, su donno tin kardìa (I give you the language, I give you the heart)", I thought that finally I could answer without hesitation the question to which every Calabrese is subjected since birth: e tu a cu 'pparteni? (and you, to whom do you belong?)

Donata Luiselli, University of Bologna

A new study by the University of Bologna has analyzed the genomic markers of a large sample of populations from Sicily and Southern Italy, revealing a dense network of cultural exchanges starting from the first colonization of the continent. In particular, the Bovesìa populations (Fig. 1) analyzed in this study showed a marked genetic differentiation compared to the rest of the populations in southern Italy. Beyond language differences, the marked geographic isolation, smaller effective population size, and consequent high inbreeding may have favored the action of random genetic drift leading to amplification and/or random fixation (or loss) of specific parts of the original genetic background.

The absence in the gene pool of these populations of the genetic component of the "southern Balkans" (found instead in continental Greece and Albania) is a result consistent with the fact that their arrival in Calabria should at least be prior to those processes of more recent differentiation (i.e. late medieval) that characterize continental Greece and Albania.

The signal of a "Mediterranean genetic continuum" extending from Sicily to Cyprus, passing through Crete and up to the islands of the Aegean and Anatolia in which the genetic variability of the Greeks of Calabria is integrated, represents the result of ancient links, a Mediterranean heritage that probably dates back to very ancient times, as a result of a series of continuous migrations with peaks during the Neolithic and Bronze Age, linked to a "source" between the Caucasus and northern Iran.

The advancement of genomic sequencing techniques, along with the analysis of ancient artifacts from the same area, could help in the near future to better identify it both geographically and temporally.

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Note: In the figure are the municipalities of Bovesia analyzed in the genetic study