This is an old revision of this page, as edited by Chronographos (talk | contribs) at 00:01, 22 July 2005 (replaced POV terms "forced", "unwilling" with NPOV "have not been". Replaced POV "their language", "that language" with NPOV "it".). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.
Revision as of 00:01, 22 July 2005 by Chronographos (talk | contribs) (replaced POV terms "forced", "unwilling" with NPOV "have not been". Replaced POV "their language", "that language" with NPOV "it".)(diff) ← Previous revision | Latest revision (diff) | Newer revision → (diff)error: ISO 639 code is required (help) Arvanitic (or Arvanitika, Arvanitic: Αρbε̰ρίσ̈τε / Arbëríshte, Greek: Αρβανίτικα / Arvanítika, Albanian: Arbërisht) is a variety of the Albanian Tosk dialect. It is not mutually intelligible with Gheg Albanian although both do mainly share the same roots. Arvanitic has been spoken by the Arvanite people of Greece for more than five centuries.
The approximately 150,000 speakers inhabit more than 300 villages in Greece. There are no monolingual Arvanitic-speakers; all are bilingual in Greek, and the language has been influenced by Greek over the centuries. Arvanitic is considered an endangered language as the descendants of Arvanite speakers have not been learning it. Consequently it is only used by some septuagenarians and octogenarians, when trying to communicate with Albanian immigrants who have not learned Greek yet. Although it is traditionally a spoken rather than a written language, an Arvanitic alphabet adapted from the Greek alphabet has been developed for Arvanitic.