TheExtreme Southern Italian[1][2][3] dialects are a set of languages spoken mainly inSicily, southernSalento, southernCilento, and most ofCalabria with common phonetic and syntactic characteristics such as to constitute a single group. The name "Italian" refers to the fact that these languages are spoken inItaly, not that they are dialects of theItalian language (seeLanguages of Italy § Language or dialect).
Today, Extreme Southern Italian dialects are still spoken daily, although their use is limited to informal contexts and is mostly oral. There are examples of full literary uses with contests (mostly poetry) and theatrical performances.
The areas where Extreme Southern dialects are found today roughly trace that same territory where both Ancient Greek and Medieval Byzantine hegemonies happened to be the strongest.[4]
The main distinguishing characteristics, which all Extreme Southern dialects have in common, and which differentiate them from the rest of the Southern Italian lects, are:[6]
Sicilian vowel system, a characteristic not present in many dialects of central-northern Calabria;
presence of three well-perceptible word-final vowels in most dialects of this area: -a, -i, -u; however -e and -o can also be sometimes found in Cosentino, southern Cilentan and southern Salentino.
clear cacuminal or retroflex pronunciation of -DD- (ultimately deriving from -LL-).
maintenance of voiceless occlusive consonants after the nasals: the word for "eats" will therefore be pronouncedmancia and notmangia. However, this phenomenon is absent in Cosentino;
absence of apocopated infinitives spread from the UpperMezzogiorno to Tuscany (therefore one has cantare or cantari and not cantà). Also in this respect the Cosentino dialect is an exception;
use of the preterite with endings similar to the Italian remote past and the non-distinction between past perfect (pluperfect) and remote pluperfect; however, this phenomenon is absent in central-northern Calabria (north of the Lamezia Terme-Sersale-Crotone line).
Gerhard Rohlfs,Dizionario dialettale delle tre Calabrie. Milano-Halle, 1932-1939.
Gerhard Rohlfs,Vocabolario supplementare dei dialetti delle Tre Calabrie (che comprende il dialetto greco-calabro di Bova) con repertorio toponomastico. Verl. d. Bayer. Akad. d. Wiss., München, 2 volumi, 1966-1967
Gerhard Rohlfs,Vocabolario dei dialettisalentini (Terra d'Otranto). Verl. d. Bayer. Akad. d. Wiss., München, 2 volumi (1956-1957) e 1 suppl. (1961)
Gerhard Rohlfs,Supplemento ai vocabolari siciliani. Verlag der Bayer,München, Akad. d. Wiss., 1977
Gerhard Rohlfs,Historische Sprachschichten im modernen Sizilien. Verlag der Bayer, München, Akad. d. Wiss., 1975
Gerhard Rohlfs,Studi linguistici sullaLucania e sulCilento.Congedo Editore,Galatina, 1988 (translation by Elda Morlicchio, Atti e memorie N. 3, Università degli Studi della Basilicata).
Gerhard Rohlfs,Mundarten und Griechentum des Cilento, inZeitschrift für Romanische Philologie, 57, 1937, pp. 421– 461
