| Vaccarizzo Albanian | |
|---|---|
| Native to | Italy |
| Region | Calabria (Vaccarizzo Albanese andSan Giorgio Albanese) |
Native speakers | (undated figure of c. 3,000[citation needed]) |
| Latin | |
| Language codes | |
| ISO 639-3 | – |
| Glottolog | cala1254 |
| Linguasphere | 55-AAA-ahd |
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Vaccarizzo Albanian, orCalabria Arbëresh,[1] is asubdialect of theArbëresh dialect of theAlbanian language. Spoken in the villages ofVaccarizzo Albanese andSan Giorgio Albanese in southernItaly by approximately 3,000 people, Vaccarizzo Albanian has retained many archaic features of theTosk dialect, on which theStandard Albanian is based.
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 theregion of Cosenza.[2] Although it is a part of the Tosk dialects, Vaccarizo Albanian also contains a fewGheg elements.[3]
The communes of Vaccarizzo Albanese and San Giorgio Albanese were founded by Albanian refugees after the conquest ofAlbania by theOttoman 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 intervocalicvoiced velar plosive ([ɡ]) to avoiced velar fricative ([ɣ]), Vaccarizzo Albanian has retained the initial[ɡ].[4]
Another feature of the Vaccarizzo dialect is thesonorization of thevoiceless velar fricative[x], which also occurs in the Arbëresh dialects of the region.[5] As Albanian dialects of the Balkans it exhibitsdoubly articulated consonants; however, unlike in Balkan Tosk dialects, the final unstressedschwa rarely appears in Vaccarizzo.
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