Arbëreshë

Abstract

The essay aims to illustrate the fundamental questions that, in the dialectological and sociolinguistic framework, have engaged and engage the communicative space of those Italo-Albanian communities that, having arrived in different migratory waves between the 15th and 18th centuries, have created a new linguistic and cultural facies of some southern Italian regions. After having illustrated the current distribution of the Albanian-speaking communities, some dialectical phenomena have been examined from a diachronic and diatopic perspective, in support of the hypothesis that each Italo-Albanian community is the result of re-combinations of groups from different origins from their very first arrival on Italian soil. Moreover, aspects that demonstrate how arbëreshe varieties are characterized today by the outcomes of the centuries-old contact with the Romance varieties will be taken into consideration. These outcomes indeed have determined a greater convergence between the original varieties and between these and the Romance varieties particularly in the last decades through Italian leveling action. The next topic to be addressed is the intra-community dynamics which make the approach to the functional aspects of the different varieties (Albanian, Italian, Italo-Roman dialect) of the Italian-Albanian communities linguistic repertoire particularly complex. This issue is approached without neglecting some clarifications regarding the issue of "Vitality" (linguistic and sociolinguistic) of varieties (and communities) at "risk of extinction", also covering possible plans to "protect" and "revitalize" the minority varieties, particularly through its introduction into the school curriculum.