Cham Albanian dialect

The Cham Albanian dialect (), also called Cham Tosk or Arvanitika, is the dialect of the Albanian language spoken by the Cham Albanians, an Albanian ethnic sub-group native to the region of Chameria in southern Albania and northwestern Greece.

Historical background

Albanians in the region of Epirus are attested in historical sources since the beginning of the 13th century. A Venetian document (1210) mentions that "the continent facing the island of Corfu is inhabited by Albanians" and a letter from John Apokaukos, Metropolitan of Naupaktos, to a George Dysipati (ancestor of the Shpata family). Albanian tribes moved to the south in large numbers in the early 14th century and established territories like the Despotate of Arta.

During much of the Ottoman period, most of the writing in Chameria was done in Greek or in Turkish, and Cham Albanian was a spoken dialect only, while Albanians found it difficult to find education in their native language. Christian Albanians could attend Greek schools, and Muslim Albanians Turkish schools, but Albanian language schools were highly discouraged. Nationalist sentiments during the late Ottoman era was weak in the region with Muslim Albanian Chams referring to themselves as ''Myslyman''(Muslims) or ''Turks'' while local Orthodox Albanian speaking Christians referred to themselves as ''Kaur'' (i.e ''infidels'') and did not find the term offensive. During the Albanian National Awakening a number of local Albanians would establish private, unrecognized Albanian-language schools. In 1870, the despot of Paramythia, Grygorios, translated the New Testament into Albanian, as his followers could not understand well the Greek language. While, in 1879, the first Albanian school of the region was created in Sagiada by father Stathi Melani. At that time, the region was under the short-lived rule of the League of Prizren.Anamali, Skënder and Prifti, Kristaq. Historia e popullit shqiptar në katër vëllime. Botimet Toena, 2002, .

The Expulsion of Cham Albanians in the aftermath of World War II was a traumatic event that put pressure on the Cham dialect, and ultimately in both Greece and Albania, Chams were pressured to give up their dialect in favor of Standard Greek and Standard Albanian respectively.

Features

Cham Albanian is part of Tosk Albanian and is the second-southernmost variety of Albanian language, the other being Arvanitika, which is also part of Tosk Albanian. As such, Arvanitika and Cham dialect retain a number of common features.L'étude Euromosaic. "L'arvanite/albanais en Grèce", 2006.
/ref> It also thus closely related to Arbëresh and Lab.

The dialect has been affected by language contact from the nearby Greek dialects much more compared to any other adjacent Albanian dialect.

Linguistic conservatism

Linguists say the Cham dialect has a conservative character, which is due to the close proximity and its continuous contacts with the Greek language. They argue that this conservative character, which is reflected in a number of peculiar features of the dialect, is endangered, as are the Albanian toponyms of the region, which are no longer in use, and which have provided valuable material for research into the historical evolution of Albanian.

Phonology

Like Arvanitika in southern Greece and Arbëresh in Italy, Cham Albanian retains some conservative features of Albanian, such as the old consonant clusters /kl/, /gl/, which in standard Albanian are q and gj, and retention of /l/ instead of /j/.Shkurtaj, Gjovalin. ''The Dialectological and Ethno-linguistic Values of the Language of Chameria'', , pp. 242-245.

Like Lab, Arbëresh language, and also the Gheg dialects of Debar and Ulqin, Cham unrounds Albanian /y/ to /i/. It also fronts the Albanian schwa ''ë'', and merges it with ''e'' -- this is the opposite of certain Lab dialects, which tend to back the schwa into /ʌ/ (as in English "nut").

Morphology and Syntax

The declensions of verbs and nouns may vary in Cham Albanian:
* the present perfect may be done differently for reflexive verbs, and it resembles the imperfect: ''u kam bërë'' instead of ''jam bërë''.
* due to the preservation of intervocalic ''l'', the ''-je'' morpheme of some verbal nouns is instead ''-ele'', so ''marrje'' may be pronounced (archaically) as ''marrele''
* the ''-eshe'' ending is also replaced with ''-ele''

Written sources

The first Albanian-language book written in the region of Chameria was the Greek-Albanian dictionary by Markos Botsaris, a Souliote captain and prominent figure of the Greek War of Independence. This dictionary was the biggest Cham Albanian dictionary of its time, with 1,484 lexemes. According to albanologist Robert Elsie, it is not of any particular literary significance, but is important for our knowledge of the now extinct Suliot-Albanian dialect, a sub-branch of the Cham dialect. The dictionary is preserved at the ''Bibliothèque Nationale'' in Paris.

During the 19th century, Chams started creating bejtes, which were a new kind of poems, mainly in Southern Albania. The most well-known '' bejtexhi'' was Muhamet Kyçyku (Çami), born in Konispol. He is the only poet in Albania that has written in the Cham dialect and was apparently also the first Albanian author to have written longer poetry. The work for which he is best remembered is a romantic tale in verse form known as ''Erveheja'' (''Ervehe''), originally entitled ''Ravda'' ("Garden"), written about 1820. Kyçyku is the first poet of the Albanian National Renaissance.

Sociolinguistics and survival

Where Chams are concentrated in Modern Albania, the dialect may still be strong especially in the elder generations, although it is increasingly influenced by Standard Albanian. Konispol and Markat are two traditionally Cham speaking municipalities that lie within the borders of Albania, and thus did not experience the expulsion.

In Greece, meanwhile, Cham Albanian may be upheld by the Orthodox Cham Albanian communities that were not expelled. According to a study by the Euromosaic project of the European Union, Albanian speaking communities live along the border with Albania in Thesprotia prefecture, the northern part of the Preveza prefecture in the region called Thesprotiko, and a few villages in Ioannina regional unit. The Arvanite dialect is still spoken by a minority of inhabitants in Igoumenitsa.Vickers, Miranda and Petiffer, James. ''The Albanian Question''. I.B. Tauris, 2007, , p. 238. In northern Preveza prefecture, those communities also include the region of Fanari, in villages such as Ammoudia and Agia. In 1978, some of the older inhabitants in these communities were Albanian monolinguals. "There are still many Greek Orthodox villagers in Threspotia who speak Albanian among themselves. They are scattered north from Paramithia to the Kalamas River and beyond, and westward to the Margariti Plain. Some of the older people can only speak Albanian, nor is the language dying out. As more and more couples in early married life travel away to Athens or Germany for work, their children remain at home and are brought up by their Albania-speaking grandparents. It is still sometimes possible to distinguish between Greek- and Albanian-speaking peasant women. Nearly all of them wear traditional black clothes with a black scarf round their neck heads. Greek-speaking women tie their scarves at the back of their necks, while those who speak primarily Albanian wear their scarves in a distinctive style fastened at the side of the head." The language is spoken by young people too, because when the local working-age population migrate seeking a job in Athens, or abroad, the children are left with their grandparents, thus creating a continuity of speakers.

Today, these Orthodox Albanian speaking communities refer to themselves as Arvanites in the Greek language and their language as ''Arvanitika'' but they call it ''Shqip'' while speaking Albanian. In contrast with the Arvanites, some have retained a distinct linguistic and ethnic identity. In the presence of foreigners there is a stronger reluctance amongst Orthodox Albanian speakers to speak Albanian, compared to the Arvanites in other parts of Greece. A reluctance has been also noticed for those who still see themselves as ''Chams'' to declare themselves as such. Researchers like Tom Winnifirth on short stays in the area have hence found it difficult to find Albanian speakers in urban areas and concluded in later years that Albanian had "virtually disappeared" in the region.Winnifrith, Tom (2002). ''Badlands, Borderlands: A History of Northern Epirus/Southern Albania''. Duckworth. pp. 25-26, 53. "Some Orthodox speakers remained, but the language was not encouraged or even allowed, and by the end of the twentieth century it had virtually disappeared..... And so with spurious confidence Greek historians insist that the inscriptions prove that the Epirots of 360, given Greek names by their fathers and grandfathers at the turn of the century, prove the continuity of Greek speech in Southern Albania since their grandfathers whose names they might bear would have been living in the time of Thucydides. Try telling the same story to some present-day inhabitants of places like Margariti and Filiates in Southern Epirus. They have impeccable names, they speak only Greek, but their grandparents undoubtedly spoke Albanian." According to ''Ethnologue'', the Albanian speaking population of Greek Epirus and Greek Western Macedonia number 10,000 as of 2002. According to Miranda Vickers in 1999, Orthodox Chams today are approximately 40,000.Miranda Vickers, The Albanians: A Modern History, I.B.Tauris, 1999,

See also

* Cham Albanians
* Souliotes
* Tosk Albanian
* Arvanitika

Notes

References

Sources

*

{{DEFAULTSORT:Cham Albanian Dialect
Albanian dialects