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LANGUAGE AND CULTURE

How music is keeping one southern Italian dialect alive

Italy's Griko dialects are classed as endangered by the European Union and Unesco. But could folk music be the secret to keeping them alive? Greece-born Italian student Constantinos Orphanos investigates the languages' past and perilous future.

How music is keeping one southern Italian dialect alive
The PaleaRiza Festival in Calabria. Photo: piervincenzocanale/Flickr

The historic dialect of Southern Italy, spoken by the Griko people, is on the verge of extinction.

However, it's still alive – largely thanks to the music associated with it. 

Also known as Salentino-Calabrian Greek, Griko or Italiot Greek is an umbrella-term for two distinctive dialects: Griko, spoken in Salento, and Calabrian Greek, still present in Southern Calabria. Both dialects are usually referred to simply as 'Griko'.

Partially intelligible with Modern Greek, its exact origins are unclear even to academics with expertise in the area.

Historians and linguists have put forward several hypotheses, linking the dialects with Ancient Greece and Magna Grecia or with the Byzantine Empire, but none of these theories has been proven.

But wherever its Greek-ness came from, Griko has also been heavily influenced by the Italian Language, and speakers use both the Greek and Latin alphabets.

For instance, the Griko word for family ('famija') sounds nothing like the Modern Greek word 'oikogeneia/οικογένεια' but bears a resemblance to the Italian 'famiglia'.

The number of Griko speakers, largely confined to Salento's ethnic Greek community, has been continuously declining. Its use is limited to the Lecce Province in southern Apulia and a few small villages near Reggio di Calabria – in the toe and heel of Italy's boot – most of which have a Griko name as well as an Italian one.

What's more, most active speakers are aged over 50, with the younger generation relying on Italian. Barely any children are thought to speak or even understand Griko. In total, fewer than 20,000 people are thought to speak the dialects.

Both dialects were included in the list of endangered languages published by UNESCO and were classified as “severely endangered”, and recently, the European Union granted them 'endangered language' status.

In 1999, the Griko communities of Calabria and Salento were recognized by the Italian parliament as a Greek ethnic and linguistic minority that is protected by the Republic. 

Serious efforts have been made in recent years by several local associations (such as Enosi Griko and the Griko Milume Association to raise awareness and preserve its existence, for example sharing vocabulary lists and grammar lessons online and organizing Griko courses in collaboration with schools.

 

But with so few speakers and limited subsidies from the government, the future of the dialects seems inescapably bleak.

The main hope for its future can be found in its music.

Unlike Griko itself, Griko folk music continues to be remarkably popular in Greece, whereas in Italy it has received limited attention and, apart from Salento and parts of Calabria, most Italians are not even aware of its existence.

Roberto Licci founded the musical group Ghetonia, one of Salento's best-known folk music groups, in 1992. He told The Local: “Griko is still surviving and there is greater awareness, but people do not use it in their daily lives. The economic situation of local authorities in Salento is not that good, so there are not enough funds to support those activities.”

“Even in Bari or Northern Lecce , people are not necessarily familiar with Griko or Griko music” says Licci.

However, plenty of artists are enthusiastic about promoting Griko music and the culture it represents, and once you know where to look, it's not hard to find one of the festivals celebrating Griko folk traditions.

La Notte della Taranta is one of the most popular folk music festivals in the region, held each summer. Since 1998, it has featured a lineup of different local artists, including Ghetonia and other Griko bands.

Another well-known festival is PaleaRiza Festival, held in Bova Marina, Calabria. Found in 1997, the festival aims at uniting the the local Griko culture with the rest of the Mediterranean and promoting Griko music in general.
 

A Griko song, The word Kalinifta means good night in Griko

So Griko,a dialect that has fallen victim to the Italianization, owes its survival to its rich musical culture.

Could music rescue the dialect from extinction? It remains to be seen, but let’s hope that the 'goodnight' message of Kalinifta, which is one of the most beautiful songs ever written in Griko, is not an omen of the dialect’s future.

Born and raised in Greece, Constantinos Orphanos is currently living and studying French & Italian Law in Paris, France. He started learning Italian in primary school and has been a huge admirer of Italian culture and politics ever since. 
 

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LANGUAGE AND CULTURE

Le Havre rules: How to talk about French towns beginning with Le, La or Les

If you're into car racing, French politics or visits to seaside resorts you are likely at some point to need to talk about French towns with a 'Le' in the title. But how you talk about these places involves a slightly unexpected French grammar rule. Here's how it works.

An old WW2 photo taken in the French port town of Le Havre.
An old WW2 photo taken in the French port town of Le Havre. It can be difficult to know what prepositions to use for places like this - so we have explained it for you. (Photo by AFP)

If you’re listening to French chat about any of those topics, at some point you’re likely to hear the names of Mans, Havre and Touquet bandied about.

And this is because French towns that have a ‘Le’ ‘La’ or ‘Les’ in the title lose them when you begin constructing sentences. 

As a general rule, French town, commune and city names do not carry a gender. 

So if you wanted to describe Paris as beautiful, you could write: Paris est belle or Paris est beau. It doesn’t matter what adjectival agreement you use. 

For most towns and cities, you would use à to evoke movement to the place or explain that you are already there, and de to explain that you come from/are coming from that location:

Je vais à Marseille – I am going to Marseille

Je suis à Marseille – I am in Marseille 

Je viens de Marseille – I come from Marseille 

But a select few settlements in France do carry a ‘Le’, a ‘La’ or a ‘Les’ as part of their name. 

In this case the preposition disappears when you begin formulating most sentences, and you structure the sentence as you would any other phrase with a ‘le’, ‘la’ or ‘les’ in it.

Masculine

Le is the most common preposition for two names (probably something to do with the patriarchy) with Le Havre, La Mans, Le Touquet and the town of Le Tampon on the French overseas territory of La Réunion (more on that later)

A good example of this is Le Havre, a city in northern France where former Prime Minister, Edouard Philippe, who is tipped to one day run for the French presidency, serves as mayor. 

Edouard Philippe’s twitter profile describes him as the ‘Maire du Havre’, using a masculine preposition

Here we can see that his location is Le Havre, and his Twitter handle is Philippe_LH (for Le Havre) but when he comes to describe his job the Le disappears.

Because Le Havre is masculine, he describes himself as the Maire du Havre rather than the Maire de Havre (Anne Hidalgo, for example would describe herself as the Maire de Paris). 

For place names with ‘Le’ in front of them, you should use prepositions like this:

Ja vais au Touquet – I am going to Le Touquet

Je suis au Touquet – I am in Le Touquet 

Je viens du Touquet – I am from Le Touquet 

Je parle du Touquet – I am talking about Le Touquet

Le Traité du Touquet – the Le Touquet Treaty

Feminine

Some towns carry ‘La’ as part of their name. La Rochelle, the scenic town on the west coast of France known for its great seafood and rugby team, is one such example.

In French ‘à la‘ or ‘de la‘ is allowed, while ‘à le‘ becomes au and ‘de le’ becomes du. So for ‘feminine’ towns such as this, you should use the following prepositions:

Je vais à La Rochelle – I am going to La Rochelle

Je viens de La Rochelle – I am coming from La Rochelle 

Plural

And some places have ‘Les’ in front of their name, like Les Lilas, a commune in the suburbs of Paris. The name of this commune literally translates as ‘The Lilacs’ and was made famous by Serge Gainsbourg’s song Le Poinçonneur des Lilas, about a ticket puncher at the Metro station there. 

When talking about a place with ‘Les’ as part of the name, you must use a plural preposition like so:

Je suis le poinçonneur des Lilas – I am the ticket puncher of Lilas 

Je vais aux Lilas – I am going to Les Lilas

Il est né aux Lilas – He was born in Les Lilas  

Islands 

Islands follow more complicated rules. 

If you are talking about going to one island in particular, you would use à or en. This has nothing to do with gender and is entirely randomised. For example:

Je vais à La Réunion – I am going to La Réunion 

Je vais en Corse – I am going to Corsica 

Generally speaking, when talking about one of the en islands, you would use the following structure to suggest movement from the place: 

Je viens de Corse – I am coming from Corsica 

For the à Islands, you would say:

Je viens de La Réunion – I am coming from La Réunion 

When talking about territories composed of multiple islands, you should use aux.

Je vais aux Maldives – I am going to the Maldives. 

No preposition needed 

There are some phrases in French which don’t require any a preposition at all. This doesn’t change when dealing with ‘Le’ places, such as Le Mans – which is famous for its car-racing track and Motorcycle Grand Prix. Phrases that don’t need a preposition include: 

Je visite Le Mans – I am visiting Le Mans

J’aime Le Mans – I like Le Mans

But for a preposition phrase, the town becomes simply Mans, as in Je vais au Mans.

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