Vaccarizzo Albanian is a subdialect

Subdialect

Subdialect - is a subdivision of dialect. Subdialects can be divided further, ultimately down to idiolects.Normally subdialects of one dialect are quite close to each other, differing mainly in pronunciation and certain local words....

 of the Arbëresh dialect of the Albanian language

Albanian language

Albanian is an Indo-European language spoken by approximately 7.6 million people, primarily in Albania and Kosovo but also in other areas of the Balkans in which there is an Albanian population, including western Macedonia, southern Montenegro, southern Serbia and northwestern Greece...

. Spoken in the villages of Vaccarizzo Albanese

Vaccarizzo Albanese

Vaccarizzo Albanese is a village and comune in the province of Cosenza in the Calabria region of southern Italy.The town is bordered by Acri, San Cosmo Albanese and San Giorgio Albanese.- Language :...

 and San Giorgio Albanese

San Giorgio Albanese

San Giorgio Albanese is a town and comune in the province of Cosenza in the Calabria region of southern Italy.- Language :...

 in southern Italy

Italy

Italy , officially the Italian Republic languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Italy's official name is as follows:;;;;;;;;), is a unitary parliamentary republic in South-Central Europe. To the north it borders France, Switzerland, Austria and...

 by approximately 3,000 people Vaccarizzo Albanian has retained many archaic features of the Tosk dialect, on which the Standard Albanian is based.

Classification

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 Cosmo Albanese

San Cosmo Albanese is a village and comune in the province of Cosenza in the Calabria region of southern Italy.There is a majority ethnic Arbëresh in the village. The founders of the settlement were christian Albanians who migrated to Italy after Albania's resistance against the Ottoman empire...

, San Demetrio Corone

San Demetrio Corone

San Demetrio Corone is a town and comune in the province of Cosenza in the Calabria region of southern Italy. It is notable for the Collegio of Sant'Adriano, a boarding school which produced many patriots and theorists/revolutionaries in the Italian Independence wars-Geography:The village is...

, Santa Sofia d'Epiro

Santa Sofia d'Epiro

Santa Sofia d'Epiro is an Arberesh town and comune in the province of Cosenza in the Calabria region of southern Italy.The town is bordered by Acri, Bisignano, San Demetrio Corone and Tarsia.-People:*Ferruccio Baffa Trasci Bishop...

 it belongs to a group of dialects spoken in the region of Cosenza

Province of Cosenza

The Province of Cosenza is a province in the Calabria region of Italy. Its capital is the city of Cosenza.It has an area of 6,650 km², and a total population of 733,797 . It is the biggest Calabrian Province...

. Although it is a part of the Tosk dialects, Vaccarizo Albanian also contains a few Gheg elements.

Features

The communes of Vaccarizzo Albanese and San Giorgio Albanese were founded by Albanian refugees after the conquest of Albania

Albania

Albania , officially known as the Republic of Albania , is a country in Southeastern Europe, in the Balkans region. It is bordered by Montenegro to the northwest, Kosovo to the northeast, the Republic of Macedonia to the east and Greece to the south and southeast. It has a coast on the Adriatic Sea...

 by the Ottoman Empire

Ottoman Empire

The Ottoman EmpireIt was usually referred to as the "Ottoman Empire", the "Turkish Empire", the "Ottoman Caliphate" or more commonly "Turkey" by its contemporaries...

 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 through a process of partial or total fricativization resulting in the change of the intervocalic voiced velar plosive

Voiced velar plosive

The voiced velar plosive is a type of consonantal sound, used in some spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is , and the equivalent X-SAMPA symbol is g. Strictly, the IPA symbol is the so-called "opentail G" , though the "looptail G" is...

 ([ɡ]) to a voiced velar fricative

Voiced velar fricative

The voiced velar fricative is a type of consonantal sound, used in various spoken languages. It is not found in English today, but did exist in Old English...

 ([γ]), Vaccarizzo Albanian has retained the initial [ɡ].

Another feature of the Vaccarizzo dialect is the sonorization of the voiceless velar fricative

Voiceless velar fricative

The voiceless velar fricative is a type of consonantal sound used in some spoken languages. The sound was part of the consonant inventory of Old English and can still be found in some dialects of English, most notably in Scottish English....

 [x], which also occurs in the Arbëresh dialects of the region. As Albanian dialects of the Balkans it exhibits doubly articulated consonants; however, unlike in Balkan Tosk dialects, the final unstressed schwa

Schwa

In linguistics, specifically phonetics and phonology, schwa can mean the following:*An unstressed and toneless neutral vowel sound in some languages, often but not necessarily a mid-central vowel...

rarely appears in Vaccarizzo.