Italiot Greek

Italiot Greek
Native to	Italy
Region	Salento, Calabria
Ethnicity	Griko people
Language family	Indo-European Hellenic Greek Attic–Ionic (Disputed) Doric (Disputed) Italiot Greek
Writing system	Greek alphabet, Latin alphabet
Official status
Recognised minority language in	Italy
Language codes
ISO 639-3	–
Glottolog	apul1236  Apulia-Calabrian Greek
IETF	el-IT
Location map of the Italiot-speaking areas in Salento and Calabria

Italiot Greek, also known as Italic-Greek and Salentino-Calabrian Greek refers to two varieties of Modern Greek, spoken in Italy by the Griko people.

Italiot Greek refers to the Greek varieties spoken in some areas of southern Italy, a historical remnant of the ancient colonisation of Magna Graecia. There are two small Griko-speaking communities known as the Griko people who live in the Italian regions of Calabria, the southern tip of the Italian peninsula, and in Apulia, its south-easternmost corner. These varieties too are thought to have developed on the basis of an originally Doric ancient dialect, and have preserved some elements of it, though to a lesser extent than Tsakonian. They subsequently adopted influences from ancient Koiné, but became isolated from the rest of the Greek-speaking world after the decline of Byzantine rule in Italy during the Middle Ages. Among their linguistic peculiarities, besides influences from local Romance languages, is the preservation of the infinitive, which was lost in the modern Greek of the Balkans.

The dialects are:

• Griko, spoken in Salento
• Calabrian Greek, spoken in southern Calabria