Vintage Calabria, Italy. Giro d'Italia, 1954. Reggio Calabria - Catanzaro stage. The cheer of Calabrian women.
The name “Giro d'Italia” simply means "tour of Italy,” an apt name for the stage bicycle race Italy puts on each year in May. It’s one of three Grand Tours, together with the Tour de France and the Vuelta a España in Spain.
The first Giro was in 1909, put together by the sports newspaper La Gazzetta dello Sport as a publicity stunt.
With any stage race, there are daily winners and overall winners. Time for each stage is accumulated throughout the entire race, and the rider who completes the entire course in the least overall time is the winner.
How many words do you know to describe the land? Language reveals a lot about a people. In the village of Bova, in Southern Italy’s Calabria, the Museo della Lingua Greco-Calabra “Gerhard Rohlfs” takes a closer look at this connection between the calabresi and their land, specifically the community that speaks an ancient Calabrian Greek language in the Aspromonte Mountains, way down south in the toe of Italy.
BOVESIA: GRECO-CALABRO– CALABRIAN GREEK IN BOVA, CALABRIA
Bova, at the heart of the Bovesia, is the last bastion of Greek speakers in the Province of Reggio Calabria. (The other Southern Italian enclave of historically Greek-language communities is the Grecìa Salentina near Lecce in the Salento peninsula on the heel of the boot.) In Calabria, the dialect spoken by an ever-dwindling handful of people is called grecanicoorgreco-calabro. This Greek dialect is one of Italy’s official minority languages.
How long have they been speaking Greek in Calabria? Does this language stem from the time of Greater Greece, beginning in the 8th century BC or from the Byzantine Period from the 6th to 12th centuries AD? Scholars differ on this point. Although Calabrian Greek has followed its own developmental path, it is categorized as a modern Greek language with Calabrian and Italian influences. Interesting to note, however, that the grecanico in Calabria also contains numerous ancient-Greek words, which have long disappeared from the language spoken in Greece today.
The Museum of the Calabrian Greek Languag
The Museum of the Calabrian Greek Language in Bova explores different aspects of the language through photos, historic documents and artifacts, as well as audio-visual material. Gerhard Rohlfs (1892 – 1986) was a German linguist, whose area of study was Romance languages, in particular, those spoken in Southern Italy. Often referred to as an “archeologist of words,” he asserted that Italian-Greek descended directly from the days of Magna Graecia, contending that the ancient Romans had not been able to Latinize the entire Italian peninsula.
The museum is located in what is often referred to as Bova Superiore, the old town located on the top of a hill, complete with numerous churches and castle ruins. Along the streets of historic Bova and down a hillside trail, the farmer’s life is also remembered in the Sentiero della Civiltà Contadina – Path of Rural Culture, with large millstones, olive and bergamot oil presses, drinking troughs, and other objects relating to the agrarian existence of the bovesi (people from Bova) not so long ago.
Museums and even the attractions help keep memories of the old town and the old life alive. Many bovesi moved to the coastal town of Bova Marina and much further beyond.
Today, Bova, Calabria counts fewer than 500 residents. Although it has its fair share of abandoned houses, many have been renovated to the point that the historic center has been named one of the Borghi più belli d’Italia (Italy’s most beautiful villages) as well as one of only eighteen in Italy to be named a Gioiello d’Italia (Jewel of Italy).
Willgrecanicosurvive?
Very few young people speak their native tongue, and with the focus on English and other languages, Latin and even ancient Greece in the schools, the prospects are less than rosy. Several cultural groups and schools offer classes, but learning a modern language is difficult, no less an ancient one. To dedicate the proper amount of time and energy, there must be a very strong motivation.
View of a little square in the historic center of Roccella Ionica, with some locals gathered around the white war memorial; round-the-scenes a stately building on the right and a tavern, with three people sitting at table outdoors, on the left. Roccella Ionica, Calabria, Italy, May 1957.
(Photo by Mario De Biasi/Mondadori Portfolio/Mondadori via Getty Images)
