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.
I’ve been having a lot of headaches due to all the time I have been spending on the screen during the pandemic. This has made it hard to do digital art.
Instead have a traditional drawing of a male ornate (or peacock) wrasse, Thalassoma pavo.
This was my favorite fish to encounter while snorkeling in Lebanon. In Arabic it is known as the “bridefish,” but its reproductive strategy is more unusual than that name suggests. A single male lives in a group with a harem of females, but all of the wrasse are born female. When the lead male dies, the dominant female transforms into a male to lead the shoal. This makes them sequential hermaphrodites.
They are typically found over rocks that are covered in coralline algae and red, brown, and green seaweed, so their bright magenta, turquoise, and spring green colors don’t stand out as obviously as one might expect. They swim by flapping their pectoral fins, flitting about the rocks like butterflies. They sleep at night buried in the sand.
The female is similar in color to the male, but has brown patches and black spots in place of the male’s red-edged body scales.
Amantea serves not only as a tourist hub of Calabria, but with its population of about 14,000 it is also a focal point for commerce and culture. As everywhere in Calabria, its history is long, and the shores of Amantea have witnessed many a battle and skirmish. Interestingly, while most of the region managed to resist persistent Arab attacks over the course of 1,000 years, Amantea was conquered twice. The first emirate lasted for 40 years during the 9th century and the second endured over 50 years, bridging the 10th and 11th centuries.
Gazing out from Amantea’s centro storico, you don’t have any trouble imagining the desirability of this natural citadel for the many peoples who strove to conquer the area as well as for those defending what they had. The panorama is quite beautiful and it’s just a half hour’s walk down to the sea. From the streets and windows of the antique edifices, today’s view is of rooftops extending to the water with rugged hills flanking this modern growth.
In Amantea, summer can begin as early as April and last into November. Thus, the town’s long sandy beach is popular. In fact, Amantea boasts eight beautiful miles of shoreline along the Tyrrhenian Sea, a narrow coastal terrain, just a little over a mile wide before climbing the adjacent hillside.
Olive trees, vineyards, Mediterranean scrub, millennial traditions, sweet hills and impervious peaks, the sea that connected Greece and Italy more than 2.000 years ago, two languages (one of which is lost in history and still exists only here). Old Calabria, the undiscovered gem of Southern Italy.
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![[manel - al mar! playing in the background]mallorca, maig 2019kodak ektar 100, kodak gold 200, kodak](https://64.media.tumblr.com/ec78194361446adb88f75c2456fe1397/tumblr_ptz1ubdakz1vkp9yeo1_1280.jpg "[manel - al mar! playing in the background]mallorca, maig 2019kodak ektar 100, kodak gold 200, kodak")
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