Arvanitika
Proper noun
Meaning
Arvanitika
An archaic form of the Albanian language spoken by a linguistic minority in Greece.
Synonyms: Arvanitic, Arvanitika Albanian
Examples
A few years later, at the time of the Greek revolution, Psalidas refutes, for obvious reasons, the term Arvanitia and comments: “Epirus is wrongly referred to as Arvanitia, since no one there knows how to speak Arvanitika (Albanian)”.
" Arvanitika is in a state of attrition due to language shift towards Greek and large-scale internal migration to the cities and subsequent intermingling of the population during the 20th century.
"Botsi’s chapter on Arvanitika also gives much useful information but contains some unfortunate errors.
From a strictly dialectological point of view, what we can call Arvanitika proper (Southern Arvanitika in Botsi’s terms) represents the southernmost extension of the Albanian dialect continuum with a consistent and gradual development of isoglosses.
It is clear that the words Arbëresh, Arvanitika, and even Albanian and Albania are all related to the older name of the language.
Today they refer to themselves not as Albanians but as Arvanites, and call the language they speak not Albanian but Arvanitika.