Griko people are Jews

[tchaiku]

The Medieval Salento: Art and Identity in Southern Italy




Linda Safran is Associate Professor of Art History in the department of Greek and Latin at The Catholic University of America. She is the author of San Pietro at Otranto: Byzantine Art in South Italy (1992).

https://muse.jhu.edu/book/29014

https://books.google.com/books?id=xYwBAwAAQBAJ&pg=PA56&dq=griko+jews&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwi-5tiEouPSAhVIjiwKHceDDA4Q6AEIGjAA#v=onepage&q&f=false

[Liberator of Makedonija]

This works with some of the information I put forward a while ago about "Hellene" being a pagan term and how the name "Greek" was not used widely prior to the 19th century. Interesting to point out that the ancient tribe of "Greeks" (not to be confused with the ancient Hellenes or modern Greeks) inhabitated Southern Italy, I believe in what is now modern Calabria

[Amphipolis]

Griko people are Jews

You... understood the text you submitted very well.

Interesting to point out that the ancient tribe of "Greeks" (not to be confused with the ancient Hellenes or modern Greeks) inhabitated Southern Italy, I believe in what is now modern Calabria

I'm a little confused. What?

[tchaiku]

You... understood the text you submitted very well.

I should've named the tittle different but the text information is very interesting and puts things in perspective.

[tchaiku]

Griko is illuminated by considering its use among Jews. After being expelled from Spain in 1492 and from the Salento by the Spanish rulers in 1541, the affected Jews went mostly to Thessalonike, part of the Ottoman Empire, or to Corfu, under Venetian rule. In both places they found Romaniote (formerly Byzantine) Jews, Italian Jews from Rome, Ashkenazim, and Sephardim practicing their distinctive liturgical rites. Visitors to early modern Corfu record that there were communities of Jews of diverse origin that included both gregi—Jews from the Salento who spoke griko — and others from Apulia who used pugghisu, "Puglian: the Salentine Romance vernacular.107 These communities had names derived from their lan-guages: gehillah apulyanit (the Apulian community, using Romance) and yehillah griga, or grip, using Salentine Greek."' The linguistic term was thus a cultural signifier for both Jews and Christians. The ancient Greeks labeled those who did not speak their language barbaroi, "barbarians;' and this term is also used to describe the Libyan heathens in the Byzantine dedication of the rebuilt walls of Taranto [139]." Today, ppoppiti, with the same kind of staccato syllables as barbaroi, is used to describe the inhabitants of the southern Salento by those who live along and beyond its northern limit and speak an Apulian rather than a Salentine dialect 10 Ppoppiti has also come to con-note boorish, unlettered peasants, just as speaking a non-Greek tongue once implied other kinds of cultural and behavioral barbarisms. As usual, when the term is adopted by those who have been identified pejoratively—when it becomes an cmic rather than an etic label—it loses much of its negative force.,,, This chapter has demonstrated ways in which language is a linchpin of identity. Hebrew users were at least bilingual because they were always part of a larger com-munity that did not share their language. Greek and Latin speakers, especially those who lived in a monolingual village, lacked such linguistic pressures, but their verbal interaction is apparent in their public texts nonetheless. Despite the erasure of the Jewish communities of the Salento by the sixteenth century, both the Jews and their sacred language have left traces in the local record. In addition to the toponyms that refer to Jewish streets or neighborhoods, we noted in the previous chapter the derogatory labels Sciutei and Sciudeu applied to the inhabitants of two southern towns.

[Carlin]

This may not be about Griko people, but let's take a look. It comes from the book "Greek Jewry in the Twentieth Century, 1913-1983: Patterns of Jewish Survival in the Greek Provinces Before and After the Holocaust", written by Joshua Eli Plaut.

On pages 23 and 24 we read the following:

"Distinctions between the various Jewish communities date back to the time when the Sephardi immigrants arriving in the Ottoman Empire referred to the local Greek Jews with the Hebrew designation toshavim, natives, or with the less complimentary Judeo-Spanish term Gregos, Greeks. The Gregos spoke of their newly arrived brethren as megorashim, a Hebrew term for the expelled ones."

As we can plainly see, the immigrant Sephardic Jews referred to the 'native Jews' as Gregos, Greeks. It's curious that this term or designation is described as somewhat less complimentary. We can also infer about the meaning(s), or possible meaning(s), the term 'Greeks' might have in this time period.



PS - From the same book, page 25:

"Corfu's Jews conversed mostly in Italian but also knew Greek. They spoke a local Judeo-Italian patois known as Corfuoite."

[tchaiku]

The exact book that I cited in the post number one was used as a source in Wikipedia for a particular Jewish subject. Regarding Griko people here is what Wikipedia states:

The Griko are believed to be remnants of the once large Ancient[6] and Medieval Greek communities of southern Italy (the old Magna Graecia region), although there is dispute among scholars as to whether the Griko community is directly descended from ancient Greeks or from more recent medieval migrations during the Byzantine domination.

How come did they ignore the truth entertained by Linda Safran in a such interesting subject. Wikipedia is such a weird website.

Greek - Καληνύχτα - kali'nixta
Griko - Καληνύφτα - kali'nifta

Griko - [e'vo 'panta se 'sena pen'seo,
ja'ti 'sena fsi'hi mu ɣa'po,
tɕe pu 'pao, pu 'sirno, pu 'steo
stin kar'dia[10] mu 'panta 'sena vas'to.]


Greek - [e'ɣo 'panda e'sena 'sceftome,
ʝa'ti e'sena psi'çi mu aɣa'po,
ce 'opu 'pao, 'opu sir'θo, 'opu sta'θo
stin gar'ðʝa mu 'panda e'sena va'sto.]

[tchaiku]

''Una razza una faccia.''
"This phrase was invented by the government propaganda fascist Italian in 'era of' occupation during the Second World War to convince the Greeks that the two peoples are brothers and encourage their cooperation. Despite the bad memory that the Greeks have of those years, the phrase had sucess and paradoxically decades after they use the Greeks who want to do nice Italian tourists, as I have seen so many times during the years I lived in Greece. Instead, the phrase is completely unknown in Italy, so it is funny to see the face of the greek convinced he's telling something famous in Italy, and the Italian who does not understand what they're talking about. Nevertheless, the sentence is historic and was created in Italian, but only to be used in Greece."

http://www.ww2wrecks.com/portfolio/italian-war-crimes-and-atrocities-in-greece-during-ww2/

Historically speaking Italians and Greeks did NOT get along at all in the last century. And it's not just once.

[tchaiku]

This may not be about Griko people, but let's take a look. It comes from the book "Greek Jewry in the Twentieth Century, 1913-1983: Patterns of Jewish Survival in the Greek Provinces Before and After the Holocaust", written by Joshua Eli Plaut.

On pages 23 and 24 we read the following:

"Distinctions between the various Jewish communities date back to the time when the Sephardi immigrants arriving in the Ottoman Empire referred to the local Greek Jews with the Hebrew designation toshavim, natives, or with the less complimentary Judeo-Spanish term Gregos, Greeks. The Gregos spoke of their newly arrived brethren as megorashim, a Hebrew term for the expelled ones."

As we can plainly see, the immigrant Sephardic Jews referred to the 'native Jews' as Gregos, Greeks. It's curious that this term or designation is described as somewhat less complimentary. We can also infer about the meaning(s), or possible meaning(s), the term 'Greeks' might have in this time period.



PS - From the same book, page 25:

"Corfu's Jews conversed mostly in Italian but also knew Greek. They spoke a local Judeo-Italian patois known as Corfuoite."

Greco/Grego is used in Calabria.

There is no Griko community in Sicily. That should tell us something.