![]() ![]() ![]() We ate them, cooked them, and jarred them, Of course, we also grew peppers (hot and sweet), basil, parsly, lettuce and zucchini. Not just flower gardens, but huge gardens where we grew tomatoes, tomatoes and more tomatoes. There was another difference between US and THEM. They never knew the pleasure of waking up every morning to find a hot crispy loaf of bread waiting behind the screen door. Americans went to the stores for most of their foods. We would wait for their call, their yell, their individual distinctive sound. They were the many peddlers who plied their wares in the Italian neighborhoods. There was no animosity involved in that distinction, no prejudice, no hard-feelings.just, well, we were sure ours was the better way, For instance, we had a bread-man, a coal-man, and ice-man, a fruit and vegetable man, a watermelon man, and a fish-man we even had a man who sharpened knives and scissors, who came to our homes or at least outside our homes. Everybody else.the Irish, German, Polish, Jews, they were the "MED-E-GONES". But I was ITALIAN.įor me, as I am sure for most second generation Italian-American children who grew up in the 40's or 50's, there was a definite distinction drawn between US and THEM. Americans are people who ate peanut butter and jelly on mushy white bread that came in plastic packages. Of course I had been born in America and had lived here all of my life, but somehow it never occurred to me that just being a citizen of the United States meant I was an American. Today, the Griko are Catholics."I was well into adulthood before I realized I was an American. In recent years, the number of Griko who speak the Griko language has been greatly reduced the younger Griko have rapidly shifted to Italian. The Griko people traditionally speak Italiot Greek (the Griko or Calabrian dialects), which is a form of the Greek language. Although most Greek inhabitants of Southern Italy have become entirely Italianized over the centuries,the Griko community has been able to preserve their original Greek identity, heritage, language and distinct culture,although exposure to mass media has progressively eroded their culture and language. In the Middle Ages, Greek regional communities were reduced to isolated enclaves. Greek people have been living in Southern Italy for millennia, initially arriving in Southern Italy in numerous waves of migrations, from the ancient Greek colonisation of Southern Italy and Sicily in the 8th century BC through to the Byzantine Greek migrations of the 15th century caused by the Ottoman conquest. Rohlfs, in the wake of Hatzidakis (1892), claimed instead that Griko was a local variety evolved directly from the ancient Greek. According to the first theory, developed by Giuseppe Morosi in 1870, Griko originated from the Hellenistic Koine when in the Byzantine era waves of immigrants arrived from Greece to Salento. The Griko are believed to be remnants of the once large Ancient and Medieval Greek communities of southern Italy (the ancient 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.Ī long-standing debate over the origin of the Griko dialect has produced two main theories about the origins of Griko. The Griko people (Greek: Γκρίκο), also known as Grecanici in Calabria, are an ethnic Greek community of Southern Italy.They are found principally in regions of Calabria and Apulia (peninsula of Salento). Click here for an article on the Griko people ![]()
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