Editing Arvanites (section)

==Intercommunity relations==
Arvanites were regarded as ethnically distinct from the Greeks until the 19th century.<ref name=Hall29 /> Amongst the Arvanites, this difference was expressed in words such as ''shkljira'' for a Greek person and ''shkljerishtë'' for the Greek language that had until recent decades negative overtones.<ref>Tsitsipis. ''Language change and language death''. 1981. pp. 100–101. "The term /evjeni̇́stika/ meaning "polite", used by the young speaker to refer to Greek, is offered as synonymous to /shkljiri̇́shtika/ one of the various morphological shapes of the Arvanitika word /shkljeri̇́shtë/ which refers to "the Greek language". Thus, Greek is equated with the more refined, soft, and polite talk. The concept of politeness is occasionally extended from the language to its speakers who are the representatives of the urban culture. In conversations in Kiriaki, I heard the word /shklji̇́ra/ (fem.) referring to a city women who exhibits polite and fancy behavior according to the local view. As I stated in the introduction to this dissertation, most of the occurrences of the term /shkljeri̇́shtë/ are not socially marked, and simply refer to the Greek language. But a few are so marked and these are the ones that reflect the speakers' attitudes. The term /shkljeri̇́shtë/ is ambiguous. This ambiguity offers a valuable clue to the gradual shift in attitudes. It points to the more prestigious Greek language and culture, and also has a derogatory sense. In my data only the first meaning of the socially marked senses of the word occurs."; pp. 101–102. "The second meaning is offered by Kazazis in his description of the Arvanitika community of Sofikó, in the Peloponnese (1976:48):{{nbsp}}... two older people from Sofiko told me independently that, to the not-so-remote past, it was those who spoke Greek with their fellow-Arvanites who were ridiculed. Even today, if an older inhabitant of Sofiko were to speak predominantly in Greek with his fellow villagers of the same age, he would be called i shkljerishtúarë, literally "Hellenized" but used here as a derogatory term denoting affectation. One of those two informants, a woman, said that, until about 1950, it was a shame for a girl in Sofiko to speak Greek with her peers, for that was considered as "putting on airs." In Spata, /shkljeri̇́shtë/ is used only to refer to "the Greek language" although speakers are aware of the other meanings of the word."</ref> These words in Arvanitika have their related counterpart in the pejorative term ''shqa'' used by Northern Albanians for [[Slavs]].<ref name=Pipa/> Ultimately these terms used amongst Albanian speakers originate from the Latin word ''sclavus'' which contained the traditional meaning of "the neighbouring foreigner".<ref name=Pipa>Pipa, Arshi (1989). ''The politics of language in socialist Albania''. East European Monographs. p. 178. "North Albanian call Slavs shqé (sg. shqá <shkjá <shklá, from sclavus), whereas to Greco-Albanians shklerisht means 'in the Greek language.' Hamp observes that "obviously the meaning is traditionally 'the neighbouring foreigner,' as with Welsh, Vlah, etc.""</ref>

With participation in the [[Greek War of Independence]] and the [[Greek Civil War]], this has led to increasing assimilation amongst the Arvanites.<ref name=Hall29>Hall, Jonathan M. ''Ethnic Identity in Greek Antiquity''. Cambridge University Press, 2000, p. 29, {{ISBN|0-521-78999-0}}.</ref> The common [[Eastern Orthodox Church|Christian Orthodox]] religion they shared with the rest of the local population was one of the main reasons that led to their assimilation.<ref>{{Cite book|last=Hemetek|first=Ursula|title=Manifold identities: studies on music and minorities|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=awgJ2LtnU6oC&q=Arvanites%20assimilation&pg=PA55|year=2003|publisher=Cambridge Scholars Press|isbn=1-904303-37-4|page=55}}</ref> Although sociological studies of Arvanite communities still used to note an identifiable sense of a special "ethnic" identity among Arvanites, the authors did not identify a sense of 'belonging to Albania or to the Albanian nation'.<ref name="Trudgill/Tzavaras 1977"/> Many Arvanites find the designation "Albanians" offensive as they identify nationally and ethnically as [[Greeks]] and not [[Albanians]].<ref name="greekhelsinki.gr"/> [[Jacques Lévy]] describes the Arvanites as "Albanian speakers who were integrated into Greek national identity as early as the first half of the nineteenth century and who in no way consider themselves as an ethnic minority".<ref>{{Cite book|last1=Levy|first1=Jacques|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=mgBUdq3XK1cC&pg=PA176|title=From Geopolitics to Global Politics: A French Connection|last2=Lévy|first2=Jacques|date=2001|publisher=Psychology Press|isbn=978-0-7146-5107-1|pages=176|language=en}}</ref>

Relations between Arvanites and other Albanian speaking populations have varied over time. During the onset of the Greek war of Independence, Arvanites fought alongside Greek revolutionaries and against Muslim Albanians.<ref name=Heraclides/><ref name=Andromedas/> Arvanites participated in the 1821 [[Tripolitsa massacre]]<ref name=Heraclides>Heraclides, Alexis (2011). ''[http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/45693/1/GreeSE%20No51.pdf The essence of the Greek-Turkish rivalry: national narrative and identity]''. Academic Paper. The London School of Economics and Political Science. p. 15. "On the Greek side, a case in point is the atrocious onslaught of the Greeks and Hellenised Christian Albanians against the city of Tripolitza in October 1821, which is justified by the Greeks ever since as the almost natural and predictable outcome of more than '400 years of slavery and dudgeon'. All the other similar atrocious acts all over Peloponnese, where apparently the whole population of Muslims (Albanian and Turkish-speakers), well over twenty thousand vanished from the face of the earth within a spat of a few months in 1821 is unsaid and forgotten, a case of ethnic cleansing through sheer slaughter (St Clair 2008: 1–9, 41–46) as are the atrocities committed in Moldavia (were the "Greek Revolution" actually started in February 1821) by prince Ypsilantis."</ref> while some Muslim Albanian speakers in the region of Bardounia remained after the war, converting to Orthodoxy.<ref name=Andromedas>Andromedas, John N. (1976). "Maniot folk culture and the ethnic mosaic in the southeast Peloponnese". ''Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences''. '''268'''. (1): 200. "In 1821, then, the ethnic mosaic of the southeastern Peloponnese (the ancient Laconia and Cynouria) consisted of Christian Tsakonians and Albanians on the east, Christian Maniats and Barduniotes, and Moslem Albanian Barduniotes in the southwest, and an ordinary Greek Christian population running between them. In 1821, with a general Greek uprising impending, rumors of a "Russo-Frankish" naval bombardment caused the "Turkish" population of the southeastern Peloponnese to seek refuge in the fortresses of Monevasia, Mystra, and Tripolitza. Indeed, the Turkobarduniotes were so panic stricken that they stampeded the Moslems of Mystra along with them into headlong flight to Tripolitza. The origin of this rumor was the firing of a salute by a sea captain named Frangias in honor of a Maniat leader known as "the Russian Knight." Some Moslems in Bardunia, and elsewhere, remained as converts to Christianity. Thus almost overnight the whole of the southeastern Peloponnese was cleared of "Turks" of whatever linguistic affiliation. This situation was sealed by the ultimate success of the Greek War for Independence. The Christian Albanians, identifying with their Orthodox coreligionists and with the new nationstate, gradually gave up the Albanian language, in some instances deliberately deciding not to pass it on to their children."</ref> In recent times, Arvanites have expressed mixed opinions towards Albanian immigrants within Greece. Negative views are perceptions that Albanian immigrants are "communists" arriving from a "backward country",<ref>Bintliff, John (2003). "[https://openaccess.leidenuniv.nl/bitstream/handle/1887/8444/1_036_127.pdf?sequence=1. The Ethnoarchaeology of a "Passive" Ethnicity: The Arvanites of Central Greece]" in K.S. Brown & Yannis Hamilakis, (eds.). ''The Usable Past: Greek Metahistories.'' Lexington Books. p. 138. "The bishop was voicing the accepted modern position among those Greeks who are well aware of the persistence of indigenous Albanian-speakers in the provinces of their country: the "Albanians" are not like us at all, they are ex-Communists from outside the modern Greek state who come here for work from their backward country"</ref> or an opportune people with questionable morals, behaviors and a disrespect for religion.<ref>Hajdinjak Marko (2005). ''[http://pdc.ceu.hu/archive/00003870/01/Albanians_in_Greece.pdf Don't want to live with them, can't afford to live without them: Albanian labor migration in Greece] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150701000219/http://pdc.ceu.hu/archive/00003870/01/Albanians_in_Greece.pdf |date=1 July 2015 }}''. Academic paper. International Center for Minority Studies and Intercultural Relations (IMIR). pp. 8–9. "What is striking is that IMIR's team encountered exceptionally negative attitude towards the Albanians even among those Greeks, who are of Albanian origin. Arvanitis are ethnic group of Albanian descent. According to Greek historians, they were an Albanian speaking Christian population, which was hired by Venetians as sailors in the 14th century to fight against the Ottomans. Arvanitis have long since abandoned Albanian language for Greek and integrated fully into the Greek ethnos. Arvanitis respondents IMIR's team spoke with talked about Albanians with disgust, saying that "they have flooded Greece," that "they were not good people" and that they "steal, beat and kill." Some were afraid that Greeks might start to identify them, Arvanitis, with Albanians and their condemnable behavior, and as a result start to reject them. The one thing Arvanitis, who are devout Christians, cannot forgive Albanians, is their apparent lack of respect for religion. In order to facilitate their integration, a large number of immigrants from Albania has been changing their names with Greek ones and adopting Orthodox Christianity, but only nominally, as a façade."</ref> Other Arvanites during the late 1980s and early 1990s expressed solidarity with Albanian immigrants, due to linguistic similarities and being politically leftist.<ref>Lawrence, Christopher (2007). ''Blood and oranges: Immigrant labor and European markets in rural Greece''. Berghahn Books. pp. 85–86. "I did collect evidence that in the early years of Albanian immigration, the late 1980s, immigrants were greeted with hospitality in the upper villages. This initial friendliness seems to have been based on villagers' feelings of solidarity with Albanians. Being both leftists and Arvanites, and speaking in fact a dialect of Albanian that was somewhat intelligible to the new migrants, many villagers had long felt a common bond with Albania."</ref><ref>Nitsiakos, Vassilis (2010). ''On the border: Transborder mobility, ethnic groups and boundaries along the Albanian-Greek frontier''. LIT Verlag. pp. 23–24. "Linguistic community and cultural intimacy have played and still play a role in the search of a place of settlement and line of work on the part of migrants, but, also, in their reception and incorporation by the communities of local Arvanites. I have had the opportunity to substantiate this fact through many interviews with Albanian migrants, whose report of their good reception by the populations of Arvanite villages tends to be uniform, especially around the area of Thebes during the first months of their ventures in Greece. The fact that the elderly, at least, speak Arvanite and can communicate with Albanians is of crucial importance. As to the question of cultural intimacy, the matter is more complex and demands special research and study. It was brought up at the Korçe conference by S. Mangliveras, who, with his paper on A1banian immigrants and Arvanite hosts: Identities and relationships" (Magliveras 2004; also Derhemi 2003), demonstrated its complexity and great significance for the understanding of the very concepts of ethnic and cultural identity. It is very interesting, indeed, to examine the way such bonds are activated in the context of migration, but, also, the way the subjects themselves confer meaning to it. After all, the very definition of such a bond is problematic, in the sense that it is essentially ethnic, since it concerns the common ethnic origins of the two groups, while now their members belong to different national wholes, being Greek or Albanian. The formation of modern, "pure" national identities and the ideology of nationalism generate a difficulty in the classification of this bond, as is the case with any kind of identification, which, on top of any other social and psychological consequences. It may have, may produce an identity crisis as well. The apparently contradictory attitude of the Arvanites, which Mangliveras discerns, has to do with their difficulty of dealing with this phenomenon in public. Public manifestation of ethnic and linguistic affinity with Albanian immigrants is definitely a problem for the Arvanites, which is why they behave differently in public and in private. For them, the transition from pre-modern ethnic to modern national identity involved, historically, their identification with the Greek nation, a fact that causes bewilderment whenever one wants to talk to them about the activation of ethnic bonds. From this perspective, too, the particular issue is provocative."</ref> Relations too between Arvanites and other Orthodox Albanian speaking communities such as those of Greek Epirus are mixed, as they are distrusted regarding religious matters due to a past Albanian Muslim population living amongst them.<ref>Adrian Ahmedaja (2004). "[https://books.google.com/books?id=awgJ2LtnU6oC&pg=PA54 On the question of methods for studying ethnic minorities' music in the case of Greece's Arvanites and Alvanoi.]" In Ursula Hemetek (ed.). ''Manifold Identities: Studies on Music and Minorities''. Cambridge Scholars Press. p. 60. "That although the Albanians in Northwest Greece are nowadays orthodox, the Arvanites still seem to distrust them because of religious matters."</ref>

Amongst the wider Greek speaking population however, the Arvanites and their language Arvanitika were viewed in past times in a derogatory manner.<ref>Tsitsipis. ''Language change and language death''. 1981. pp. 104–105. "In the shaping of their attitudes towards Arvanitika, speakers have been influenced by the way members of the dominant culture, namely, Greek monolinguals view them their language. One example of the criticism that an old women experienced for her Arvanitika at a hospital in Athens was presented in Chapter IV. Kazazis (1976:47) observes with regard to this matter, that: The attitude of other Greeks certainly reinforces the low opinion so many Arvanites have (or profess to have) of Arvanitika, and other Greek are probably the main source of that opinion. Once or twice, Arvanitika was described to me by non-Arvanites as "ugly" and several people{{nbsp}}... have told me how "treacherous and sly"{{nbsp}}... "uncivilized"{{nbsp}}... and "stubborn"{{nbsp}}... the Arvanites are. That the view of the Greek monolingual segment of the society has been a major source for the development of negative attitudes among Arvanites toward their language can be substantiated on evidence including earlier and more recent information. In the discussion of the Linguistic Policy in Greece (Chapter IV) I observed that the seeds of Arvanitika language are to be sought in the efforts of the intellectuals to bring about the regeneration of Greek nationalism by promoting Greek as the only legitimate language of the nation."</ref> These views contributed toward shaping negative attitudes held by Arvanites regarding their language and thereby increasing assimilation.<ref>Tsitsipis. ''Language change and language death''. 1981. pp. 104–105.</ref> In post-dictatorial Greece, the Arvanites have rehabilitated themselves within Greek society through for example the propagation of the [[Pelasgians|Pelasgian theory]] regarding Arvanite origins.<ref name=DeRapper/> The theory created a counter discourse that aimed to give the Arvanites a positive image in Greek history by claiming the Arvanites as the ancestors and relations of contemporary Greeks and their culture.<ref name=DeRapper/> The Arvanite revival of the Pelasgian theory has also been recently borrowed by other Albanian speaking populations within and from Albania in Greece to counter the negative image of their communities.<ref name=DeRapper>De Rapper, Gilles (2009). "[http://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/halshs-00400327/document Pelasgic Encounters in the Greek–Albanian Borderland: Border Dynamics and Reversion to Ancient Past in Southern Albania.]" ''Anthropological Journal of European Cultures''. '''18'''. (1): 60–61. "In 2002, another important book was translated from Greek: Aristides Kollias' ''Arvanites and the Origin of Greeks'', first published in Athens in 1983 and re-edited several times since then (Kollias 1983; Kolia 2002). In this book, which is considered a cornerstone of the rehabilitation of Arvanites in post- dictatorial Greece, the author presents the Albanian speaking population of Greece, known as Arvanites, as the most authentic Greeks because their language is closer to ancient Pelasgic, who were the first inhabitants of Greece. According to him, ancient Greek was formed on the basis of Pelasgic, so that man Greek words have an Albanian etymology. In the Greek context, the book initiated a 'counterdiscourse' (Gefou-Madianou 1999: 122) aiming at giving Arvanitic communities of southern Greece a positive role in Greek history. This was achieved by using nineteenth-century ideas on Pelasgians and by melting together Greeks and Albanians in one historical genealogy (Baltsiotis and Embirikos 2007: 130–431, 445). In the Albanian context of the 1990s and 2000s, the book is read as proving the anteriority of Albanians not only in Albania but also in Greece; it serves mainly the rehabilitation of Albanians as an antique and autochthonous population in the Balkans. These ideas legitimise the presence of Albanians in Greece and give them a decisive role in the development of ancient Greek civilisation and, later on, the creation of the modern Greek state, in contrast to the general negative image of Albanians in contemporary Greek society. They also reverse the unequal relation between the migrants and the host country, making the former the heirs of an autochthonous and civilised population from whom the latter owes everything that makes their superiority in the present day."</ref> However, this theory has been rejected by modern scholars and it is seen as a myth.<ref>Schwandner-Sievers & Fischer (2002). Stephanie Schwandner-Sievers and [[Bernd Jürgen Fischer]], editors of ''Albanian Identities: Myth and History'', present papers resulting from the London Conference held in 1999 entitled "The Role of Myth in the History and Development of Albania." The "Pelasgian" myth of Albanians as the most ancient community in southeastern Europe is among those explored in Noel Malcolm's essay, "Myths of Albanian National Identity: Some Key Elements, As Expressed in the Works of Albanian Writers in America in the Early Twentieth Century". The introductory essay by Stephanie Schwandner-Sievers establishes the context of the "Pelasgian Albanian" mythos, applicable to Eastern Europe generally, in terms of the longing for a stable identity in a rapidly opening society.</ref>

In the 1990s, the Albanian president [[Sali Berisha]] raised a question about an Albanian minority in Greece, but the Arvanite cultural associations reacted angrily to his statement.<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Abadzi |first=Helen |title=Historical Greek-Albanian Relations: Some Mysteries and Riddles |url=https://www.academia.edu/3475296 |journal=Mediterranean Quarterly |pages=57}}</ref>