Dialect of Himara

Dialect of Himara

The dialect:

The dialect is completely different from the greek lang of the greek minority of Saranda and Gjirokaster rural areas, which indicates that it is not a linguistical continuity of the minority zone.

There is a special dialect which is restricted only to 3 villages of Himara: Himara-village, Dhermi/Drimades and Palase, the other 4 villages are alb speaking. To understand the reasons of the prevalence of the dialect one has to take into consideration some facts concerning the history of Himara.

Unfortunately the dialect of this 3 villages has been a taboo for a long time to the Albanian historiography, no serious study has been conducted by the Albanian side as far as I know. The dialect of Himara village differs slightly from that of Dhermi and Palasa. The dialect is completely different from the greek lang of the greek minority of Saranda and Gjirokaster rural areas, which indicates that it is not a linguistical continuity of the minority zone.

The striking elements in the dialect are the many incorporated Italian words of the Venetian dialect. This is a clear fact that the Himara dialect is connected to the Venetian ruled greek speaking Corfu, which reminds us the fact that Corfu has always been used by himariots (and others, Suliots ) as a safe heaven during different Turkish reprisals from the 15th to the 19th century, as it has been mentioned in several documents. This point can be consolidated by the fact that, except Palasa, the other two villages (Himara and Dhermi) are the only ones to have a strong naval tradition, so their normal escape choice would be Corfu, while for the others it were mostly the mountains.

Further, a substratum of old Albanian lies behind the greek surface of the dialect,but you don’t need to be a linguist to notice that.. This substratum is not only present in many Albanian words used in the vocabulary, but also in the structure of the sentences as well as in most expressions, which are usually simple translations from alb to greek (they don’t exist in ordinary greek). It is sad that this dialect is dying without being seriously studied and it is being sometimes replaced from the official greek brought by the recent years emigrants (a fact that lies by itself as an example as to how the linguistical idiom of a region can be changed within a very short time).