The language of the Greeks of Calabria (and with it their cultural identity) is thousands of years old, dating back to the 7th century BC. The Doricisms found in the Calabrian Greek vocabulary show us that it is a very ancient language, because when the language in Greece was unified in the 2nd century BC and the Attic dialect spread, the ancient language, Doric, remained in use in Greek Calabria, a peripheral territory, as well as in some islands such as Crete. Unfortunately, the Greeks of Calabria were not always masters of their own language.... The problems began in 1573, when the Catholic Church in Rome abolished the Greek rite in Bova and the entire Grecanica area. The Latin liturgy was imposed and people could no longer pray in Greek during Mass (and prayers are very important for the oral transmission of the language). Even if people are not prevented from speaking Greek, and as if they were, because the schools run by the Church teach Latin, the ability to write in Greek is lost.
So people continued to speak Greek, but began to write in Latin characters. The problems continued with Fascism, which, as with other linguistic minorities, began to discriminate against the speakers of Greek from Calabria. Between 1920 and 1940 it was forbidden to speak Greek, and parents stopped speaking it in front of their children so as not to encourage them to use a language that, if used outside the family, would lead to corporal punishment. They are not even allowed to use Calabrian Greek in public offices. The natural transmission of the language from generation to generation is broken down by this long period. The language of the Greeks of Calabria was rediscovered by eminent foreign scholars and linguists such as Rohlfs, who, with an ethno-anthropological spirit, ventured to Calabria to discover this particular "linguistic island".
Thus began a series of long journeys that would last until 1980, during which he met people, visited villages and communities, talked, took notes, photographed and wrote books. Through his in-depth linguistic studies, Rohlfs became convinced that Calabrian Greek was a continuation of Magna Greek. Rohlfs's interest sparked a spirit of revenge and self-determination among a number of Reggio Emilia scholars who, in the 1970s, founded the Circolo culturale La Ionica, a place to talk about and restore the dignity of Calabrian Greek. This was the beginning of an attempt to recover the language, which is still going on today, with young people, such as those of the Assoc. Culturale alò tu Vua, working on ways to revitalise the language.
The Municipality of Bova believes that the language of the Greeks of Calabria is a very important collective and relational intangible asset. In 2016 it inaugurated the Museum of the Greek Language of Calabria, dedicated to the German linguist G. Rohlfs, to tell the story of the language of the Greeks of Calabria through Rohlfs' studies. In 2019 he will complete all the signs in the town in Italian, Calabrian Greek, English and German, and in 2020 he will embellish the toponymy, already in Italian, Modern Greek and Calabrian Greek, with ceramics symbolising the shepherds' carvings and the Greek meander.
In 2021, he created a small literary park, 'The Garden of Words - O cipo ton logo', in which passages from Italo-Greek literature from antiquity to the present day are carved in stone, forming an ancient semicircular theatre. In recent years, it has tried to encourage young residents to love their own language through small projects funded by National Law 482/99, Regional Law 15/2003 and the Metropolitan Municipality of RC. In its project activities it uses ludolinguistics to bring children closer to the language through play and to make them aware of the important cultural identity that characterises their gestures, the place where they live, traditions, music, food and wine.For some years now, the Czech children of primary school age who belong to the Bova Marina Palizzi Condofuri IC Bova Marina -Condofuri have had the opportunity to learn the Greek of Calabria at school, as the educational offer has been implemented using the local curriculum quota, in accordance with Article 8 of Presidential Decree 275/1999. The inclusion of the minority language in schools is also provided for by Law 482/99, but is difficult to implement due to the lack of teachers. Strengthening the linguistic and cultural identity of the Greco area is the strategy for the future. Young people must be proud of their country, their traditions and their values. They must love it and understand that they can stay. It is possible to stay in one's village, to revitalise one's language, to take care of cultural tourism services. Bova is a small example and therefore what happens in Bova can also happen in other ancient Greek villages.
It all began in the 1990s, when a group of young people from Bova realised that their land, their language, their history had made peace with themselves and their loved ones. And they began not to rule out the possibility of planning their future here, in a place that their grandparents and parents had often left in despair. In short, they understood that only when you are free can you choose, and only when you can choose can you be happy.
They no longer felt like 'paddies' because they came from rural areas that lived on agriculture and pastoralism. They understood, through the eyes and words of those who visit Bova and the Aspromonte National Park every day and are fascinated by it, that their cultural identity comes from the Greeks, who brought beauty and philosophy, and that it was contaminated by the Byzantines, who embellished the places and monuments with their administrative skills and refinement, and that 'rurality', environmental sustainability and food at the heart of the Aspromonte National Park were the key to their success. Rurality, environmental sustainability and local food are precious values that not everyone has.
The cultural identity and the wisdom of the Greeks of Calabria help us, in this particular historical moment in which xenophobia prevails, to know and put into practice philoxenia, the hospitable love for the stranger, as the ancient Greeks understood it: the highest expression of welcome, a fundamental ethical principle to distinguish, as Ulysses said, the "hospitable and just" man from the "savage and without justice". A welcome that distinguished the Greeks of Calabria, according to whom the "stranger" could be a "god" who had descended from Olympus to earth, in disguise, to meet ordinary mortals.