Salentino dialect

Salentino (salentinu) is a dialect of the Extreme Southern Italian (italiano meridionale estremo in Italian) spoken in the Salento peninsula, which is the southern part of the region of Apulia at the southern "heel" of the Italian peninsula.

Salentino is a dialect of the Extreme Southern Italian language group (italiano meridionale estremo). It is thus closer to the Southern Calabrian dialect and the dialects of Sicily than to the geographically less distant dialects of central and northern Apulia (like Tarantino, Barese and Foggiano).

The traditional areas where Salentino is spoken are the province of Lecce, much of the southern part of the province of Brindisi, and the southern part of the province of Taranto.

The Salentino dialect is a product of the different powers and/or populations that have had a presence in the peninsula over the centuries: indigenous Messapian, Ancient Greek, Roman, Byzantine Greek, Lombard, French and Spanish influences are all, to differing levels, present in the modern dialect, but the Greek substratum has had a particular impact on the phonology and the lexicon of this language. Salentino is thus a derivative of local dialects of Vulgar Latin, with a strong Greek substratum.

The oldest text in Salentino is in the margin notes of a copy of the Mishnah known as Parma A written between 1072 and 1073. It is written in the Judeo-Salentino dialect of Salentino which is now extinct.

During the Middle Ages, the area was home to both Romance-based dialects–the precursors to the modern Salentino–and Greek-based dialects in roughly equal measure. The areas of Greek speech have retreated over time, but Salento remains one of two areas of southern Italy, the other being southern Calabria, where Griko can still be heard in some villages (today known collectively as the Grecìa Salentina).

The term Salentino should be considered a general word to describe the various Romance vernaculars of the Salento peninsula, rather than one to describe a unified standard language spoken throughout the area. Indeed, in common with most other Italian languages, there are no agreed standards for spelling, grammar or pronunciation, with each locality and even generation having its own peculiarities. What unites the various local dialects of the Salento is their shared differences from the dialects further north in Apulia, such as the Tarantino and Barese dialect, and their similarities with other varieties of Sicilian, particularly those found in Calabria. In Sicily efforts have been made by the non-profit Cademia Siciliana to standardise the orthography for written insular Sicilian. They have also adopted a 'polycentric' approach which suggests that Salentino should have its own orthography within a family of Sicilian orthographies.

Salentino has 5 vowels and an SOV (subject, object, verb) word order. There are six persons: jeu (I), tu (you, singular), idhu/idha (he, it/she, it), nui (we), vui (you, plural), idhi/idhe (they). And there are six tenses: present, imperfect, remote past, past perfect, past pluperfect, plus remote past.