| Extreme Southern Italian | |
|---|---|
| dialetti italiani meridionali estremi | |
| Native to | Italy |
| Region | Apulia (Salento) Calabria Sicily Campania (Cilento) |
| Ethnicity | Italians, Sicilians |
Native speakers | 4.7 million (2002) |
Indo-European
| |
| Language codes | |
| ISO 639-3 | – |
 Extreme Southern Italian dialects | |
The Extreme Southern Italian[1][2][3] dialects are a set of languages spoken in Salento, Calabria, Sicily and southern Cilento with common phonetic and syntactic characteristics such as to constitute a single group. These languages derive, without exception, from Vulgar Latin but not from Tuscan; therefore it follows that the name "Italian" is a purely geographical reference.
Today, Extreme Southern Italian dialects are still spoken daily, although their use is limited to informal contexts and is mostly oral. There are examples of full literary uses with contests (mostly poetry) and theatrical performances.
- ^ According to the classification of Giovan Battista Pellegrini, see [1] Archived 26 August 2007 at the Wayback Machine
- ^ Francesco Avolio, Lingue e dialetti d'Italia, 2012, Carocci editore, Roma, ed=2, ISBN 978-88-430-5203-5, page 54.
- ^ "Introduzione ai dialetti italiani meridionali estremi (Alessandro De Angelis)" (PDF). Retrieved January 17, 2013.