The mayor of Himara Bolanos is the new president of “OMONIA”

[yannis-3]

This is a good news for the Greek minority in south Albania

Νέος πρόεδρος στην "Ομόνοια"...
.
Συνήλθε στους Αγίους Σαράντα η 7η τακτική Συνδιάσκεψη της ΟΜΟΝΟΙΑΣ. Στις εργασίες, τα στελέχη της ΟΜΟΝΟΙΑΣ και τα μέλη της συνδιάσκεψης τοποθετήθηκαν με ιδιαίτερη υπευθυνότητα και πλήρη επίγνωση των εξελίξεων στην ευρύτερη περιοχή. Τέθηκαν θέματα όπως: Η κατοχύρωση των περιουσιών, η επιστροφή της εκκλησιαστικής και μοναστηριακής περιουσίας, η απογραφή με ελευθερία έκφρασης της εθνικής και θρησκευτικής ταυτότητας, η πρόσβαση στα ΜΜΕ, στην δημόσια διοίκηση, η πολιτιστική αυτονομία, τα εκπαιδευτικά δικαιώματα κ.ά.
Νέος πρόεδρος της ΟΜΟΝΟΙΑΣ εξελέγη από την συνδιάσκεψη ο Βασίλης Μπολάνος, δήμαρχος της Χιμάρας. Στο αμέσως επόμενο χρονικό διάστημα η νέα ηγεσία της Ομόνοιας θα προχωρήσει στην βελτίωση του καταστατικού και του εσωτερικού κανονισμού, στην συγκρότηση νέων τοπικών οργανώσεων, στο άνοιγμα στους Βορειοηπειρώτες που ζουν και εργάζονται στον ελλαδικό χώρο κ.ά.

[helinasson]

Indeed. This is great news.

[Peace Lover]

Bollano : We should propagate the Greek language in southern Albania !
Albanians : We should protect the Albanian language in Greece !
This is the difference between the Greek and the Albanian issue !

[Draco]

Originally Posted by Peace Lover

Bollano : We should propagate the Greek language in southern Albania !
Albanians : We should protect the Albanian language in Greece !
This is the difference between the Greek and the Albanian issue !

Protect what?

[Peace Lover]

Originally Posted by Draco

Protect what?

The Albanian language also spoken by more than one million of citizens in Greece as familiar langauge !

[Draco]

One million? Hahahaha... What is it, you don't want to use the Ethnologue figure in the same way that you use their map?? Let's see, Arvanitika: 150,000.

Of course Arvanites claim they have nothing to do with Albanians and they also claim that their language is not Albanian.

Arvanites are those whose mother tongue is Arvanitika [...]; most linguists use the word Albanian for that language, but the community loathes its use, and it is therefore advisable that this sensitivity be taken into consideration unless researchers and/or human and minority rights activists do not mind alienating the very community they are studying. Likewise, they call themselves Arvanites (in Greek) and Arberor (in their language); but in Northwestern Greece, in their language, they use the term Shqiptar (the same used by Albanians of Albania), a term strongly disliked by the other Arvanites, who also resent being called Albanians.

http://www.greekhelsinki.gr/english/...arvanites.html

Should we not respect their wishes?

Also, why is Albanian not listed as spoken in "Chameria" in your map?

[Peace Lover]

Originally Posted by Draco

One million? Hahahaha... What is it, you don't want to use the Ethnologue figure in the same way that you use their map?? Let's see, Arvanitika: 150,000.

Of course Arvanites claim they have nothing to do with Albanians and they also claim that their language is not Albanian.

Should we not respect their wishes?

Also, why is Albanian not listed as spoken in "Chameria" in your map?

Yeah , yeah !
I should belive Greek Helsinki www.mega-ellada.naz !
I listen to the Arvantic league former president Kola :
1- In Greece live 2 million of Albanian minorances , 1.200.000 authoctonus minorances and 800.000 immigrats !
2- The Albanians are the real and unic descendants of the Hellenes !
3- Epirus is Albania and there is no Albania without Eprius !
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In the map is also forggot that in Evros live at minimum 50.000 Albanians(35.000 autochtonus+15.000 immigrats) !
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Arvanites (Greek: Αρβανίτες, see also below about names) are a population group in Greece of Albanian origin who traditionally speak Arvanitika, a form of Tosk Albanian. They settled in Greece during the late Middle Ages and were the dominant population element of some regions in the south of Greece until the 19th century.[1]
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History

Arvanites in Greece originated from Albanian settlers who moved south at different times between the 11th and 16th centuries from areas in what is today southern Albania.[3][4] The reasons for this migration are not entirely clear and may be manifold. In many instances the Arvanites were invited by the Byzantine and Latin rulers of the time. They were employed to re-settle areas that had been largely depopulated through wars, epidemics and other reasons, and they were employed as soldiers. Some later movements are also believed to have been motivated to evade Islamization after the Ottoman conquest. The main waves of migration into southern Greece started around 1300, reached a peak some time during the 14th century, and ended around 1600.[5] Arvanites first reached Thessaly, then Attica and finally the Peloponnese.[6]
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Botsaris and Tzavelas, published a manifesto calling their fellow Albanians outside Greece to join in the creation of a common Albanian-Greek state.[11]

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They are reported to resent being called Albanians.[13]
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At some times, particularly under the nationalist Metaxas dictatorship of 1936 - 1940, Greek state institutions followed a policy of actively discouraging and repressing the use of Arvanitika.[15] In the decades following World War II and the Greek Civil War, many Arvanites came under pressure to abandon Arvanitika in favour of monolingualism in the national language, and especially the archaizing Katharevousa which remained the official variant of Greek until 1976. This trend was prevalent mostly during the Greek military junta (1967-1974).[16]
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Demographics

Regions with a strong traditional presence of Arvanites are found mainly in a compact area in southeastern Greece, namely across Attica (especially in Eastern Attica), southern Boeotia, the north-east of the Peloponnese, the south of the island of Euboea, the north of the island of Andros, and several islands of the Saronic Gulf including Salamis. In parts of this area they formed a solid majority until about 1900. Within Attica, parts of the capital Athens and its suburbs were Arvanitic until the late 19th century.[17]

There are also settlements in some other parts of the Peloponnese, and in Phthiotis.

Other groups of Arvanites live in the north of Greece in areas closer to Albania and the historical centers of contiguous Albanian populations (Banfi 1996). Some of them live in Epirus (Thesprotia, Preveza and Konitsa); in Macedonia (Florina); and in some locations further east in Thrace. There are no reliable figures about the number of Arvanites in Greece today and their exact number is unknown (no official data exist for ethnicity in Greece)[3]. The last official census figures available come from 1951. Since then, estimates of the numbers of Arvanites has ranged from 50,000 to 250,000,
* 1928 census: 18,773 citizens self-identifying as "Albanophone", i.e. Arvanitic-speaking.
* 1951 census: 22,736 "Albanophones".
* Furikis (1934): estimated 70,000 Arvanites in Attica alone.
* Trudgill/Tzavaras (1976/77): estimated 140,000 in Attica and Boeotia together.
* Sasse (1991): estimated 50,000 Arvanitic speakers in all of Greece.
* Ethnologue, 2000: 150,000 Arvanites, living in 300 villages.
* Federal Union of European Nationalities, 1991: 95,000 "Albanians of Greece" (MRG 1991: 189)
* According to some estimates: up to 250,000 (quoted in Schukalla 1993: 523) or even over a million (Albanian life No.2, 1994, quoted in Clogg 2002) people of ultimately Arvanitic descent.

[Peace Lover]

Names

The name Arvanites and its equivalents are today used both in Greek (Αρβανίτες, singular form Αρβανίτης, feminine Αρβανίτισσα) and in Arvanitic itself (Arbëreshë or Arbërorë). In Standard Albanian, the name is Arvanitë. Arvanites are thus distinguished from ethnic Albanians, who are called Shqiptarë in Standard Albanian, and Alvaní (Αλβανοί) in Greek. Arvanites have referred to their place of origin as Arvanitiá (today southern Albania and NW Greece). Sometimes this term has also been applied to the whole of Albania and/or Epirus.

The name Arvanites and its equivalents go back to an old ethnonym that was at one time used by all Albanians to refer to themselves. It goes back to a geographical term, first attested in Polybius in the form of a place-name Άρβων, and then again in Byzantine authors of the 11th and 12th centuries in the form Άρβανον or Άρβανα, referring to a place in what is today Albania.[22] "Arvanites" ("Arbanitai") originally referred to the inhabitants of that region, and then to all Albanian-speakers. The alternative name "Albanians" (Αλβανοί) may ultimately be etymologically related, but is of less clear origin (see Albania (toponym)). It was probably conflated with that of the "Arbanitai" at some stage due to phonological similarity. In later Byzantine usage, the terms "Arbanitai" and "Albanoi", with a range of variants, were used interchangeably, while sometimes the same groups were also called by the classicising names "Illyrians" or "Macedonians". In the 19th and early 20th century, Αλβανοί ("Albanians") was used predominantly in formal registers and Αρβανίτες ("Arvanites") in the more popular speech in Greek, but both were used indiscriminately for both Muslim and Christian Albanophones inside and outside Greece. In Albania itself, the self-designation "Arvanites" had been exchanged for the new name "Shqiptarë" since the 15th century, an innovation that was not shared by the Albanophone migrant communities in the south of Greece. In the course of the 20th century
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these speakers are reported to use the name Shqiptarë both for themselves and for Albanian nationals,[23
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The word Shqiptár is also used in a few villages of Thrace, where Arvanites migrated from the mountains of Pindos during the 19th century[25
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Arvanitic songs

Traditional Arvanite folk songs offer valuable information about social values and ideals of Arvanite societies.[34] Arvanitic songs share similarities with Arbëresh, Albanian

[Draco]

If there were two million Albanians in Greece, the situation in Greece would be worse than it ever was in Kosovo or FYROM. If you want to find out what the proud Arvanite Greeks themselves have to say, you can ask them and find out, but you won't like the answer. You are living in a sick fantasy.

[Peace Lover]

Originally Posted by Draco

If there were two million Albanians in Greece, the situation in Greece would be worse than it ever was in Kosovo or FYROM. If you want to find out what the proud Arvanite Greeks themselves have to say, you can ask them and find out, but you won't like the answer. You are living in a sick fantasy.

Sorry , for me is more easy to understand Doric or Attic(from Albanain) than Modern Greek !