[2][3] Other Tosk Albanian varieties from the Late Middle Ages referred to as Arvanitika (endonym: arbërisht) are spoken in Greece by the Arvanites.

E Mbësuame e Krështerë (1592) by Luca Matranga from Piana degli Albanesi is the earliest known Old Tosk text, a translation of a catechism book from Latin.

While Italian law protects the language and culture of the Albanian people in Italy,[5] the language taught at school and university is Standard Albanian, constituting an issue for the Arbëresh communities' preservation of their native idiom, wich has remained separated from the main Albanian-speaking compact area for around 500 years.

[4][6][7] Between the 11th and 14th centuries, Albanian-speaking mercenaries from the areas of medieval Albania, Epirus and Morea now Peloponesse, were often recruited by the Franks, Aragonese, Italians and Byzantines.

Led by Demetrio Reres and his two sons, these men and their families were settled in twelve villages in the Catanzaro area of Calabria.

After victories in two battles, a second contingent of Albanians was rewarded with land east of Taranto, in Apulia, where they founded 15 villages.

For instance, between 1500 and 1534, Albanians from central Greece were employed as mercenaries by Venice, to evacuate its colonies in the Peloponnese, as the Turks invaded.

Despite an Arbëreshë cultural and artistic revival in the 19th century, emigration from southern Italy significantly reduced the population.

[5] The exact Arbëresh speech population is uncertain, as the Italian national census does not collect data on minority language speakers.

Arbëresh varieties are spoken in Southern Italy in the regions of Abruzzi, Basilicata, Calabria, Campania, Molise, Apulia and Sicily.

Many scholars have produced language learning materials for communities, including those by Giuseppe Schirò Di Maggio, Gaetano Gerbino, Matteo Mandalà, Zef Chiaramonte.

[citation needed] In the absence of rigorous linguistic intelligibility tests, the claim cannot be made whether one is a dialect or a separate variant of the same language group.

[10][7][11][12] The varieties of Arbëresh largely correspond with the regions where they are spoken, while some settlements have distinctive features that result in greater or lesser degrees of mutual intelligibility.

In Standard Albanian these have mostly become the palatal stops gj and q, e.g. glet not gjet ('s/he looks like ... '), klumësht not qumësht ('milk'), and klisha instead of kisha ('church').

This feature is very strong that it is carried over into the Italian speech of inhabitants of Piana degli Albanesi and Santa Cristina Gela in words such as grazie, frigorifero, gallera, magro, gamba etc.

Arbëresh has retained an archaic system[citation needed] of final devoicing of consonants in contrast with Standard Albanian.

The present continuous or gerund differs from Standard Albanian; Arbëresh uses the form "jam'e bënj" instead of "po bej" (I am doing).

The adoption of words of ancient Greek origin or of the Koine comes above all from their use in Byzantine religious practices, when the corresponding use in Albanian declined, the "courtly" one of the church was used.

Examples: Some Arbëresh words appear to be of Albanian Arvanitika which has influenced the current Greek areas since the Middle Ages.

Examples: In the past tense this conjugates as follows: The Arbëresh diminutive and augmentative system is calqued from Sicilian and takes the form of /-ats(-ɛ)/ = Sic.

There are many elements of Arberesh grammar that differ considerably from Albanian, for example: The name Arbërishte is derived from the ethnonym "Albanoi", which in turn comes from the toponym "Arbëria" (Greek: Άρβανα), which in the Middle Ages referred to a region in what is today Albania (Babiniotis 1998).

According to the writer Arshi Pipa, the term Gegë was initially used for confessional denotation, being used in pre-Ottoman Albania by its Orthodox population when referring to their Catholic neighbors.

Examples of Italian names and their Arbëresh equivalents: The language is not usually written outside of the church and a few highly educated families, but officials are now using the standard Albanian alphabet, which is used on street signs in villages as well as being taught in schools.