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Arvanites

Arvanites (Arvanitika: Αρbε̱ρεσ̈ε̰, romanized: Arbëreshë or Αρbε̰ρορε̱, romanized: Arbërorë; Greek: Αρβανίτες, romanized: Arvanítes) are a population group in Greece of Albanian origin. They are bilingual, traditionally speaking Arvanitika, an Albanian language variety, along with Greek. Their ancestors were first recorded as settlers who came to what is today southern Greece in the late 13th and early 14th century. They were the dominant population element in parts of the Peloponnese, Attica and Boeotia until the 19th century. They call themselves Arvanites (in Greek) and Arbëror (in their language). Arvanites today self-identify as Greeks as a result of a process of cultural assimilation,  and do not consider themselves Albanian. Arvanitika is in a state of attrition due to language shift towards Greek and large-scale internal migration to the cities and subsequent intermingling of the population during the 20th century.

Names
The name Arvanites and its equivalents are today used both in Greek (Αρβανίτες, singular form Αρβανίτης, feminine Αρβανίτισσα) and in Arvanitika itself (Arbëreshë or Arbërorë). In Standard Albanian (Arvanitë, Arbëreshë, Arbërorë) all three names are used. The name Arvanites and its variants are based upon the root arb/alb of the old ethnonym that was at one time used by all Albanians to refer to themselves. It refers to a geographical term, first attested in Polybius in the form of a place-name Arvon (Άρβων), and then again in Byzantine authors of the 11th and 12th centuries in the form Arvanon (Άρβανον) or Arvana (Άρβανα), referring to a place in what is today Albania. The name Arvanites ("Arbanitai") originally referred to the inhabitants of that region, and then to all Albanian-speakers. The alternative name Albanians 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. In the 19th and early 20th century, Alvani (Albanians) was used predominantly in formal registers and Arvanites (Αρβανίτες) 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, it became customary to use only Αλβανοί for the people of Albania, and only Αρβανίτες for the Greek-Arvanites, thus stressing the national separation between the two groups.

There is some uncertainty to what extent the term Arvanites also includes the small remaining Christian Albanophone population groups in Epirus and West Macedonia. Unlike the southern Arvanites, these speakers are reported to use the name Shqiptarë both for themselves and for Albanian nationals, although these communities also espouse a Greek national identity nowadays. The word Shqiptár is also used in a few villages of Thrace, where Arvanites migrated from the mountains of Pindus during the 19th century. However they also use the name Arvanitis speaking in Greek, while the Euromosaic (1996) reports notes that the designation Chams is today rejected by the group. The report by GHM (1995) subsumes the Epirote Albanophones under the term Arvanites, although it notes the different linguistic self-designation, on the other hand, applies the term Arvanites only to the populations of the compact Arvanitic settlement areas in southern Greece, in keeping with the self-identification of those groups. Linguistically, the Ethnologue identifies the present-day Albanian/Arvanitic dialects of Northwestern Greece (in Epirus and Lechovo) with those of the Chams, and therefore classifies them together with standard Tosk Albanian, as opposed to "Arvanitika Albanian proper" (i.e. southern Greek-Arvanitika). Nevertheless, it reports that in Greek the Epirus varieties are also often subsumed under "Arvanitika" in a wider sense. It puts the estimated number of Epirus Albanophones at 10,000. Arvanitika proper is said to include the outlying dialects spoken in Thrace.

History

Arvanites in Greece originate from Albanian settlers who moved south from areas in what is today southern Albania during the Middle Ages. These Albanian movements into Greece are recorded for the first time in the late 13th and early 14th century. The reasons for this migration are not entirely clear and may be manifold. In many instances the Albanians 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.

Groups of Albanians moved into Thessaly as early as 1268 as mercenaries of Michael Doukas. The Albanian tribes of Bua, Malakasioi and Mazaraki were described as "unruly" nomads living in the mountains of Thessaly in the early 14th century in Emperor John VI Kantakouzenos' 'History'. They numbered approximately 12,000. Kantakouzenos describes a pact they made to serve the Byzantine Emperor and pay tribute to him ca. 1332 in exchange for using the lowland areas of Thessaly in the summer months. Albanian groups were given military holdings Fanari in the 1330s and by the end of the 14th century and the Ottoman takeover of the region, they were an integral part of the military structures of Thessaly. Two of their military leaders known in Byzantine sources as Peter and John Sebastopoulos controlled the small towns of Pharsala and Domokos. Ottoman control began in the late 14th century with the capture of Larissa in 1392-93 and consolidated in the early 15th century. Nevertheless, Ottoman control was threatened throughout this era by groups of Greeks, Albanians and Vlachs who based themselves in the mountainous areas of Thessaly.

The main waves of migration into southern Greece started from 1350, reached a peak some time during the 14th century, and ended around 1600. Albanians first reached Thessaly, then Attica, and finally the Peloponnese. One of the larger groups of Albanian settlers, amounting to 10,000, settled the Peloponnese during the reign of Theodore I Palaiologos, first in Arcadia and subsequently in the more southern regions around Messenia, Argolis, Elis and Achaea. Around 1418, a second large group arrived, possibly fleeing Aetolia, Acarnania and Arta, where Albanian political power had been defeated. After the Ottoman incursion in 1417, other groups from Albania crossed western Greece and may have infiltrated into Achaea. The settled Albanians practiced a nomadic lifestyle based on pastoralism, and spread out into small villages.

In 1453, the Albanians rose in revolt against Thomas and Demetrios Palaiologos, due to the chronic insecurity and tribute payment to the Turks; they were also joined by the local Greeks, who by then had a common leader in Manuel Kantakouzenos. Following the Ottoman conquest, many Albanians fled to Italy and settled primarily in the Arbëreshë villages of Calabria and Sicily. On the other hand, in an effort to control the remaining Albanians, during the second half of the 15th century, the Ottomans adopted favorable tax policies towards them, likely in continuation of similar Byzantine practices. This policy had been discontinued by the early 16th century. Arvanites often took part in wars on the side of the Republic of Venice against the Ottomans, between 1463 and 1715.

During the Greek War of Independence, many Arvanites played an important role on fighting on the Greek side against the Ottomans, often as national Greek heroes. With the formation of modern nations and nation-states in the Balkans, Arvanites have come to be regarded as an integral part of the Greek nation. In 1899, leading representatives of the Arvanites in Greece, including descendants of the independence heroes, published a manifesto calling their fellow Albanians outside Greece to join in the creation of a common Albanian-Greek state.

After the Greek War of Independence, Arvanites contributed greatly to the fulfilment of irredentist concept of Megali Idea which aimed to see all Greek populations in the Ottoman Empire freed and came to a halt with the end of the Greco-Turkish war in 1922.

During the 20th century, after the creation of the Albanian nation-state, Arvanites in Greece have come to dissociate themselves much more strongly from the Albanians, stressing instead their national self-identification as Greeks. At the same time, it has been suggested that many Arvanites in earlier decades maintained an assimilatory stance, leading to a progressive loss of their traditional language and a shifting of the younger generation towards Greek. At some times, particularly under the nationalist 4th of August Regime under Ioannis Metaxas of 1936–1941, Greek state institutions followed a policy of actively discouraging and repressing the use of Arvanitika. 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 of 1967–1974.

Demographics
The 1460–1463 Ottoman taxation cadastre recorded the taxable population of the Peloponnese by households (ḫâne), bachelors, and widows. Specifically, there were 6,551 (58.37%) Greek and 4,672 (41.63%) Albanian households, 909 (66.25%) Greek and 463 (33.75%) Albanian bachelors, and 562 (72.05%) Greek and 218 (27.95%) Albanian widows. Greeks tended to live in large villages and cities, while Albanians in small villages. Specifically, out of the 580 inhabited villages, 407 are listed as Albanian, 169 as Greek, and four as mixed; however, Greek villages had on average 3.5 times more families than Albanian ones. Many of these settlements have since been abandoned, while others have been renamed. A Venetian source of the mid-15th century estimates that 30,000 Albanians lived in the Peloponnese at that time. Throughout the Ottoman–Venetian wars, many Albanians died or were captured in service to the Venetians; at Nafpaktos, Nafplio, Argos, Methoni, Koroni and Pylos. Furthermore, 8,000 Albanian stratioti, most of them along with their families, left the Peloponnese to continue their military service under the Republic of Venice or the Kingdom of Naples.

Historian Thomas Gordon who traveled in the Kingdom of Greece in the 1830s and earlier in the 1820s described its Albanian-speaking areas: "Attica, Argolis, Boeotia, Phocis, and the isles of Hydra, Spetses, Salamis, and Andros" as well as "several villages in Arcadia, Achaia, and Messenia". Historian George Finlay in the mid 19th century estimated the number of Albanians (Arvanites) in Greece to number about 200,000 out of approximately 1.1 million inhabitants in total based on the 1861 census. A demographic census by Alfred Philippson, based on fieldwork between 1887 and 1889, found that out of the approximately 730,000 inhabitants of the Peloponnese, and the three neighboring islands of Poros, Hydra and Spetses, Arvanites numbered 90,253, or 12.3% of the total population. In the mid-19th century, Johann Georg von Hahn had estimated their number throughout Greece to be between 173,000 and 200,000.

There are no official figures about the number of Arvanites in Greece today (no official data exist for ethnicity in Greece). The last official census figures available come from 1951. Since then, estimates of the numbers of Arvanites has ranged from 25,000 to 200,000. The following is a summary of the widely diverging estimates (Botsi 2003: 97):

Like the rest of the Greek population, Arvanites have been emigrating from their villages to the cities and especially to the capital Athens. This has contributed to the loss of the language in the younger generation.
 * 1928 census: 18,773 citizens self-identifying as "Albanophone" in all of Greece.
 * 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 Arvanitika 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)
 * Minority Rights Group International, 1997: 200,000 Arvanites of Greece.
 * Jan Markusse (2001): 25.000 Arvanites in Greece

Today, regions with a strong traditional presence of Arvanites are found mainly in a compact area in southeastern mainland 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, Hydra, Poros, Agistri and Spetses. 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. There are also settlements in some other parts of the Peloponnese, and in Phthiotis. Albanians also settled on the islands of Kea, Psara, Aegina, Kythnos, Skopelos, Ios and Samos. They would thereafter assimilate into the Greek population.

Language use and language perception

Arvanitika is a dialect of the Albanian language, sharing similar features primarily with other Tosk varieties. The name Arvanítika and its native equivalent Arbërisht are derived from the ethnonym Arvanites, which in turn comes from the toponym Arbëna (Greek: Άρβανα), which in the Middle Ages referred to a region in what is today Albania. Its native equivalents (Arbërorë, Arbëreshë and others) used to be the self-designation of Albanians in general.

While Arvanitika was commonly called Albanian in Greece until the 20th century, the wish of Arvanites to express their ethnic identification as Greeks has led to a stance of rejecting the identification of the language with Albanian as well. In recent times, Arvanites had only very imprecise notions about how related or unrelated their language was to Albanian. Since Arvanitika is almost exclusively a spoken language, Arvanites also have no practical affiliation with the Standard Albanian language used in Albania, as they do not use this form in writing or in media. The question of linguistic closeness or distance between Arvanitika and Albanian has come to the forefront especially since the early 1990s, when a large number of Albanian immigrants began to enter Greece and came into contact with local Arvanitic communities.

Since the 1980s, there have been some organized efforts to preserve the cultural and linguistic heritage of Arvanites. The largest organisation promoting Arvanitika is the "Arvanitic League of Greece" (Αρβανίτικος Σύλλογος Ελλάδος).

Arvanitika is currently considered in danger of extinction due to it having no legal status in Greece. The language is also not available at any level of the educational system in Greece. Social changes, government policies, and public indifference have also contributed to the decline of the language.

Intercommunity relations
Arvanites were regarded as ethnically distinct from the Greeks until the 19th century. Amongst the Arvanites, this difference was expressed in words such as shkljira for a Greek person and shkljerishtë for the Greek language that had until recent decades negative overtones. Tsitsipis. Language change and language death. 1981. pp. 100–101. "The term /evjeni̇́stika/ meaning "polite", used by the young speaker to refer to Greek, is offered as synonymous to /shkljiri̇́shtika/ one of the various morphological shapes of the Arvanitika word /shkljeri̇́shtë/ which refers to "the Greek language". Thus, Greek is equated with the more refined, soft, and polite talk. The concept of politeness is occasionally extended from the language to its speakers who are the representatives of the urban culture. In conversations in Kiriaki, I heard the word /shklji̇́ra/ (fem.) referring to a city women who exhibits polite and fancy behavior according to the local view. As I stated in the introduction to this dissertation, most of the occurrences of the term /shkljeri̇́shtë/ are not socially marked, and simply refer to the Greek language. But a few are so marked and these are the ones that reflect the speakers' attitudes. The term /shkljeri̇́shtë/ is ambiguous. This ambiguity offers a valuable clue to the gradual shift in attitudes. It points to the more prestigious Greek language and culture, and also has a derogatory sense. In my data only the first meaning of the socially marked senses of the word occurs."; pp. 101–102. "The second meaning is offered by Kazazis in his description of the Arvanitika community of Sofikó, in the Peloponnese (1976:48):... two older people from Sofiko told me independently that, to the not-so-remote past, it was those who spoke Greek with their fellow-Arvanites who were ridiculed. Even today, if an older inhabitant of Sofiko were to speak predominantly in Greek with his fellow villagers of the same age, he would be called i shkljerishtúarë, literally "Hellenized" but used here as a derogatory term denoting affectation. One of those two informants, a woman, said that, until about 1950, it was a shame for a girl in Sofiko to speak Greek with her peers, for that was considered as "putting on airs." In Spata, /shkljeri̇́shtë/ is used only to refer to "the Greek language" although speakers are aware of the other meanings of the word." These words in Arvanitika have their related counterpart in the pejorative term shqa used by Northern Albanians for Slavs. Ultimately these terms used amongst Albanian speakers originate from the Latin word sclavus which contained the traditional meaning of "the neighbouring foreigner".

With participation in the Greek War of Independence and the Greek Civil War, this has led to increasing assimilation amongst the Arvanites. The common Christian Orthodox religion they shared with the rest of the local population was one of the main reasons that led to their assimilation. Although sociological studies of Arvanite communities still used to note an identifiable sense of a special "ethnic" identity among Arvanites, the authors did not identify a sense of 'belonging to Albania or to the Albanian nation'. Many Arvanites find the designation "Albanians" offensive as they identify nationally and ethnically as Greeks and not Albanians. Jacques Lévy describes the Arvanites as "Albanian speakers who were integrated into Greek national identity as early as the first half of the nineteenth century and who in no way consider themselves as an ethnic minority".

Relations between Arvanites and other Albanian speaking populations have varied over time. During the onset of the Greek war of Independence, Arvanites fought alongside Greek revolutionaries and against Muslim Albanians. For example Arvanites participated in the 1821 Tripolitsa massacre of Muslim Albanians, while some Muslim Albanian speakers in the region of Bardounia remained after the war, converting to Orthodoxy. In recent times, Arvanites have expressed mixed opinions towards Albanian immigrants within Greece. Negative views are perceptions that Albanian immigrants are "communists" arriving from a "backward country", or an opportune people with questionable morals, behaviors and a disrespect for religion. Other Arvanites during the late 1980s and early 1990s expressed solidarity with Albanian immigrants, due to linguistic similarities and being politically leftist. Nitsiakos, Vassilis (2010). On the border: Transborder mobility, ethnic groups and boundaries along the Albanian-Greek frontier. LIT Verlag. pp. 23–24. "Linguistic community and cultural intimacy have played and still play a role in the search of a place of settlement and line of work on the part of migrants, but, also, in their reception and incorporation by the communities of local Arvanites. I have had the opportunity to substantiate this fact through many interviews with Albanian migrants, whose report of their good reception by the populations of Arvanite villages tends to be uniform, especially around the area of Thebes during the first months of their ventures in Greece. The fact that the elderly, at least, speak Arvanite and can communicate with Albanians is of crucial importance. As to the question of cultural intimacy, the matter is more complex and demands special research and study. It was brought up at the Korçe conference by S. Mangliveras, who, with his paper on A1banian immigrants and Arvanite hosts: Identities and relationships" (Magliveras 2004; also Derhemi 2003), demonstrated its complexity and great significance for the understanding of the very concepts of ethnic and cultural identity. It is very interesting, indeed, to examine the way such bonds are activated in the context of migration, but, also, the way the subjects themselves confer meaning to it. After all, the very definition of such a bond is problematic, in the sense that it is essentially ethnic, since it concerns the common ethnic origins of the two groups, while now their members belong to different national wholes, being Greek or Albanian. The formation of modern, "pure" national identities and the ideology of nationalism generate a difficulty in the classification of this bond, as is the case with any kind of identification, which, on top of any other social and psychological consequences. It may have, may produce an identity crisis as well. The apparently contradictory attitude of the Arvanites, which Mangliveras discerns, has to do with their difficulty of dealing with this phenomenon in public. Public manifestation of ethnic and linguistic affinity with Albanian immigrants is definitely a problem for the Arvanites, which is why they behave differently in public and in private. For them, the transition from pre-modern ethnic to modern national identity involved, historically, their identification with the Greek nation, a fact that causes bewilderment whenever one wants to talk to them about the activation of ethnic bonds. From this perspective, too, the particular issue is provocative." Relations too between Arvanites and other Orthodox Albanian speaking communities such as those of Greek Epirus are mixed, as they are distrusted regarding religious matters due to a past Albanian Muslim population living amongst them.

Amongst the wider Greek speaking population however, the Arvanites and their language Arvanitika were viewed in past times in a derogatory manner. These views contributed toward shaping negative attitudes held by Arvanites regarding their language and thereby increasing assimilation. In post-dictatorial Greece, the Arvanites have rehabilitated themselves within Greek society through for example the propagation of the Pelasgian theory regarding Arvanite origins. The theory created a counter discourse that aimed to give the Arvanites a positive image in Greek history by claiming the Arvanites as the ancestors and relations of contemporary Greeks and their culture. The Arvanite revival of the Pelasgian theory has also been recently borrowed by other Albanian speaking populations within and from Albania in Greece to counter the negative image of their communities.De Rapper, Gilles (2009). "Pelasgic Encounters in the Greek–Albanian Borderland: Border Dynamics and Reversion to Ancient Past in Southern Albania." Anthropological Journal of European Cultures. 18. (1): 60–61. "In 2002, another important book was translated from Greek: Aristides Kollias' Arvanites and the Origin of Greeks, first published in Athens in 1983 and re-edited several times since then (Kollias 1983; Kolia 2002). In this book, which is considered a cornerstone of the rehabilitation of Arvanites in post- dictatorial Greece, the author presents the Albanian speaking population of Greece, known as Arvanites, as the most authentic Greeks because their language is closer to ancient Pelasgic, who were the first inhabitants of Greece. According to him, ancient Greek was formed on the basis of Pelasgic, so that man Greek words have an Albanian etymology. In the Greek context, the book initiated a 'counterdiscourse' (Gefou-Madianou 1999: 122) aiming at giving Arvanitic communities of southern Greece a positive role in Greek history. This was achieved by using nineteenth-century ideas on Pelasgians and by melting together Greeks and Albanians in one historical genealogy (Baltsiotis and Embirikos 2007: 130–431, 445). In the Albanian context of the 1990s and 2000s, the book is read as proving the anteriority of Albanians not only in Albania but also in Greece; it serves mainly the rehabilitation of Albanians as an antique and autochthonous population in the Balkans. These ideas legitimise the presence of Albanians in Greece and give them a decisive role in the development of ancient Greek civilisation and, later on, the creation of the modern Greek state, in contrast to the general negative image of Albanians in contemporary Greek society. They also reverse the unequal relation between the migrants and the host country, making the former the heirs of an autochthonous and civilised population from whom the latter owes everything that makes their superiority in the present day." However, this theory has been rejected by modern scholars and it is seen as a myth.

In the 1990s, the Albanian president Sali Berisha raised a question about an Albanian minority in Greece, but the Arvanite cultural associations reacted angrily to his statement.

Fara
Fara (φάρα, means "seed", "descendants" in Albanian, from Proto-Albanian *pʰarā ) is a descent model, similar to the Albanian tribal system of fis. Arvanites were organised in phares (φάρες) mostly during the reign of the Ottoman Empire. The apical ancestor was a warlord and the phara was named after him. In an Arvanitic village, each phara was responsible to keep genealogical records (see also registry offices), that are preserved until today as historical documents in local libraries. Usually, there were more than one phares in an Arvanitic village and sometimes they were organised in phratries that had conflicts of interest. Those phratries didn't last long, because each leader of a phara desired to be the leader of the phratry and would not be led by another.

Role of women
Women held a relatively strong position in traditional Arvanitic society. Women had a say in public issues concerning their phara, and also often bore arms. Widows could inherit the status and privileges of their husbands and thus acquire leading roles within a fara, as did, for instance, Laskarina Bouboulina.

Arvanitic songs
Traditional Arvanite folk songs offer valuable information about social values and ideals of Arvanitic societies.

Dress
The traditional clothing of Arvanites included distinctive attire that sometimes identified them in past times as Arvanites from other neighbouring populations. Arvanite males on the Greek mainland wore the fustanella, a pleated like skirt garment or kilt, while those who lived on some Aegean islands wore baggy breeches of the seafaring Greeks.

Arvanite women were known for wearing a chemise shirt that was heavily embroidered. They also wore a heavily embroidered foundi or gown like garment that was heavily embroidered in silk and on the mainland the sigouni, a woolen thick white coat. On the Aegean islands, Arvanite women wore silk gowns with Turkish influences. Terms for Arvanite female clothing were in Arvanitika rather than in Greek.

Greek War of Independence

 * Laskarina Bouboulina, female member of Filiki Etaireia
 * Georgios Kountouriotis, from Hydra, admiral (and briefly Prime Minister)
 * Ioannis Orlandos
 * Odysseas Androutsos
 * Lazaros Kountouriotis
 * Andreas Miaoulis
 * Dimitris Plapoutas
 * Hatzigiannis Mexis

Presidents of Greece

 * Pavlos Kountouriotis, admiral

Prime Ministers of Greece

 * Antonios Kriezis (also served in the Greek navy during the Revolution)
 * Alexandros Diomidis

Politicians

 * Theodoros Pangalos, former minister of foreign affairs and deputy prime minister

Clergymen

 * Archbishop Ieronymos II of Athens, incumbent Archbishop of Athens.

Military

 * Theodoros Pangalos, general and briefly military dictator.
 * Alexandros Kontoulis
 * Dimitrios Kriezis

Literature

 * Panayotis Koupitoris
 * Anastas Kullurioti, Albanian nationalist author

Folklore

 * Aristeidis Kollias
 * Vangelis Liapis, folklorist and Albanolog

Science

 * Tasos Neroutsos, physician and scholar

Artists

 * Eleni Boukoura-Altamoura, painter

Architecture

 * Periklis Papapetrou, architect and politician

title: Arvanites


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Silent Hunter II

Silent Hunter II is a 2001 World War II U-boat combat simulation published by Ubi Soft for PCs with Windows 95/98/ME.

Gameplay
Silent Hunter II gives the player the command of German U-boats during the Battle of the Atlantic in World War II. The game offers single-player missions and multiplayer gameplay. The single-missions include sinking HMS Laurentic and HMS Patroclus as GS U-99 (1940), avoiding being sunk by HMS Fortune (H70) as GS U-44 (1939), sinking HMS Avenger (D14) as GS U-155 (1941), Operation Drumbeat against American shipping, retrieving the war diary from the GERMAN BATTLESHIP Bismarck, the action in Tarrafal Bay, saving the German supply ship Python from HMS Dorsetshire (40) and attacking a task force as GS U-2511 as the last act of the Battle of the Atlantic. The campaign, which has the player being sent notes from Admiral Dönitz, spans 21 missions from the start of the war in 1939 to the end of the war in 1945, and includes attacking fleeing Polish navy destroyers during the invasion of Poland, hunting British shipping off the English coast, penetration into Scapa Flow, assisting in the invasion of Norway, Blitzkrieg and Dunkirk evacuation ("Dunkirk little ship" Sundowner appears in this mission), then battling in the North Atlantic, before passing through the Strait of Gibraltar to La Spezia, severing the British lifeline to Malta, Operation Drumbeat, attacking in the Caribbean, attacking Arctic convoys to the Allies ultimately gaining the upper hand in the Mid-Atlantic gap, repelling the D-Day invasion and finally escaping to Buenos Aires, Argentina at the end of the war, whereupon Dönitz sends a final message.

German war veteran and U-boat commander Erich Topp was one of the game's technical advisers, and a series of interviews with him appears in the game.

Silent Hunter II was developed with multi-player support as a notable feature. Players were able to connect with other players, and engage in sub vs. sub combat. Furthermore, connectivity to the separate game Destroyer Command (also released by Ubisoft) was available, which enabled sub and surface ship combat.

History
Silent Hunter II was first announced in 1999, and originally developed by Aeon Electronic Entertainment, the developers of Silent Hunter, but they had to leave the project unfinished, and Ultimation Inc. finished it. After considerable delays it was released in November 2001 after three years of work.

After release, instability with the multiplayer feature was found to be commonplace, yet Ubisoft never resolved this issue by releasing another official patch. While in 2002 Ubisoft had ended the official support, they authorized and enabled the game's community at Subsim.com to fix the game themselves by giving them the source code. The fan community raised over $7000 for an unofficial patch development project called Projekt Messerwetzer which ultimately fixed the issues. Since then, unofficial expansion packs like the World War II Pacific war theatre-based total conversation "Pacific Aces" were released by community.

In June 2009, after many years of commercial non-availability, the game was re-released on the digital distributor gog.com.

Reception
Silent Hunter II received "average" reviews according to video game review aggregator Metacritic. A Subsim review rated Silent Hunter II 80/100 in 2005 and named it "the new WWII subsim benchmark".

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

title: Silent Hunter II


text:
Talk:Democratic socialism

Question:
Uh.. Simple question: Why is the article about Democratic Socialism not protected? Obviously this would be the target of vandalism. Like seriously. So, how come an article about ROBLOX is extra-protected, but not the one about Democratic Socialism? Not even edit moderation? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 72.90.245.66 (talk • contribs) 19:33, March 17, 2021 (UTC)

Europe section
The first paragraph of the Europe section seems to conflate democratic socialism with social democracy, for the most part, only talking about social democratic parties and countries that follow the Nordic model. Should this paragraph be moved to the social democracy article or perhaps removed in its entirety assuming that the aforementioned article already states this information? digiulio8 (talk) 22:49, 23 April 2021 (UTC)

 * The entire article is largely nonsense. It's an attempt to cobble together a grandiose history for a new-ish political grouping that is, in terms of what its (mostly American) adherents believe, indistinguishable from social democracy. The reality is that the term 'Democratic socialism' really emerged in the early 90s as a way to differentiate existing Western social-democratic parties from the old Eastern bloc communist parties. It then evolved to describe the "really social-democratic" groups in opposition to the old parties that had slid to the political center. This page really should be dedicated to illustrating that semantic shift and nothing else. 82.12.128.242 (talk) 11:25, 21 March 2023 (UTC)
 * It seems a couple people decided to dramatically change the articles on social democracy and democratic socialism with cherry picked sources to portray them as the same (despite adherents to each regularly distinguishing the two). They used to be pretty accurate articles a couple years ago, so perhaps it would be beneficial to look at previous versions and revive that essence, with additional sources. There could remain parts pointing out the conflation in recent years. Bryce Springfield (talk) 17:42, 25 June 2023 (UTC)

Trotskyism?
I wouldn't have thought trotskyism would fall into this category, especially as trotsky was anti-Menshevik Sporadicmonk03 (talk) 17:37, 15 February 2024 (UTC)

 * Yes, that is weird. Encyclopédisme (talk) 11:39, 19 February 2024 (UTC)

Differentiation between dem socialism and social democracy
more emphasis and clarity needed Sporadicmonk03 (talk) 17:37, 15 February 2024 (UTC)

 * I, as someone who lived long enough to experience the pre-90s social democratic parties of (continental) Europe, can tell you that there is none. To me there were always two courants, reformist socialism, i.e social democracy, or whatever else you want to call that, it exists, and it worked, in Sweden, in Danemark, in Norway, for a time in Venezuela, in Bolivia, in France etc. as opposed to revolutionary socialism i.e communism, supported by the communist and Trotskyist parties of Europe. I don't get the point of over-emphasizing a difference between reformist socialist courants. Encyclopédisme (talk) 11:44, 19 February 2024 (UTC)
 * In addition you may look at the FAQ on the top of this page, cheers. Encyclopédisme (talk) 11:51, 19 February 2024 (UTC)
 * Although the term has been used by different people at different times - for example, I believe George Orwell, from one point onwards, considered himself as such - however this does not mean that we cannot make distinctions, especially when Social Democracy is concerned. First, Social Democracy as a movement has changed over its existence. To put it clearly, despite, you wouldn't call any modern Social Democratic parties 'Marxist.' Yet, in the beginning they certainly were. The change was gradual, and although the 1959 Godesberg Program of the German SDP is commonly used as a turning point, post-war Social Democratic parties clearly moved away from their Marxist roots.
 * Most parties and groups that today refer to themselves as Democratic Socialist, have followed a different root, and of course have a different ideology than Social Democratic parties. Unlike Social Democratic parties, most of these groups came from within Marxist-Leninism Communism. The Neo-Communist tradition, also popularly known as Euro-communism, rejected the authoritarianism and one-party state of Soviet Communism. However, this does not mean that they became Social Democrats. They continue to consider the Free Market, capitalism, whatever you want to call it, incompatible with a democratic society, and effectively have chosen to 'work within' the constraints of liberal-democratic states in order to pave the way for their own 'socialism.' Social Democratic parties, although during their Marxist era made similar rationalizations, today don't operate, or think, like this.
 * Since the fall of the Soviet Union and its satellites across eastern Europe names that included terms like communism became less popular, and along with the rise of other movements and parties (Green parties for example) Eurocommunist parties and groups have adopted the tern Democratic Socialist to express their political/ideological orientation. Although the term can be interpreted quite loosely to incorporate any number of groups, including former Eurocommunist ones, it's important to note that today the main strain comes from this tradition, especially in Europe. And there is little, if any, commonality with Social Democratic parties or their historical evolution. Alector87 (talk) 02:52, 3 May 2024 (UTC)
 * This is only true for some social democratic parties. It’s a mess. The 2000s are over, the left-wing of those parties is having a slight resurgence, the far-right is getting stronger and stronger as we speak. You forgot, in all of this, the new parties, you know, the "true left-wing" the "true social-démocrats" the "true reformists", those who were opposed to both the communists (with whole they still occasionally made alliances) and the "social-democrats" converted to the neo-liberal doxa. PG, now organizing member of La France Insoumise (movement, pretty successful for now, built on the ideas of Chantal Mouffe), Die Linke, Podemos (another one based on Chantal Mouffe), SYRIZA (Chantal Mouffe, again, at the origins of it all), and of course the parallel movements around Bernie Sanders and Jeremy Corbyn in UK and US. There is Kevin Kühnert, general secretary of the SPD, too, and Olivier Faure leading the Socialist Party. Don’t forget the new one, Sumar. Reformist socialism isn’t about any revolution aside from the "citizen revolution", and the reason the distinction isn’t accoepted by most of the real social-democrats, moderate communists, democratic socialists, and whatever you call them based on their angle of attack, is because it is being repeated exclusively by capitalists, and by far-leftists… As well as by some north-Americans feeling a need to "rectify" something which has never been in the need of rectification. Don’t forget those Latin Americans either. All in all, social-democracy will never become fully not-socialist (especially since Fabianists, Jaurressian socialists, post-Marxists, heterodox marxists and co. are not going to cease to exist suddenly). Encyclopédisme (talk) 03:40, 3 May 2024 (UTC)
 * this is quite silly. Social democracy and democratic socialism are two different philosophies and forms of governance. They are historically related, and have been closer in the past, but they are different things. You may define all reformist socialism as social-democracy, including the left-wings of social-democratic parties, and I would agree. but social democracy is not socialism, and makes no claim to overcome capitalism.
 * But the theory of democratic socialism, often proposed by Marxists on non-reformist grounds, is different to that. Even if we take Eurocommunism (what Poulantzas would call the "democratic road"), we are not talking about a reformist project. I wouldnt say trotskyists are necessarily democratic, but trots are surely a part of this democratic socialist tradition too (hence why trot parties often describe themselves as such). essentially, revolutionary socialists who oppose Marxism-Leninism but are not anarchists surely come under this umbrella. The New Left most obviously, but also autonomists, humanist marxists, the Praxis school, Hegelian marxists, and syndicalists. E.P Thompson, for example, (and potentially those around him like Hobsbawm who called for a "realistic" Marxism, or Hall who called for a post-colonial and post-socialist Marxism) specifically defends a "democratic communism", being a member of the CP who left after 1956 but maintained a communist perspective. A third-way, if you will, between social-democracy and soviet socialism. Sporadicmonk03 (talk) 20:45, 13 May 2024 (UTC)
 * The term "democratic socialism" is indeed vague. And it is also used by gradualists, by reformist socialists. I define social-democracy as part of reformist socialism. The problem with this is that the line between a non-socialist social-democrat and a socialist social-democrat is blurry, very blurry. Most reformist socialists don’t have expropriations and co. in the party program… Reformist socialism, social-democracy, which never excludes an eventual turn towards socialism, hence is not fundamentally capitalist while being strongly linked to socialism, often represented a "third way" between soviet communism (and associated communist groups) and US capitalism. On euro-communism, in practice many "euro-communists" of the post-Soviet years were only European, not communist nor socialist. Social-democracy, or part of it, as you write yourself, the historically important reformist socialist wing (Jauressians, Fabianists, etc. most left-wing governments of Europe in the past were reformist. Don’t forget that most of the Third Wayers simply didn’t follow up on their program, while campaigning for radical policies. And also, the emerging Populist left has, as I mentioned above, a habit of excluding new courants, "social traitors", from the left-wing, socialism, or social-democracy. La France Insoumise, and the Socialist Party now too, have this habit, with the first dubbing François Hollande a "social-traitor", social-liberal and right-winger, and the latter now explicitly stating it’s eco-socialist, anti-liberal and social-democratic goals. Die Linke often claims the true social-democracy of Willy Brandt, etc.) being social-democratic, is a part of socialism (as a wide movement and ideology).
 * An important problem with this is that often reformist socialists use the term democratic socialism to mean reformist socialism, with no connection to the Trotskyist meaning of the term. Trotskyist "democratic socialism" and reformist "democratic socialism", often used synonymously to "social-democracy", aren't the same ideology. Encyclopédisme (talk) 06:50, 14 May 2024 (UTC)
 * I guess this is the heart of the matter. I'm not sure socialist social-democracy / reformist socialism really exists. social-democracy is ultimately not committed, and hasn't historically, created socialist societies. if democratic socialism refers to a form of socialism between social-democracy and marxism-leninism, then perhaps this is the room for "socialist" social democracy, reformist non-reformism, etc. as for left populism, I see it as a strategy for radical social democracy, but not truly democratic socialism. Sporadicmonk03 (talk) 16:20, 14 May 2024 (UTC)
 * The fundamental problem with this is that once a politician is committed to making "true" social-democratic (often populist) policies, the way is open for developing a socialist society. This is why the São Paulo Forum gets along, mostly. You can of course make it quick, like Allende, or Chavez, or you could make it slow, like most European reformist governments of the past. This is more about the efficiency of reformism (which exists. The idea is a gradual move towards a mixed economy, first, as a compromise, and eventually a functioning non-capitalist [or non-neoliberal at the very minimum] economy) in all its forms, than about the actual question at hand: Is social-democracy socialist, or (if not) capitalist?
 * There are multiple problems with this question.
 * First, there are two or three ways to do "social-democracy": there is the historical right-wing of socdem ("second left" in France), economically vaguely liberal; the traditional (refsoc) wing, glorifying historical leaders, often populist, and currently disappointed with the traditional parties, splitting off into multiple new "populist left" parties, critical of American foreign policy, more or less aligned with the historical heritage of the traditional parties, and supportive of the Latin-American left, in all its forms; and there are the Third Wayers, often believing the Keynesian policies of social-democracy aren’t workable, or just incapable of following up on promises made in the party program.
 * Second, as mentioned before, socdems are never really capitalist or socialist, as the idea of a gradual development towards socialism was not historically tested, the question of wether this is possible remains open. Because of this, reformists are free to idealistically believe in this. And the legitimately recognized reformist socialists who are also simultaneously socdems are the radical ones, not the Third Way types, those are definitely not-socialist. You could surely argue that, following Popper’s falsification principle, that reformist socialism is pseudo-scientific (on the same grounds Popper thought Marxism was pseudo-scientific), but that doesn’t change the ideological link to "real" (whatever that might be) Marxism. Encyclopédisme (talk) 18:26, 14 May 2024 (UTC)

title: Talk:Democratic socialism


text:
Extinct language

An extinct language is a language with no living descendants that no longer has any first-language or second-language speakers. In contrast, a dead language is a language that no longer has any first-language speakers, but does have second-language speakers or is used fluently in written form, such as Latin. A dormant language is a dead language that still serves as a symbol of ethnic identity to an ethnic group; these languages are often undergoing a process of revitalisation. Languages that have first-language speakers are known as modern or living languages to contrast them with dead languages, especially in educational contexts.

In the modern period, languages have typically become extinct as a result of the process of cultural assimilation leading to language shift, and the gradual abandonment of a native language in favor of a foreign lingua franca, largely those of European countries.

As of the 2000s, a total of roughly 7,000 natively spoken languages existed worldwide. Most of these are minor languages in danger of extinction; one estimate published in 2004 expected that some 90% of the currently spoken languages will have become extinct by 2050.

Language death
Normally the transition from a spoken to an extinct language occurs when a language undergoes language death by being directly replaced by a different one. For example, many Native American languages were replaced by English, French, Portuguese, Spanish, or Dutch as a result of European colonization of the Americas.

In contrast to an extinct language, which no longer has any speakers, or any written use, a historical language may remain in use as a literary or liturgical language long after it ceases to be spoken natively. Such languages are sometimes also referred to as "dead languages", but more typically as classical languages. The most prominent Western example of such a language is Latin, and comparable cases are found throughout world history due to the universal tendency to retain a historical stage of a language as the liturgical language.

In a view that prioritizes written representation over natural language acquisition and evolution, historical languages with living descendants that have undergone significant language change may be considered "extinct", especially in cases where they did not leave a corpus of literature or liturgy that remained in widespread use (see corpus language), as is the case with Old English or Old High German relative to their contemporary descendants, English and German.

Some degree of misunderstanding can result from designating languages such as Old English and Old High German as extinct, or Latin dead, while ignoring their evolution as a language or as many languages. This is expressed in the apparent paradox "Latin is a dead language, but Latin never died." A language such as Etruscan, for example, can be said to be both extinct and dead: inscriptions are ill understood even by the most knowledgeable scholars, and the language ceased to be used in any form long ago, so that there have been no speakers, native or non-native, for many centuries. In contrast, Old English, Old High German and Latin never ceased evolving as living languages, thus they did not become extinct as Etruscan did. Through time Latin underwent both common and divergent changes in phonology, morphology, syntax, and lexicon, and continues today as the native language of hundreds of millions of people, renamed as different Romance languages and dialects (French, Italian, Spanish, Corsican, Asturian, Ladin, etc.). Similarly, Old English and Old High German never died, but developed into various forms of modern English and German, as well as other related tongues still spoken (e.g. Scots from Old English and Yiddish from Old High German). With regard to the written language, skills in reading or writing Etruscan are all but non-existent, but trained people can understand and write Old English, Old High German, and Latin. Latin differs from the Germanic counterparts in that an approximation of its ancient form is still employed to some extent liturgically. This last observation illustrates that for Latin, Old English, or Old High German to be described accurately as dead or extinct, the language in question must be conceptualized as frozen in time at a particular state of its history. This is accomplished by periodizing English and German as Old; for Latin, an apt clarifying adjective is Classical, which also normally includes designation of high or formal register. Minor languages are endangered mostly due to economic and cultural globalization, cultural assimilation, and development. With increasing economic integration on national and regional scales, people find it easier to communicate and conduct business in the dominant lingua francas of world commerce: English, Mandarin Chinese, Spanish, and French.

In their study of contact-induced language change, American linguists Sarah Grey Thomason and Terrence Kaufman (1991) stated that in situations of cultural pressure (where populations are forced to speak a dominant language), three linguistic outcomes may occur: first – and most commonly – a subordinate population may shift abruptly to the dominant language, leaving the native language to a sudden linguistic death. Second, the more gradual process of language death may occur over several generations. The third and most rare outcome is for the pressured group to maintain as much of its native language as possible, while borrowing elements of the dominant language's grammar (replacing all, or portions of, the grammar of the original language). A now disappeared language may leave a substantial trace as a substrate in the language that replaces it. There have, however, also been cases where the language of higher prestige did not displace the native language but left a superstrate influence. The French language for example shows evidence both of a Celtic substrate and a Frankish superstrate.

Institutions such as the education system, as well as (often global) forms of media such as the Internet, television, and print media play a significant role in the process of language loss. For example, when people migrate to a new country, their children attend school in the country, and the schools are likely to teach them in the majority language of the country rather than their parents' native language.

Language death can also be the explicit goal of government policy. For example, part of the "kill the Indian, save the man" policy of American Indian boarding schools and other measures was to prevent Native Americans from transmitting their native language to the next generation and to punish children who spoke the language of their culture of origin. The French vergonha policy likewise had the aim of eradicating minority languages.

Language revival
Language revival is the attempt to re-introduce an extinct language in everyday use by a new generation of native speakers. The optimistic neologism "sleeping beauty languages" has been used to express such a hope, though scholars usually refer to such languages as dormant.

In practice, this has only happened on a large scale successfully once: the revival of the Hebrew language. Hebrew had survived for millennia since the Babylonian exile as a liturgical language, but not as a vernacular language. The revival of Hebrew has been largely successful due to extraordinarily favourable conditions, notably the creation of a nation state (modern Israel in 1948) in which it became the official language, as well as Eliezer Ben-Yehuda's extreme dedication to the revival of the language, by creating new words for the modern terms Hebrew lacked.

Revival attempts for minor extinct languages with no status as a liturgical language typically have more modest results. The Cornish language revival has proven at least partially successful: after a century of effort there are 3,500 claimed native speakers, enough for UNESCO to change its classification from "extinct" to "critically endangered". A Livonian language revival movement to promote the use of the Livonian language has managed to train a few hundred people to have some knowledge of it.

Recently extinct languages
This is a list of languages reported as having become extinct since 2010. For a more complete list, see Lists of extinct languages.

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title: Extinct language