Hello everyone! My name is Gianlorenzo and I was born in 1993 in Salento, the heel of the boot-shaped Italian peninsula. Like most of my compatriots who were born and raised in Italy by an Italian family, I'm a diglossic (or "dilalic") native speaker, perfectly mastering both Italian and the local Salentinian Romance variety (commonly called "Salentinian dialect").
My first approach to a foreign language was in elementary school, where I attended my very first English lesson. During my years in middle school I also had the opportunity to get a taste of French, a language that I can now only partially understand both when I read it or when I listen to someone speaking it (veeery clearly and slowly) but that I can't really write or speak.
My passion for languages and lingustics revealed itself in 2012 when I began my university course in Linguistic Mediation in Rome, where not only did I have the opportunity to improve my English but also to study two more languages: Spanish and Arabic. Between 2014 and 2016 I went multiple times to Morocco and Jordan where I deepen my knowledge of Modern Standard Arabic and the local Arabic dialects. While I was in Jordan i took a trip to Jerusalem, an experience that sparked my interest for Modern Hebrew, a language that I later decided to include in my master degree course curriculum in Eastern Languages and Civilizations at "L'Orientale" University of Naples.
About my main interest on Wiktionary
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What pushed me to become an active wiktioner, however, has nothing to do with Arabic or Hebrew. The main reason I'm here, in fact, is the passionate love that I have for Italiot Greek. The glossonym Italiot Greek refers to a number of endangered Greek varieties of ancient and/or medieval origins which are still spoken in southern Italy and that can be further subclassified in two main branches: the Calabrian Greek and the Apulian (or Salentinian) Greek (called respectively Greko and Griko by native speakers).
Although I wasn't born in a Griko-speaking family, I've been considering Griko as part of my cultural heritage since the very first moment I began to learn it, which happened quite late: despite my hometown being just few kilometres away from the Salentinian hellenophone area (the so-called Grecìa Salentina) it wasn't until the age of 22 that I started to develop a serious interest towards Griko.
After years of study on books and practice with native speakers not only did I reach today a good fluency in the language, but I also became an activist for its revitalization. Today, in fact, I collaborate with a group of young women and men from Calabria and Apulia to increase awareness on these endangered varieties among (especially young) locals and promote their lerning by younger generations.
I personally think that Wiktionary can be an extraordinarily useful tool for any endangered language. With my little contribution, I hope it'll demonstrate its utility to all those who desire to give to Greko and Griko the opportunity of still being spoken in the years to come.
