Arbëresh of Greece

Arvanites (Greek: Αρβανίτες, Arvanitika: Arbëreshë or Αρbερεσε) are a population group in Greece who traditionally speak Arvanitika, a dialect of the Albanian language. They are beleived to have lived in Greece all the time, representing the descendent of the so called "Ancient Greeks" and were the dominant population element of most celebrated historicals regions of the Peloponnese and Attica until the 19th century. Most of Arvanites today self-identify as Greeks as the result of a process of assimilation applied from Greek Church and Government, and do not consider themselves to belong to Albania or the Albanian nation. They call themselves Arvanites (in Greek) and Arbëror (in their language); the communities in northern Greece also use the term Shqiptar (the same used by Albanians of Albania), a term somehow disliked by other Arvanites of Christian religion, who also resent being called Albanians. 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.

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 (Babiniotis 1998). Its native equivalents (Arbërorë, Arbëreshë and others) formerly were the self-designation of Albanians in general. In the past Arvanitika had sometimes been described as "Graeco-Albanian".