So i was watching Greek & Italian related things on YT at some point and I came across this beautiful song https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=P93fVOJ73Vo which i initially thought would be in (Latin) Italian sung by a Greek band but there was something different about it and it turns out it's in Salentino so I was curious about how their actual pronunciation sounded like because the Hellenic one sounded pretty natural to it and it turns out https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=1o10kWL7Tec easily the closest thing to Hellenic! Unsurprisingly given the region :D this contributed to the rabbit hole i've fallen into about all the native Mediterranean cultures & languages of ethni without a country of their own, not to mention their relationship to Hellas/Hellenic, and theres a whole new world of beautiful cultures & the consequent re-alignment of your knowledge of things that happens (the number of things I thought were Spanish but are Catalan frex, is sobering) Anyway for the relation to Hellas aspect, Catalá, Euskara, Occitan, Salentino etc. similarities to Hellenic are just fascinating! What are your thoughts on this?
Okay, there are misconceptions here.
Full disclaimer, because I know how annoying it can be to us Greeks when foreign people make assumptions about us and our culture and they are often wrong, I am not an expert at any of the matters about to be discussed here and I might as well be wrong, but I am trying to answer as objectively as possible and with as much legit information I could gather.
So, first things first, the song is indeed very beautiful. The song is in Salentino, which is an Italian dialect. Salentino is clearly Latin / Italic but it does have Greek influence, mostly due to its proximity to the Griko and Grecanico dialects, the Greek dialects of South Italy. According to Wikipedia:
I tried to read the lyrics of the song. What I found is that it is quite distinct from Standard Italian but it is unmistakeably totally Latin and not Hellenic in its root. The only Greek influence I was most likely correct to trace was that the "ce me" (= and to me) is influenced by the Greek "ke me / mou" and not the Latin "et me / mihi". I almost mistook "core meu" for a Greek reference ("kardiá mou"), until I remembered it's "cor meum" in Latin lol (I learned some Latin in Duolingo!)
Now, as for the pronunciation. Well, in the first video the song is performed by a Greek band and it sounding suitable in your ears could have been due to your familiarity with Greek pronunciation. However, you were not wrong in your observation that even when sang by an actual (local?) Italian as in the second video, it also sounded totally a familiar accent to Greek.
It is the Greek influence over Salentino (by the way I was able to also hear the Spanish influence a lot), as also confirmed by Wikipedia that Greek had particular impact on the phonology, but here's the thing: even Standard Italian does not have a huge difference from Greek pronunciation. We pronounce the vowels identically and many consonants pretty similarly. The differences are most notable in the rhythm and intonation as well as some distinct consonants each language has, but overall an Italian and a Greek pronunciation are vastly more similar than with a Germanic or a Slavic pronunciation.
And because the speech intonation and rhythm are diminished in a melody, these differences are weakened in songs. Listen to the following song for example. It's a song I love and it's Standard Italian. Don't you think you would pull it off perfectly with your Greek accent?
Just so I could make sure I was not pulling things out of my ass, I also checked a reddit thread with a question about how Greeks sound when speaking Italian. Most Italians answering confirmed that they can tell it's a foreigner speaking but with a very light accent, coming off as speaking Italian pretty well. (Okay obviously some other Italians may have a different opinion, I could only judge based on a few reddit answers.)
Going back to Salentino, the lyrics of the song were too few for me to determine how much Greek influence may or may not be there but my first impression is of very obviously Vulgar Latin / Italian with some Greek (and maybe also Spanish) flair. Perhaps the exact reverse of Griko and Grecanico, which are very obviously Greek with Italian influence.
Then you make some talk that is a bit too black and white and because I am neither knowledgeable enough nor a person from these regions, I feel like an opinion would matter only if coming from people of these regions directly or maybe a neutral scholar or something.
Catalá is a Latin / Romance language that has evolved completely independently from Spanish. It is and sounds Latin. I do not trace any more similarity to Greek in it than other Romantic languages may have to some degree with Greek. Ancient Greeks did settle in Catalan regions but it's a big stretch to trace their current accent to those ancient settlements.
Besides.................. you are forgetting the language that has the most auditory resemblance to Greek in the world... and that is.... Spanish. lol. Certainly Catalá sounds less like Greek than Spanish does so the theory doesn't work very well.
Occitan is also a Latin / Romance language and it has Germanic influence. True indeed, if you listen to it in videos and songs, the Germanic influence is very notable. I don't get any Greek-like sound from it at all. It is totally just Latin and Germanic sounding.
As for Euskara, the Basque language, it is a mystery of linguistics. It is a complete isolate. It is not Latin. It has zero similarity to Greek and it's not even Indo-European! It is strongly believed to be pre-PIE! While Greek has incorporated a significant pre-PIE influence (known as the pre-Greek substratum), possibly from the language of what we call "the Pelasgians" in the Aegean, still the pre-PIE language here in the Aegean was too far from the ancestor of Euskara to be able to trace any similarities whatsoever nowadays. Let alone that pre-Greek words in Greek are so seamlessly incorporated that it is virtually impossible to tell which word is PIE and which is pre-PIE unless you are a professional linguist. So, Euskara, not at all like Greek or any other language. And the Basques are not even Mediterraneans and they do not have a Mediterranean pronunciation so I am not sure where you got that from.
That's Basque. I haven't heard a language more different than Greek or Latin lol
Long story short:
Salentino does have particular Greek influence, more than other Italian dialects.
Catalan and Occitan neither have more connection to Greek than any other Latin ethnic language has, nor more auditory similarities.
Northern Mediterranean languages in general have a similar standard way of sounding, apart from the peculiarities of each language. This does not necessarily indicate some Greek influence or special ancient Greek connection. The reason for these perceived similarities in sound is that Greek and Latin preserved more archaic PIE sounds compared to Germanic, Celtic and Slavic which underwent more radical phonological changes over time. Therefore they sound more alike than with the others.
Euskara / Basque has no connection or auditory similarity to anything we know of.
