Extreme Southern Italian

The Extreme Southern Italian dialects are a set of languages spoken in Salento, Calabria, Sicily and southern Cilento with common phonetic and syntactic characteristics such as to constitute a single group. These languages derive, without exception, from Vulgar Latin but not from Tuscan; therefore it follows that the name "Italian" is a purely geographical reference.

Today, Extreme Southern Italian dialects are still spoken daily, although their use is limited to informal contexts and is mostly oral. There are examples of full literary uses with contests (mostly poetry) and theatrical performances.