FIG. 33--The Slavic colonies of the Molise group in eastern Italy are shown by black dots.] The Turkish conquest of Greece also forced many Greek families to seek safety on the Italian mainland. As a result, two communities of Greek speech are found on Italian territory at Lecce in the province of Puglia and at Bora in Calabria. The vernacular of both these regions contains a strong proportion of Italian words without, however, losing its affinity with the original mother tongue. The Lecce community consists of 4,973 families scattered in nine communi. The southern group is represented by 2,389 families settled in four communi of the Bora district, in Reggio di Calabria and in Palizzi. Altogether Greek is spoken as a vernacular by 30,700 inhabitants of Italy. Still another reminder of the Turkish conquests of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries is afforded by the presence of an Albanian element living along the eastern coast of Italy. This group consists of between 80,000 and 90,000 Albanians speaking their own language. The purity of Albanian speech and custom has been preserved by them on the alien soil skirting western Adriatic waters.[68] This total shows a marked decrease from the figure of 96,000 reported in the census of 1901. Emigration accounts mainly for this loss. At the same time, a tendency among Albanians to forsake their vernacular for Italian is discernible as intercourse with the dominant element increases. All these nuclei of foreign languages cannot impair the unity of Italian nationality because the racial distinctions on which they are based have been largely obliterated. The final supremacy of Italian language is already in sight. From the valleys of Piedmont to the eastern coastlands which face Albania, the alien tongues are giving way before the national vernacular, perhaps just because no pressure or effort to hasten their disappearance is being exerted by the government. TABLE I INHABITANTS OF ITALY SPEAKING NON-ITALIAN VERNACULARS[69] Number of Families[70] (Average of four persons LANGUAGE Localities to the family)