Greek dialects
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Ancient Greek, in classical antiquity before the development of the Koiné as the lingua franca of Hellenism, was divided into several dialects. Likewise, Modern Greek is divided into several dialects, most of them deriving from the Koiné.
Contents
Antiquity
- The earliest known dialect is Mycenaean Greek, the language spoken by the first Hellenic settlers of the Greek mainland in the 2nd millennium BC. The classical distribution of dialects was brought about by the migrations of the early Iron Age Greek Dark Ages after the collapse of the Mycenaean civilization. Some speakers of Mycenaean were displaced to Cyprus while others remained inland in Arcadia, giving rise to the Arcadocypriot dialect.
- The Dorian invasion spread Doric Greek the coast of the Pelopennesus, for example of Sparta, Crete and the southernmost parts of the west coast of Asia Minor. Doric was standard for Greek lyric poetry, such as Pindar. North Western Greek used to be classified as a separate dialect, but is now usually subsumed under Doric. Macedonian is regarded by some authors as another Greek dialect, possibly related to Doric or NW Greek.It is as yet undetermined whether Macedonian was a separate yet sibling language which was most closely related to Greek, a dialect of Greek, or an independent Indo-European language not especially close to Greek..
- Aeolic was spoken chiefly on the island of Lesbos (Lesbian) and the west coast of Asia Minor north of Smyrna.
- Ionic was mostly spoken along the west coast of Asia Minor, including Smyrna and the area to the south of it. Homer's Iliad and Odyssey were written in Homeric Greek, a kind of literary Ionic with some loan words from the other dialects. Ionic, therefore, became the primary literary language of ancient Greece, Epic Greek. Attic Greek, a sub- or sister-dialect of Ionic, was for centuries the language of Athens. Because Attic was adopted in Macedon before the conquests of Alexander the Great and the subsequent rise of Hellenism, it became the "standard" dialect that evolved into the Koiné.
The dialects of Classical Antiquity are grouped slightly differently by various authorities. Pamphylian is a marginal dialect of Asia Minor and usually left uncategorized. Note that Mycenaean was only deciphered in 1952, and is therefore missing from the earlier schemes presented here.
Northwestern, Southeastern
| History of the Greek language (see also: Greek alphabet) |
| Proto-Greek (c. 2000 BC)
|
| Mycenaean (c. 1600–1100 BC)
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| Ancient Greek (c. 800–300 BC) Dialects: Aeolic, Arcadocypriot, Attic-Ionic, Doric, Macedonian; Homeric Greek. |
| Koine Greek (from c. 300 BC)
|
| Medieval Greek (c. 330–1453)
|
| Modern Greek (from 1453) Dialects: Cappadocian, Cypriot, Demotic, Griko, Katharevousa, Pontic, Tsakonian, Yevanic |
Ernst Risch, Museum Helveticum (1955):
- Northern Greek
- *Doric/North-Western Greek
- *Aeolic
- *Pamphylian?
- Southern Greek
- *Ionian-Arcadian-Cyprian-Mycenaean
- Northwestern group
- *Doric/North-Western Greek
- *Aeolic?
- Southeastern group
- *Ionian-Attic
- *Arcadocypriot
Western, Central, Eastern
A. Thumb, E. Kieckers, Handbuch der griechischen Dialekte (1932):- Western Greek
- *Doric dialects
- *dialect of Achaia
- *dialect of Elis
- *North-Western Greek
- Central Greek
- *Aeolic
- **Boiotic
- **Thessalic
- **Lesbian
- *Arcadocyprian
- Eastern Greek
- *Ionic
- *Attic
- Pamphylian
- Western Greek
- *North-Western Greek
- *Doric
- Aeolic
- Eastern Greek
- *Ionian-Attic
- *Arcadocyprian
Western, Thessalian, Boiotic, Eastern
C.D. Buck, The Greek Dialects (1973):- Western Greek
- *North-Western Greek
- *Doric
- Eastern Greek
- *Ionian-Attic
- *Lesbian
- *Arcadocyprian
- Thessalian
- Boiotic
- Pamphylian
Post-Hellenistic
- Attic Greek
- *Koiné
- **Byzantine Greek language
- ***Modern Greek
- ****Demotic Greek
- ****Katharevousa
- ***Yevanic
- ***Cypriot Greek
- ***Griko (possibly with Doric elements)
- *Pontic Greek
- *Cappadocian Greek
- *Romano-Greek
- Doric Greek
- *Tsakonian
Notes
External links
- http://titus.fkidg1.uni-frankfurt.de/didact/idg/grie/grdial.htm
- http://www.friesian.com/archon.htm
- [Ethnologue report on Greek languages]
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