Ancient Greek Dialects

25/3/2019 Ancient Greek dialects - Wikipedia
Ancient Greek dialects

Ancient Greek in classical antiquity , before the
dev elopment of the common Koine Greek of the
Hellenistic period, was div ided into sev eral
v arieties.
Most of these v arieties are known only from

inscriptions, but a few of them, principally Aeolic,
Doric, and Ionic, are also represented in the literary
canon alongside the dominant Attic form of literary
Greek.
Likewise, Modern Greek is div ided into sev eral

dialects, most deriv ed from Koine Greek.
Distribution of Greek dialects in Greece in the classical

Contents period.[1]
Western group: Central group: Eastern
Provenance
Doric proper Aeolic group:
Literature Attic
Northwest Arcado-
Classification Ionic
Doric Cypriot
Ancient classification
Achaean Doric
Modern classification
Phonology
Hiatus
Ā
Ablaut
Post-Hellenistic
Notes
Further reading
Overviews
Inscriptions
Provenance
The earliest known Greek dialect is Mycenaean Greek, the South/Eastern Greek variety attested from the Linear B
tablets produced by the Mycenaean civilization of the Late Bronze Age in the late 2nd millennium BC. The classical
distribution of dialects was brought about by the migrations of the early Iron Age[2] 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. This is the only dialect with a known Bronze-age precedent. The
other dialects must have preceded their attested forms but the relationship of the precedents to Mycenaean remains
to be discovered.
Aeolic was spoken in three subdialects: one, Lesbian, on the island of Lesbos and the west coast of Asia Minor
north of Smyrna. The other two, Boeotian and Thessalian, were spoken in the northeast of the Greek mainland (in
Boeotia and Thessalia).
The Dorian invasion spread Doric Greek from a probable location in northwestern Greece to the coast of the
Peloponnesus; for example, to Sparta, to Crete and to the southernmost parts of the west coast of Asia Minor.
North Western Greek is sometimes classified as a separate dialect, and is sometimes subsumed under Doric.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ancient_Greek_dialects 1/8
Macedonian is regarded by some scholars as another Greek dialect, possibly related to Doric or NW
Greek.[3][4][5][6][7][8]
Ionic was mostly spoken along the west coast of Asia Minor, including Smyrna and the area to the south of it, but
also in Euboea. Homer's Iliad and Odyssey were written in Homeric Greek (or Epic Greek), an early East Greek
blending Ionic and Aeolic features. 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.
Literature
Ancient Greek literature is written in literary dialects that dev eloped from particular regional or archaic dialects.
Ancient Greek authors did not necessarily write in their nativ e dialect, but rather chose a dialect that was
suitable or traditional for the ty pe of literature they were writing (see belles-lettres). [9 ][1 0 ] All dialects hav e
poetry written in them, but only Attic and Ionic hav e full works of prose attested.
Homeric Greek is used in the first epic poems, the Iliad and the Ody ssey , and the Homeric Hy mns, traditionally
attributed to Homer and written in dacty lic hexameter. Homeric is a literary dialect with elements of Ionic,
Aeolic and Arcadocy priot. Hesiod uses a similar dialect, and later writers imitate Homer in their epics, such as
Apollonius Rhodius in Argonautica and Nonnus in Diony siaca. [1 1 ] Homer influenced other ty pes of poetry as
well.
Ionic proper is first used in Archilochus of Paros. This dialect includes also the earliest Greek prose, that of
Heraclitus and Ionic philosophers, Hecataeus and logographers, Herodotus, Democritus, and Hippocrates.
Elegiac poetry originated in Ionia and alway s continued to be written in Ionic. [1 2 ][1 3 ]
Doric is the conv entional dialect of choral ly ric poetry , which includes the Laconian Alcman, the Theban Pindar
and the choral songs of Attic tragedy (stasima). Sev eral ly ric and epigrammatic poets wrote in this dialect, such
as Iby cus of Rhegium and Leonidas of Tarentum. The following authors wrote in Doric, preserv ed in fragments:
Epicharmus comic poet and writers of South Italian Comedy (phly ax play ), Mithaecus food writer and
Archimedes.
Aeolic is an exclusiv ely poetic ly ric dialect, represented by Sappho and Alcaeus for Lesbian (Aeolic) and Corinna
of Tanagra for Boeotian.
Thessalic (Aeolic), Northwest Doric, Arcado-Cy priot and Pamphy lian nev er became literary dialects and are
only known from inscriptions, and to some extent by the comical parodies of Aristophanes and lexicographers.
Attic proper was used by the Attic orators, Ly sias, Isocrates, Aeschines and Demosthenes, the philosophers
Plato and Aristotle and the historian Xenophon. Thucy dides wrote in Old Attic. The tragic play wrights
Aeschy lus, Sophocles, and Euripides wrote in an artificial poetic language, [1 4 ] and the comic play wright
Aristophanes writes in a language with v ernacular elements.
Classification
Ancient classification
The ancients classified the language into three gene or four dialects, Ionic proper, Ionic (Attic), Aeolic, Doric and
later a fifth one, Koine. [1 5 ][1 6 ] Grammarians focus mainly on the literary dialects and isolated words. Historians
may classify dialects on my thological/historical reasons rather than linguistic knowledge. According to Strabo,
"Ionic is the same as Attic and Aeolic the same as Doric - Outside the Isthmus, all Greeks were Aeolians except
the Athenians, the Megarians and the Dorians who liv e about Parnassus - In the Peloponnese, Achaeans were also
Aeolians but only Eleans and Arcadians continued to speak Aeolic". [1 7 ] Howev er, for most ancients, Aeolic was
sy nony mous with literary Lesbic. [1 8 ] Stephanus of By zantium characterized Boeotian as Aeolic and Aetolian as
Doric. [1 9 ] Remarkable is the ignorance of sources, except lexicographers, on Arcadian, Cy priot and Pamphy lian.
Finally , unlike Modern Greek[2 0 ] and English, Ancient Greek common terms for human speech ( 'glôssa', [2 1 ]
'dialektos', [2 2 ] 'phônê'[2 3 ] and the suffix '-isti' ) may be attributed interchangeably to both a dialect and a
language. Howev er, the plural 'dialektoi' is used when dialects and peculiar words are compared and listed by the
grammarians under the terms 'lexeis'[2 4 ] or 'glôssai'. [2 5 ]
Modern classification
The dialects of Classical Antiquity are grouped slightly differently by v arious authorities. Pamphy lian is a
marginal dialect of Asia Minor and is sometimes left uncategorized. My cenaean was deciphered only in 1952 and
so is missing from the earlier schemes presented here:
Ernst Risch, Museum Helveticum

(1955): Alfred Heubeck:
Northern Greek Northwestern group
Doric/North-Western Doric/North-Western Greek

Northwestern, Greek Aeolic?
Southeastern Aeolic Ancient Macedonian?
Pamphylian? Southeastern group
Southern Greek
Ionic-Attic
Ionic-Arcadian-Cypriot- Arcadocypriot
Mycenaean
A. Thumb, E. Kieckers,
Handbuch der griechischen
Dialek te (1932):
Western Greek
Doric dialects
W. Porzig, Die Gliederung des indogermanischen
dialect of Achaea Sprachgebiets (1954):
dialect of Elis
North-Western Greek Western Greek
Western, Central Greek North-Western Greek

Central, Doric
Aeolic
Eastern Aeolic
Boiotic Eastern Greek
Thessalic
Lesbic Ionic-Attic
Arcadocypriot
Arcadocyprian
Eastern Greek
Ionic
Attic
Pamphylian
East Greek C.D. Buck, The Greek Dialects (1955):[26]

West Greek
East Greek
The Attic-Ionic Group
Attic
Ionic
East Ionic
Central Ionic
West Ionic or Euboean
The Arcado-Cyprian Group
Arcadian
Cyprian
Pamphylian
The Aeolic Group
Lesbian
Thessalian
Boeotian
West Greek
The North-West Greek Group
Phocian (including Delphian)

Locrian
Elean
The Northwest Greek koine
The Doric Group
Laconian and Heraclean

Messenian
Megarian
Corinthian
Argolic
Rhodian
Coan
Theran and Cyrenaean
Cretan
Sicilian Doric
Phonology
The Ancient Greek dialects differed mainly in v owels.
Hiatus
Loss of interv ocalic s and consonantal i and w from Proto-Greek brought two v owels together in hiatus, a
circumstance often called a "collision of v owels". [2 7 ] Ov er time, Greek speakers would change pronunciation to
av oid such a collision, and the way that v owels changed determined the dialect.
For example, the word for the "god of the sea" (regardless of the culture and language from which it came) was in
some prehistoric form *poseidāwōn (genitiv e *poseidāwonos). Loss of the interv ocalic *w left poseidāōn, which
is found in both My cenaean and Homeric dialects. Ionic Greek changed the *a to an e (poseideōn), while Attic
Greek contracted it to poseidōn. It changed differently in other dialects:
Corinthian: potedāwoni > potedāni and potedān

Boeotian: poteidāoni
Cretan, Rhodian and Delphian: poteidān
Lesbian: poseidān
Arcadian: posoidānos
Laconian: pohoidān
The changes appear designed to place one v owel phoneme instead of two, a process called "contraction", if a third
phoneme is created, and "hy phaeresis" ("taking away ") if one phoneme is dropped and the other kept. Sometimes,
the two phonemes are kept, sometimes modified, as in the Ionic poseideōn.
Ā
A v owel shift differentiating the Ionic and Attic dialects from the rest was the shift of ā (ᾱ) to ē (η). In Ionic, the
change occurred in all positions, but in Attic, it occurred almost ev ery where except after e, i, and r (ε, ι, ρ).
Homeric Greek shows the Ionic rather than the Attic v ersion of the v owel shift for the most part. Doric and
Aeolic show the original forms with ā (ᾱ). [2 8 ]
Attic and Ionic mētēr (μήτηρ); Doric mātēr (μᾱ́τηρ) "mother"[29] (compare Latin māter)
Attic neāniās (νεᾱνίᾱς); Ionic neēniēs (νεηνίης) "young man"[30]
Ablaut
Another principle of v ocalic dialectization follows the Indo-European ablaut series or v owel grades. The Proto-
Indo-European language could interchange e (e-grade) with o (o-grade) or use neither (zero-grade). Similarly ,
Greek inherited the series, for example, ei, oi, i, which are e-, o- and zero-grades of the diphthong respectiv ely .
They could appear in different v erb forms – present leipo (λ είπω) "I leav e", perfect leloipa (λ έλ οιπα) "I hav e left",
aorist elipon (ἔλ ιπον) "I left" – or be used as the basis of dialectization: Attic deiknūmi (δείκνῡμι) "I point out" but
Cretan diknumi (δίκνῡμι).
Post-Hellenistic
The ancient Greek dialects were a result of isolation and poor communication between communities liv ing in
broken terrain. All general Greek historians point out the influence of terrain on the dev elopment of the city -
states. Often, the dev elopment of languages dialectization results in the dissimilation of daughter languages. That
phase did not occur in Greek; instead the dialects were replaced by Standard Greek.
Increasing population and communication brought speakers more closely in touch and united them under the
same authorities. Attic Greek became the literary language ev ery where. Buck say s:[3 1 ]
"… long after Attic had become the norm of literary prose, each state employed its own dialect,
both in private and public monuments of internal concern, and in those of a more… interstate
character, such as… treaties…."
In the first few centuries BC, regional dialects replaced local ones: Northwest Greek koine, Doric koine and Attic
koine. The last came to replace the others in common speech in the first few centuries AD. After the div ision of
the Roman Empire into the east and the west the earliest Modern Greek prev ailed. The dialect distribution was
then as follows:
Attic Greek
Koiné
Byzantine Greek language
Modern Greek
Demotic Greek
Katharevousa
Yevanic
Cypriot Greek
Cretan Greek
Southern Italian Greek (Griko and Calabrian/Bovesian), retaining some Doric elements
Pontic Greek, retaining some Ionic elements
Cappadocian Greek
Romano-Greek
Doric Greek
Doric Koiné
Tsakonian
According to some scholars, Tsakonian is the only modern Greek dialect that descends from Doric, albeit with
some influence from the Koine. [3 2 ] Others include the Southern Italian dialects in this group, though perhaps
they should rather be regarded as descended from the local Doric-influenced v ariant of the Koine. [3 3 ]
Notes
1. Roger D. Woodard (2008), "Greek dialects", in: The Ancient Languages of Europe, ed. R. D. Woodard, Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, p. 51.
2. Sometimes called the Greek Dark Ages because writing disappeared from Greece until the adaptation of the
Phoenician alphabet.
3. Masson, Olivier (2003) [1996]. "[Ancient] Macedonian language". In Hornblower, S.; Spawforth A. The Oxford
Classical Dictionary (revised 3rd ed.). USA: Oxford University Press. pp. 905–906. ISBN 0-19-860641-9.
4. Hammond, N.G.L (1993) [1989]. The Macedonian State. Origins, Institutions and History (reprint ed.). USA: Oxford
University Press. ISBN 0-19-814927-1.
5. Meier-Brügger, Michael; Fritz, Matthias; Mayrhofer, Manfred (2003). Indo-European Linguistics (https://books.google.
com/books?id=49xq3UlKWckC). Walter de Gruyter. p. 28. ISBN 978-3-11-017433-5.
6. Roisman, Worthington, 2010, "A Companion to Ancient Macedonia", Chapter 5: Johannes Engels, "Macedonians
and Greeks", p. 95:"This (i.e. Pella curse tablet) has been judged to be the most important ancient testimony to
substantiate that Macedonian was a north-western Greek and mainly a Doric dialect".
7. "[W]e may tentatively conclude that Macedonian is a dialect related to North-West Greek.", Olivier Masson, French
linguist, “Oxford Classical Dictionary: Macedonian Language”, 1996.
8. Masson & Dubois 2000, p. 292: "..."Macedonian Language" de l'Oxford Classical Dictionary, 1996, p. 906:
"Macedonian may be seen as a Greek dialect, characterized by its marginal position and by local pronunciation (like
Βερενίκα for Φερενίκα etc.)."
9. Greek mythology and poetics By Gregory Nagy. Page 51] ISBN 978-0-8014-8048-5 (1992)
10. Sihler, Andrew Littleton (1995). New Comparative Grammar of Greek and Latin. New York, Oxford: Oxford University
Press. pp. 10–12. ISBN 0-19-508345-8.
11. Homer and the epic: a shortened version of The songs of Homer By Geoffrey Stephen Kirk Page 76 (1965) (https://b
ooks.google.com/books?id=jhPh7PT51-QC&pg=PA76)
12. A History of Greek Literature: From the Earliest Period to the Death of Demosthenes by Frank Byron Jevons (1894)
Page 112
13. A History of Classical Greek Literature: Volume 2. The Prose Writers (Paperback) by John Pentland Mahaffy Page
194 ISBN 1-4021-7041-6
14. Helen By Euripides, William Allan Page 43 ISBN 0-521-54541-2 (2008)
15. New Documents Illustrating Early Christianity: Volume 5, Linguistic Essays With Cumulative Indexes to Vols. 1-5
Page 30 (https://books.google.com/books?id=rttiI4LE7twC&pg=PA30&dq=Ionic+Doric+Aeolic+gene&lr=#v=onepage
&q=Ionic%20Doric%20Aeolic%20gene&f=false) ISBN 0-8028-4517-7 (2001)
16. History Of The Language Sciences By Sylvain Auroux Page 440 (https://books.google.com/books?id=mL9erLJ5afU
C&pg=RA1-PA440&dq=Strabo+8.1.2+dialects&lr=#v=onepage&q=Strabo%208.1.2%20dialects&f=false) ISBN 3-11-
016736-0 (2000)
17. Strabo 8.1.2 14.5.26
18. Mendez Dosuna, The Aeolic dialects
19. Stephanus of Byzantium, Ethnika s.v. Ionia
20. glossa: language, dialektos: dialect, foní : voice
21. LSJ glôssa (http://old.perseus.tufts.edu/cgi-bin/ptext?doc=Perseus:text:1999.04.0057:entry%3D%2322426)
Archived (https://web.archive.org/web/20091202133428/http://old.perseus.tufts.edu/cgi-bin/ptext?doc=Perseus%3At
ext%3A1999.04.0057%3Aentry%3D%2322426) December 2, 2009, at the Wayback Machine
22. LSJ:dialektos (http://old.perseus.tufts.edu/cgi-bin/ptext?doc=Perseus:text:1999.04.0057:entry%3D%2325131)
23. LSJ phônê (http://old.perseus.tufts.edu/cgi-bin/ptext?doc=Perseus:text:1999.04.0057:entry%3D%23112834)
24. LSJ lexis (http://old.perseus.tufts.edu/cgi-bin/ptext?doc=Perseus:text:1999.04.0057:entry%3D%2362384) Archived
(https://web.archive.org/web/20091202133428/http://old.perseus.tufts.edu/cgi-bin/ptext?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1
999.04.0057%3Aentry%3D%2362384) December 2, 2009, at the Wayback Machine
25. Ataktoi Glôssai (Disorderly Words) by Philitas of Cos

26. First published in 1928, it was revised and expanded by Buck and republished in 1955, the year of his death. Of the
new edition Buck said (Preface): this is virtually a new book." There have been other impressions, but no further
changes to the text. The 1955 edition was at the time and to some degree still is the standard text on the subject in
the United States. This part of the table is based on the Introduction to the 1955 edition. An example of a modern
use of this classification can be found at columbia.edu as Richard C. Carrier's The Major Greek Dialects (http://www.
columbia.edu/~rcc20/greece3.html) Archived (https://web.archive.org/web/20061006144657/http://www.columbia.ed
u/~rcc20/greece3.html) October 6, 2006, at the Wayback Machine
27. Two vowels together are not to be confused with a diphthong, which is two vowel sounds within the same syllable,
often spelled with two letters. Greek diphthongs were typically inherited from Proto-Indo-European.
28. Smyth, Greek Grammar, paragraph 30 (http://www.ccel.org/s/smyth/grammar/html/smyth_1b_uni.htm#30) on
CCEL: vowel change involving ē, ā
29. μήτηρ (http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus:text:1999.04.0057:entry=mh/thr)
30. νεᾱνίας (http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus:text:1999.04.0057:entry=neani/as)
31. Greek Dialects
32. Medieval and modern Greek By Robert Browning Page 124 (https://books.google.com/books?id=b55B1J7I99AC&pg
=PA124&dq=Tsakonian+Doric#v=onepage&q=Tsakonian%20Doric&f=false) ISBN 0-521-29978-0 (1983)
33. Browning, ibid.
Further reading
Bakker, Egbert J., ed. 2010. A companion to the Ancient Greek language. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell.
Christidis, Anastasios-Phoivos, ed. 2007. A history of Ancient Greek : From the beginnings to Late Antiquity.
Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
Colvin, Stephen C. 2007. A historical Greek reader: Mycenaean to the k oiné. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Horrocks, Geoffrey. 2010. Greek : A history of the language and its speak ers. 2nd ed. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell.
Palmer, Leonard R. 1980. The Greek language. London: Faber & Faber.
Overviews
Griechische Dialek te und ihre Verteilung (http://titus.fk idg1.uni-frank furt.de/didact/idg/grie/grdial.htm), Titus site, in
German. List, map, table of features.
Dialects of Greek (http://www.friesian.com/archon.htm), Kelley L. Ross. Map and brief description.
Excerpts from Margalit Finkelburg, "Greek s and Pre-Greek s: Aegean Prehistory and Greek Heroic Tradition" (http://
assets.cambridge.org/052185/2161/excerpt/0521852161_excerpt.pdf) (PDF). (162 KiB). One of the topics is the origin
of the dialects.
Inscriptions
Searchable Greek Inscriptions (https://wayback .archive-it.org/all/20091210184440/http://epigraphy.pack hum.org/ins
criptions/). A considerable corpus of ancient Greek inscriptions in various dialects published by The Packard
Humanities Institute.
Inscriptions Listed by Region (http://www.csad.ox.ac.uk /CSAD/Catalogue.html), Centre for the Study of Ancient
Documents site.
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25/3/2019 Ancient Greek dialects - Wikipedia

Most of these v arieties are known only from

Likewise, Modern Greek is div ided into sev eral

Distribution of Greek dialects in Greece in the classical

Ernst Risch, Museum Helveticum

Northern Greek Northwestern group

Doric/North-Western Doric/North-Western Greek

Western, Central Greek North-Western Greek

East Greek C.D. Buck, The Greek Dialects (1955):[26]

The Attic-Ionic Group

The North-West Greek Group

Phocian (including Delphian)

Laconian and Heraclean

Corinthian: potedāwoni > potedāni and potedān

Attic neāniās (νεᾱνίᾱς); Ionic neēniēs (νεηνίης) "young man"[30]

Byzantine Greek language

25. Ataktoi Glôssai (Disorderly Words) by Philitas of Cos

Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Ancient_Greek_dialects&oldid=885142259"

This page was last edited on 26 February 2019, at 06:12 (UTC).

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