Ancient Greek in classical antiquity, before
the development of the κοινή (koiné)
"common" language of Hellenism, was divided
into several dialects.
Most of them 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 divided into several
dialects, most of them having been derived
from Koine Greek.
== Provenance ==
The earliest known Greek dialect is Mycenaean
Greek, the language 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 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.
Macedonian is regarded by some scholars as
another Greek dialect, possibly related to
Doric or NW Greek.
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 developed from particular regional
or archaic dialects.
Ancient Greek authors did not necessarily
write in their native dialect, but rather
chose a dialect that was suitable or traditional
for the type of literature they were writing
(see belles-lettres).
All dialects have poetry written in them,
but only Attic and Ionic have full works of
prose attested.
Homeric Greek is used in the first epic poems,
the Iliad and the Odyssey, and the Homeric
Hymns, traditionally attributed to Homer and
written in dactylic hexameter.
Homeric is a literary dialect with elements
of Ionic, Aeolic and Arcadocypriot.
Hesiod uses a similar dialect, and later writers
imitate Homer in their epics, such as Apollonius
Rhodius in Argonautica and Nonnus in Dionysiaca.
Homer influenced other types 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 always
continued to be written in Ionic.Doric is
the conventional dialect of choral lyric poetry,
which includes the Laconian Alcman, the Theban
Pindar and the choral songs of Attic tragedy
(stasima).
Several lyric and epigrammatic poets wrote
in this dialect, such as Ibycus of Rhegium
and Leonidas of Tarentum.
The following authors wrote in Doric, preserved
in fragments: Epicharmus comic poet and writers
of South Italian Comedy (phlyax play), Mithaecus
food writer and Archimedes.
Aeolic is an exclusively poetic lyric dialect,
represented by Sappho and Alcaeus for Lesbian
(Aeolic) and Corinna of Tanagra for Boeotian.
Thessalic (Aeolic), Northwest Doric, Arcado-Cypriot
and Pamphylian never 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,
Lysias, Isocrates, Aeschines and Demosthenes,
the philosophers Plato and Aristotle and the
historian Xenophon.
Thucydides wrote in Old Attic.
The tragic playwrights Aeschylus, Sophocles,
and Euripides wrote in an artificial poetic
language, and the comic playwright Aristophanes
writes in a language with vernacular 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.
Grammarians focus mainly on the literary dialects
and isolated words.
Historians may classify dialects on mythological/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 live about Parnassus - In the Peloponnese,
Achaeans were also Aeolians but only Eleans
and Arcadians continued to speak Aeolic".
However, for most ancients, Aeolic was synonymous
with literary Lesbic.
Stephanus of Byzantium characterized Boeotian
as Aeolic and Aetolian as Doric.
Remarkable is the ignorance of sources, except
lexicographers, on Arcadian, Cypriot and Pamphylian.
Finally, unlike Modern Greek and English,
Ancient Greek common terms for human speech
( 'glôssa', 'dialektos', 'phônê' and the
suffix '-isti' ) may be attributed interchangeably
to both a dialect and a language.
However, the plural 'dialektoi' is used when
dialects and peculiar words are compared and
listed by the grammarians under the terms
'lexeis' or 'glôssai'.
=== Modern classification ===
The dialects of Classical Antiquity are grouped
slightly differently by various authorities.
Pamphylian is a marginal dialect of Asia Minor
and is sometimes left uncategorized.
Mycenaean was deciphered only in 1952 and
so is missing from the earlier schemes presented
here:
== Phonology ==
The Ancient Greek dialects differed mainly
in vowels.
=== Hiatus ===
Loss of intervocalic s and consonantal i and
w from Proto-Greek brought two vowels together
in hiatus, a circumstance often called a "collision
of vowels".
Over time, Greek speakers would change pronunciation
to avoid such a collision, and the way that
vowels 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 (genitive *poseidāwonos).
Loss of the intervocalic *w left poseidāōn,
which is found in both Mycenaean 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: pohoidānThe changes appear designed
to place one vowel phoneme instead of two,
a process called "contraction", if a third
phoneme is created, and "hyphaeresis" ("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 vowel 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 everywhere
except after e, i, and r (ε, ι, ρ).
Homeric Greek shows the Ionic rather than
the Attic version of the vowel shift for the
most part.
Doric and Aeolic show the original forms with
ā (ᾱ).
Attic and Ionic mētēr (μήτηρ); Doric
mātēr (μᾱ́τηρ) "mother" (compare
Latin māter)
Attic neāniās (νεᾱνίᾱς); Ionic
neēniēs (νεηνίης) "young man"
=== Ablaut ===
Another principle of vocalic dialectization
follows the Indo-European ablaut series or
vowel 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 respectively.
They could appear in different verb forms
– present leipo (λείπω) "I leave",
perfect leloipa (λέλοιπα) "I have left",
aorist elipon (ἔλιπον) "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
living in broken terrain.
All general Greek historians point out the
influence of terrain on the development of
the city-states.
Often, the development 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 everywhere.
Buck says:
"… 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 division of the Roman Empire into
the east and the west the earliest Modern
Greek prevailed.
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
TsakonianAccording to some scholars, Tsakonian
is the only modern Greek dialect that descends
from Doric, albeit with some influence from
the Koine.
Others include the Southern Italian dialects
in this group, though perhaps they should
rather be regarded as descended from the local
Doric-influenced variant of the Koine.
== Notes ==
== 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
koiné.
Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Horrocks, Geoffrey.
2010.
Greek: A history of the language and its speakers.
2nd ed.
Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell.
Palmer, Leonard R. 1980.
The Greek language.
London: Faber & Faber.
=== Overviews ===
Griechische Dialekte und ihre Verteilung,
Titus site, in German.
List, map, table of features.
Dialects of Greek, Kelley L. Ross.
Map and brief description.
Excerpts from Margalit Finkelburg, "Greeks
and Pre-Greeks: Aegean Prehistory and Greek
Heroic Tradition" (PDF).
(162 KiB).
One of the topics is the origin of the dialects.
=== Inscriptions ===
Searchable Greek Inscriptions.
A considerable corpus of ancient Greek inscriptions
in various dialects published by The Packard
Humanities Institute.
Inscriptions Listed by Region, Centre for
the Study of Ancient Documents site.
