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94-484: Ever since the times of Koiné Greek in Hellenistic and Roman antiquity, there was a competition between the naturally evolving spoken forms of Greek on the one hand, and the use of artificially archaic, learned registers on the other. The learned registers employed grammatical and lexical forms in imitation of classical Attic Greek ( Atticism ). This situation is known in modern linguistics as diglossia . During

188-623: A stress accent system , and the monophthongization of several diphthongs: The Koine-period Greek in the table is taken from a reconstruction by Benjamin Kantor of New Testament Judeo-Palestinian Koine Greek. The realizations of most phonemes reflect general changes around the Greek-speaking world, including vowel isochrony and monophthongization, but certain sound values differ from other Koine varieties such as Attic, Egyptian and Anatolian. More general Koine phonological developments include

282-416: A broader range of mainstream dialects less divergent from each other and from Standard Modern Greek, which cover most of the linguistic area of present-day Greece and Cyprus. Native Greek scholarship traditionally distinguishes between " dialects " proper (διάλεκτος), i.e. strongly marked, distinctive varieties, and mere "idioms" (ιδίωμα), less markedly distinguished sub-varieties of a language. In this sense,

376-425: 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

470-461: A contiguous area around the capital Athens (i.e. the regions of Attica and neighbouring parts of Boeotia , Euboia , the Peloponnese and nearby islands), there is a "dialectal void" where no distinctly marked traditional Greek dialects are found. This is due to the fact that these areas were once predominantly inhabited by speakers of Arvanitika Albanian. The Greek spoken in this area today

564-551: A formerly contiguous Greek dialect area from the time before the Arvanitic settlement. These include the old local dialect of Athens itself ("Old Athenian"), that of Megara (to the west of Attica), of Kymi in Euboia and of the island of Aegina . These dialects are now extinct. The following linguistic markers have been used to distinguish and classify the dialects of Greece. Many of these features are today characteristic only of

658-424: A language with vernacular elements. 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

752-438: A large amount of vocabulary from the learned tradition, especially through the registers of academic discourse, politics, technology and religion; together with these, it has incorporated a number of morphological features associated with their inflectional paradigms, as well as some phonological features not originally found in pure Demotic. The first systematic scholarly treatment of the modern Greek dialects took place after

846-578: A late, ancient Laconian variety of the Koiné influenced by Doric. It used to be spoken earlier in a wider area of the Peloponnese, including Laconia , the historical home of the Doric Spartans . Pontic Greek varieties are those originally spoken along the eastern Black Sea coast of Asia Minor , the historical region of Pontus in Turkey . From there, speakers of Pontic migrated to other areas along

940-450: A more open pronunciation than other Koine dialects, distinguished as open-mid /ɛ/ vs. close-mid /e/ , rather than as true-mid /e̞/ vs. close-mid /e̝/ as has been suggested for other varieties such as Egyptian. This is evidenced on the basis of Hebrew transcriptions of ε with pataḥ/qamets /a/ and not tsere/segol /e/ . Additionally, it is posited that α perhaps had a back vowel pronunciation as /ɑ/ , dragged backwards due to

1034-562: A simplified form of Ionic . The view accepted by most scholars today was given by the Greek linguist Georgios Hatzidakis , who showed that despite the "composition of the Four", the "stable nucleus" of Koine Greek is Attic. In other words, Koine Greek can be regarded as Attic with the admixture of elements especially from Ionic, but also from other dialects. The degree of importance of the non-Attic linguistic elements on Koine can vary depending on

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1128-418: A supra-regional, de facto standard variety. From the late 19th century onwards, written Demotic rather than Katharevousa became the primary medium of literature. During much of the 20th century, there were heated political conflicts over the use of either of the two varieties, especially over the issue of their use in education. Schools were forced to switch from one form to the other and back several times during

1222-457: A thesis on Pharasiot Greek, based on speakers remaining in Greece. The Greek dialect of Sille (near Iconium /Konya) was the most divergent of the varieties of Asia Minor Greek. Griko or Italiot Greek refers to the Greek varieties spoken in some areas of southern Italy , a historical remnant of the ancient colonisation of Magna Graecia . There are two small Griko-speaking communities known as

1316-460: A very important source of information on the ancient Koine is the modern Greek language with all its dialects and its own Koine form, which have preserved some of the ancient language's oral linguistic details which the written tradition has lost. For example, Pontic and Cappadocian Greek preserved the ancient pronunciation of η as ε ( νύφε, συνέλικος, τίμεσον, πεγάδι for standard Modern Greek νύφη, συνήλικος, τίμησον, πηγάδι etc.), while

1410-544: A work that is now known as Meditations . Koine Greek continues to be used as the liturgical language of services in the Greek Orthodox Church and in some Greek Catholic churches . The English-language name Koine is derived from the Koine Greek term ἡ κοινὴ διάλεκτος ( hē koinḕ diálektos ), meaning "the common dialect". The Greek word κοινή ( koinḗ ) itself means "common". The word

1504-606: A written language. Dialect is recorded in areas outside Byzantine control, first in legal and administrative documents, and then in poetry. The earliest evidence for literary dialects comes from areas under Latin control , notably from Cyprus, Crete, and the Aegean islands . From Cyprus under the Lusignan dynasty (the 14th to 16th centuries), legal documents, prose chronicles, and a group of anonymous love poems have survived. Dialect archives also survive from 15th century Naxos . It

1598-473: Is a highly divergent variety, sometimes classified as a separate language because of not being intelligible to speakers of standard Greek. It is spoken in a small mountainous area slightly inland from the east coast of the Peloponnese peninsula. It is unique among all other modern varieties in that it is thought to derive not from the ancient Attic – Ionian Koiné , but from Doric or from a mixed form of

1692-520: Is a term used for present tense verbs that are used in some narrative sections of the New Testament to describe events that are in the past with respect to the speaker. This is seen more in works attributed to Mark and John than Luke . It is used 151 times in the Gospel of Mark in passages where a reader might expect a past tense verb. Scholars have presented various explanations for this; in

1786-555: Is above all from the island of Crete, during the period of Venetian rule from 1204 until its capture by the Ottomans in 1669, that dialect can be illustrated more fully. Documents showing dialectal features exist from the end of the 12th century, rapidly increasing in number from the 13th century onward. During the Cretan Renaissance in the 16th and early 17th centuries there existed a flourishing vernacular literature in

1880-407: Is characterized by a high frequency of loanwords and grammatical structures imported from other languages, the main influences being Turkish, French, Italian and Armenian, while also preserving some archaic characteristics lost in other dialects. Speakers are noted for their production of dark L and postalveolar affricates . Greco-Australian is an Australian-based dialect of Greek that is spoken by

1974-819: Is closely related to Pontic Greek and evolved from the dialect of Greek spoken in the Crimea , which was a part of the Pontic Empire of Trebizond until that state fell to the Ottomans in 1461. Thereafter the Crimean region remained independent and continued to exist as the Greek Principality of Theodoro . The Greek speaking residents of the Crimea were invited by Catherine the Great to resettle in, and found,

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2068-630: 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 ,

2162-581: Is often mentioned as Common Attic . The first scholars who studied Koine, both in Alexandrian and Early Modern times, were classicists whose prototype had been the literary Attic Greek of the Classical period and frowned upon any other variety of Ancient Greek . Koine Greek was therefore considered a decayed form of Greek which was not worthy of attention. The reconsideration on the historical and linguistic importance of Koine Greek began only in

2256-648: Is pronounced / k ɔɪ ˈ n eɪ / , / ˈ k ɔɪ n eɪ / , or / k iː ˈ n iː / in US English and / ˈ k ɔɪ n iː / in UK English. The pronunciation of the word koine itself gradually changed from [koinéː] (close to the Classical Attic pronunciation [koi̯.nɛ̌ː] ) to [cyˈni] (close to the Modern Greek [ciˈni] ). In Modern Greek,

2350-563: Is rendered in a reconstructed pronunciation representing a hypothetical conservative variety of mainland Greek Koiné in the early Roman period. The transcription shows raising of η to /eː/ , partial (pre-consonantal/word-final) raising of ῃ and ει to /iː/ , retention of pitch accent, and retention of word-initial /h/ (the rough breathing ). περὶ peri ὧν hoːn Θισ[β]εῖς tʰizbîːs λόγους lóɡuːs ἐποιήσαντο· epojéːsanto; Ancient Greek dialects Ancient Greek in classical antiquity , before

2444-420: Is seen 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: The 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,

2538-834: Is sometimes used for the Greek written by the Greek Church Fathers , the Early Christian theologians in late antiquity. Christian writers in the earliest time tended to use a simple register of Koiné, relatively close to the spoken language of their time, following the model of the Bible. After the 4th century, when Christianity became the state church of the Roman Empire , more learned registers of Koiné also came to be used. Koine period Greek differs from Classical Greek in many ways: grammar , word formation , vocabulary and phonology (sound system). During

2632-412: 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

2726-470: Is the product of convergence between varieties of migrants who moved to the capital and its surroundings from various other parts of the country, and it is close to the standard. On the whole, Standard Modern Greek is based predominantly on the southern dialects, especially those of the Peloponnese. At the fringes of this former Arvanitika-speaking area, there were once some enclaves of highly distinct traditional Greek dialects, believed to have been remnants of

2820-748: 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

2914-415: 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

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3008-668: The Alexandrian dialect , Biblical Greek , Septuagint Greek or New Testament Greek , was the common supra-regional form of Greek spoken and written during the Hellenistic period , the Roman Empire and the early Byzantine Empire . It evolved from the spread of Greek following the conquests of Alexander the Great in the fourth century BC, and served as the lingua franca of much of the Mediterranean region and

3102-600: The Cretan dialect , based on Italian literary influences. Its best-known specimen today is the verse romance Erotokritos , by Vitsentzos Kornaros (1553–1614). Later, during the 18th and early 19th centuries, the Ionian Islands , then also under Italian rule, became a centre of literary production in Demotic Greek. The best-known writer from that period was the poet Dionysios Solomos (1789–1857), who wrote

3196-681: The Greek genocide (1919–1921) during the Population exchange between Greece and Turkey . In 2005, professors Mark Janse and Dimitris Papazachariou discovered that there are still native speakers of the Mistiot dialect of Cappadocian in Central and Northern Greece. Cappadocian Greek diverged from the other Byzantine Greek varieties earlier, beginning with the Turkish conquests of central Anatolia in

3290-581: The Griko people who live in the Italian regions of Calabria , the southern tip of the Italian peninsula, and in Apulia , its south-easternmost corner. These varieties too are believed to have developed on the basis of an originally Doric ancient dialect, and have preserved some elements of it, though to a lesser extent than Tsakonian. They subsequently adopted influences from ancient Koiné, but became isolated from

3384-535: The Gulf of Corinth , while the southern varieties are spoken in the Peloponnese peninsula and the larger part of the Aegean and Ionian islands , including the large southern islands of Crete and Cyprus . The most salient defining marker of the northern varieties is their treatment of unstressed vowels (so-called northern vocalism ), while many southern varieties are characterised, among other things, by their palatalisation of velar consonants. Between these areas, in

3478-580: The Mani peninsula . The dialect, which is now regarded as extinct, had preserved the main characteristics of the Mani dialect , and had been also influenced by both the Corsican and the French language (official language of the island after its union with France ). Unlike the above, the varieties described below form a contiguous Greek-speaking area, which covers most of the territory of Greece. They represent

3572-646: The Septuagint , the Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible , and the Greek New Testament . The teaching of these texts was aimed at the most common people, and for that reason, they use the most popular language of the era. Other sources can be based on random findings such as inscriptions on vases written by popular painters, mistakes made by Atticists due to their imperfect knowledge of Attic Greek or even some surviving Greco-Latin glossaries of

3666-541: The Tsakonian language preserved the long α instead of η ( ἁμέρα, ἀστραπά, λίμνα, χοά etc.) and the other local characteristics of Doric Greek . Dialects from the southern part of the Greek-speaking regions ( Dodecanese , Cyprus , etc.), preserve the pronunciation of the double similar consonants ( ἄλ-λος, Ἑλ-λάδα, θάλασ-σα ), while others pronounce in many words υ as ου or preserve ancient double forms ( κρόμμυον – κρεμ-μυον, ράξ – ρώξ etc.). Linguistic phenomena like

3760-456: The definite article ; the Greek speakers of the area had also incorporated into their dialect many French words. Constantinopolitan Greek, on the other side, has very few dialectal features, and it is very close to what scholars call "Modern Greek Koiné." Another Greek outlying dialect was spoken, until the mid-20th century, in Cargèse on Corsica , by descendants of 17th-century settlers from

3854-727: The "Roman" Greek speakers of Cappadocia, wrote a few poems in Cappadocian Greek, leaving one of the earliest attestations of the dialect. The Greek dialect spoken in Pharasa (Faraşa, now Çamlıca village in Yahyalı , Kayseri ) and other nearby villages (Afshar-Köy, Çukuri), to the east of Cappadocia, is not particularly close to Cappadocian. It may be closer to Pontic, or equally distant from both. The Pharasiot priest Theodoridis published some folk texts. In 2018, Metin Bağrıaçık published

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3948-483: The 11th and 12th centuries, and so developed several radical features, such as the loss of the gender for nouns. Having been isolated from the crusader conquests ( Fourth Crusade ) and the later Venetian influence of the Greek coast, it retained the Ancient Greek terms for many words that were replaced with Romance ones in Demotic Greek. The poet Rumi , whose name means "Roman", referring to his residence amongst

4042-437: The 20th century. The conflict was resolved only after the overthrow of the Greek military junta of 1967–1974 , whose strong ideological pro-Katharevousa stance had ultimately contributed to bringing that language form into disrepute. In 1976, shortly after the restoration of democracy , Demotic was finally adopted for use everywhere in education and became the language of the state for all official purposes. By that time, however,

4136-687: The Black Sea coast, in Ukraine (see Mariupol ), Russia and Georgia . Through the forced population exchange after the Greco-Turkish War (1919–1922) and the Treaty of Lausanne of 1923, the Pontic speakers of Turkey were expelled and moved to Greece. Of the Pontic speakers in the ex-Soviet Union, many have immigrated to Greece more recently. The number of Pontic Greeks currently maintaining

4230-518: The Four). This view was supported in the early twentieth century by Paul Kretschmer in his book Die Entstehung der Koine (1901), while Ulrich von Wilamowitz-Moellendorff and Antoine Meillet , based on the intense Ionic elements of the Koine – σσ instead of ττ and ρσ instead of ρρ ( θάλασσα – θάλαττα , 'sea'; ἀρσενικός – ἀρρενικός , 'potent, virile') – considered Koine to be

4324-458: The Greek diaspora of Australia, including Greek immigrants living in Australia and Australians of Greek descent. In Asia Minor, Greek varieties existed not only in the broader area of Cappadocia, but also in the western coast. The most characteristic is the dialect of Smyrna which had a number of distinguishing features, such as certain differences in the accusative and genitive cases of

4418-551: The Greek national anthem ( Hymn to Liberty ) and other works celebrating the Greek Revolution of 1821–1830. His language became influential on the further course of standardisation that led to the emergence of the modern standard form of Demotic, based on the south-western dialects. Spoken modern vernacular Greek can be divided into various geographical varieties. There are a small number of highly divergent, outlying varieties spoken by relatively isolated communities, and

4512-478: The Middle Ages, Greek writing varied along a continuum between extreme forms of the high register very close to Attic, and moderate forms much closer to the spoken Demotic . According to Manolis Triantafyllides , the modern Greek language of the beginning of the 19th century, as used in the demotic poetry of the time, has very few grammatical differences from the vernacular language of the 15th century. During

4606-590: The Middle East during the following centuries. It was based mainly on Attic and related Ionic speech forms, with various admixtures brought about through dialect levelling with other varieties. Koine Greek included styles ranging from conservative literary forms to the spoken vernaculars of the time. As the dominant language of the Byzantine Empire, it developed further into Medieval Greek , which then turned into Modern Greek . Literary Koine

4700-496: The New Testament , W.F. Howard argues that the heavy use of the historical present in Herodotus and Thucydides , compared with the relatively infrequent usage by Polybius and Xenophon was evidence that heavy use of this verb tense is a feature of vernacular Koine, but other scholars have argued that the historical present can be a literary form to "denote semantic shifts to more prominent material." The term patristic Greek

4794-501: The Roman period, e.g.: Καλήμερον, ἦλθες; Bono die, venisti? Good day, you came? Ἐὰν θέλεις, ἐλθὲ μεθ' ἡμῶν. Si vis, veni mecum . If you want, come with us. Ποῦ; Ubi? Where? Πρὸς φίλον ἡμέτερον Λύκιον. Ad amicum nostrum Lucium. To our friend Lucius. Τί γὰρ ἔχει; Quid enim habet? Indeed, what does he have? What is it with him? Ἀρρωστεῖ. Aegrotat. He's sick. Finally,

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4888-511: The Standard Modern Greek). Modern linguistics is not in accord with the tendency of the 19th century scholars to regard modern Greek dialects as the direct descendants of the dialects of ancient Greek . According to the latest findings of scholarship, modern Greek dialects are products of the dialect differentiation of Koiné Greek , and, with the exception of Tsakonian and possibly Italiot Greek , they have no correlation with

4982-797: 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, Arcadocypriot , and Pamphylian never became literary dialects and are only known from inscriptions, and to some extent by

5076-560: The above imply that those characteristics survived within Koine, which in turn had countless variations in the Greek-speaking world. Biblical Koine refers to the varieties of Koine Greek used in Bible translations into Greek and related texts. Its main sources are: There has been some debate to what degree Biblical Greek represents the mainstream of contemporary spoken Koine and to what extent it contains specifically Semitic substratum features. These could have been induced either through

5170-407: The ancient dialects. It is difficult to monitor the evolution of Koiné Greek and its splitting into the modern Greek dialects; certain researchers make the hypothesis that the various local varieties were formed between the 10th and the 12th century (as part of an evolution starting a few centuries before), but it is difficult to draw some safer conclusions because of the absence of texts written in

5264-482: The basis of dialectization: Attic deíknȳmi ( δείκνῡμι ) "I point out" but Cretan díknūmi ( δίκνῡμι ). 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

5358-533: 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 wrote in

5452-475: The creation and evolution of Koine Greek throughout the entire Hellenistic and Roman eras of history until the start of the Middle Ages. The linguistic roots of the Common Greek dialect had been unclear since ancient times. During the Hellenistic period , most scholars thought of Koine as the result of the mixture of the four main Ancient Greek dialects, " ἡ ἐκ τῶν τεττάρων συνεστῶσα " (the composition of

5546-450: The development of the common Koine Greek of the Hellenistic period , was divided into several varieties . Most of these varieties 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 derived from Koine Greek. Ancient Greek literature

5640-578: The dialect is unclear. A small group of Muslim Pontic speakers remain in Turkey, although their varieties show heavy structural convergence towards Turkish . Other varieties of Anatolian Greek that were influenced by the Turkish language, besides Pontic, are now almost extinct, but were widely spoken until 1923 in central Turkey, and especially in Cappadocia . In 1923, all Orthodox Christian inhabitants of Asia Minor were forced to emigrate to Greece after

5734-414: 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: In the last 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

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5828-469: The early 19th century, where renowned scholars conducted a series of studies on the evolution of Koine throughout the entire Hellenistic period and Roman Empire . The sources used on the studies of Koine have been numerous and of unequal reliability. The most significant ones are the inscriptions of the post-Classical periods and the papyri , for being two kinds of texts which have authentic content and can be studied directly. Other significant sources are

5922-537: The early 20th century some scholars argued that the use of the historical present tense in Mark was due to the influence of Aramaic , but this theory fell out of favor in the 1960s. Another group of scholars believed the historical present tense was used to heighten the dramatic effect, and this interpretation was favored in the New American Bible translation. In Volume II of the 1929 edition of A Grammar of

6016-450: The early Modern Era, a middle-ground variety of moderately archaic written standard Greek emerged in the usage of educated Greeks (such as the Phanariots ) and the Greek church; its syntax was essentially Modern Greek. After the Greek War of Independence and the formation of the modern Greek state (1830), a political effort was made to "purify" this form of Greek by bringing it back to resemble classical Attic Greek more closely. The result

6110-438: The first few centuries AD. After the division of the Roman Empire the earliest Modern Greek prevailed, although a version of Attic Greek was still exclusively taught in schools and served as the official language of the state until the early 20th century. The dialect distribution was then as follows: According to some scholars, Tsakonian is the only modern Greek dialect that descends from Doric, albeit with some influence from

6204-437: The form of Demotic used in practice was no longer the pure popular dialect, but had begun to assimilate elements from the Katharevousa tradition again. In 1982 diacritics were replaced by the monotonic orthography . Modern linguistics has come to call the resulting variety "Standard Modern Greek" to distinguish it from the pure original Demotic of earlier literature and traditional vernacular speech. Greek authors sometimes use

6298-633: The grammarians under the terms 'lexeis' or 'glôssai'. 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: A historical overview of how the dialects were classified in different points in time can be found in Van Rooy (2020). The Ancient Greek dialects differed mainly in vowels . Loss of intervocalic s and consonantal i and w from Proto-Greek brought two vowels together in hiatus ,

6392-404: The initial stage in the fortition of the second element in the αυ/ευ diphthongs) and the loss of vowel-timing distinctions are carried through. On the other hand, Kantor argues for certain vowel qualities differing from the rest of the Koine in the Judean dialect. Although it is impossible to know the exact realizations of vowels, it is tentatively argued that the mid-vowels ε / αι and η had

6486-470: The language is referred to as Ελληνιστική Κοινή , "Hellenistic Koiné", in the sense of "Hellenistic supraregional language "). Ancient scholars used the term koine in several different senses. Scholars such as Apollonius Dyscolus (second century AD) and Aelius Herodianus (second century AD) maintained the term koine to refer to the Proto-Greek language , while others used it to refer to any vernacular form of Greek speech which differed somewhat from

6580-403: The literary language. When Koine Greek became a language of literature by the first century BC, some people distinguished two forms: written as the literary post-classical form (which should not be confused with Atticism ), and vernacular as the day-to-day vernacular . Others chose to refer to Koine as "the dialect of Alexandria " or "Alexandrian dialect" ( ἡ Ἀλεξανδρέων διάλεκτος ), or even

6674-407: The main of the Greek language. S. J. Thackeray, in A Grammar of the Old Testament in Greek According to the Septuagint (1909), wrote that only the five books of the Pentateuch , parts of the Book of Joshua and the Book of Isaiah may be considered "good Koine". One issue debated by scholars is whether and how much the translation of the Pentateuch influenced the rest of the Septuagint, including

6768-407: The middle of the 19th century, mainly thanks to the work of the prominent Greek linguist Georgios Hadjidakis. The absence of descriptive accounts of the speech of individual regions made the efforts of the researchers of the 19th century more difficult. Therefore, the dialects' forms are known to us only during their last phase (from the middle of the 19th century, and until the panhellenic dominance of

6862-675: The most part. Doric and Aeolic show the original forms with ā ( ᾱ ). 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 leípō ( λείπω ) "I leave", perfect léloipa ( λέλοιπα ) "I have left", aorist élipon ( ἔλιπον ) "I left" – or be used as

6956-664: The new city of Mariupol after the Russo-Turkish War (1768–74) to escape the then Muslim dominated Crimea. Its main features present certain similarities with both the Pontic (e.g. the lack of synizesis of -ía, éa ), and the northern varieties of the core dialects (e.g. the northern vocalism). Istanbul Greek is a dialect of Greek spoken in Istanbul, as well as by the Istanbul Greek emigre community in Athens. It

7050-548: The notion of meeting and gathering of men, without any particular character. Therefore, etymologizing this word could be needless, or even misleading, when it could guide to false meanings, for example that ἐκκλησία is a name used for the people of God, Israel. The authors of the New Testament follow the Septuagint translations for over half their quotations from the Old Testament. The " historical present " tense

7144-457: The opening of ε . Influence of the Aramaic substrate could have also caused confusion between α and ο , providing further evidence for the back vowel realization. The following texts show differences from Attic Greek in all aspects – grammar, morphology, vocabulary and can be inferred to show differences in phonology. The following comments illustrate the phonological development within

7238-399: The period generally designated as Koine Greek, a great deal of phonological change occurred. At the start of the period, the pronunciation was virtually identical to Ancient Greek phonology , whereas in the end, it had much more in common with Modern Greek phonology . The three most significant changes were the loss of vowel length distinction, the replacement of the pitch accent system by

7332-534: The period of Koine. The phonetic transcriptions are tentative and are intended to illustrate two different stages in the reconstructed development, an early conservative variety still relatively close to Classical Attic, and a somewhat later, more progressive variety approaching Modern Greek in some respects. The following excerpt, from a decree of the Roman Senate to the town of Thisbae in Boeotia in 170 BC,

7426-438: The post-Classical period of Greek is defined as beginning with the death of Alexander the Great in 323 BC, when cultures under Greek sway in turn began to influence the language. The passage into the next period, known as Medieval Greek , is sometimes dated from the foundation of Constantinople by Constantine the Great in 330 AD, but often only from the end of late antiquity . The post-Classical period of Greek thus refers to

7520-505: The practice of translating closely from Biblical Hebrew or Aramaic originals, or through the influence of the regional non-standard Greek spoken by originally Aramaic-speaking Hellenized Jews . Some of the features discussed in this context are the Septuagint's normative absence of the particles μέν and δέ , and the use of ἐγένετο to denote "it came to pass". Some features of Biblical Greek which are thought to have originally been non-standard elements eventually found their way into

7614-467: The region of the Hellenistic world. In that respect, the varieties of Koine spoken in the Ionian colonies of Anatolia (e.g. Pontus , cf. Pontic Greek ) would have more intense Ionic characteristics than others and those of Laconia and Cyprus would preserve some Doric and Arcadocypriot characteristics, respectively. The literary Koine of the Hellenistic age resembles Attic in such a degree that it

7708-599: The rest of the Greek-speaking world after the decline of Byzantine rule in Italy during the Middle Ages. Among their linguistic peculiarities, besides influences from Italian, is the preservation of the infinitive , which was lost in the modern Greek of the Balkans. Rumeíka (Ρωμαίικα) or Mariupolitan Greek is a dialect spoken in about 17 villages around the northern coast of the Sea of Azov in southern Ukraine . Mariupolitan Greek

7802-641: 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

7896-429: The spirantization of Γ , with palatal allophone before front-vowels and a plosive allophone after nasals, and β . φ, θ and χ still preserve their ancient aspirated plosive values, while the unaspirated stops π, τ, κ have perhaps begun to develop voiced allophones after nasals. Initial aspiration has also likely become an optional sound for many speakers of the popular variety. Monophthongization (including

7990-496: The term "Modern Greek Koiné" (Greek: Νεοελληνική Κοινή , romanized:  Neoellinikí Koiní , lit.   'Common Modern Greek'), reviving the term koiné that otherwise refers to the "common" form of post-classical Ancient Greek; according to these scholars, Modern Greek Koiné is the " supra-dialect product of the composition of both the Demotic and Katharevousa." Indeed, Standard Modern Greek has incorporated

8084-567: The term "dialect" is often reserved to only the main outlying forms listed in the next section ( Tsakonian , Pontic , Cappadocian and Italiot ), whereas the bulk of the mainstream spoken varieties of present-day Greece are classified as "idioms". However, most English-speaking linguists tend to refer to them as "dialects", emphasising degrees of variation only when necessary. The geographical varieties of Greek are divided into three main groups, Northern, Semi-Northern and Southern, based on whether they make synizesis and vowel elision : Tsakonian

8178-418: The traditional rural vernaculars and may be socially stigmatised . Younger, urban speakers throughout the country tend to converge towards accents closer to the standard language, with Cyprus being an exception to this. Koine Greek Koine Greek ( ἡ κοινὴ διάλεκτος , hē koinḕ diálektos , lit.   ' the common dialect ' ), also variously known as Hellenistic Greek , common Attic ,

8272-480: The translation of Isaiah. Another point that scholars have debated is the use of ἐκκλησία ekklēsía as a translation for the Hebrew קָהָל qāhāl . Old Testament scholar James Barr has been critical of etymological arguments that ekklēsía refers to "the community called by God to constitute his People". Kyriakoula Papademetriou explains: He maintains that ἐκκλησία is merely used for designating

8366-519: The two phonemes are kept, sometimes modified, as in the Ionic poseideōn . 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

8460-707: The universal dialect of its time. Modern classicists have often used the former sense. Koine Greek arose as a common dialect within the armies of Alexander the Great . Under the leadership of Macedon , their newly formed common variety was spoken from the Ptolemaic Kingdom of Egypt to the Seleucid Empire of Mesopotamia . It replaced existing ancient Greek dialects with an everyday form that people anywhere could understand. Though elements of Koine Greek took shape in Classical Greece ,

8554-404: The vast majority of Greek speakers today. As they are less divergent from each other and from the standard, they are typically classified as mere "idioms" rather than "dialects" by Greek authors, in the native Greek terminology. The most prominent contrasts between the present-day dialects are found between northern and southern varieties. Northern varieties cover most of continental Greece down to

8648-532: The vernacular language, when this initial dialect differentiation occurred. Very few paradigms of these local varieties are found in certain texts, which however used mainly learned registers. The first texts written in modern Greek dialects appear during the Early Renaissance on the islands of Cyprus and Crete . Before the establishment of a common written standard of Demotic Greek, there were various approaches to using regional variants of Demotic as

8742-454: Was Katharevousa (καθαρεύουσα, lit. 'the purifying one'), still a compromise form with basically Modern Greek syntax, but re-lexified with a much larger amount of Ancient Greek words and morphology. Katharevousa was used as an official language in administration, education, the church, journalism, and (until the late 19th century) in literature. At the same time, spoken Demotic, while not recognised as an official language, nevertheless developed

8836-675: Was the medium of much post-classical Greek literary and scholarly writing, such as the works of Plutarch and Polybius . Koine is also the language of the Septuagint (the 3rd century BC Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible ), the Christian New Testament , and of most early Christian theological writing by the Church Fathers . In this context, Koine Greek is also known as "Biblical", "New Testament", "ecclesiastical", or "patristic" Greek. The Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius wrote his private thoughts in Koine Greek in

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