Varieties of Modern Greek

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History of the Greek language (see also: Greek alphabet)

Proto-Greek (c. 2000 BC)

Mycenaean (c. 1600–1100 BC)

Ancient Greek (c. 800–300 BC) Dialects: Aeolic, Arcadocypriot, Attic-Ionic, Doric, Pamphylian; Homeric Greek. Possible dialect: Macedonian.

Koine Greek (from c. 300 BC)

Medieval Greek (c. 330–1453)

Modern Greek (from 1453) Dialects: Cappadocian, Cretan, Cypriot, Demotic, Griko, Katharevousa, Pontic, Tsakonian, Yevanic

The linguistic varieties of Modern Greek can be classified along two principal dimensions. First, there is a long tradition of sociolectal variation between the natural, popular spoken language on the one hand and archaizing, learned written forms on the other. Second, there is regional variation between dialects. The competition between the popular and the learned registers, known as diglossia, culminated in the struggle between Demotic Greek and Katharevousa during the 19th and 20th centuries. As for regional dialects, variation within the bulk of dialects of present-day Greece is not particularly strong, except for a number of outlying, highly divergent dialects spoken by isolated communities.

Contents 1 Diglossia: Demotic, Katharevousa and Standard Modern Greek 2 Historical literary dialects 3 Spoken dialects 3.1 Outlying dialects 3.2 Core dialects 3.2.1 Phonological features 3.2.2 Grammatical features 4 References

[edit] Diglossia: Demotic, Katharevousa and Standard Modern Greek

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).^[1] This situation is known in modern linguistics as diglossia.^[2]

During 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.^[3] During 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. It syntax was essentially Modern Greek.^[4] 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 was Katharevousa (καθαρεύουσα, lit. 'the purifying one'). It was still a compromise form with basically Modern Greek syntax, but re-lexified with a much larger amount of Ancient Greek words and morphology.^[5] 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 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 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.^[6] In 1976, shortly after the restitution 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, 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.

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 the term "Modern Greek Koiné" (Νεοελληνική Κοινή, literally 'Common Modern Greek'), reviving the term koiné that otherwise refers to the "common" form of post-classical Ancient Greek. Standard Modern Greek has incorporated 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.

[edit] Historical literary dialects

Before the establishment of a common written standard of Demotic Greek, there were various approaches to using regional variants of Demotic as a written language. During the Cretan Renaissance in the 16th and early 17th centuries, when Crete was still under Venetian rather than Ottoman rule, there existed a florishing vernacular literature in 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 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.

[edit] Spoken dialects

Spoken modern vernacular Greek can be distinguished into various geographical dialects. There are a small number of highly divergent, outlying dialects spoken by relatively isolated communities, and 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, the term "dialect" is often reserved to only the outlying forms listed in the next section, whereas the bulk of mainstream spoken varieties of present-day Greece is classified as "idioms".^[7]

[edit] Outlying dialects

• Tsakonian is a highly divergent dialect spoken in a small mountaneous area slightly inland from the east coast of the Peloponese peninsula. It is unique among all other modern dialects in that it is believed to derive not from the ancient Attic-Ionian Koiné, but from Doric. It used to be spoken earlier in a wider area of the Peloponese, including Laconia, the historical home of the Doric Spartans.

• Griko refers to the diaspora dialects of Greek spoken in some areas of southern Italy, a historical remnant of the ancient colonisation of Magna Graecia. There are two small Griko-speaking communities today in the Italian regions of Calabria, the southern tip of the Italian peninsula, and in Apulia, its south-easternmost corner. These dialects 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.^[8] They subsequently adopted influences from ancient Koiné, but became isolated from 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.

• Pontic Greek dialects 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 the Black Sea coast, in Ukraine, 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 emigrated to Greece more recently. Today Pontic Greeks form a 200,000-strong group within Greece,^[9] where some of them maintain the dialect. A small group of Muslim Pontic speakers is reported to be still found in Turkey.^[10] Their dialects show heavy structural convergence towards Turkish, similar to what was earlier reported for Cappadocian Greek, spoken in central Turkey until the early 20th century.^[11] In the 1920s Cappadocian speakers were forced to emigrate to Greece, where they were resettled in various locations. Cappadocian Greek, a dialect influenced by the Turkish language, is now extinct.^[12]
• Cargèse Greek, a dialect spoken, until the mid-20th century, in Cargèse on Corsica, by descendants of 16th-century settlers from the Mani peninsula.^[13]

[edit] Core dialects

Map showing the distribution of major Modern Greek dialect areas[14]

Map showing important isoglosses between the traditional Modern Greek dialects (c.1900).[15] Purple: Area of "northern vocalism" (/skiˈli/ > [skli]) Yellow: Area of palatalisation of /k/ > tʃ (/kiriaˈki/ > [tʃirjaˈtʃi] Green: Area of palatalisation of /k/ > [ts] (/kiriaˈki/ > [tsirjaˈtsi]) Brown: Geminated initial consonants (/ne/ > [nne]) Red: Retention of word-final /n/ Dark brown: Historical /y/ > /u/

Unlike the above, the dialects described below form a contiguous Greek-speaking area, which covers most of the territory of Greece. They represent 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 the Gulf of Corinth, while the southern varieties are spoken in the Peloponese 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 a contiguous area around the capital Athens (i.e. the regions of Attica and neighbouring parts of Boeotia, Euboia, the Peloponese and nearby islands), there is a "dialectal void" where no distinctly marked traditional Greek dialects are found.^[16] 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 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 Peloponese.

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 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 (further west in Attica), of Kymi in Euboia and of the island of Aegina. These dialects are now extinct.^[17]

The following linguistic markers have been used to distinguish and classify the dialects of Greece. Many of these features are today characteristic only of 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.

[edit] Phonological features

Further information: Modern Greek phonology

• Northern vocalism (high vowel loss). In the north, unstressed high vowels (/i/ and /u/) are typically deleted (e.g. [skli] vs. standard [skiˈli]) 'dog'). Unstressed mid vowels (/e/ and /o/) are raised to [i] and [u] instead (e.g. [piˈði] vs. standard [peˈði] 'child'). Subtypes of this phenomenon can be distinguished as follows: in "Extreme Northern" dialects these two processes apply throughout. In mid "Northern" dialects the deletion of /i/ and /u/ applies only to word-final vowels. "Semi-Northern" dialects only have the deletion of word-final /i/ and /u/, but not the raising of /e/ and /o/.^[18] The latter include Mykonos, Skiros, Lefkada and the urban dialect of the Greeks of Constantinople (Istanbul).

• Palatalisation. Standard Greek has an allophonic alternation between velar consonants ([k], [ɡ], [x], [ɣ]) and palatalised counterparts (([c], [ɟ], [ç], [ʝ]) before front vowels (/i/, /e/). In southern dialects, the palatalisation goes further towards affricates (e.g. [tʃe] vs. standard [ce] 'and'). Subtypes can be distinguished that have either palato-alveolar ([tʃ], [dʒ], [ʃ], [ʒ]) or alveolo-palatal sounds ([tɕ], [dʑ], [ɕ], [ʑ]). The former are reported for Cyprus, the latter for Crete, among others.^[19]

• Tsitakism. In a core area in which the palatalisation process has gone even further, covering mainly the Cycladic Islands, palatalised /k/ is further fronted to alveolar [ts] and thus merges with the original phoneme /ts/.^[20] This phenomenon is known in Greek as tsitakism (τσιτακισμός). It was also shared by Old Athenian.

• Ypsilon. A highly archaic feature shared by Tsakonian, the Maniot dialect, and the Old Athenian enclave dialects, is the divergent treatment of historical /y/ (<υ>). While this sound merged to /i/ everywhere else, these dialects have /u/ instead (e.g. [ˈksulo] vs. standard [ˈksilo] 'wood').^[21]

• Geminate consonants. Most Modern Greek varieties have lost the distinctively long (geminate) consonants found in Ancient Greek. However, the dialects of the south-eastern islands, including Cyprus, have preserved them, and even extended them to new environments such as word-initial positions. Thus, the word ναι 'yes' is pronounced with a distinctively long initial /n/ in Cypriot, and there are minimal pairs such as φυλλα [ˈfilla] 'leaves' vs. φίλα [ˈfila] 'kiss!', which are pronounced exactly the same in other dialects but distinguished by consonant length in Cypriot.^[22]

• Dark /l/. A distinctive marker of modern northern vernaculars, especially of Macedonia, is the use of a "dark" (velarised) [ɫ] sound.

• Medial fricative deletion. Some dialects of the Aegean Islands, especially in the Dodecanese, have a tendency of deleting intervocalic voiced fricatives /v/, /ð/, /ɣ/ (e.g. [meˈalo] vs. standard [meˈɣalo] 'big').^[23]

• Nasals and voiced plosives. Dialects differ in their phonetic treatment of the result of the assimilation of voiceless plosives with preceding nasals. All dialects have a voicing of the plosive in this position, but while some dialects also have an audible segment of prenasalisation, others do not; thus ton patera may be realised as either [tombaˈtera] or [tobaˈtera].^[24] Furthermore, prenasalisation tends to be preserved in more formal registers regardless of geography. In informal speech, it tends to be more common in northern varieties.

[edit] Grammatical features

Further information: Modern Greek grammar

• Final /n/. Most Modern Greek varieties have lost word-final -n, once a part of many inflectional suffixes of Ancient Greek, in all but very few grammatical words. The south-eastern islands have preserved it in many words (e.g. [ˈipen] vs. standard [ˈipe] 'he said'; [tiˈrin] vs. standard [tiˈri] 'cheese').^[25]

• inda? versus ti? In Standard Greek, the interrogative pronoun 'what?' is ti. In most of the Aegean Islands (except at its geographical fringe: Rhodes in the south-east, Lemnos, Thasos and the Sporades in the north; and Andros in the west), it is inda.^[26]

• Indirect objects. All Modern Greek dialects have lost the Ancient Greek dative case. But while in some dialects this has resulted in a merger between the dative and the genitive, in others it has been a merger between the dative and the accusative. In the standard and in the southern dialects, the personal pronoun forms used to express indirect objects are those of the genitive case, as in ex. (1) below. In northern dialects — including those of Thessaloniki and of Constantinople— in Rhodes and in Mesa Mani the accusative forms are used instead,^[12] as in ex. (2).

	(1)	Standard Greek:	sou you.GEN	dhíno I give	to vivlío the book
	(2)	Northern Greek:	se you.ACC	dhíno I give	to vivlío the book
			'I give you the book'

[edit] References