Ancient Greek Dialects

Distribution of Greek dialects, around -400.

In the antiquity , the ancient Greek was not the only language, literature and normative It is currently studying in the text when reading authors such as Plato or Aristophanes. This language, the Ionian-Attic - language of Athens - is indeed one of many dialects , so present in the Greek sphere hellenophone; is however the most prestigious and most importantly, is the one we better known. Its success is seen simply as it is known that the modern Greek is derived.

We must therefore represent the so-called ancient Greek dialects as a whole more or less intercomprehensible and further afield, who may not have existed at the same time, and most importantly, have not been importance or even the same fate within this language family.

While some dialects like Athens we are very well known, is due to several factors that mingle cultural, literary, economic and political (to a lesser extent) and religious (especially with the advent of Christianity ) of the area where the dialects in question were spoken. Thus, the Ionian-Attic became the great majority language literary texts and Greek scientists (hence its importance, still present in the formation of learned words by Greek radicals ) and, with the Athenian hegemony and conquests of Alexander the Great , the lingua franca (the Koine literally, " language common "), Hellenistic and Roman world (so much so that the upper-class Romans under the Empire, they had to speak it). From there, its expansion has become unstoppable: language communications, the Koine Greek language is the default one in which, finally, are the written gospels Christians, who spends as liturgical language (and it can greatly influence languages of countries sharing the religion, such as Latin Church, and after the Great Schism of the East , the languages of the Orthodox Church : Slavic , Coptic ...). All these phenomena explain present Ionian-Attic has become synonymous with Greek and whether this variant being studied in class: it is indeed the one we know best and that can be grammatically and lexically , describe in more detail, which is also the bearer of an illustrious past.

Conversely, other dialects are known to us only by a few non-literary inscriptions (often very limited in the lexicon , like "X gave Y to Z" or "X has Y for Z") and even few isolated words (in glosses , the Greeks having often surprised that such a word to say so in this dialect), are usually studied in the context of philology or linguistics. This is the case of Eleans, the Aetolian or scapegoat , for example.

Between the two there are dialects that might know the destiny of the Ionic-Attic, also used in literature, well known and can be described very well on the grammar and lexicon. The importance has taken the Ionian-Attic has, however, more or less erased from the memories and customs. You can count the rank of the Ionian dialects such, the wind or Dorian.

Reasons dialectal fragmentation

The apparent lack of linguistic unity in Greece before the Koine explained historically, culturally and naturally. First, the early Greeks have established a dichotomy between the Dorians and Achaeans , the first corresponding to the "invaders" of the second wave of settlement, the same people who removed the Mycenaean civilization. This separation is found, mutatis mutandis, in the language field.

Moreover, Greece before the Hellenistic period is not a nation and if the feeling of belonging to the same "race" (which contrasts with the rest of the world, brbaroi "barbarians", literally "those brrr brrr who, "" those who jabber ") does exist, this" race "is not Greek to a unit. In fact, the dominant political model is the plis, the city, the same sense of independence can be enhanced by the mountainous terrain of Greece, which isolates the different cities. The conquests of Alexander the Great and the Romans will, however, by the language of Athens a lingua franca , promote the use of a single dialect, the Ionic-Attic, then became the Koine (Greek and medieval and, hence, the modern Greek ). It is also noteworthy that currently the Modern Greek is a unified language and subsist only on rare dialects, the most famous is probably the Tsakonian (from the Doric, which proves once again how the separation between Dorians and Achaeans remained alive).

Unit underlying Greek

This apparent disparity, which appears mainly to the historian, however, should not hide the fact that the Greek dialects remain generally intercomprehensible when lies in synchrony (obviously a dialect as archaic as the Mycenaean thirteenth ^century before AD would probably not have been understood not a speaker of the Koine of ¹ AD). In this way, the main differences are primarily the aural (but systems phonological remain close enough: just to know that such / a / Ionic-Attic is a / / Ionian), slightly less than morphology , let alone the lexicon and hardly the syntax. We can therefore speak of a linguistic unit: the dialect differences should thus be regarded as primarily a problem of "accent".

Moreover, as discussed, dialects "literary", those that were used for literature, has been a degree of continuity. A classic tragedy by Sophocles, written mostly in Ionic-Attic, has necessarily passages in "Dorian" (or, rather, what was felt as such because it is a matter of convention) and sometimes borrows the Ionian mainly when it distinguishes the epic. Literary language, especially poetry, is composite in the sense that it is an art talk (in German, a Kunstsprache) obtained by a conscious creation. The clearest example is the poetry of Homer : it is lying in an artificial language that was never spoken, described as Homeric dialect , and where the demands of the meter and the needs of the membership form has been coexist a number of old elements (wind or even Mycenaean) with elements much more recent (the base of the Homeric dialect is a relatively archaic Ionian). But it is also valid for iambic and lyric poetry, especially the choral lyric by Pindar and Bacchylides: poets write archaic language motley conventional gender that avoids (choral lyric) or cultivated (iambographes) appearance Ionian, but never really implemented in their daily speech.

Finally, if before the Greek -403 spelled differently depending on where it is spoken, using alphabets pichoriques after that date, so spread out, he comes to follow the model Ionian Athens together sits the importance of the Ionian-Attic dialect and the Koine. The disappearance of old consonants ( digamma , Koppa , San ), though useful in some dialects, is also indicative of an underlying unity: rather quickly, Greek was written in the same way everywhere.

Dialects

The "common Greek"

Thus we call the ancestor of all Greek dialects, language and returned unattested studied mainly in comparative linguistics and historical phonetics of the Greek, to determine the etymons historical words. In fact, it is a dialect of the Indo-European with still some features that disappear thereafter. For example, we know that common Greek was a pair of consonants present also in Indo-European and noted * g for sound, * k for the deaf, the occlusive lip velarized / g , k / (according to uses philological , the asterisk indicates the forms not attested). These consonants have evolved differently in different dialects, which explains the apparent discrepancies: thus in Ionic-Attic, the word for "ox" is Bouse (cf. Latin bove (m), which gives our beef) but Mycenaean dialect much older, we find the same concept for a radical qo-(for the Mycenaean, we denote by q the phoneme / k /): the age of the Mycenaean term and the convergence with other Indo-European ( gau-in Sanskrit , kouz in Germanic (with passage of g to k according to Grimm's law) from which the English cow) to determine that the two consonants / k / and / b / can only go up both at * g of common Greek and Indo-European.

List of dialects and distribution

• Arcado-Cypriot group:
  • Mycenaean
  • Arcadian, Cyprian, Pamphylian
• group Ionian-Attic :
  • Attic ( Greek )
    • Koine (common Greek way)
      • Modern Greek
      • yvanique
      • Greek Cypriot
    • pontine (spoken by the Pontic )
    • Cappadocian
    • Romano-Greek
  • Ionian (Asian island of Evia)
• Wind band ( Boeotian , lesbian, Thessalian)
• Western Group
  • Dorian (Laconian, Argive, Corinthian, etc.).
    • Tsakonian
    • Griko (spoken in villages of Southern Italy )
  • Eleans, Aetolian, locrian, Phocidians
  • Former Macedonian (with features of Thessalian ^{Literary Dialects}
    • Attic:
      • Historians, Thucydides , Xenophon ...
      • Attic orators : Demosthenes , Aeschines , Isocrates , Lysias ...
      • Philosophers Aristotle , Plato ...
      • Poets comedy : Aristophanes , Eupolis , Phrynichus ...
      • Tragic poets (with dorismes): Aeschylus , Sophocles , Euripides.
    • Dorian:
      • Alcman
      • Theocritus
    • Boeotian:
      • Corinne
    • Ionic:
      • Herodotus.
      • Hesiod (with olismes).
      • Homer (archaic language which also uses olismes).
      • Iambic poets, lyric and Mlique: Archilochus , Tyrtaeus , Ibycus , Stesichorus , Anacreon , Mimnerme , Hipponax , Solon , Herondas
      • Simonides , Pindar , Bacchylides (Ionian crossbred with conventional dorismes)
    • Lesbian:
      • Alcaeus
      • Sappho

    Bibliography

    • History of the Greek language:
      • A. Meillet, Outline of a history of ^Greek, 8th ed., Paris, 1975 ^(1st ed. 1913; the book perhaps the most suggestive that has been written about the evolution of ancient Greek)
      • PS Costas, An Outline of the History of the Greek Language: with Particular Emphasis On The Koine And The Subsequent Periods, Chicago, 1936
      • GC Horrocks, Greek. A History of the Language and Its Speakers, London, 1997 (the reference leads to the modern Greek)
      • W. Moleas, The Development of the Greek Language. Second Edition, London, 2004 ^(1st ed. 1980; more accessible than the previous one, but less reliable)
    • The different dialects:

    General orientation in textbooks, CD Buck, The Greek Dialects. Grammar, Selected Inscriptions, Glossary, latest edition 1955 (Chicago & London) and A. Thumb, Handbuch der griechischen Dialekt, 2 vols. reviewed respectively by E. Kieckers and A. Scherer, 1932-1959 (Heidelberg). The former is more user-friendly, selective and dated than the second. Since then have appeared R. Schmitt, Einfhrung in die griechischen Dialekt (Darmstadt, 1977) and Y. Duhon, Introduction to Ancient Greek dialects. Problems and methods. Collection of translated texts (Louvain, 1983), which remain rather sketchy and complement more than compete. The large comprehensive treaty, the only available, is that Bechtel, in three volumes: vital though often cursory, but pre-Saussurean and now very dated. It pays to use the treaty's unfinished Hoffmann, much more detailed and has the merit of collecting, the head of each of its volumes, while all known sources (including poetic fragments and inscriptions). In terms of perception of literary dialects in terms of an Athenian speaker through the prism that is the Old Attic Comedy, there are large-scale synthesis of S. Colvin, Dialect in Aristophanes and The Politics of Language in Ancient Greek Literature, Oxford, 1999.

    • Attic:
      • WG Rutherford, The New Phrynichus, Being a Revised Text Of The Ecloga Of The Grammarians Phrynichus With Introductions and Commentary, London, 1881, Chapter I
      • K. Meisterhans, Grammatik der Inschriften attischen, Berlin: ^1st ed. 1885, ^2nd ed. increased 1888, ^3rd ed. redone by E. Schwyzer, 1900 (outdated)
      • G. Bjrck, Das Alpha impurum und die tragische Kunstsprache: Wort-und attische Stilstudien, Uppsala, 1950 (on artificial literary dialect of the tragedy, including alphas "Dorian" lyrical parts)
      • Subtitles Teodorsson, phonemic The System of the Attic Dialect 400-340 BC, Lund, 1974 (abstract but useful)
      • AC Moorhouse, The Syntax of Sophocles, Leiden, 1982
      • AA Long, Language and Thought in Sophocles: A Study of Abstract Nouns and Poetic Technique ", London, 1968
      • L. Threatt, A Grammar of Attic Inscriptions, I, Phonology, Morphology II, Berlin & New York, 1980-1996 (fundamental)
    • Dorian:
      • P.-E. Legrand, Study Theocritus, Paris, 1898, Chapter IV, Section 1
      • F. Bechtel, Die griechischen Dialekt, II Die westgriechischen Dialekt, Berlin, 1923
      • E. Bourguet, Laconian dialect, Paris, 1927 (the life of this dialect known through the inscriptions of the time the author)
      • DL Page, Alcman. The Partheneion, Oxford, 1951, Chapter III
      • C. Dobias-Lalou, the dialect of the Greek inscriptions of Cyrene, Paris, 2000
    • Boeotian:
      • F. Bechtel, Die griechischen Dialekt, I Der Lesbisch, thessalische, botische, arkadische und kyprische Dialekt, Berlin, 1921
      • DL Page, Corinna, London, 1953, Chapter II
    • Ionic:
      • A. Fick, Die Ilias nach ihrer Entstehung Homerische betrachtet und in der ursprnglichen Sprachform wiederhergestellt, Gttingen, 1886, Preface (ideas to know, to keep them: this entails the transfer of Homeric epics from their farm to a primitive Ionian "recent", that it differs from a so-called "Old Ionic" entirely vernacular, and claims to restore the original dialect Notes
        1. M. Hatzopoulos, "The talk of the ancient Macedonians, Macedonia, Historical Geography, Language, Religion and Beliefs, Institutions, De Boccard, Paris 2006, p. 35-51.
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