Ancient Greek Dialects - Post-Hellenistic

Post-Hellenistic

The ancient Greek dialects were a result of isolation and poor communication between communities living in broken terrain. No general Greek historian fails to point out the influence of terrain on the development of the city-states. Often in the development of languages dialectization results in the dissimilation of daughter languages. This 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 BCE regional dialects replaced local ones: North-west Greek koine, Doric koine and of course Attic koine. The latter came to replace the others in common speech in the first few centuries AD. After the division of the Roman Empire into east and 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
    • Tsakonian

According to some scholars, Tsakonian is the only modern Greek dialect that descends from Doric rather than the Koine. Others believe it to be the descendant of the local Laconian, and thus Doric-influenced, variant of the Koine.