Language and Dialects

Ancient Greek is divided into three historical eras—Mycenaean, Archaic and Classical, and Hellenistic.

Date: c. 2000-31 b. c.e.

Category: Language

Summary Greek is a solitary branch of the Eastern Indo-European language groups related most closely to ancient Macedonian (not to be confused with the modern Slavic tongue) and Phrygian. In the Mycenaean period (2100-1000 b. c.e.), Greek speakers began to move into the lower Balkan Peninsula, the islands of the Aegean Sea, Crete, and western Anatolia after 2000 b. c.e. Around 1400 b. c.e., the Greeks adapted the Linear A alphabet of Crete for their own use; the result is known as Linear B. Inscriptions of this period indicate that the language was rather uniform, but variations in the script show that spoken dialects did exist. Around 1200 b. c.e., Dorian Greek invasions wiped out the use of the written alphabet, introducing the Greek Dark Age.

Population pressure in ancient Greece caused a vast colonization period from about 800 to 600 b. c.e., called the Archaic period. Greek commerce also developed causing the adoption of a version of the Phoenician alphabet (the Greek alphabet still in use today.) Thus began the written record of classical Greek starting with the epic poems of Homer. A uniform script evolved by the fourth century b. c.e. In the Classical period (sixth to fifth centuries b. c.e.), four major dialect groups have been recognized by scholars: West, Aeolic, Ionic-Attic, and Arcado-Cypriot. Modern linguists have sometime combined the last with the Aeolic or Ionic-Attic groups. The Arcado-Cypriot dialect developed from the earlier Mycenaean language. The Dorians brought with them the West dialect, which influenced the others spoken by those people whom they drove further east and south.

Colonies spoke the dialects of their mother cities but developed their own strains. In Greece proper, the dialects were the West group, including Doric proper (in the Peloponnesus, Rhodes, and Crete) and North-West

Greek; the Aeolic group in Boeotia, Thessaly, Lesbos, and Asiatic Aeolis; the Ionian-Attic group in Attica, Euboea, the Cyclades, and Asiatic Ionia; and the Arcado-Cypriot group in Arcadia, Cyprus, and Pamphylia.

The unification of Macedonia, Greece, and the Middle East under Alexander the Great and his successors, in the Hellenistic era (323-31 b. c.e.), established Greek as a common language, and the dialect koine (literally “common”) was spoken throughout the area. Its basis was Attic Greek. Local influences, however, also entered into the language.

Significance Classical literature exists in various dialects. The poetry of Homer has both Ionian-Attic and Aeolic elements. Classical tragedy is Attic, while there was both Attic and Doric comedy. In lyric poetry, Doric dominates. Attic Greek remained the dominant literary form, although some poets imitated earlier dialects.

Further Reading

Adrados, Francisco Rodriguez. A History of the Greek Language: From Its Origin to the Present. Translated by Francisca Rojas del Canto. Boston: E. J. Brill, 2005.

Colvin, Stephen. Dialect in Aristophanes and the Politics of Language in Ancient Greek Literature. Oxford, England: Clarendon Press, 1999. Moleas, Wendy. The Development of the Greek Language. 2d ed. Bristol, England: Bristol Classical Press, 2004.

Nagy, Gregory. Homer’s Text and Language. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2004.

Willi, Andreas. The Language of Greek Comedy. New York: Oxford University Press, 2002.

Frederick B. Chary

See also: Inscriptions; Linear B; Literary Papyri; Writing Systems.