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 (see Diglossia) culminated in the struggle between Dimotiki 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.
Diglossia
Roots and history: Demotic and Katharevousa 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).Horrocks, Geoffrey (1997): Greek: a history of the language and its speakers. London: Longman. Ch. 5.5 This situation is known in modern linguistics as diglossia.Ferguson, Charles A. (1959): "Diglossia." Word 15: 325–340.
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.Horrocks (1997), ch.10; 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 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.Horrocks, ch.15. 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'), still a compromise form with basically Modern Greek syntax, but re-lexified with a much larger amount of Ancient Greek words and morphology.Horrocks, ch.17. 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.Horrocks, ch.17.6. 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.Law 309/1976 "About the Organization and Administration of the General Education" 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. In 1982 diacritics were replaced by the monotonic orthography.Presidential Decree 207/1982
Standard Modern Greek 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" (), 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."Babiniotis (2007), 29 Indeed, 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.
History of modern Greek dialects The first systematic scholarly treatment of the modern Greek dialects took place after 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 the Standard Modern Greek).
Initial dialect differentiation 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.Browning (1983), 119: "Scholars of the generation of F.W. Mullach sought to find Dorisms and Aeolisms in the medieval and Modern Greek dialects, or even went further back, seeking the origin of certain of their characteristics in primitive "Indo-European". 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 little correlation with the ancient dialects.Browning (1983), 119* Kontosopoulos (2007), 149
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 the vernacular language, when this initial dialect differentiation occurred. Very few paradigms of these local varieties are found in certain texts, which used mainly learned registers. The first texts written in modern Greek dialects appear during the Early Renaissance on the islands of Cyprus and Crete.Kontosopoulos (2007), 149
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. 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 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.Alexiou (2002), 29 During the Cretan Renaissance in the 16th and early 17th centuries there existed a flourishing 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.
Modern varieties
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 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 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".For the distinction between "Greek dialects" and "Greek idioms", see Kontosopoulos, Nikolaos (1999): "Dialektoi kai idiomata". In: Manos Kopidaks et al. (eds.), Istoria tis ellinikis glossas.. Athens: Elliniko Logotechniko kai Istoriko Archeio. 188–205; Kontosopoulos (2008) 2–3; Trudgill (2003) 49 [Modern Greek dialects. A preliminary Classification, in: Journal of Greek Linguistics 4 (2003), p. 54-64] : "Dialekti are those varieties that are linguistically very different from Standard Greek [...] Idiomata are all the other varieties." 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:
Examples of modern Northern Greek dialects are: Rumelian, Epirote (except Thesprotia prefecture), Thessalian, Macedonian,Studies in Greek Syntax (1999), Pg 98–99 Thracian.
The Southern category is divided into groups that include variety groups from: Megara, Aegina, Athens, Kymi (Old Athenian) and Mani Peninsula (Maniot) Peloponnese (except Mani), Cyclades, Crete and Ionian Islands Dodecanese and Cyprus. Parts of southern Albania (known as Northern Epirus among Greeks).Nick Nicholas. Appendix A. History & Diatopy of Greek. The story of pu: The grammaticalisation in space and time of a Modern Greek complementiser. December 1998. University of Melbourne, p. 20. Asia Minor (Modern Turkey)
Outlying varieties
Tsakonian
Tsakonian Greek is a highly divergent variety, sometimes classified as a separate language because it is not 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 a late, ancient Laconian variety of the Koiné influenced by Doric.Horrocks, ch.4.4.3; C. Brixhe (2007): A modern approach to the ancient dialects, in: A. F. Christides (ed.), A history of Ancient Greek, Cambridge University Press, p.499. It used to be spoken earlier in a wider area of the Peloponnese, including Laconia, the historical home of the Doric Spartans.
Pontic Greek