Doric_Greek

Doric or Dorian was a dialect of ancient Greek. Its variants were spoken in the southern and eastern Peloponnese, Crete, Rhodes, some islands in the southern Aegean Sea, some cities on the coasts of Asia Minor, Southern Italy, Sicily, Epirus and Macedon. Together with Northwest Greek, it forms the "Western group" of classical Greek dialects. By Hellenistic times, the influence of the Aetolian League had given rise to an Achaean-Doric Koine exhibiting many peculiarities common to all Doric dialects and which delayed the spread of the Attic-based Koine to the Peloponnese until the 2nd century BC.²

It is widely accepted that Doric originated in the mountains of Epirus, northwestern Greece, the original seat of the Dorians. It was expanded to all other regions during the Dorian invasion (circa 1150 BC) and the colonisations that followed. The presence of a Doric state (Doris) in central Greece, north of the Gulf of Corinth, led to the theory that Doric had originated in northwest Greece or maybe beyond in the Balkans. The extent of the dialect's distribution towards the north is unknown for lack of epigraphic evidence. It is only in the Hellenistic period that stray finds become available as far north as Macedonia (see Pella curse tablet).

Variants

Doric proper

Where the Doric dialect group fits in the overall classification of ancient Greek dialects depends to some extent on the classification. Several views are stated under Greek dialects. The prevalent theme of most views listed there is that Doric is a subgroup of West Greek. Some use the terms Northern Greek or Northwest Greek instead. The geographic distinction is only verbal and ostensibly is misnamed: all of Doric was spoken south of "Southern Greek" or "Southeastern Greek."

Be that as it may, "Northern Greek" is based on a presumption that Dorians came from the north and on the fact that Doric is closely related to Northwest Greek. When the distinction began is not known. All the "northerners" might have spoken one dialect at the time of the Dorian invasion; certainly, Doric could only have further differentiated into its classical dialects when the Dorians were in place in the south. Thus West Greek is the most accurate name for the classical dialects.

Tsakonian, a descendant of Laconian Doric (Spartan), is still spoken on the southern Argolid coast of the Peloponnese, in the modern prefectures of Arcadia and Laconia. Today it is a source of considerable interest to linguists, and an endangered dialect.

Laconian, Heraclean

Laconian was spoken by the population of Laconia in the southern Peloponnesus and also by its colonies, Tarentum and Heraclea, in southern Italy. Sparta was the seat of ancient Laconia.

Laconian is attested in inscriptions on pottery and stone from the 7th century BC. A dedication to Helen dates from the 2nd quarter of the 7th. Tarentum was founded in 706 BC. The founders must already have spoken Laconic.

Many documents from the state of Sparta survive, whose citizens called themselves Lacedaemonians after the name of the valley in which they lived. Homer calls it "hollow Lacedaemon", though he refers to a pre-Dorian period. The 7th century BC, Spartan poet, Alcman, used a dialect that some consider to be predominantly Laconian. Philoxenus of Alexandria wrote a treatise On the Laconian dialect.

Argolic

Ample inscriptional material of a legal, political and religious content exists from at least the 6th century BC.

Corinthian

Corinth contradicts the prejudice that Dorians were rustic militarists, as some consider the speakers of Laconian to be. Positioned on an international trade route, Corinth played a leading part in the recivilizing of Greece after the centuries of disorder and isolation following the collapse of Mycenaean Greece.

Northwest Greek

The Northwest Greek group is closely related to the Doric Group, while sometimes there is no distinction between the Doric and the Northwest Greek. Whether it is to be considered a part of the Doric Group or the latter a part of it or the two subgroups of West Greek, it is a verbal distinction only: the dialects and their grouping remain the same. West Thessalian and Boeotian had come under a strong Northwest Greek influence. The Northwest Greek dialects differ from the Doric Group dialects in the below features³:

Plutarch refers that Delphians pronounce b in the place of p (βικρὸν for πικρὸν)⁴

The dialect of Elis,Olympia is, after the Aeolic dialects, one of the most difficult for the modern reader of epigraphic texts⁶ (earliest ca. 600 BC)⁷

A school of thought maintains that Macedonian may have been a Greek dialect, possibly of the Northwestern group in particular, ¹⁵ although would classify Macedonian, if "Greek" at all, as a separate marginal or "deviant" item on its own.¹⁶

Differences between Doric and Attic/Koine

Vocalism

Consonantism

Morphology

Glossary

Common

North-West

Western group: Doric Northwest Greek	Central group: Aeolic Arcado-Cypriot	Eastern group: Attic Ionic
Achaean(M Macedonian – classification unknown)

Contents