In Plato's Protagoras, Prodicus labelled the Aeolic dialect of Pittacus of Mytilene as "barbarian",[2] because of its difference from the Attic literary style:[3] "He didn't know to distinguish the words correctly, being from Lesbos, and having been raised with a barbarian dialect".

Similarly PIE/PGk *gʷ always became b and PIE *gʷʰ > PGk *kʰʷ always became ph (whereas in other dialects they became alternating b/d and ph/th before back/front vowels).

Lesbian Aeolic lost initial h- (psilosis "stripping") from Proto-Indo-European s- or y-.

In Thessalian and Boeotian (sub-dialects of Aeolic) and Doric, the Proto-Indo-European and Proto-Greek semi-vowel w (digamma) was retained at the beginning of a word.

In Boeotian, the vowel-system was, in many cases, changed in a way reminiscent of the modern Greek pronunciation.

In Lesbian Aeolic, the accent of all words is recessive (barytonesis), as is typical only in the verbs of other dialects.