Arcadocypriot Greek

Arcadocypriot, or southern Achaean, was an ancient Greek dialect spoken in Arcadia, in the central Peloponnese, and in Cyprus.

Its resemblance to Mycenaean Greek, as it is known from the Linear B corpus, indicates that they are closely related to it, and belong to the same dialect group, known as Achaean.

The prevailing dialect spoken in southern Greece (including Achaea, the Argolid, Laconia, Crete, and Rhodes) at the end of the Bronze Age, was Proto-Arcadocypriot.

With the arrival of Dorians in the Peloponnese, a part of the population moved to Cyprus, and the rest was limited to the Arcadian mountains.

According to John T. Hooker, the preferable explanation for the general historico-linguistic picture is that:[6] ... in the Bronze Age, at the time of the great Mycenaean expansion, a dialect of a high degree of uniformity was spoken both in Cyprus and in the Peloponnese but that at some subsequent epoch the speakers of West Greek intruded upon the Peloponnese and occupied the coastal states, but made no significant inroads into Arcadia.