In addition, the descendants of many Cretan Muslims, who left the island during the 19th and early 20th century, continue to use it today,[1] albeit rarely.
[2] Standard Greek has an allophonic alternation between velar consonants ([k], [ɡ], [x], [ɣ]) and palatalized counterparts ([c], [ɟ], [ç], [ʝ]) before front vowels (/i/, /e/).
Subtypes can be distinguished that have either palato-alveolar ([tʃ], [dʒ], [ʃ], [ʒ]) or alveolo-palatal sounds ([tɕ], [dʑ], [ɕ], [ʑ]).
In most of the Aegean Islands, except at its geographical fringe (Rhodes in the southeast; Lemnos, Thasos and the Sporades in the north and Andros in the west), it is inda,[4] like in Cypriot Greek.
In over 10,000 lines of rhyming fifteen-syllable couplets, the poet relates the trials and tribulations suffered by two young lovers, Erotokritos and Aretousa, daughter of Heracles, King of Athens.
The time span separating Antonios Achelis, author of the Siege of Malta (1570), and Chortatsis and Kornaros is too short to allow for the formation, from scratch, of the Cretan dialect that is seen in the texts of the latter two.
The ballads of the klephts, however, survive from the 18th century; these are the songs of the Greek mountain fighters who carried on guerrilla warfare against the Turks.
This paradigm, overall, has helped Kazantzakis to write significant works such as Zorba the Greek and thus establish for himself recognition in various international circles.