The Epirote dialect is a variety of Northwest Doric that was spoken in the ancient Greek state of Epirus during the Classical Era.

[4] Nevertheless, Epirote lacked some of the features that are described as salient diagnostics of Northwest Doric, including the athematic dative plural -ois, the third person imperative -nton, and the mediopassive participle forms in -ei-.

Dosuna argues that North-West Greece was an area of dialectal convergence that became increasingly homogenous from the fifth century BCE onwards, coinciding with the rise of different koinai and political integration.

[8] Speaking in a broad sense of the history of Epirus, as of 2018, a number of advances have been made in the last few decades, largely powered by ongoing progress in archaeological research in both Greece and Southern Albania.

[9] However, there is no up-to-date comprehensive work incorporating all the recent archaeological advances, meaning the least outdated summary is Hammond 1967.

[9] Likewise, despite newly available epigraphic corpora[10][11] from Dodona and Bouthroton (modern Butrint), Greek linguist Filos notes that there remains no holistic linguistic account of Epirus at all that extends beyond a "non-piecemeal description of the epichoric variety", though Filos himself offers a summarized account.

[17] A number of scholars have asserted a possible partial Hellenization of pre-classical Epirus, wherein Greek elites would have engendered a language shift by elite dominance over an originally non-Greek-speaking population,[15] including Nilsson (1909),[18] Crossland (1982),[19] and Kokoszko & Witczak (2009)[20] However, such views largely relied on subjective ancient testimonies and are not supported by the earliest evidence (epigraphic, etc.).

[21] On the other side, Hammond (1982) argued the converse, wherein it was southward and eastward Illyrian expansions that intruded upon an originally Greek Epirus.

[15] Filos (2017) notes that due to the limitations of our linguistic knowledge of Epirus during the relevant period, which is entirely lacking except for the onomastic evidence of anthronyms, tribe names, and toponyms, any assumptions either way about which element (Illyrian, Greek) was intrusive is "tantamount to plain guesswork",[2] but one may reasonably assume a degree of bidialectalism along its coastline (cf.

Corinthian and Elean colonies) and of bilingualism in its northern part which interacted with Illyria likely did exist, but this is hardly traceable nowadays.

[23][15] According to Crossman it is also possible that the region on the north of Epirus that became latter known as southern Illyria was home to proto-Greek populations for some generations or centuries before they moved southward into Greece.

[26] The Corinthian and Elean colonies on the coast were gradually integrated into the emerging pan-Epirote political formations, resulting in increasing linguistic homogenization of the region.

[27] The Northwest Doric koina was a supraregional North-West common variety that emerged in the third and second centuries BCE, and was used in the official texts of the Aetolian League.

[5] The Northwest Doric koina was politically linked to the Aetolian league, which had long had a mutually hostile relationship with Epirus.

Scientific inquiry on the syntax and morphosyntax of Epirote is, to date, too weak in general to make strong statements.

It is an honorary decree in which the Molossian citizenship is awarded to a certain Simias from Apollonia and his family:[54] Ἀριστομάχου Ὄμ|φαλος, γραμματ|ιστᾶ δὲ Μενεδά|μου Ὄμφαλος ἔδω|<μ>καν ἰσοπολιτε||ίαν Μολοσσῶν τ|ὸ κοινὸν Σιμίαι Ἀ|πολλωνιάται κα|τοικοῦντι ἐν Θε|πτίνωι, αὐτῶι κα||15[ὶ] γενεᾶι (-αῖ) καὶ γέν|[ει ἐκ] γενεᾶς.