Varieties of Modern Greek
First, there is a long tradition of sociolectal variation between the natural, popular spoken language on the one hand and archaizing, learned written forms on the other.
At the same time, spoken Demotic, while not recognised as an official language, nevertheless developed a supra-regional, de facto standard variety.
The conflict was resolved only after the overthrow of the Greek military junta of 1967–1974, whose strong ideological pro-Katharevousa stance had ultimately contributed to bringing that language form into disrepute.
[8] By that time, however, the form of Demotic used in practice was no longer the pure popular dialect, but had begun to assimilate elements from the Katharevousa tradition again.
[14] It is difficult to monitor the evolution of Koiné Greek and its splitting into the modern Greek dialects; certain researchers make the hypothesis that the various local varieties were formed between the 10th and the 12th century (as part of an evolution starting a few centuries before), but it is difficult to draw some safer conclusions because of the absence of texts written in the vernacular language, when this initial dialect differentiation occurred.
The earliest evidence for literary dialects comes from areas under Latin control, notably from Cyprus, Crete, and the Aegean islands.
From Cyprus under the Lusignan dynasty (the 14th to 16th centuries), legal documents, prose chronicles, and a group of anonymous love poems have survived.
His language became influential on the further course of standardisation that led to the emergence of the modern standard form of Demotic, based on the south-western dialects.
In this sense, the term "dialect" is often reserved to only the main outlying forms listed in the next section (Tsakonian, Pontic, Cappadocian and Italiot), whereas the bulk of the mainstream spoken varieties of present-day Greece are classified as "idioms".
Pontic Greek varieties are those originally spoken along the eastern Black Sea coast of Asia Minor, the historical region of Pontus in Turkey.
Through the forced population exchange after the Greco-Turkish War (1919–1922) and the Treaty of Lausanne of 1923, the Pontic speakers of Turkey were expelled and moved to Greece.
[26] A small group of Muslim Pontic speakers remain in Turkey, although their varieties show heavy structural convergence towards Turkish.
[27] Other varieties of Anatolian Greek that were influenced by the Turkish language, besides Pontic, are now almost extinct, but were widely spoken until 1923 in central Turkey, and especially in Cappadocia.
[29] In 2005, professors Mark Janse and Dimitris Papazachariou discovered that there are still native speakers of the Mistiot dialect of Cappadocian in Central and Northern Greece.
These varieties too are believed to have developed on the basis of an originally Doric ancient dialect, and have preserved some elements of it, though to a lesser extent than Tsakonian.
[36] They subsequently adopted influences from ancient Koiné, but became isolated from the rest of the Greek-speaking world after the decline of Byzantine rule in Italy during the Middle Ages.
Rumeíka (Ρωμαίικα) or Mariupolitan Greek is a dialect spoken in about 17 villages around the northern coast of the Sea of Azov in southern Ukraine.
It is characterized by a high frequency of loanwords and grammatical structures imported from other languages, the main influences being Turkish, French, Italian and Armenian,[40] while also preserving some archaic characteristics lost in other dialects.
The Greek spoken in this area today is the product of convergence between varieties of migrants who moved to the capital and its surroundings from various other parts of the country, and it is close to the standard.
These include the old local dialect of Athens itself ("Old Athenian"), that of Megara (to the west of Attica), of Kymi in Euboia and of the island of Aegina.
Younger, urban speakers throughout the country tend to converge towards accents closer to the standard language, with Cyprus being an exception to this.
