Overview:
• Characteristic to each area where the dialect was spoken
• Culminating in the Homeric dialect (e.g., the Iliad, Odyssey)
• Ionic ‡ dialect of philosophy, prose of the 6th c. BC and of Herodotus
• Attic ‡ drama; in the 5th c. BC ‡ literary prose; by the 4th c. BC widespread
History: From Dialects to Koiné
• Philip II (of Macedonia) ‡ domination of Greece (common peace among all cities and against Persians)
• 336 BC Alexander (the Great) ‡ invasion of Asia
• 326 BC Death of Alexander ‡ Hellenistic period
• Philipp’s court dialect: Attic-Ionic ‡ also dialect for business & administration, widely spoken Greek, incl. non-Greeks
Details: Classification of Greek Dialects Spoken
(during the pre-Hellenic time period)
Group Classification of main dialects: Location where mostly spoken
Arcado-Cypriot
Central Peloponnese and Cyprus
West Greek (original location)
Doric branch in Southern & Eastern parts of the Peloponnese; in Crete; small costal area in Asia Minor, North-West of Peloponnese; North of the gulf of Corinth
Ionic (originally on mainland)
Attic-Ionic (closely related, with Attic spoken in Athens)
Asia Minor (Halicarnassus ‡ Smyrna); Cyclades, Euboea Aeolic
Asia Minor;
Thessaly & Boeotia with Doric elements