Tsakonian (also Tsakonic) (Standard Greek Τσακωνική Διάλεκτος — "Tsakonic language" — is a dialect of, or language closely related to, Standard Modern Greek, spoken in the Tsakonian region of the Peloponnese, Greece. ISO 639 is one of several international standards that lists short codes for language names. ... SIL International is a non-profit, Christian, scientific organization with the main purpose to study, develop and document lesser-known languages for the purpose of expanding linguistic knowledge, promoting world literacy and aiding minority language development. ... This list of languages is alphabetical by English name. ... Modern Greek (Νεοελληνική) is a dialect family that refers to the fifth stage of the evolution of the Greek language (the first four being Mycenean, Ancient Greek, Post-Classical or Hellenistic Greek and Medieval Greek), and it includes every dialect and idiom of Hellenic speech that exists in the world today. ... Tsakonia or the Tsakonian region (Greek Τσακωνία or Τσακωνικός χώρος) describes the area of the eastern Peloponnese where the Tsakonian language is presently or was formerly spoken. ... Greece and the Peloponnese The Peloponnese (Greek Πελοπόννησος Peloponnesos; Latinized as Peloponnesus) is a large peninsula in southern Greece, forming the part of the country south of the Gulf of Corinth. ...

Classification

Tsakonian is an Indo-European language of the Hellenic (Greek) branch, now widely agreed to be descended from the Doric dialect. Most Greek linguists consider it a dialect of Modern Greek, while most non-Greek linguists consider Tsakonian to be its own language, with exceptions on both sides, like the French linguist Augustin Pernot. Proto-Indo-European Indo-European studies Indo-European is originally a linguistic term, referring to the Indo-European language family. ... Doric Greek is an ancient dialect of the Greek language. ... Modern Greek (Νεοελληνική) is a dialect family that refers to the fifth stage of the evolution of the Greek language (the first four being Mycenean, Ancient Greek, Post-Classical or Hellenistic Greek and Medieval Greek), and it includes every dialect and idiom of Hellenic speech that exists in the world today. ...

According to Dr. Nick Nicholas, Greek scholars prefer to use the term διάλεκτος (dialect) for varieties mutually intelligible and unintelligible with Greek, while using ιδίωμα (idiom) for intermediate varieties (The Story of Pu, p. 482). Professor Athanasios Costakis (a native Tsakonian) calls it a dialect, while calling its varieties "idioms."

Georgraphic distribution

Tsakonian is found today in a group of mountain towns and villages slightly inland from the Argolic Gulf, although it was once spoken farther to the south and west as well as on the coasts of Laconia (ancient Sparta). The dialect is descended from the ancient Doric dialect rather than the Attic based Koine which is the ancestor of most Modern Greek dialects. The Argolic Gulf (Greek: Αργολικός Κόλπος Argolikós Kólpos) is a small gulf off the east coast of the Peloponnese, Greece, opening into the Aegean Sea. ... Laconia (Λακωνία), also known as Lacedaemonia, was in ancient Greece the portion of the Peloponnesus of which the most important city was Sparta. ... Sparta (Grk. ... Doric Greek is an ancient dialect of the Greek language. ... A dialect (from the Greek word διάλεκτος, dialektos) is a variety of a language used by people from a particular geographic area. ... The word koine has several meanings: Koiné (Κοινή), a Greek dialect that developed from the Attic dialect (dialect of Athens) and became the spoken language of Greece at the time of the Empire of Alexander the Great. ...

Official status

Tsakonian has no official status. Prayers and liturgies of the Greek Orthodox Church have been translated into Tsakonian, but the ancient Koine of the traditional church services is usually used as in other locations in Greece. Greek Orthodox Church can refer to: the Orthodox Church of Constantinople, headed by the Patriarch of Constantinople, who is also the first among equals of the Eastern Orthodox Communion. ... The word koine has several meanings: Koiné (Κοινή), a Greek dialect that developed from the Attic dialect (dialect of Athens) and became the spoken language of Greece at the time of the Empire of Alexander the Great. ...

Dialects

Tsakonian is divided by scholars into three dialects or idioms, Northern Tsakonian, Southern Tsakonian and Propontis Tsakonian.

There is some disagreement as to whether Tsakonian is a dialect of Greek or a separate language entirely: according to the Ethnologue, it has less than 70% lexical similarity with standard Greek. Lexicostatistical surveys on which this conclusion is based are, however, on controversial Swadesh list and similar vocabulary comparisons. A Swadesh list is a tool of glottochronology, proposed by Morris Swadesh (1950). ...

Another difference between Tsakonian and the Modern Greek dialects is its verb system - Tsakonian preserves many archaic forms, such as participial periphrasis for the present tense. Certain complementisers and other adverbial features present in the Modern Greek dialects are absent from Tsakonian, with the exception of the Modern που (pu) relativiser, which takes the form πη (p^hi) in Tsakonian (note: the traditional Tsakonian orthography uses the digraph πφ + η, giving πφη). Noun morphology is broadly similar to Standard Modern Greek, although Tsakonian tends to drop the nominative "s" from masculine nouns, thus Tsakonian ο τσχίφτα for Standard o τρίφτης (o tshifta/o triftis; "grater", Costakis:67). Periphrasis is a figure of speech where the meaning of a word or phrase is expressed by many or several words. ... A complement is a phrase that fits a particular slot in the syntax requirements of a parent phrase. ... Digraph has several meanings: Directed graph, or digraph Digraph (orthography) Digraph (computing) This is a disambiguation page — a navigational aid which lists other pages that might otherwise share the same title. ...

The Propontis idiom was much more heavily influenced by the modern Thracian dialect and although there were significant grammatical differences, in terms of vocabulary it was much closer to Standard Modern Greek. Compare the Northern and Southern word for water, ύο (io, derived from Ancient Greek ὓδωρ) to Propontic νερέ and Standard νερό (nere, nero).

However, there has always been contact with Attic Greek speakers and the language was not entirely unaffected by the neighboring Greek dialects. Additionally, there are many lexical borrowings from Albanian and Turkish. The core vocabulary remains recognizably Doric, though experts disagree on the extent to which other true Doricisms can be found. There are only a few hundred, mainly elderly true native speakers alive, although there are many more who can speak the language less than fluently.

Geographical barriers to travel and communication kept the Tsakonians relatively isolated from the rest of Greece until the 19th century, although there was some trade between the coastal towns. The rise of mass education and improved travel beginning after the Greek War of Independence meant that Tsakonian speakers were no longer as isolated from the rest of Greece and there began a rapid decline from an estimated figure of some 200,000 speakers to the present number of 300, most of whom are shepherds. composite satellite image of Greece Greece is located in southeastern Europe on the southern tip of the Balkan peninsula. ... Travel is the transport of people on a trip or journey. ... Communication is the process of exchanging information usually via a common system of symbols. ... Alternative meaning: Nineteenth Century (periodical) (18th century — 19th century — 20th century — more centuries) As a means of recording the passage of time, the 19th century was that century which lasted from 1801-1900 in the sense of the Gregorian calendar. ... The Greek War of Independence, also known as the Greek Revolution of 1821, was a war against the Ottoman Empire for independence, which started that year. ...

Derived languages

There are no creole dialects described in the literature, although as noted above, the Propontis dialect is much closer to the standard dialect of Greek than are the other two, and all dialects have been in constant contact with the standard. The northern dialect which in the mid-twentieth century was retreating much faster than its southern cousin, reportedly had a greater affinity to Standard Modern Greek. An indeterminate number of persons speak Tsakonian less-than fluently, so it is possible that some degree of creolization has taken place. The term Creole is used with different meanings in different contexts, which can generate confusion. ...

Since the introduction of electricity to all villages in Tsakonia by the 1970s, the Greek mass media can reach the most remote of areas and profoundly affect the speech of younger speakers. Some efforts to revive the language by teaching it in local schools seem not to have had much success. Standard Modern Greek is the prestige language of government, commerce and education and it appears inevitable that the continued modernization of Tsakonia will lead to the language's disappearance sometime this century. Lightning strikes during a night-time thunderstorm. ... 1970 was a common year starting on Thursday. ... Mass media is the term used to denote, as a class, that section of the media specifically conceived and designed to reach a very large audience (typically at least as large as the whole population of a nation state). ... This article needs to be cleaned up to conform to a higher standard of quality. ...

Sounds

Vowels

Consonants

Tsakonian in some words preserves the pre-classical Greek w-sound, represented in some Ancien Greek texts by the digamma. In Tsakonian, this sound has become a fricative v. Digamma, or Wau, (upper case , lower case ) is an obsolete letter of the Greek alphabet. ...

Prosody

Phonotactics

Writing system

Traditionally, Tsakonian used the standard Greek alphabet, along with digraphs to represent certain sounds which either do not occur in Standard Modern Greek, or which do not commonly occur in combination with the same sounds as they do in Tsakonian. Prof. Costakis invented an orthography using dots, spiritus asper, and háček for use in his works, which has been used in his grammar and several other works. The spiritus asper (rough breathing) or dasy pneuma (Greek: dasu, δασύ) is a diacritical mark used in Greek. ... č Å¡ ž A háček (ˇ, pronounced ), also known as a caron, is a diacritic placed over certain letters to indicate palatalization or iotation in the orthography of Baltic languages and some Slavic languages, whereas some Finno-Lappic languages use it to mark postalveolar fricatives (sh, zh, ch). ...

See also

• Tsakonia
• Tsakonian people

Tsakonia or the Tsakonian region (Greek Τσακωνία or Τσακωνικός χώρος) describes the area of the eastern Peloponnese where the Tsakonian language is presently or was formerly spoken. ... A Tsakonian (Greek Τσάκωνας - Tsakonas) is a speaker of Tsakonian, or more broadly, one who lives in a traditionally Tsakonian-speaking area and follows certain Tsakonian cultural traditions, such as the Tsakonian dance, even if that person is no longer able to speak Tsakonian fluently. ... This article is an overview of the history of Greek. ... Greek (Greek Ελληνικά, IPA – Hellenic) constitutes its own branch of the Indo-European languages. ... The Proto-Greek language is the common ancestor of the Greek dialects, including the Mycenean language, the classical Greek dialects Attic-Ionic, Aeolic, Doric and North-Western Greek, and ultimately the Koine and Modern Greek. ... Map of Bronze Age Greece as described in Homers Iliad Mycenaean is the most ancient known form of the Greek language, spoken in Mycenae and on Crete in the 16th to 11th centuries BC, before the Dorian invasion. ... Linear B script sample Linear B is the script that was used for writing Mycenaean, an early form of the Greek language. ... The Phoenician alphabet dates from around 1000 BC and is derived from the Proto-Canaanite alphabet. ... The Greek language is written in the Greek alphabet, developed in classical times (ca 9th century B.C.) and passed down to the present. ... Ancient Greek refers to the stage in the history of the Greek language corresponding to Classical Antiquity, which normally applies on two ancient periods of Greek history: Archaic and Classic Greece. ... Ionic Greek was a sub-dialect of the so called Attic-Ionic dialectal group of the ancient Greek language, which was itself a member of the Greek branch of Indoeuropean language family. ... Attic Greek is the ancient dialect of the Greek language that was spoken in Attica, which includes Athens. ... Doric Greek is an ancient dialect of the Greek language. ... Linguists use the term Aeolic to describe a set of rather archaic Greek sub_dialects, spoken mainly in Boeotia (a region in Central Greece), in Lesbos (an island close to Asia Minor) and in other Greek colonies. ... Ancient Greek, in Classical Antiquity before the development of the Koine as the lingua franca of Hellenism, was divided into several dialects. ... Koine Greek (Κοινή Ἑλληνική) is an ancient Greek dialect which marks the 2nd stage in the history of the Greek language. ... Koine Greek refers to the 2nd stage in the history of the Greek language. ... Koine Greek (Κοινή Ἑλληνική) is an ancient Greek dialect which marks the 2nd stage in the history of the Greek language. ... Medieval Greek refers to the 3rd stage in the history of the Greek language. ... Byzantine Greek is an archaic variant of Greek language derived from Koine which was used by the administration of the Byzantine Empire from 395 until the fall of Constantinople in 1453. ... Byzantine Greek is an archaic variant of Greek language derived from Koine which was used by the administration of the Byzantine Empire from 395 until the fall of Constantinople in 1453. ... Modern Greek (Νεοελληνική) is a dialect family that refers to the fifth stage of the evolution of the Greek language (the first four being Mycenean, Ancient Greek, Post-Classical or Hellenistic Greek and Medieval Greek), and it includes every dialect and idiom of Hellenic speech that exists in the world today. ... Ancient Greek, in Classical Antiquity before the development of the Koine as the lingua franca of Hellenism, was divided into several dialects. ... Modern Greek (Νεοελληνική) is a dialect family that refers to the fifth stage of the evolution of the Greek language (the first four being Mycenean, Ancient Greek, Post-Classical or Hellenistic Greek and Medieval Greek), and it includes every dialect and idiom of Hellenic speech that exists in the world today. ... Tsakonic or Tsakonian (Standard Greek Τσακωνική Διάλεκτος — Tsakonic language — is a dialect of Modern Greek that is spoken in the Tsakonian region of the Peloponnese, Greece. ... Pontic Greek is a Greek language which was originally spoken on the shores of the Black Sea (Pontus). Pontics linguistic lineage stems from Attic Greek, and contains influences from Byzantine Greek, Turkish influence and some Persian and Caucasian borrowings. ... Katharevousa (Greek Καθαρεύουσα, IPA //) is a form of the Greek language, created during the early 19th century by Adamantios Korais (1748-1833). ... Modern Greek (Νεοελληνική) is a dialect family that refers to the fifth stage of the evolution of the Greek language (the first four being Mycenean, Ancient Greek, Post-Classical or Hellenistic Greek and Medieval Greek), and it includes every dialect and idiom of Hellenic speech that exists in the world today. ...

External links

Links

• Brief Description - Ethnologue
• Linguistic Lineage
• Tsakonian Bibliography
• The Lord's Prayer in Tsakonian (text sample)

Sources

• Costakis, Athanasios (Thanasis) P. (1951). Συντομή Γραμματική της Τσακωνικής Διαλέκτου (Brief Grammar of the Tsakonian Dialect). Athens: Institut Français d'Athènes. ?.
• Nicholas, Nick (unpublished). "[n/a A Critical Lexicostatistical Examination of Ancient and Modern Greek and Tsakonian]." Second Draft.
• Nicholas, Nick (1999). "The Story of pu: The grammaticalisation in space and time of a Modern Greek complementiser." Final.