Dialects
A dialect, in the usual acceptance of the word, is a form of speech used by a limited
number of people, or within a limited region, and differing from the language of the main
branch of the race by reason of local usages due to separation and special conditions. The
term also denotes any of the divisions of a linguistic family. It sometimes happens that those
who use a particular dialect of a language come to be politically the most powerful branch,
with greater wealth, refinement, and literary cultivation. Their dialect then ultimately
becomes the standard form of the language, while the other variations of it sink to a
subordinate position, and are then spoken of as
dialects, and the
first, which was originally of no more authority, is accepted as the normal form of speech.
Thus, Latin became the great standard language of Italy, while its sister languages, Umbrian
and Oscan, sank to the position of dialects. Thus, too, in England, the so-called Middle
English, being spoken in that part of the country where the two great universities were
situated, and being used by the early writers of the country, gradually became the tongue of
the educated all over England and the literary form of speech, while the Northern English and
the Southern English ceased to be heard except in the mouths of the uneducated. In Greek, the
finest productions of literature were, on the whole, those of the Ionic Greeks, so that a form
of the Ionic dialect (Attic) became the standard with which all others were compared, though
the Doric and Aeolic, being used by many famous writers, never became, like Lowland Scotch or
the Sussex speech in England, discredited and vulgar. Dialectic differences when perpetuated
and intensified by continued separation and lack of intercourse between the peoples who use
them at last develop into different languages. See
Indo-European Languages.
I. Greek Dialects
The three main divisions of the dialects of Greece are usually said to be the Aeolic,
Ionic, and Doric. The exact lines of division are, however, obscure, for one dialect often
borrows from another when spoken by contiguous peoples. It must be remembered, also, that the
racial divisions of the Greeks do not always coincide with the dialectic divisions; that
there were hundreds of minor dialects of which no account can be taken here; and that these
dialects shaded off one into the other by almost imperceptible gradations. Scholars differ
most as to what dialects are to be called Aeolic, some restricting the name to the Lesbian
and Asiatic. Brugmann classes Northwest Greek (of Phocis, Locris, Aetolia, Acarnania,
Phthiotis, and Epirus), Elean, Arcadian-Cyprian, and Pamphylian as separate dialects
(
Comp. Gram. i. p. 6).
Aeolic
The Aeolic dialect was spoken in Macedonia, North Thessaly, Boeotia, Arcadia (?), Elis,
Cyprus, and the northern part of Asiatic Hellas. Our knowledge of the
Lesbio-Aeolic comes partly from inscriptions and partly from the fragments of
Alcaeus and Sappho quoted by the grammarians and others, and from the statements of the
grammarians themselves. Three of its inscriptions are of great importance—one
found at Mitylené recording the return of certain exiles in the time of Alexander
the Great (
C. I. G. 2166), one found at Pordoselena (
C. I. G.
2166
c.), and a third found at Eresus (edited by Conze and Sauppe).
The chief peculiarities of the Aeolic dialect are
- 1. a strong tendency to barytone pronunciation (e. g. σόφος,
θῦμος, Ἀχίλλευς, for σοφός, θυμός,
Ἀχιλλεύς);
- 2. the retention of the digamma (q.v.);
- 3. the loss of the dual; a second singular ending -σθα in verbs (e. g. ἔχεισθα);
- 4. a third plural ending in -ισι;
- 5. ζ appears as σδ;
- 6. the absence of the rough breathing.
Its general character was lightness and rapidity of utterance; the Aeolic poets
abound in anapaests and dactyls. The Athenians regarded the Lesbian language as somewhat
barbaric (
Protag. 341 C.). The
Thessalian-Aeolic, which is
known to us by a few inscriptions only, is a sort of bridge between the Lesbian and the
Boeotian (Collitz), doubling the liquids, changing
a to
o, and using an infinitive in -
μεν. The
Boeotian-Aeolic is known from inscriptions and from the fragments of
Corinna, though in these it is mixed with Ionic forms, as is also true of the Boeotian
passages in the
Acharnians of Aristophanes. The Boeotian-Aeolic differed from
the Lesbian chiefly in the following particulars:
- 1. In not throwing back the accent;
- 2. in a fondness for aspiration;
- 3. in retaining τ or θ where the Lesbian changes it to ς;
- 4. in using δδ for σδ=ζ;
- 5. in allowing the uncontracted -αο and -αων to stand;
- 6. in using such genitives as ἐμοῦς, τεοῦς, for
which the Lesbian has ἔμεθεν, σέθεν.
(See Beerman in Curtius's
Studien, ix. p. 85.) The
Elean-Aeolic is known from several inscriptions, such as the bronze plate
found at Olympia by Gell (
C. I. G. 11) and the inscription of Damocrates
(Kirchhoff in the
Archaeol. Zeit. 1876). The
Arcadian-Aeolic is nearer to the Doric than to the Lesbian in its forms. It
has -
αυ for the gen. sing. masc. of a-nouns, -
οι as a dative (or locative) sing. of o-nouns,
ἰν for
εἰς and
ἐν, and -
τοι as a third sing. middle ending (e.
g.
γένητοι). (See Schrader in Curtius's
Studien, x. pp. 273-280.) The
Cyprian dialect is probably at
the bottom Arcadian-Aeolic (
Herod.vii. 90;
Pausan. viii. 5, 2)—a theory strengthened by the study of the Cypriote
inscriptions by Birch, Deecke, Siegismund, Hall, Voigt, and others. See
Cyprus.
B. Doric
The Doric dialect was used in Doris, Argos, Laconia, Messenia, Crete, Sicily, Lower Italy
(Magna Graecia), and the southern part of Asiatic Hellas. Ahrens recognizes two
types—the severer Doric (spoken in Laconia, Crete, Cyrené, and Magna
Graecia); and the milder Doric, influenced by Aeolic or Ionic usage (spoken in Argolis,
Messenia, Megara, northern Greece, Asia Minor, and Sicily). It was used by the bucolic poets
(Theocritus, Bion , Moschus), and by Pindar, Alcman, and others. Its principal features are
- 1. a tendency to use α_ for η and for ω;
- 2. the use of -μες (for -μεν) as a first plural verbal ending;
- 3. the use of -ντι as a third plural ending;
- 4. a strong tendency to oxytones (e. g. ἐλέγον, ἀνθρώποι,
παίδες, for ἔλεγον, ἄνθρωποι, παῖδες);
- 5. the use of the digamma, which it retained longer than did any other Greek dialect;
- 6. peculiarities of contraction, such as η for
ει, ω for ου (ἧς for εἷς, ἦμεν for
ἔσμεν);
- 7. the shortening of long final syllables, usually when the length is due to a
compensation for the loss of a consonant (e. g. πός for
πόδ-ς, λέγες for λέγεις,
τίκτεν for τίκτειν, etc.);
- 8. a free use of assimilation.
There are many important inscriptions in Doric Greek. Chief among them are the
famous Tables of Heraclea, found in the bed of the river Cavone in 1732 and 1735, and now
partly in the Museo Nazionale at Naples and partly in the British Museum. Another (in the
Messenian-Doric) was found at Andania, and though of late date (B.C. 95?) is
valuable for its fulness and for some of the forms it exhibits. The
Megarian-Doric is known from inscriptions at Byzantium; the
Corinthian from inscriptions of Corcyra and Syracuse, both colonies of
Corinth; the
Locrian from the bronze tablet found at Oeanthia, and dating
from the fourth century b.c.; the
Cretan from
treaty-tablets and others found in Crete (see
Gortyn) and among the ruins of the Temple of Dionysus on the island of Teos. The
general character of the Doric speech was slowness, deliberation, and fulness of sound, with
the
πλατειασμός which the Dorians shared with the
Boeotians.
C. Ionic
The character of the Ionic dialect, in its several subdivisions, gives striking evidence
of its long-continued employment in literature. Its smoothness and harmony, its rich and
full vowelsystem, its variety and plasticity, all mark it out as eminently fitted for noble
and expressive utterance in both prose and verse. It was used by the Greeks of Attica and
Ionia and in most of the islands of the Aegean Sea. Under this head we may consider
- 1. the Old Ionic (Epic),
- 2. the New Ionic,
- 3. the Attic, and
- 4. the Common Dialect (New Attic).
Old Ionic (Epic)
The
Old Ionic or
Epic dialect is the Ionic of the poems of
Homer. Strictly speaking it was not a genuine, popular form of speech in common use, but a
mixed dialect, developed by the poets for artistic purposes. Its base is doubtless the
spoken language of the district in which the
Iliad and
Odyssey were composed; but interwoven with this are forms and usages partly
borrowed from other dialectic sources and partly modified by poetic license. Thus there is
a strong Aeolic element in Homer, due perhaps in part to the Aeolic affinities of the
Ionians of Smyrna, but cherished also because of the exigencies of the dactylic
hexameter. Every page of the Homeric poetry shows a peculiar multiplicity of forms of the
same word. Thus we find
ἵππου and
ἵπποιο, μάχῃς and
μάχῃσι, ἔπεσσι and
ἔπεσι, ἥρωοι and
ἡρώεσσι: in the pronouns
ἐμοῦ, ἐμεῦ,
ἔμεθεν, and
ἐμεῖο, ἄμμες, and
ἡμεῖς. The augment is used or disused at pleasure, forms are
contracted or not, diphthongs are shortened before succeeding vowels, the metrical value of
vowels varies, both hiatus and elision are freely used—in a word, the widest
license prevails and stamps the dialect as one established for the convenience of poets and
not for the common use of men. “The polish of the style, the artistic perfection
of the composition, and the elaborate nature of the syntax point back to a long series of
years of development, during which poets and schools of poets composed and passed on by
oral tradition many lays . . . which in course of time grew into more complete epic poems.
Forms of speech had not then been fixed by the general use of writing; the poet willingly
adopted any of the floating forms in common use around him, or caught and preserved for his
purpose those older forms bequeathed by past generations: so that in this way we have an
explanation of the remarkable fact that in Homeric Greek there are forms in use of such
different ages—archaisms, as we might say, by the side of modernisms”
(Merry). Some of the peculiarities of the Epic language, however, which were at one time
ascribed to the license of the poet, are now properly recognized as the usage of the oldest
Greek. The most interesting of these is the effect produced by the earlier existence of a
spirant, no longer written, upon the quantity of a preceding syllable. This lost letter is
sometimes
j and sometimes
ς—e. g.
θεὸς (
j)
ως, εἰς ἅλα (
ς)
αλτο, ἔτι γὰρ (
ς)
εχον. The same is true of the digamma, to
which, indeed, as late as the time of I. Bekker all such cases were ascribed. Real examples
of the influence of the digamma in making position or in preventing elision are
φίλα ϝείματα δύσω, οὕτω δὴ ϝοἶκονδε, ἔπειτα ϝάναξ. See
Digamma.
This complex and conventional dialect founded upon an Ionic base was disseminated
throughout all Greece by the rhapsodes, or public reciters, who chanted the epics at the
great public assemblies and festivals. Its forms and expressions colour the compositions of
authors of very different ages and various styles. It forms the basis of the lyric language
of Stesichorus and Pindar; it pervades the prose of Herodotus; and it tinges the style of
the early Attic dramatists with a distinctly epic hue. See
Epos.
The New Ionic.
The
New Ionic dialect is found in the writings of the iambic elegiac poets
Archilochus, Callinus, and Mimnermus, and in the prose of Herodotus and Hippocrates. This
dialect has the following distinctive peculiarities:
- 1. the retention of the earlier κ for π in interrogative and relative words (e. g. κοῖος, ὁκόσος);
- 2. the interchange of ει and ου with the simple vowels (e. g. εἴρομαι,
ξεῖνος, but μέζων, δέξω; and μοῦνος, οὔνομα, etc.);
- 3. the contraction of οη into ω (e. g. βῶσαι, ἐννώσας);
- 4. the use of ηϊ for ει (e. g. βασιληΐη);
- 5. crasis (e. g. ὡνήρ, ὧλλοι);
- 6. the disuse of the appended ν;
- 7. the use of -αται, -ατο for -νται, -ντο whenever these are added directly to the tense-stem (e. g.
ἀπίκαται, τιθέαται);
- 8. the genitive plural in -εων for the Homeric
-άων and Attic -ῶν.
The Attic dialect
The
Attic dialect is probably a modification of the Ionic spoken before
the founding of the Ionic colonies. It is to the student of literature the most important
of all the forms of Greek, since it was used by Thucydides, Aeschylus, Xenophon, Plato,
Sophocles, Euripides, Aristophanes, Lysias, Isocrates, Demosthenes, Aeschines, and many
others of genius scarcely inferior to them. Attic occupies a middle ground between the
harsher Doric and the softer Ionic, and was thus fitted to be the common speech of all
cultivated Greeks, and is now used as the standard of comparison in the study of the
Hellenic tongue. Literary Attic is divided into Old and New, the point of division being
approximately the beginning of the Peloponnesian War (B.C. 431). The differences between
the Old and the New are slight, and seem to point to a gradual adoption in literature of
popular forms. The Old Ionic is seen in Thucydides and the tragedians; both the Old and the
New are noticeable in Plato; while the comic writers and the orators show the usages of the
New. It is in the New Attic that the Greek language reached the zenith of its grace,
expressiveness, and symmetry, combining at once the
σεμνότης of the Doric with the
χάρις of the
Ionic speech.
The general use of the Attic gradually led to its corruption, so that we find a modified
form of it developed by the time of Alexander, which is known as the
Common
dialect (
ἡ κοινὴ διάλεκτος). It was used by the Greek
writers of later times, such as Aristotle, Polybius, Plutarch, Pausanias, Babrius, and
Lucian—writers, however, who exhibit very different degrees of divergence from
the Attic standard of purity.
The rise of the
Alexandrian School
(q.v.) of critics and grammarians did much to check the tendency to linguistic corruption
in literature; but the popular speech, continually receiving additions from foreign sources
and especially from the East, ultimately developed into a distinct idiom which is known as
Hellenistic Greek, and which is the basis of the diction of the New
Testament and also of the Septuagint. The variations from earlier standards exhibited in
this form of speech are rather to be seen in the vocabulary than in the syntax; but the
following come under the latter head:
- 1. a confusion in the use of moods (e. g. ἵνα with
the present indicative, ὅταν with the past indicative);
- 2. a construction of cases unknown in Attic (e. g. γεύεσθαι with the accusative, προσφωνεῖν
with the dative);
- 3. a gradual disuse of the optative mood, for which the subjunctive is
substituted.
The corruption of the spoken language went on continuously, much as in the case of the
Latin. For centuries literature still struggled to preserve the usages of Attic or at least
of the
κοινὴ διάλεκτος, but at last this attempt ended,
and the popular speech became also the language of literature, being first so used by
Theodorus Ptochoprodromus, a monk of Constantinople, about A.D. 1160. From this date begins
the history of modern Greek.
Bibliography
The first scientific treatment of the Greek dialects is found in the work of Ahrens,
De Graecae Linguae Dialectis, 2 vols.
(Berlin, 1839- 1843).
Many of his views require modification, however, owing to more recent investigations. Much
valuable material will be found in Curtius's
Studien zur griechischen und
lateinischen Grammatik, 10 vols.
(Leipzig, 1868-78); and
Merzdorf's
Sprachwissensch. Abhandl. (Leipzig, 1874). For the
Homeric dialect see La Roche's edition of the
Iliad (Berlin,
1870); D. B. Monro's
Grammar of the Homeric Dialect (Oxford,
1882); and Seymour's
Introduction to the Homeric Language
(Boston, 1885). Examples are given by Cauer in his
Delectus
(Leipzig, 1883); Meister,
Die griechischen Dialekte
(Gött. 1882-89); and by Hoffmann,
Die griechischen
Dialekte (Gött. 1891). See also Boisacq,
Les Dialectes
Doriens (Paris, 1891); and Smyth,
Greek Dialects, part i.
Ionic
(Oxford, 1894). For Hellenistic and vulgar Greek see Winer's
Grammar, part ii. pp. 69-128, ed. Moulton; Mullach,
Grammatik
der griechischen Vulgarsprache (Berlin, 1856); and Sophocles,
Glossary of Later and Byzantine Greek (Boston, 1870).
II. Italian Dialects
The dialects spoken in Italy in ancient times and surely traceable to an Aryan stock may be
roughly divided into two main groups—the Umbro-Sabellian and the LatinFaliscan.
Their general relations and divisions are indicated in the diagram given under
Italia, p. 892. Of the Umbro-Sabellian group, the
principal dialects are the Umbrian and the Oscan. See
Osci;
Umbria.
The Latin and the Faliscan are so closely allied that the Faliscan may be roughly regarded
as only a rustic variation of the Latin. It was used by the people of Falerii, a city
situated within Etrurian territory, and probably one of the twelve confederated cities of the
Etruscan League. That the language of the Falisci was not Etruscan or cognate with Etruscan
was noticed by the ancients (e. g. Strabo, v. p. 266; Dionys. Hal. i. 21;
Cato ap. Pliny ,
Pliny H. N. iii.
5.1), and inscriptions found in the present century have confirmed its close affinity
with Old Latin. Thus the Falisci used the Latin R instead of the Etruscan and Umbro-Sabellian
character , and possessed also the Old Latin Z. The principal phonetic peculiarity
distinguishing the Faliscan from the Latin is the representation of an original
bh medial by
f, as in
lofertas for
libertas. See Deecke,
Die
Falisker (Strassburg, 1885); and Conway's
Italic
Dialects (announced in 1896).
Latin was originally spoken only in the plain of
Latium (q.v.), and seems not to have developed any subordinate dialects. For its
colloquial and rustic forms and usages, see
Sermo
Plebeius. The best grammars of the language are those of Roby
(2 vols., Oxford,
1881); Kühner,
Ausführliche Grammatik (2 vols.
Hanover, 1877-78); Stolz and Schmalz in Iwan Müller's
Handbuch der
klassischen Alterthumswissenschaft, vol. ii.
(Nördlingen,
1885); and Gildersleeve, revised by Lodge
(N. Y. 1894).
Besides the Latin-Faliscan and the Umbro-Sabellian, Greek was spoken in the Greek cities of
southern Italy (Magna Graecia), Keltic by the Gaulish peoples in the north, Etruscan by the
inhabitants of Etruria, and at one time in Campania and the plain of the Eridanus (Po); while
at an early period, in the extreme southeast, inscriptions show the existence of a language
whose affinities have not yet been wholly determined, but which is usually styled Messapian
or Iapygian, and regarded as cognate with the language of the Veneti in the northeast of
Italy. For these dialects, see the articles
Celtae;
Etruria;
Messapia;
Veneti.