Varieties of Modern Greek include Demotic, Katharevousa, Pontic, Cappadocian, Mariupolitan, Southern Italian, Yevanic, Tsakonian and
Greco-Australian.
Demotic Strictly speaking,
Demotic or
Dimotiki (), refers to all
popular varieties of Modern Greek that followed a common evolutionary path from
Koine and have retained a high degree of
mutual intelligibility to the present. As shown in
Ptochoprodromic and
Acritic poems, Demotic Greek was the vernacular already before the 11th century and called the "Roman" language of the
Byzantine Greeks, notably in peninsular
Greece, the
Greek islands, coastal
Asia Minor,
Constantinople, and
Cyprus. Today, a standardized variety of Demotic Greek is the official language of Greece and Cyprus, and is referred to as "Standard Modern Greek", or less strictly simply as "Greek", "Modern Greek", or "Demotic". Demotic Greek comprises various regional varieties with minor linguistic differences, mainly in phonology and vocabulary. Due to the high degree of mutual intelligibility of these varieties, Greek linguists refer to them as "idioms" of a wider "Demotic dialect", known as "Koine Modern Greek" ( - 'common Neo-Hellenic'). Most English-speaking linguists however refer to them as "dialects", emphasizing degrees of variation only when necessary. Demotic Greek varieties are divided into two main groups, Northern and Southern. The main distinguishing feature common to Northern variants is a set of standard phonological shifts in
unaccented vowel phonemes: becomes , becomes , and and are dropped. The dropped vowels' existence is implicit, and may affect surrounding phonemes: for example, a dropped palatalizes preceding consonants, just like an that is pronounced. Southern variants do not exhibit these phonological shifts. Examples of Northern dialects are
Rumelian (
Constantinople),
Epirote,
Macedonian,
Thessalian,
Thracian, Northern
Euboean,
Sporades,
Samos,
Smyrna, and
Sarakatsanika. The Southern category is divided into groups that include: :#Old Athenian-Maniot:
Megara,
Aegina,
Athens,
Cyme (Old Athenian) and
Mani Peninsula (Maniot) :#Ionian-Peloponnesian:
Peloponnese (except Mani),
Ionian Islands,
Attica, Boeotia, and Southern
Euboea :#Cretan-Cycladian:
Cyclades,
Crete, and several enclaves in Syria and Lebanon :#Southeastern:
Chios,
Ikaria,
Dodecanese, and
Cyprus. Demotic Greek has officially been taught in
monotonic Greek script since 1982.
Katharevousa Katharevousa () is a
sociolect promoted in the 19th century at the foundation of the modern Greek state, as a compromise between
Classical Greek and modern Demotic. It was the official language of modern Greece until 1976. Katharevousa is written in
polytonic Greek script. Also, while Demotic Greek contains loanwords from Turkish, Italian, Latin, and other languages, these have for the most part been purged from Katharevousa. See also the
Greek language question.
Pontic in yellow.
Pontic in orange.
Cappadocian Greek in green, with green dots indicating individual Cappadocian Greek villages in 1910. Having been isolated from the crusader conquests (
Fourth Crusade) and the later Venetian influence of the Greek coast, it retained the Ancient Greek terms for many words that were replaced with
Romance ones in Demotic Greek.
Mariupolitan Ruméika () or Mariupolitan Greek is a dialect spoken in about 17 villages around the northern coast of the
Sea of Azov in southern
Ukraine and
Russia. Mariupolitan Greek is closely related to Pontic Greek and evolved from the dialect of Greek spoken in
Crimea, which was a part of the Byzantine Empire and then the Pontic
Empire of Trebizond, until that latter state fell to the Ottomans in 1461. Thereafter, the Crimean Greek state continued to exist as the independent Greek
Principality of Theodoro. The Greek-speaking inhabitants of Crimea were
deported by
Catherine the Great to resettle in the new city of
Mariupol after the
Russo-Turkish War (1768–74) to escape the then Muslim-dominated Crimea. Mariupolitan's main features have certain similarities with both Pontic (e.g. the lack of
synizesis of
-ía, éa) and the northern varieties of the core dialects (e.g. the northern vocalism).
Southern Italian and
Calabrian dialects are spoken
Southern Italian or
Italiot () comprises both
Calabrian and
Griko varieties, spoken by around 15 villages in the regions of
Calabria and
Apulia. The Southern Italian dialect is the last living trace of Hellenic elements in Southern Italy that once formed
Magna Graecia. Its origins can be traced to the
Dorian Greek settlers who colonised the area from
Sparta and
Corinth in 700 BC. It has received significant Koine Greek influence through
Byzantine Greek colonisers who re-introduced Greek language to the region, starting with
Justinian's conquest of
Italy in late antiquity and continuing through the Middle Ages. Griko and Demotic are mutually intelligible to some extent, but the former shares some common characteristics with Tsakonian.
Yevanic Yevanic (, ) is an almost extinct language of
Romaniote Jews. The language was already in decline for centuries until most of its speakers were killed in
the Holocaust. Afterward, the language was mostly kept by remaining Romaniote emigrants to
Israel, where it was displaced by
modern Hebrew.
Tsakonian Tsakonian () is spoken in its full form today only in a small number of villages around the town of
Leonidio in the region of
Arcadia in the Southern
Peloponnese, and partially spoken further afield in the area. Tsakonian evolved directly from Laconian (ancient Spartan) and therefore descends from
Doric Greek. It has limited input from Hellenistic Koine and is significantly different from and not mutually intelligible with other Greek varieties (such as
Demotic Greek and
Pontic Greek). Some linguists consider it a separate language because of this.
Greco-Australian Greco-Australian is an Australian dialect of Greek that is spoken by the Greek diaspora of Australia, including Greek immigrants living in Australia and Australians of Greek descent. ==Phonology and orthography==