It is also worth mentioning that there is a dialect of Pontic Greek in South-Eastern Ukraine, called Румеку Глоса. Its few speakers are centered (or rather were centered, unfortunately) mostly around cities of Melitopol and Mariupol, as well as in Crimea.
I’m a Pontic Greek that lives in the USA and I speak Pontic Greek and modern Greek, just wanted to say you did a great job with this video thank you for your work!!!👍👍👍
You speak Pontic Greek? There are a lot of Greeks here who had Pontic speakers in their family like grandparents or something, but no actual Pontic speakers themselves. That's awesome!!!
Χαιρετισμούς από το Γερμανιστάν. Πόντιος εγεννέθα εγώ Σ' αβούτην κοινωνίαν Μ' έναν τρανόν φιλότιμον Κ' ένα καλοκαρδία --------------------------------- Αετσ' επλάστ' ασόν θεόν Αετσ' ση γην εβρέθα Καμίαν κ' επουσμάνεψα Πόντιος ντ' εγεννέθα Όλον τον κόσμον αγαπώ Κακό ντο εν κι ξέρω Και για τον πόνον τ' άλλουνού Κλαιω και υποφέρω Τραγωδώ τα ποντίακα Και τα καρδίασ' σκίζω Θερίον είμεσ' άδικον Και σον καλόν δακρύζω Την προσβολήν κι θέλατο Μπορεί και να ματούμε Για την πατρίδαν και την πίστ Πρώτος παω σκοτούμε
Με συγκίνησες Λάζαρε με τους στίχους που έγραψες..Νά 'σαι καλά εκεί που είσαι!!! Κατάλαβα σχεδόν όλο το κείμενο! Χρήστος Αγγελίδης, Αλμυρός Μαγνησίας ❤
I recognise maybe about 50%-60% of Tsakonian vocabulary but derive about 30% of the meaning. As for the "Gigachad language" commentary, I have to say that not only sounds "based" to my modern native Greek ears but also cheerful and vibrant.
It would be great to see you talk about Cypriot Greek! I noticed a lot of similarities with Tsakonika and some with griko and even pontiaka, it’s rly cool! I’d love to see my mother tongue represent on here, and I’d be happy to provide some information as whenever I look up Cypriot Greek there’s not as much info out there as I think there should be. Great video tho! I love seeing stuff about other Hellenic languages other than standard Greece Greek :)))
I'm planning on it next time I think. It would be great if you could help! I've looked into it before and I watched an interview between an Athenian Greek and a Cypriot - the Cypriot says that Modern Greek sounds way more formal to him, and the Greek said the Cypriot sounds old-fashioned or rural. Is this true?
@@CheLanguagesSMG is used officially, in the news, in schools, most TV shows, publications, and even most adverts. Cypriot is reserved purely for conversing, as obviously it "can't be written" (although I don't agree with this). There is also a weird new form, which is basically watered down Cypriot. This is the new fad as more traditional Cypriot essentially dies off, and replaced with a more "light" version that includes a more "mainland" Greek way of conversing. To give you an example, my great grandmother could not communicate in SMG, something which is completely unheard of nowadays
@@J89-b2m that's interesting that your grandma couldn't speak Standard Modern Greek. That effectively tells me that the old traditional Cypriot Greek was it's own language, but the modern "watered-down version" sounds more like a dialect of Greek
@@CheLanguages Something like that yes. Unfortunately due to the invasion and the illegal division of the communities (Cypriot was used by both Turkish Cypriots and Greek Cypriots to communicate), the rise in nationalism and "Greekification" is exemplary.
Well, I try to contain myself on political issues these days, but obviously what the Turkish government did to their Greek, Armenian and Kurdish population between 1915-1925 was disgraceful and really doesn't get the attention it deserves. There was a population exchange between the Greeks and the Turks, a luxury the Armenians did not get, but somewhere around 360,000 Pontic Greeks were also killed before the official population exchange, not to mention all the other Greeks in Anatolia (Cappadocian Greeks, Constantinopolitan Greeks etc...)
I love both Greece and Turkey so don't misinterpret my words as hate towards the Turks, but it's still an historical fact that needs to be talked about
@@CheLanguages thank you for even referencing it in the video, nowadays whenever i see people talk about greek subjects they go over it with the ''population exchange'' and never ever mention a genocide, also i would appreciate if you called it the Greek Genocide instead of pontic, to bring it all in a unitifed umbrela, cause you know it wasn't only the pontians who received the sword.
The Islamied Greeks in Pontus still speak the Pontic dialect, although it is dying there too, because they are forgeting their roots.A solution to this problem would be to build Greek schools in Pontus.Also,as a Pontic Greek my family stoped speaking the dialect two generations ago.I want to learn it in order to teach it to my children when the time will come.I hope one day we will be able to go back to our homeland!
Sadly I don't see the Turkish government building Pontic schools anytime soon. How can you learn Pontic Greek? It'd be great for you to pass it on as you said you'd like to
Ι' m Greek and I have to congratulate you for your excellent work! For a Greek it's quite easy to understand Griko, it's more difficult with Pontiaca and almost impossible to understand Tsakonika!
The only problem I had with the text in Tsakonika was that I was primed to expect Doric Greek but it was just a modern folk song with a standard modern metric of 15 syllables, nothing Doric or ancient about it. Once you are past the first few words and you realise it is modern Greek, it is easy to read. Meroute was the only word that spooked me. Had it been spoken or sung, however, without being able to read the text, it would have been much harder to understand.
Thank you for the comment, I appreciate it! Sadly, my viewship has gone down massively compared to before in the last few months and my channel is only growing very slowly now. It's quite discouraging but I want to keep making videos for you guys - a good thing you could do as an individual viewer to help my content get more attention would be to share the video to people you think might like it, and also leave a few comments as that's all good for the algorithm. I'm glad you enjoy the content, so let other people know about my channel so they can enjoy it too! Have a great day
@@CheLanguages I've shared it with my brother. The algorithm is pure garbage these days, all you get are videos you've already seen and channels you've already watched for years. It's impossible to find anything new these days.
@@arseface2k934 thank you for sharing. The algorithm is difficult and as a content creator, it's difficult to get recognition if the algorithm works against you. That being said, this video is becoming popular, it might be another viral!
It is worth mentioning the 1923 Population Exchange, Romeika was brought to Greece with Population Exchange and also it caused the extinction of Karamanli Turkish which was a distinct dialect written in Greek alphabet.
It's also worth mentioning that the population exchange happened after hundreds of thousands of ethnic Greeks had already been killed by the Turkish government.... I didn't know about that dialect of Turkish, that you for highlighting it to me
@@Rabid_Nationalist Being Mocked by Constantinople for being Kings of Tzantini inspite of their ruling dynasty remaining Komnenian only to Outlive them, they are my favorite Roman Succesor.
I had read that Constantinopolitan ethnic Greeks by birth refer to themselves as Romans as a last ditch resistance to the Turkish state's policy of forced assimilation as apart of the WWI separation of ethno-religious communities within the borders of their nation states. Greece recognises membership of a Greek Orthodox Church as entitlement to citizenship & Turkey recognises Islamic observance as entitlement to citizenship. This effectively strips non-religious & non-Orthodox indigenes of citizenship but ironically grants it in Turkey to Bessarabians, Hamshins & Lazes but only ethnic Jewish Muslims (such as the 19th century mass converts from Salonika) & thus not the atheist-raised Turkic peoples of the former Soviet Union nor the Judaic Khazars nor Orthodox Christian Moldavian Gagauz.
@@ianison9820 Hi you two, my dad is Romaioi from Istanbul. I wouldn't use the word hellenic/hellenes to refer to my people just roman. most likely say Rumlar which is the turkish word for it. So not just the Ponitans. Also yea what you said. If i had a penny for everytime the turkish state did an ethnic cleansing or genocide i would have 18 pennies which isn't a lot but it's sad it was so normal. (made up the number for comedic effect but it's a lot against every minority group you could imagine
Cypriot Greek is consider a dialect as many many others but it's quite different as others are too. You could count some very very divergent varieties of Cappadocian/Iconian/Farasha Greek as other Hellenic languages. And also the Mariupolitan varieties that some call Pontic, some are but other it's not conclusive and some are mixed and that's how much my knowledge goes. Other varieties are Maniot, Old Athenian, Thracian varieties, Cretan varieties, Dodecanese Varieties, Yevanic(Romaniote), Sarakatsanika, Macedonian varieties, Epirote varieties, Ionian varieties, Politika, Greko of Calabria, Pelloponesian varieties and others.
@@ΝεκτάριοςΧριστοφή from Cypriot Greek speakers in this comment section, I am told the rural and/or traditional Cypriot Greek dialect is effectively a different language, completely incomprehensible to Standard Modern Greek. The modern dialect in more built up areas is more like SMG with a heavy accent, yet it still has some slightly different grammatical features and uses a lot of older words. A Modern Cypriot speaker can understand both SMG and traditional Cypriot, but SMG and Traditional Cypriot cannot understand each other, so it works like a dialect continuum I suppose
As a modern Greek speaker, I will say that I understand Griko and Pontic the most and Tsakonian the least. To provide you with some context, when I read slowly and really pay attention I can understand the first two, while for the last one only when comparing the modern Greek translation to the Tsakonian I might understand some phrases. However, written text is more understandable than speech so with the different dialects for these languages I would probably not make out what all three language speakers are saying. It is very interesting though to see how different and yet how similar there languages are to modern greek and I want to thank all of you for caring to see this video! I hope more interest is given to these languages so that these cultures do not fade but rather make more people want to talk these languages.
You are most definitely welcome! It is interesting what you say you can understand, I wonder how much of that would change if you were listening to the spoken language only. Sadly, I only speak a very little amount of Greek so I cannot have my own input on these texts
How was the Griko text difficult? It is in modern Greek. Penseo was the only foreign word in that text. One does not even need to know Italian to understand what it means, it is obvious from the rest of the text. When I read the "translation" it is practically identical to the original.
There is still a very small greek town, established in the 19th Century near Tartous in Syria. The Town is called "Al-Hamidiyah" and they have their own Greek dialect. Also, many many of the Levantine and Anatolian Christians are called "Rum" - so, it's not only Pontic Greeks. "Rum" in Turkish reffers to Greeks and despite actual ethnic descent it refers to the historically hellenized semitic populations in the Levant.
Thank you so much for letting me know about this, I would have never come across it any other way as it's well hidden in the depths of the internet. It's super interesting how that exists!
I grew up listening to my aunts speaking Pontic Greek now and then, I could always detect the humor and Ancient Greek influences this dialect contains. I can understand lots of phrases but I cannot speak it myself. And thank you for mentioning the genocide too, history is a complicated thing but more awareness is always helpful.
my favourite thing about tsakonika is how it naturally lends to a false etymology by sounding like the verb τσακώνομαι, meaning to quarrel. And there’s something poetic about that as the last bearers of Spartan language
I agree with your last point also, there definitely is something poetic about it. The people's determination to preserve it is like the story of their Spartan ancestors preserving Hellas against the forces of Persia
@@CheLanguages please I beg you don't quote me on this, but one possibility I can offer from something I read long long ago is it may have come from "exolakonian"(like exoskeleton...basically "outter Laconian", since it's mostly found on Laconia's fringes) then eventually the exo-(ekso) somehow mutated to etso and then... you get the idea ;)
@@CheLanguages I should mention though I'm kinda sceptical of this theory (even though I'm *not* a linguist of any kind btw) I think unless we find some very early mention of that term in some ancient or medieval text we may never know for sure and since the language is so small (no offense to its speakers) it probably went completely unnoticed for most of its history plus I don't think we have any surviving attestations of its older forms afaik (ofc I could be wrong)... nevertheless I think a certain people in the Peloponnese called "Tsakones" are mentioned in some early (I mean medieval) sources but that's not good enough to prove anything except maybe indicate that if the "exo" theory turns out to be correct, tsakonika likely still came from those "eksolakones" dwelling on the outskirts of Laconia rather than the other way around(but that's still another conjecture on my part tbh)
Hey! Greek here. I wouldnt call pontic greek unintelligible at all, a modern greek speaker could understand the core meaning of a sentence, maybe missing just a few words. The grammar is definitely not like modern greek tho so most people probably wouldn't be able to actually speak it easily but we can still understand it. Amazing video, greetings from greece 🇬🇷
I’ve been waiting for a video on the Hellenic languages, so interesting that the Pontic Greeks still call themselves Roman even more incredible how grikos survived til today. I wish all these languages nothing but the best.
As a greek I could mostly understand Pontic and Griko. Tsakonian is by far the the most difficult to understand and imagine that my family is from Lakonia…
The pontic greek poem you cited speaks about an old man having a rooster that made noises and then came a fox and ate the rooster and then came the dog and ate the fox and so on and so on. It sounds very much and has the mood of "old mcdonald had a farm" where most verses are the same rhyming and their only difference being a bunch of animals :)
I am glad to see you've made a video about Hellenic Languages/Dialects. Personally I was aware that Pontiac Dialect existed but the thing is Pontic people that came to Cyprus after the fall of Soviet Union or in 2008 seem to be speaking Modern Greek and Russian very well. There was a documentary though from many years ago where there was a journalist going to Pontus and found out that there were people still hiding their pontic identity and speaking Romeika/Pontiac. I don't remember the name of it and neither have I watched all of its episodes (I think there were five of them). As a Cypriot though I was able to understand Griko when I saw it in your video. In our music class when I was at 8th grade the teacher put a song called "Το κλάμα το εμιγκράντου" which translates to "The cry of the emigrant". I noticed there were many words almost the same between Griko and the Cypriot Dialect such as the "cè" in Griko in Cypriot is "τζαι" which both are pronounced like "je"
@@CheLanguages No they were the Pontic people still living in Turkey (Trabazon). As of the "che" and "je" in this case writing it like that with English letters isn't really wrong but in Cypriot "ch" and "j" are two completely different sounds with "ch" sometimes having strong accent and weak accent. As for Griko I don't know that much but "cè" is pronounced like "je" but writing the pronunciation like "che" isn't wrong for this word in both Cypriot and Griko.
@@CheLanguages Basically, writing the pronunciation as "che" or "je" isn't a problem for this certain word but for other words with these sounds it does matter.
I'm from Greece. My mother is from Crete and my father from Peloponnese and more specifically. "Tsakonia". He used to speak the language fluently with my grandfathers but they've both passed and he's slowly starting to forget how to speak although he can clearly understand it. I personally only know a few words but I'd love to learn it at some point in my life. I visit Tsakonia a few times a year but it's been years since I heard someone speak more than one sentence in Tsakonian. Although it's been preserved so far I haven't seen the new generations of local people pick it up and use it, hopefully I'm mistaken. I think Griko and a bit less so Pontic greek have a lot of intelligibility with modern Greek I was able to understand most of it.
That's awesome! You're the only person in the comments who has a link to Tsakonian, try and get your father to teach you it as soon as possible so you can help preserve this language!
From the small sample that he put in the video (and you can see my comment with my transcription, that I made it in a way to show better the similarities of the tsakonian dialect with modern Greek) it seems to me that it is mainly a matter of accent (pronunciation) .
@@georgiosdoumas2446 I know it definitely isn't just accent as "Καλώς ορίσατε" is "Καούρ εκάνατε" , I'm no expert but there's even a different verb used. Also there's the obvious difference from modern greek "η", for example "η γλώσσα" to the tsakonian "α" , "α γρούσσα" which is a difference between ionian and doric dialects if I'm not mistaken
Im so happy when i see people who know about our history. The map show greek minorities and the languages are alive even now. Great video mate! Good job!
Thank you for your comment and the support! I'm glad you enjoyed the video. It's amazing that some of these languages still live today and kay they continue to thrive!
Im Thracian Greek. I can understand Pontic very well, although no Pontic myself, I grew up in an area that there were a lot of Pontic speakers. Griko is easy if you know a bit Italian, and I do. Tsakonika on the other hand its like a foreign language... I get a word here and there but thats about it.
For me it is just a matter of accent, nothing hard. Here is my transcription ot make things clear. I have put it as a seperate comment, but I am surprised by the many comments that complain that they find tsakonian dialect so distant! Πουλάτζι έμα εχα τθο κουιβί τσαι μερουτέ νι εμα έχα. Ταχίγια νι έμα ζάχαρη, ποϊκίχα νι έμα μόσκο. Πουλάκι είχα στο κλουβί και μερωμένο το είχα. Τάιζα το ζάχαρη, πότιζα το μόσχο. Τσαι απο το μοσκο το περσού, τσαι απο τα νυρωδιά, εσκανταλίστε το κουιβί, τσαι έφυντζε μοι το αηδόνι. Και απο τον μόσκο τον περισσό, και απο τη μυρωδιά, εσκανταλίστη το κλουβί, και μου έφυγε το αηδόνι. Τσαι αφέγκι νι έκει τσυνηγού με το κουιβί τθο χέρε. Και ο αφέντης του το κυνηγά με το κλουβί στο χέρι. Έ(λ)α πουλί τθον τόπο ντι, έ(λ)α τθα καϊκοιτζίαι, Έλα πουλί στον τόπο σου, έλα στην κατοικία να άτσου τα κουδούνια νιτ, να βάλου άβα τσαινούρτζα. να [αλλ]άξω τα κουδούνια σου, να βάλω άλλα καινούργια.
Well as a Greek speaker I can tell you that if I heard Griko or Tsakonian or Pontian out of the blue I wouldn't be able to make out a single word! But if you familiarize yourself with the language even a little bit, you can make out a big part of it! save for a few foreign words. Great video and unique, rarely talked about subject! Thanks!
That's a really good question. The two I can think of that definitely do are the words Sparta (the Attic Greek equivalent is Sparti) and Machine (from Doric Makhana, Attic Greek equivalent Makhani). There might be more because of Magna Graecia and it's influence on early Roman culture but it's not really known
Thank you very much. I am very interested in ancient languages like greek and Latin. I never knew that Hellenic language family contains other languages like these language in this video. I am only know it contains only greek, but however thank you very much for sharing me the knowledges. 👏👏👏👏
There are more too, Cypriot Greek, Calabrian Greek, Crimean and Mariupol Greek, Cappadocian Greek, Caucasus Greek and some more minor dialects. I aim to cover some of these in the next installment. Thank you for your kind comment
My frend here is only one language. The language for the literate people was named Hellinika (Hellenic) and was written using the traditional style of classical greek. For all the illiterate people the language used was simpler and named as Romeika (i.e. "Language of the Romans"). And was named "romeika" in every area of the Romania (eastern roman empire). Nowdays (last 90 years) the "romaika" of southern greece (pelopones and cyclades) "renamed" as "New Greek" .But in reality is Romeika. An official simplification of the language made out of the "lazines" of the modern descentants of Greeks and Romans! Its sad I know!
You were absolutely correct to think that because the only member of the Hellenic branch of the I-E languages is Greek. There are lately some TH-camrs with no linguistic background that sell the idea of "hellenic languages" against the standard linguistic classification that you perfectly well know and that you shouldn't second guess.
@@CheLanguages These are dialects. Why are you calling them "languages"? Did you take a look at the Indo-European Tree? Do you see anything next to Greek under the Hellenic branch?
as a Pontic Greek we are very infatuated with our Italian cousins, the proud products of Megali Idea! we miss you and love you cousins!!!!! God bless you all
Hi! I really enjoyed your video, great job. I live in Greece and I speak fluently tsakonian as my parents are still speaking all the time this dialect. Excellent video again
I'm a Greek from Greece. Have seen a few videos of people speaking Griko, and I can completely understand what they are saying. Sometimes I felt like they were speaking much better greek than us natives on the home land.
@@CheLanguages To me sounded like literally an Italian speaking common Greek with his respective Italian accent. Maybe some pronounciations, bits and pieces of speach are slightly sounding different, grammarly though everything is in order and makes sense understanding what they say. For example, when being affirmative we simply say "Nai/Ne", "Yes". Griko say "Ma Nai/Ne" which is superficial in simple cases using an exclamation phrase in Modern common Greek but in other languages would properly translate to something like "of course"
@@itacom2199 anch'io, i Greci ed Italiani sono fratelli in istoria, cultura ed anche cibo (un po' di lingue anche, c'è molte parole in italiano ed in greco che loro condividono
Thank you for providing us with such an informative well made video! I’m from a Pontic family an interesting fact is that my great grandpa that survived the genocide was from a village in Pontus that spoke only Turkish(they had to choose between converting to Islam or abandon their language) when they came in Greece until the 60s in the school Modern Greek/Pontic/Turkish were all spoken. Btw according to a glosologist 60% of the dialect is Ionian words(eye in Anc Greek was Oma in Pontic is Omat) 20% Homeric words and the rest is words from Farsi,Armenian etc
I would say that "completely mutually unintelligable" is an overstatement for the case of Griko and Pontic, but I would confirm it in the case of Tsakonian. Recently I was given an unknown to me Griko song, and I translated about 60 to 70%. I would say, a similar thing holds about Pontic. I would say however, that I would feel even more comfortable translating a Koine text, however, such as an excerpt from the New Testament- given that it was pronounced in modern Greek pronunciation. I would also like to point out that these languages do not necessarily preserve more features of Ancient Greek that Standard Modern Greek, but rather different ones
Very interesting video...❤ Iam 4 generation Pontic Greek and still speak pontiaka... Hope people will continue to speak these languages before they die🥺❤❤❤
That was so cool you found tsakonika, and denoted the major fact it doesn't come from Ionian Greek. I first came to contact with that offshoot of our language last summer, and I couldn't understand almost anything, unlike any other dialect of Greek I had ever encountered. Being raised in the North of Greece I came to contact with Pontic as early as elementary school, and I found it fairly easy to understand. What surprised me is that the dialects of southern Italy where, despite of all their latin loans, more intelligible to me than tsakonian, and now I finally realised it's due to that fact you pointed out. Cheers from Thrace!
I suppose it's because Griko and Graiko (Calabrian Greek) are both Ionian, though there is evidence to show they have some Doric loanwords. Being Ionian makes it a lot easier to understand from Modern Greek, at least that's what I guess
It was a very interesting video, thanks for featuring those. I have heard of them out, but don’t know much about them. I especially like Pontian! And I like their folk music. And I don’t think much about the Greek speaking people in Italy. Who have been there for thousands of years. It’s crazy that these communities can survive. Also, sad that within a few generations, there is always the potential that a language may die out. Thank you for spreading the information!
I already commented a bit before I'd watched the full video, but I'm coming back here to say how fascinating this video is. Please make a part 2 and don't forget to talk about Judeo-Greek!
Dear friend in 1492 Yıldırım Beyazit time when Turks sent a 500 piece navy to Spain and brought many jews under pressure of catholic enquisition and oppression ,per capacity of the navy they settled them accross their country.1 of them was Selanik. And t that time there were no Rum or Greek in Selanik it was a Turk land. Till we lost our homelnd in 1912 it remained a Turk majority city with much jew population in Europe. In this context you cannot say something like judeo greek its not fair and not true meantime break the case from its true context. They are Turkish jews as a whole, But fallen under Rum hegemony from 1912 today. Like they ethnic cleansed many natives they also dissolved the jews from Selanik.
Suetonius's anecdote about Tiberius and Zeno is a fairly banal instance of an ancient author referring to the Greek dialects. As such, it represents a rather low level of awareness of dialectal variation. Several centuries before Suetonius, the Greek historian Herodotus (c. 485-424 BC) was more conscious of Greek diver sification, as he was in a position to distinguish four different varieties of lonic Greek in Asia Minor, part of present-day Turkey. He refers to them as trópous tésseras paragógéön, 'four manners of deviations,', and kharakteres glosses tésseres, 'four distinctions of tongue'.' Herodotus's wording indicates that he could not yet rely on an established conceptual apparatus and a corresponding metalanguage to talk about dialectal diversity. Instead, he had to resort to words lacking an obvious semantic link with language at that time, such as kharakter (xapakтýp), 'character(istic); distinctive mark; stamp', trópos (pónos), 'way; manner', and paragoge (mapayary), which for Herodotus apparently meant something like 'deviation', 'twisting', or 'seduction'. Paragógé did later become a metalinguistic term meaning 'derived form' and 'inflection', whereas the root kharak- featured prominently in later Greek definitions of the term dialektos." Some generations later, the Athenian general and notoriously difficult histori ographer Thucydides (second half of the fifth century BC) went a little further still by trying to make sense of the different Greek dialects and to characterize their interrelationships. He reported, for instance, on a case of dialect mixture on Sicily (Historiae 6.5.1). The inhabitants of the city of Himera spoke, Thucydides claimed, a variety that occupied a middle ground between Chalcidian lonic and Doric, an assertion for which there is, by the way, no historical evidence (Vassallo 2005: 89). The Athenian historian also mentioned that the Greek spoken by the Aetolians was not understood by other Greeks (Historiae 3.94.5), thus apparently proving that not all varieties of Greek were mutually intelligible. Van Rooy, R. (2021). Language or Dialect? (p. 16)). Oxford: Oxford University Press USA - OSO.
Με αναγωγή θα πρέπει να δεχτούμε ότι κάποτε θα υπήρξε μια αρχή οπότε δημιουργήθηκε η γλώσσα που πολύ αργότερα ονονάστηκε ελληνική και η οποία ομιλείτο από ανθρώπους που ζούσαν μαζί. Κάποτε για κάποιους λόγους οι άνθρωποι που μιλούσαν εκείνη τη γλώσσα 'εφυγαν από την κοινή πατρίδα και έμειναν χωρισμένοι για χιλιετείες. Κάποτε γύρισαν στην κοινή πατρίδα η οποία βρίσκεται στην χερσόνησο του Αίμου . Στη διάρκεια του μακροχρόνιου χωρισμού τους, την κάποτε κοινή τους γλώσσα την διαμόρφωσαν με διαφορετικό τρόπο όσο αφορά καταλήξεις λέξεων, γραμματικής δομής πρότασης απόδοσης όμοιου γεγονότως, τρόπου χρήσης των φωνηέντων για απόδοση των υποκειμένων και αντικειμένων στην γλωσσοποίηση γεγονότων και ακόμα την ονομασία όμοιων αντικειμένων από διαφορετικά χαρακτηριστικά τους . Μόνο βασικές λέξεις έμεινα όμοιες. Αποτέλεσμα, η κάποτε όμοια σε όλους γλώσσα να διαφοροποιηθεί στα διάφορα φύλα της κάποτε κοινής πατρίδας. Η Ελληνική γλώσσα είναι μια η οποία έχει διαφορετικούς τρόπους απόδοσης όμοιων εννοιών. Δεν υπάρχουν πολλές ελληνικές γλώσσες.
Nice and interesting video. The word Romios instead of Hellene(Greek) was in use until 1821 and the War of Independence. The same goes with the language. It was called Romeika instead of Hellenic(Greek). First time that officially the terms Hellene, Hellas and Hellenic was been used was during the 1st National assembly and the creation of the 1st constitution December 1821, January 1822. After the creation of Greek State all the Greeks outside Greece, citizens of the Ottoman Empire, were called Romioi(Romans) and the language Romeika. The remainders Greeks of Constantinople, still are called Romioi. The rum community.
Great video! Had trouble comprehending Tsakonian and Pontic, especially the former, but the rest seemed to be at least somewhat comprehensible. I descend from a tribe called Sarakatsani, who are thought to be descended from the Dorians who were isolated for centuries in the mountains of mainland Greece. Their language/dialect is also a big mystery for me, since my grandparents could speak it and I would randomly catch a few words here and there because of my exposure to it. I have searched online to find information on the language but information is just to scarce. Nevertheless I though it would be fun pointing out!
Ahhh interesting. I have read about Sarakatsanika and that dialect is very interesting, I wish I knew more about it. It has so many older preservations and is very resistant to outside words. Have a great day!
For me it is just a matter of accent, nothing hard. Here is my transcription ot make things clear. I have put it as a seperate comment, but I am surprised by the many comments that complain that they find tsakonian dialect so distant! Πουλάτζι έμα εχα τθο κουιβί τσαι μερουτέ νι εμα έχα. Ταχίγια νι έμα ζάχαρη, ποϊκίχα νι έμα μόσκο. Πουλάκι είχα στο κλουβί και μερωμένο το είχα. Τάιζα το ζάχαρη, πότιζα το μόσχο. Τσαι απο το μοσκο το περσού, τσαι απο τα νυρωδιά, εσκανταλίστε το κουιβί, τσαι έφυντζε μοι το αηδόνι. Και απο τον μόσκο τον περισσό, και απο τη μυρωδιά, εσκανταλίστη το κλουβί, και μου έφυγε το αηδόνι. Τσαι αφέγκι νι έκει τσυνηγού με το κουιβί τθο χέρε. Και ο αφέντης του το κυνηγά με το κλουβί στο χέρι. Έ(λ)α πουλί τθον τόπο ντι, έ(λ)α τθα καϊκοιτζίαι, Έλα πουλί στον τόπο σου, έλα στην κατοικία να άτσου τα κουδούνια νιτ, να βάλου άβα τσαινούρτζα. να [αλλ]άξω τα κουδούνια σου, να βάλω άλλα καινούργια.
Beautiful. I like the Pontic music more then the mainstream Greek music. Arvanitika Albanian is a minority language in Greece, and as other minority languages is on the way of extinction. Arvanitika is nor a Hellenic language, is is a form of Medieval Albanian with a lot of Greek words in its vocabulary. I just saw a beautiful video about a Romaniote Jewish lady who's family left Greece for Albania when the Germans were advancing toward Athens. Her name is Anna Cohen (sometimes spelled in Albanian variant Ana Kohen). Her parents relatives that remained in Greece perished after they were captured and sent to concentration camps. A prosperous Jewish community before the WW2 in Greece was almost all wiped out. Anna's family settled in Vlore, Albania and were helped by the local population during the Nazi occupation of Albania. As a matter of fact many Jews moved to Albania during WW2 to find a small place to hide from the Nazis even though Albania itself being occupied by the Nazis. Anna told the story that her husband's family, Jewish from Poland, all perished during WW2. You can read a short excerpt of her book and fascinating story in the link www.ocnal.com/2022/07/the-flower-of-vlora-book-of-anna-cohens.html
@@wankawanka3053 Yes, that's true. Romania is a much larger place than Albania, and Aromanians, or Vlah people as they are also called have been living for many centuries in Greece, especially in Macedonia and Epirus; and since independence, all over Greece. Aromanians/Vlahs are one of the best people around, very skillful, laborious and loyal to the country they live in; such are the Vlahs of Albania; although a minority, they have given the country many illustrious personalities for arts to politics and government.
Wait for angry Romanians here for that claim you made about the modern "Romans". An interesting detail: they changed their name from Rumânia to România to be "more" Romans. That "u" makes me think, if their name didn't come from the Eastern Rome as well... The Pontic Greeks were also living in the Black Sea coastal areas of former Russian Empire, but by now, they are either left, or largely Russified. There are also another, though by now largely Russified Greek "Roman" groups - the Turkic speaking Urums, who were deported from Crimea to Donbass by Catherine II of Russia, together with 'Ruméika' - the Crimean Greek speakers. For more information, check "Mariupol Greeks" (and if anyone wonders, where the city name Mariupol comes from...). Anyone who was Greek Orthodox, was considered a Greek, anyone who was Muslim was considered a Tatar; to avoid deportation, many Christians converted to Islam. That's how effective was Russia protecting the Orthodox faith. To make it more complicated - the Caucasus Greeks were called "Urum" by the Turks as well. Perhaps, some Turk could clarify, how they have used the name "Rum" - in different time, it could mark any Christians, or even the Ottoman Empire itself and its people.
That makes sense, I have always wondered why it is spelled Rumania on old maps and I assumed it was just dodgy translation into English. I assume they probably took it from Turkish Rumca, then? I know Rumania has had a....history, let's say, with the Turks. As for Mariupol(is), I'm well aware and Mariupol and Crimean Greek almost made it on to this video, I will most likely include them in the next one too. I'd never heard the term Urum before, though I know Georgian/Caucasus Greeks exist....
@@CheLanguages About the Urum language, better check Wikipedia in Russian with translator, the English page is representing some mess, putting Azov Urum and Caucasian Urum together. Azov Urum, today considered as a separate language, is coming from the Crimean Tatar Kipchak dialect. The Caucasian Tsalka Urum (Russian: Цалкский язык) speak a language or a dialect coming from Turkish.
@@CheLanguages it's still called "Roumanía" in Greek (also Roumanie in French), which kind of helps distinguish it from the Roman Empire (what Greeks call Romanía)
Great video. My family come from down near Kythira. Many linguist believe Tsakonian was spoken that far south up until about 200 years ago. I sent my mother some Tsakonian text. She could actually understand some of the Tsakonian words. When I asked her how she knew them she said they were words used by the elderly people in her village when she was growing up.
That's amazing! It's very possible the language did spill over further than it does today. Also, Kythira is a beautiful island, I really want to visit it
5:31 - You point out how the word "ego" from Greek, changed to "evo" in Griko. While learning Russian, I found that any combination of "ego" in words is pronounced "evo" while in other combinations the "g" is pronounced as a hard "g". The Cyrillic alphabet does have a historic connection to the Greek alphabet - through Church Slavonic, etc. interesting factoid fyi
Very good video. Of course, the Greek language through its thousands of years of development, depending on the region, the influences, evolved differently. But despite the apparent, but & substantial differences, communication between all the different dialects is possible, maybe not in complex concepts, but in basic everyday ones. In the Greek language today, the Ionic-Attic dialect prevails, without missing Doric influences, for example the word Λαός / laos = people as pronounced today has a Doric accent, normally in Ionic-Attic dialect would be pronounced Λεώς / leos = people but to say the word, bus we say Λεωφορείο / leoforio you would notice that the word is compound Λεω - φορείο / leo - forio which means brings the people but here for the word people we use the Ionic-Attic dialect ( letter (ο) & letter (ω) have the same pronunciation) Usually the differences are small and understandable even subconsciously by us, there are of course more complex differences. I'll give you another example. You will know the historical phrase of Spartan Mothers or Wives before the Spartans left for war, (either with it or on it) referring to the shield, that is either with the shield you will return, or on it you will be brought, today we would say either victorious with the shield or dead on it. The phrase (either with it or on it) it was in Doric dialect ( η ταν η επί τας ) and at Ionic-Attic dialect it was ( η την η επί της ), as you can see the difference is only the vowel α/a & the vowel η/e alternating (the pronunciation of e as in the word eat in English) Sorry for my english is not very good I hope I added something more to your discussion.
Thank you for the comment! I'm aware of the α→η sound shift between Doric and Ionian. Even the name of the city itself in Doric is Sparta, and in Ionian is Sparte (later Sparti). It's crazy to see this still exists today
@@Llyebbay I am quoting verbatim ( letter (ο) & letter (ω) have the same pronunciation).... pronunciation....pronunciation.... You speak Greek ? Probably not Because if you spoke Greek, you would know that (ο) and (ω) have an important role in grammar, but there is no difference in the pronunciation of the word...and that's what I'm saying....
@@AMat-vx3ew l'm a native speaker ... I know very well the official Athenian Greek pronunciation You don't know that Ω pronunce as long Also the η , ει , οι , αι When Greeks they speak , you don't understand the differences of the pronunciation because you don't know the Language
@@Llyebbay Τότε αφού καταλαβαίνεις Ελληνικά εξήγησε μου τι δεν κατάλαβες από την πρόταση που είπα.....[το γράμμα (ο) & το γράμμα (ω) έχουν την ίδια προφορά].....Μίλησα για προφορά και όχι για γραμματική.... Νομίζω ότι απλά είπες κάτι, μόνο για να το πεις ή απλά δεν ξέρεις Ελληνικά...... Then since you understand Greek explain to me, what you didn't understand from the sentence I said.....[the letter (ο) & the letter (ω) have the same pronunciation].....I was talking about pronunciation and not about grammar. ... I think you just said something, just to say it, or you just don't know Greek......
So does Modern Greek. Sound shifts took place over the last 2,500 years which have led to the difference between the Ancient Greek alphabet from today's. Thus, old sounds have to ve represented in a different way e.g. β now makes a /v/ and not a /b/, si the digraph μπ represents /b/ today. There are more letters and diphthongs like this ad nauseam, but it's basically a solution to an Ancient problem. Again, Modern Greek does the same
Some other Greek speakers had different opinions. It might depends on what dialect you speak yourself. Also the sample in the video was mentioned to be quite similar because it's poetic, but everyday Griko is much harder for Greek speakers
Cretan and Cypriot are both Greek dialects, but they are mutually unintelligible even for local Greeks from mainland Greece to hear and understand. I would probably say the same case works with Griko and Tsakonian.
@@CheLanguagesI may have made a paraphrase on my part. What I meant was me as a common Greek can't understand completely a Cretan or a Cypriot because of the different vocabulary and morphology in their speech. Same reason as an Athenian can't understand a Thessalonican (from Thessaloniki) in northern Greece at first glance. Both of them originate from Koine Greek, bolstered through the efforts of the Greek Orthodox Church.
hey man, I'm from Crete (the southmost island of Greece) we have a unique language too our dialect has been petitioned to become its own language twice (both times greeve intervened) we used to be our own country over 100 years ago plus we are the decedents of the Minoans so a lot of our dialect may or not come from a COMPLETLY different language and culture. just thought I would let you know about us good video
Since you are going to talk about cretan greek in the future i want to tell you about an offshoot of it in my country Libya in Cyrenaica still spoken alongside Arabic by greek Muslims originally from Crete but when Greece got its independence from the ottoman empire they were persecuted by Christian Greeks and fleed to Cyrenaica Libya and several other countries Syria Lebanon ...etc And since Libya is very tribal thay formed a tribe although thay were not related by blood thay were related by Crete,so thay called it the Cretans tribe and the language has evolved a bit from its original cretan Sorry for not putting punctuation marks because i don't know how to
@@alzubyr.alhnach.2005 yes i know.of your culture, 1 quater of my island was muslim but they all got sent away during the population exhcange. It is sad to see cretans away from their island we have an attachment that goes back thousands of years and i wish for them to return someday to our home
@@potwatch9357 Yeah it's true I am not from that culture but a lot of my friends are And thay told me thay still have a lot of property in Crete farmlands ...ect so they can Technically return whenever they want to, but things of course are a bit more complicated and the situation in Libya is not so simple
If Tsakonian and Griko both have ties to Doric Greek I wonder if they would understand each other a little better than they would standard Greeks. Or if Griko has diverged too much for there to be any understanding between the two.
So I did mention that Griko may have ties to Doric, but it is not Doric (from what we know). It's still descended from Koine (supposedly) but it does share some vocabulary with Doric, but not much in terms of grammar, so it is thought that local Doric Greek languages in Magna Graecia may have influenced it
A few Greeks said they can't understand Tsakonian very well, they can pick out words but they can't construct the sentences and understand the meaning. Given that Griko is further away from that, I'm guessing that they'd have an even harder time with Tsakonian
@@CheLanguages today's common Greek dialect that we speak in Greece is full of ancient Greek words and of course it has Doric. you can't speak modern Greek without mentioning ancient Greek words. not only us or today's Greeks but the whole western world speaks ancient Greek.if you look for the root of the words used in the different languages you spoke, they are ancient Greek.
@@ΓιώργοςΑ-ψ7ψ Well obviously, it is descended from Ancient Greek LOL. English, Italian and even Hebrew have many words of Greek origin that entered the language during Ancient times, and then some in more modern times.
There is a huge difference between reading it and listening to these dialects. When reading you have time to "translate" and figure out the grammar and syntax, but when listening to it you dont have time to analyse what has been said and the pronunciation also throws you off. I could still identify it as greek but understood very little. The dialects in Ukraine and Crimea are also difficult to understand. They were complaining to me. They had greek schools but Zelensky and his predecessor closed them down. I suppose the laws were made to close down russian schools, but in the end all non-ukrainian schools were closed. They were so proud of their greek ancestry, it makes me smile. 🙂
Well, I was able to detect a lot of words in Griko (as a greek) and make out a meaning, but as for Tsakonian or Pontic ( I am half pontic myself and my grandma speaks them with fluency) I was able to make out very very few words and no meaning
Interesting. I seem to have different answers from different Greek speakers in the comments, it makes me wonder if some of them speaj dialects. Do you speak a particular dialect?
Pontiac has some similarities with Zakytnthian mainly the preservation of the final ν but Zakytnthian is far closer to standard Greek with some Ancient and Italian words thrown in there than to Pontic they just have some similarities.
@@CheLanguages yeah islands tend to be more conservative than the mainland. As for Griko there's actually not much similarity between Zakytnthian and Griko in spite of having both Italian influence, except from other Ionian Islands Cretan has some similarities with Zakytnthian mainly the use of τση instead of της but that's about it. There are some Medieval and ancient remnants like χωρίο(νε) and λιμιώνας which comes from ancient λιμήν. There is also a lot of Italian influence words like parla and bonora have entered into the everyday vocabulary.
@@Ratich interesting. As you said, islands tend to be more conservative and this goes for Cyprus too. Thank you for going into more detail with the examples too
@@CheLanguages Yes as I grew up there, I don't speak the dialect as well as I used to because I've been away from the island for close to a decade now. I haven't completely lost the accent though and sometimes people will say that I talk weird.
Well, in reality, Pontiac dialect is the most difficult of the three to understand for me, because the accentuation is completely different from modern Greek language. The same is with Cyprian dialect. The Cretan dialect on the other hand, which is completely different from common (koine means common, and it is pronounced kenέ , κοινή) is very understandable for me, cause is similar with the dialect of Naxos from where i descend. Tsakonian maybe different from our dialect, but uses the same consonants for k, tz and ts. and of course sh. Generally, every place in Greece has a different dialect, and every dialect has its idioms, yet everybody can understand common Greek. And when a dialect is written, most of Greeks can understand what they read, because the roots of the words are the same with ancient greek. I understood all three dialects you illustrated very well. For example, the word "Lalia", is used in common Greek. It means "to speak, to make a sound with your mouth", and we mostly use it nowadays for... the roosters. The problem is when someone from a village speaks quickly with an idiom. What i am trying to say, is that all these are not different languages, they are dialects for us.
I see your point, but Tsakonian is derived from such a different root and so difficult for most Greek speakers to understand that it is generally accepted to be a separate language. The others I will agree are dialects, but very notable ones. Watch my part 2 video as I explain further what I mean in the intro
Afaik the "-ον" ending is much more present in Pontic Greek than iin modern Greek because: a. The dialects on which Standard Modern Greek is based tended to drop final -ν while Pontic didn't b. Pontic -along with many Cappadocian Greek varieties- only uses the neuter forms of the adjectives (which end in -ον in the Nominative) when describing inanimate nouns c. 2nd declension nouns ending in -ος, ου in Ancient/Koine and Modern Greek, end in -ον, ονος in Pontic by analogy to Ancient/Koine Greek 3rd declension nouns ending in -ων, ωνος (so Koine Greek ὁ σκῦλος, τοῦ σκύλου --> Modern Greek ο σκύλος, του σκύλου // Pontic Greek ο σκύλον, τη σκύλονος) The Hellenic languages don't get much attention, so thanks for this great video!
I can confirm that. Half Greek half Swedish brought up in Athens have a small house in Astros which is near tsakonia it's easier to understand griko than tsakonika.
On the topic of my politics channel, I got a lot of nasty comments on my one video I made which kinda discouraged me a bit. I feel a little bit under qualified and as if talking about politics is just asking for trouble....
@@CheLanguages I’m sorry to hear that 💙 I always remove nasty comments that I’ve gotten. You can ban words so the comments won’t get published, I’ve done that with “free palestine” and other swear words. Turning off the comments is also an option.
Great video. There is still some hope that these dialects can be preserved, the internet certainly can be very empowering to that effect. On the mutual intelligibility: I think the analogy with Romance languages is very apt. One can certainly recognize words but not all of them. One can on further careful study recognize structures and grammar features too to enhance the basic understanding afforded by common words. But other than that, two people speaking two different dialects will not be able to easily communicate. Now, having said that, one correction: in modern Greek there are many local idioms and thus local pronunciations - accents if you will. Modern Greeks are very familiar with them, including the sounds of Pontic Greek. So, for example, in 9:27, the pronunciation of "κ" as the "ch" sound in English is very familiar to Greeks (as used e.g. in Cretan idiom) and thus the word is instantly recognizable.
@@Κασσάνηρ And now it is time that “Greeks” admit they’re just impostors ☺️ We should be the ONLY Greece. Soon we’ll submit a name change request for your country… just like “Macedonia”.
@@CheLanguages Indeed it is used, although it's considered to be a somewhat 'archaic', or 'rustic/folkloric' endonym. Some people use it interchangeably for 'Greek' (and often quote the famous words by the hero of 1821 revolution against the Turks, Athanasios Diakos who said "Εγώ Ρωμηός γεννήθηκα Ρωμηός θε να πεθάνω", i.e. "I was born a Romios and a Romios I will die"). A more nuanced take on the historical usage of the "Romios" ethnonym, would be that under the Ottoman Empire it mainly came to mean any Christian Orthodox Greek-speaking individual (being the conquered population of the Eastern Roman Empire... Byzantine was a term used much later). It's a really fascinating topic, for sure! By the way, congrats for the awesome video; subbed!!
@@Freawulf very interesting, your example sounds very heroic (in the context of the Greek War of Independence I assume) and echoes back to the time of when the Greeks were Romans I guess. I'm glad you like the video and welcome to the channel!
"Romiosyni" has a pretty vague meaning which absolutely doesn't equate to "Greece" ...and to answer CL's question, no people don't normally use these terms nowadays, except occasionally for ideological or rhetorical purposes (like among certain nationalistic circles...for alluding to the past... that kind of thing..) ... sort of like Frenchmen calling themselves "gaulois" ...I mean people may do it but imo it sounds a bit pretentious and can even invite mockery... Also with regards to the Jewish "Romaniotim"(or Romaniotes) I think their name refers to Romanía, which was the colloquial greek name for the (eastern) Roman empire (not to be confused with a modern country of almost identical name) rather than to the Romans themselves.
I enjoyed your video a lot. Nice job! Will we be seeing any video in which you explain what the main differences between languages and dialects are? Such as the Thracian which is ambigious if it is after all a language or a dialect. Or the Pontic Dialect? Or the Macedonian one?
I understood 90% of Romeika and Griko, but Tsakonian is something else man... It was separated way too long ago... Its like reading ancient greek man. To be honest, I understand much more Ancient Greek because in schools we are taught the Attic Dialect, which is the one that evolved to modern greek. Tsakonian could be a whole other language. There are some words that are the same but that goes with Spanish-Italian, Spanish-Portuguese, German-Dutch etc etc. Its not enough to call Tsakonian a dialect. Its totally a whole other language. Good work man
@@CheLanguages потому что это ссср виновато они многие народы так сделали зависимые от ссср оккупированные российской империей , , в ссср постепенно начало переставание говорить своими диалектами , специально создали такие условия и дальше так рф что Россия виновата с поконивеков пример!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I don't know where you get your info on Pontic and Griko bur you neglected to relativize the data in the various papers on ancient dialect influences on them and place it in the larger context of Greek dialectology. Both these dialects are nothing else than local varieties derived from the Alexandrian Koinê, just like all the various dialects of Modern Greek (including Modern Standard), with some substrate from the Ancient Gk dialects (not an exceptional feature among the various regional languages.) Their relatively isolated development after the loss of Byzantine sovereignty does not make them "another Greek" in the vastly varied collection of Greeek dialects. Tsakonian, of course, is obviously Lacedemonian, one of the ancient dialects, in fact the only survivor from before the Alexandrian Koinê, which developed mainly on an Attic [-Ionian] basis.
I never made any claim that the other languages are not from Koine origins. There is some speculation about Griko, but some linguists now think that it is a Koine descendant with some influence from the nearby Doric dialects, mainly observed in some vocabulary. Pontic Greek is definitely from Koine and I never made any claim counter to this. Tsakonian on the other hand is firmly different from Koine, as you mentioned.
@@CheLanguages Very well; but then one should hear why these two mainly Koine-origin dialects among many should be elevated to a parallel branch status.
@@watching7650 well, they are not. In the video I describe these as languages/dialects with the slash being important here. Griko is not mutually intelligible with Greek, so I would call it a different language. Apparently Greeks can read it with some difficulty but they can't listen to it and understand. Pontic on the other hand is effectively a dialect and I say this in the video. Yet Pontic Greek is significant and has some interesting features that set it apart from Greek in the mainland and thus I wanted to talk about it
@@CheLanguages Fine. Jut wondered about your criteria. We could list a good number of dialects (whether one calls them "language" or not) that are not mutually intelligible vs. Pelopponesian Standard or Northern Greek speakers -- Pontic is definitely among them, and how!
Not crying for having my language recognised. Even more that the dialect my grandpa used to speak. Know you made me even more sure to learn italian and go to South Italy
I don't know if you can put it in the same category as those dialects but the most endangered language in the EU is a Greek Whistling tongue found in the island of Euboea with only 20 people and it was discover a few decades ago when a millitary helicopter fell nearby.
Oh wow!!! I didn't know about that. There are a lot of those 'whistling languages' across the world that developed in small mountainous communities, the most famous example is Silbo Gomero. Super interesting, thank you!
When i look at the comments, I understood once again how strong the Greek diaspora is. Despite their small population, their organization is very well coordinated.
Many varieties exist really, most descend from Koine Greek except probably Tsakonian that descends from Doric with influences from Koine Greek varieties. Griko is quite influenced by Doric and Pontic from Ionian. Others are influenced to some degree from Ancient varieties too though
Very accurate and detailed map at the beginning of the video. Including Imvros, Tenedos, Occupied Cyprus, Northern Epirus and places in Southern Italy where Greek language is still spoken, outside the borders of the modern country.
I'm not sure where Imvros or Tenedos are, but it is a good map! It doesn't show Al-Hamidiyah in Syria or the Greek speaking populations of Levanon, Crimea, Mariupol or Constantinople however
I hope you all enjoyed this video. Be sure to let me know which language was your favorite. Have a great day!
Griko is badass
@@AvrahamYairStern I agree
@@CheLanguages good, they are all cool though
Also Griko for me
@@grzegorzbrzeczyszczykiewicz991 that's great to hear Grzegorz
The Greek language is so beautiful. Us Egyptians love the Greeks.
We also love the Greeks, an amazing nation with such an impactful history
@@CheLanguages we love you both as well!
We Love you too! 💙
@@CheLanguages
We Love you guys as well! 💙
@@obabas80 that's great to hear!
It is also worth mentioning that there is a dialect of Pontic Greek in South-Eastern Ukraine, called Румеку Глоса. Its few speakers are centered (or rather were centered, unfortunately) mostly around cities of Melitopol and Mariupol, as well as in Crimea.
I'm saving it for the next video, as I'd rather dedicate a full section to Crimean and Mariupol(is) Greek
@@CheLanguages wow Im excited for that one, that’s one of the wildest ethnic enclaves ik of😂
@@just1frosty516 I'm definitely going to have to make a part 2, there are so many obscure Greek dialects and languages
Yeah, a shame that a lot of ukrainian Greeks were killed by totalitarian ukrainian government in 1930-1938.
@iumaser3219 I've already read this article LOL
I’m a Pontic Greek that lives in the USA and I speak Pontic Greek and modern Greek, just wanted to say you did a great job with this video thank you for your work!!!👍👍👍
You speak Pontic Greek? There are a lot of Greeks here who had Pontic speakers in their family like grandparents or something, but no actual Pontic speakers themselves. That's awesome!!!
Γειά σου ποντιε... χαιρετίσματα από Αυστραλία
@@tryfindemeifyoucan1172 Κρατατε γερα μαγκες μου γιατι εμεις εδω στην πατριδα το σκορπισαμε το μαγαζι , . HUG FROM PATRIDA RRRREEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE !!
Χαιρετισμούς από το Γερμανιστάν.
Πόντιος εγεννέθα εγώ
Σ' αβούτην κοινωνίαν
Μ' έναν τρανόν φιλότιμον
Κ' ένα καλοκαρδία
---------------------------------
Αετσ' επλάστ' ασόν θεόν
Αετσ' ση γην εβρέθα
Καμίαν κ' επουσμάνεψα
Πόντιος ντ' εγεννέθα
Όλον τον κόσμον αγαπώ
Κακό ντο εν κι ξέρω
Και για τον πόνον τ' άλλουνού
Κλαιω και υποφέρω
Τραγωδώ τα ποντίακα
Και τα καρδίασ' σκίζω
Θερίον είμεσ' άδικον
Και σον καλόν δακρύζω
Την προσβολήν κι θέλατο
Μπορεί και να ματούμε
Για την πατρίδαν και την πίστ
Πρώτος παω σκοτούμε
Με συγκίνησες Λάζαρε με τους στίχους που έγραψες..Νά 'σαι καλά εκεί που είσαι!!! Κατάλαβα σχεδόν όλο το κείμενο! Χρήστος Αγγελίδης, Αλμυρός Μαγνησίας ❤
I recognise maybe about 50%-60% of Tsakonian vocabulary but derive about 30% of the meaning. As for the "Gigachad language" commentary, I have to say that not only sounds "based" to my modern native Greek ears but also cheerful and vibrant.
I like how you reverberated terms used in this comment section LOL. I'm glad to hear a Greek speaker give an opinion on it!
It would be great to see you talk about Cypriot Greek! I noticed a lot of similarities with Tsakonika and some with griko and even pontiaka, it’s rly cool! I’d love to see my mother tongue represent on here, and I’d be happy to provide some information as whenever I look up Cypriot Greek there’s not as much info out there as I think there should be. Great video tho! I love seeing stuff about other Hellenic languages other than standard Greece Greek :)))
I'm planning on it next time I think. It would be great if you could help! I've looked into it before and I watched an interview between an Athenian Greek and a Cypriot - the Cypriot says that Modern Greek sounds way more formal to him, and the Greek said the Cypriot sounds old-fashioned or rural. Is this true?
@@TheGeorgeMChannel I'd love to know more. Are there situations in which you would use MSG e.g. job interviews or courts?
@@CheLanguagesSMG is used officially, in the news, in schools, most TV shows, publications, and even most adverts. Cypriot is reserved purely for conversing, as obviously it "can't be written" (although I don't agree with this). There is also a weird new form, which is basically watered down Cypriot. This is the new fad as more traditional Cypriot essentially dies off, and replaced with a more "light" version that includes a more "mainland" Greek way of conversing. To give you an example, my great grandmother could not communicate in SMG, something which is completely unheard of nowadays
@@J89-b2m that's interesting that your grandma couldn't speak Standard Modern Greek. That effectively tells me that the old traditional Cypriot Greek was it's own language, but the modern "watered-down version" sounds more like a dialect of Greek
@@CheLanguages Something like that yes. Unfortunately due to the invasion and the illegal division of the communities (Cypriot was used by both Turkish Cypriots and Greek Cypriots to communicate), the rise in nationalism and "Greekification" is exemplary.
I love how you said "since the pontic genocide by the turks.." in the most casual way possible 😂😂
Well, I try to contain myself on political issues these days, but obviously what the Turkish government did to their Greek, Armenian and Kurdish population between 1915-1925 was disgraceful and really doesn't get the attention it deserves. There was a population exchange between the Greeks and the Turks, a luxury the Armenians did not get, but somewhere around 360,000 Pontic Greeks were also killed before the official population exchange, not to mention all the other Greeks in Anatolia (Cappadocian Greeks, Constantinopolitan Greeks etc...)
I love both Greece and Turkey so don't misinterpret my words as hate towards the Turks, but it's still an historical fact that needs to be talked about
@@CheLanguages thank you for even referencing it in the video, nowadays whenever i see people talk about greek subjects they go over it with the ''population exchange'' and never ever mention a genocide, also i would appreciate if you called it the Greek Genocide instead of pontic, to bring it all in a unitifed umbrela, cause you know it wasn't only the pontians who received the sword.
@@CheLanguages the biggest estimate for the casualties for the genocide is around 700.000 - 1.000.000
@@ejoji4245 yes, there was a Greek genocide. The population exchange happened after many hundreds of thousands had already been slaughtered
The Islamied Greeks in Pontus still speak the Pontic dialect, although it is dying there too, because they are forgeting their roots.A solution to this problem would be to build Greek schools in Pontus.Also,as a Pontic Greek my family stoped speaking the dialect two generations ago.I want to learn it in order to teach it to my children when the time will come.I hope one day we will be able to go back to our homeland!
Sadly I don't see the Turkish government building Pontic schools anytime soon. How can you learn Pontic Greek? It'd be great for you to pass it on as you said you'd like to
@@CheLanguages I don't know how to learn Pontic Greek but i really want to.I will try learning through TH-cam videos or Google
@@tenshi4124 there's not a lot of videos out there, I tried looking into it myself
@@tenshi4124 if you find any resources, let me know!
@@tenshi4124 in TH-cam you’ll find everything you need to learn your language. Just look fir it
Ι' m Greek and I have to congratulate you for your excellent work! For a Greek it's quite easy to understand Griko, it's more difficult with Pontiaca and almost impossible to understand Tsakonika!
Good to know! Some other Greeks said if they listen to the spoken language of Griko, it's much harder. What's your verdict?
Thank you for the kind comment also!
@@CheLanguages Griko is the easiest one for a MGS to understand. It must have been influenced a lot by later Byzantine Greek I guess
@@TMPOUZI That is possible
The only problem I had with the text in Tsakonika was that I was primed to expect Doric Greek but it was just a modern folk song with a standard modern metric of 15 syllables, nothing Doric or ancient about it. Once you are past the first few words and you realise it is modern Greek, it is easy to read. Meroute was the only word that spooked me. Had it been spoken or sung, however, without being able to read the text, it would have been much harder to understand.
its a crime that your channel isnt getting more attention, some of the most interesting videos ive seen in a long time
Thank you for the comment, I appreciate it! Sadly, my viewship has gone down massively compared to before in the last few months and my channel is only growing very slowly now. It's quite discouraging but I want to keep making videos for you guys - a good thing you could do as an individual viewer to help my content get more attention would be to share the video to people you think might like it, and also leave a few comments as that's all good for the algorithm. I'm glad you enjoy the content, so let other people know about my channel so they can enjoy it too! Have a great day
@@CheLanguages I've shared it with my brother. The algorithm is pure garbage these days, all you get are videos you've already seen and channels you've already watched for years. It's impossible to find anything new these days.
@@arseface2k934 thank you for sharing. The algorithm is difficult and as a content creator, it's difficult to get recognition if the algorithm works against you. That being said, this video is becoming popular, it might be another viral!
A crimea
@@mpforeverunlimited LOL
It is worth mentioning the 1923 Population Exchange, Romeika was brought to Greece with Population Exchange and also it caused the extinction of Karamanli Turkish which was a distinct dialect written in Greek alphabet.
It's also worth mentioning that the population exchange happened after hundreds of thousands of ethnic Greeks had already been killed by the Turkish government....
I didn't know about that dialect of Turkish, that you for highlighting it to me
@@CheLanguages and also Cappadocian Greek. I forgot to write it. It was thought the be extinct but later some native speakers of it were found.
@@szentistvan8995 yes, I mentioned that somewhere in the comments. Also an interesting dialect
@@CheLanguages That is a variety of Turkish that uses the Greek alphabet for writing: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karamanli_Turkish
@@PanayiotisVyras someone else told me, but they didn't link it so I forgot to check it out
Fun Fact: The Trapezuntine Roman Empire lasted until 1461.
That is indeed both a fun fact and a very true one!
And it was ruled by the Komnenos, meaning that their eastern roman empire lasted longer than Constantinople.
@@Rabid_Nationalist also 100% true. I think there was a reference to it in Assassin's Creed Revelations
@@Rabid_Nationalist Being Mocked by Constantinople for being Kings of Tzantini inspite of their ruling dynasty remaining Komnenian only to Outlive them, they are my favorite Roman Succesor.
@@ylmazirdenyazc8393 LOL
Thanks for this video. I am a L2 (Calabrian) Griko speaker.
Calabrian Greek or Graiko?! Do you think you could help me for the next video perhaps? How did you learn it?
@@CheLanguages Self-taught. And with pleasure. What I have to do?
It's Greko not Griko, Griko refers to Salentino Greek
@@ΝεκτάριοςΧριστοφή Yes, I know. But it seems to me in English "Griko" is used for both varieties.
@@giuseppedelfino8246 No, Greko for Calabrian and Griko for Salentino my friend
It's cool to know that there are still Greek/Hellenic speakers calling themselves "Romans". All of the languages in this video are very interesting!
I find that very cool too, Pontus must be the true successor to the Roman Empire HAHA!!!
I had read that Constantinopolitan ethnic Greeks by birth refer to themselves as Romans as a last ditch resistance to the Turkish state's policy of forced assimilation as apart of the WWI separation of ethno-religious communities within the borders of their nation states. Greece recognises membership of a Greek Orthodox Church as entitlement to citizenship & Turkey recognises Islamic observance as entitlement to citizenship. This effectively strips non-religious & non-Orthodox indigenes of citizenship but ironically grants it in Turkey to Bessarabians, Hamshins & Lazes but only ethnic Jewish Muslims (such as the 19th century mass converts from Salonika) & thus not the atheist-raised Turkic peoples of the former Soviet Union nor the Judaic Khazars nor Orthodox Christian Moldavian Gagauz.
@@ianison9820 Hi you two, my dad is Romaioi from Istanbul. I wouldn't use the word hellenic/hellenes to refer to my people just roman. most likely say Rumlar which is the turkish word for it. So not just the Ponitans. Also yea what you said. If i had a penny for everytime the turkish state did an ethnic cleansing or genocide i would have 18 pennies which isn't a lot but it's sad it was so normal. (made up the number for comedic effect but it's a lot against every minority group you could imagine
@@ianison9820 it's almost like basing citizenship laws off religion is a bad idea....
@@ianison9820 do Constantinopolitan Greeks still do this?
I've been looking forward to this one!
I hope you enjoy!
I thought there was only 3 hellenic languages (Pontic Greek, Cypriot Greek and Griko), never knew there was more!
Definitely, there are more than that too, to be covered a different time!
@@CheLanguages Aliens: land on Earth
Che Languages: basic guide on the 3 main alien languages, part 47
@@Account_abandoned-q7m LOL
Cypriot Greek is consider a dialect as many many others but it's quite different as others are too. You could count some very very divergent varieties of Cappadocian/Iconian/Farasha Greek as other Hellenic languages. And also the Mariupolitan varieties that some call Pontic, some are but other it's not conclusive and some are mixed and that's how much my knowledge goes. Other varieties are Maniot, Old Athenian, Thracian varieties, Cretan varieties, Dodecanese Varieties, Yevanic(Romaniote), Sarakatsanika, Macedonian varieties, Epirote varieties, Ionian varieties, Politika, Greko of Calabria, Pelloponesian varieties and others.
@@ΝεκτάριοςΧριστοφή from Cypriot Greek speakers in this comment section, I am told the rural and/or traditional Cypriot Greek dialect is effectively a different language, completely incomprehensible to Standard Modern Greek. The modern dialect in more built up areas is more like SMG with a heavy accent, yet it still has some slightly different grammatical features and uses a lot of older words. A Modern Cypriot speaker can understand both SMG and traditional Cypriot, but SMG and Traditional Cypriot cannot understand each other, so it works like a dialect continuum I suppose
As a modern Greek speaker, I will say that I understand Griko and Pontic the most and Tsakonian the least. To provide you with some context, when I read slowly and really pay attention I can understand the first two, while for the last one only when comparing the modern Greek translation to the Tsakonian I might understand some phrases. However, written text is more understandable than speech so with the different dialects for these languages I would probably not make out what all three language speakers are saying. It is very interesting though to see how different and yet how similar there languages are to modern greek and I want to thank all of you for caring to see this video! I hope more interest is given to these languages so that these cultures do not fade but rather make more people want to talk these languages.
You are most definitely welcome! It is interesting what you say you can understand, I wonder how much of that would change if you were listening to the spoken language only. Sadly, I only speak a very little amount of Greek so I cannot have my own input on these texts
How was the Griko text difficult? It is in modern Greek. Penseo was the only foreign word in that text. One does not even need to know Italian to understand what it means, it is obvious from the rest of the text. When I read the "translation" it is practically identical to the original.
Totally agree with you
@@nikolaosaggelopoulos8113 fair enough
@@nikolaosaggelopoulos8113 it might he different if you listen to the spoken language though
There is still a very small greek town, established in the 19th Century near Tartous in Syria. The Town is called "Al-Hamidiyah" and they have their own Greek dialect. Also, many many of the Levantine and Anatolian Christians are called "Rum" - so, it's not only Pontic Greeks.
"Rum" in Turkish reffers to Greeks and despite actual ethnic descent it refers to the historically hellenized semitic populations in the Levant.
Thank you so much for letting me know about this, I would have never come across it any other way as it's well hidden in the depths of the internet. It's super interesting how that exists!
@@CheLanguages Rum in the Levant means Orthodox, Eastern not Oriental.
@@HellenicLegend7 it is a Turkish term too
@@CheLanguages Yes, it’s Arabic and Turkish to denote the Orthodox.
@@HellenicLegend7 Ah thank you
I grew up listening to my aunts speaking Pontic Greek now and then, I could always detect the humor and Ancient Greek influences this dialect contains. I can understand lots of phrases but I cannot speak it myself. And thank you for mentioning the genocide too, history is a complicated thing but more awareness is always helpful.
I'm glad to hear you have good memories of the language growing up. And yes, I couldn't just skip over the Greek and Pontic genocide
@@CheLanguages things of this kind are precious, mother tongue, the human journey on earth.
@@VeraBousiou indeed!!
my favourite thing about tsakonika is how it naturally lends to a false etymology by sounding like the verb τσακώνομαι, meaning to quarrel.
And there’s something poetic about that as the last bearers of Spartan language
I didn't know about that "false etymology", that's very fascinating. I'm still unclear on how Laconia became Tsakonia myself
I agree with your last point also, there definitely is something poetic about it. The people's determination to preserve it is like the story of their Spartan ancestors preserving Hellas against the forces of Persia
@@CheLanguages please I beg you don't quote me on this, but one possibility I can offer from something I read long long ago is it may have come from "exolakonian"(like exoskeleton...basically "outter Laconian", since it's mostly found on Laconia's fringes) then eventually the exo-(ekso) somehow mutated to etso and then... you get the idea ;)
@@ntonisa6636 ah yes, someone else mentioned that because I had also asked them. It could be true
@@CheLanguages I should mention though I'm kinda sceptical of this theory (even though I'm *not* a linguist of any kind btw) I think unless we find some very early mention of that term in some ancient or medieval text we may never know for sure and since the language is so small (no offense to its speakers) it probably went completely unnoticed for most of its history plus I don't think we have any surviving attestations of its older forms afaik (ofc I could be wrong)... nevertheless I think a certain people in the Peloponnese called "Tsakones" are mentioned in some early (I mean medieval) sources but that's not good enough to prove anything except maybe indicate that if the "exo" theory turns out to be correct, tsakonika likely still came from those "eksolakones" dwelling on the outskirts of Laconia rather than the other way around(but that's still another conjecture on my part tbh)
Hey! Greek here. I wouldnt call pontic greek unintelligible at all, a modern greek speaker could understand the core meaning of a sentence, maybe missing just a few words. The grammar is definitely not like modern greek tho so most people probably wouldn't be able to actually speak it easily but we can still understand it. Amazing video, greetings from greece 🇬🇷
Sorry. I got mixed responses here but sure, it's definitely understandable but also very different
Part 2 please!
Wow, that was quick. I'll definitely consider it
@@CheLanguages awesome!
@@grzegorzbrzeczyszczykiewicz991 sure is!
I’ve been waiting for a video on the Hellenic languages, so interesting that the Pontic Greeks still call themselves Roman even more incredible how grikos survived til today. I wish all these languages nothing but the best.
Even more crazy yet is how Greek survived in Mariupol and Calabria! But that's a topic for another time....
There is only one Hellenic language of Hellas, rest are dialects.
As a greek I could mostly understand Pontic and Griko. Tsakonian is by far the the most difficult to understand and imagine that my family is from Lakonia…
Oh wow, can any of your family understand it? Thank you for this information, very interesting!
@@CheLanguagesunfortunately not.
@@alexsakos1243 ah
@@alexsakos1243 that's a shame
Nice detailed video! I Learnt more here than I learnt in school about this topic even though I'm Greek
That's awesome to hear! Thank you
The pontic greek poem you cited speaks about an old man having a rooster that made noises and then came a fox and ate the rooster and then came the dog and ate the fox and so on and so on. It sounds very much and has the mood of "old mcdonald had a farm" where most verses are the same rhyming and their only difference being a bunch of animals :)
How nice to see that stories like this exist all over the world, I wonder if it has any link to Aesop's Fables which were written in Ancient Greece
@@CheLanguages sounds very plausible :)
@@vtsirkinidis yes
Great job , congratulations.
Thank you!
I always love researching the Hellenic languages, my whole family speaks Greek and it’s always so cool to see what else there is
That's awesome! Do they speak a dialect of Greek?
Dialects*
I love that you are bringing attention to these type of things. I'm a greek and i hadn't even heard about griko until now. Great video!
I'm glad you enjoyed the video! I recommend you listen to the song Kalinifta in the Griko language, it's beautiful
I am glad to see you've made a video about Hellenic Languages/Dialects. Personally I was aware that Pontiac Dialect existed but the thing is Pontic people that came to Cyprus after the fall of Soviet Union or in 2008 seem to be speaking Modern Greek and Russian very well. There was a documentary though from many years ago where there was a journalist going to Pontus and found out that there were people still hiding their pontic identity and speaking Romeika/Pontiac. I don't remember the name of it and neither have I watched all of its episodes (I think there were five of them). As a Cypriot though I was able to understand Griko when I saw it in your video. In our music class when I was at 8th grade the teacher put a song called "Το κλάμα το εμιγκράντου" which translates to "The cry of the emigrant". I noticed there were many words almost the same between Griko and the Cypriot Dialect such as the "cè" in Griko in Cypriot is "τζαι" which both are pronounced like "je"
Were those Pontic Greeks from Crimea or Mariupol though?
Also yeah, someone else pointed out that similarity. Isn't it pronounced che not je
@@CheLanguages No they were the Pontic people still living in Turkey (Trabazon). As of the "che" and "je" in this case writing it like that with English letters isn't really wrong but in Cypriot "ch" and "j" are two completely different sounds with "ch" sometimes having strong accent and weak accent. As for Griko I don't know that much but "cè" is pronounced like "je" but writing the pronunciation like "che" isn't wrong for this word in both Cypriot and Griko.
@@CheLanguages Basically, writing the pronunciation as "che" or "je" isn't a problem for this certain word but for other words with these sounds it does matter.
Another amazing video. I love Greek! 🇵🇱💪🏼💪🏼💪🏼🇵🇱
Thank you, I'm glad you enjoyed the video!
Hellas 💪🏼
@@AvrahamYairStern the true name of course
@@CheLanguages yes
@@AvrahamYairStern 👍
Watching from Greece.hi everybody.
Interesting video.
Hello, I'm glad you found the video interesting! Have a great day
I'm from Greece. My mother is from Crete and my father from Peloponnese and more specifically. "Tsakonia". He used to speak the language fluently with my grandfathers but they've both passed and he's slowly starting to forget how to speak although he can clearly understand it. I personally only know a few words but I'd love to learn it at some point in my life. I visit Tsakonia a few times a year but it's been years since I heard someone speak more than one sentence in Tsakonian. Although it's been preserved so far I haven't seen the new generations of local people pick it up and use it, hopefully I'm mistaken. I think Griko and a bit less so Pontic greek have a lot of intelligibility with modern Greek I was able to understand most of it.
That's awesome! You're the only person in the comments who has a link to Tsakonian, try and get your father to teach you it as soon as possible so you can help preserve this language!
Yes, Griko I can understand much, much easier.
From the small sample that he put in the video (and you can see my comment with my transcription, that I made it in a way to show better the similarities of the tsakonian dialect with modern Greek) it seems to me that it is mainly a matter of accent (pronunciation) .
@@georgiosdoumas2446 I know it definitely isn't just accent as "Καλώς ορίσατε" is "Καούρ εκάνατε" , I'm no expert but there's even a different verb used. Also there's the obvious difference from modern greek "η", for example "η γλώσσα" to the tsakonian "α" , "α γρούσσα" which is a difference between ionian and doric dialects if I'm not mistaken
Also I haven't found your comment after scrolling for a bit. You could copy and paste it here as a reply if you want!
Im so happy when i see people who know about our history. The map show greek minorities and the languages are alive even now. Great video mate! Good job!
Thank you for your comment and the support! I'm glad you enjoyed the video. It's amazing that some of these languages still live today and kay they continue to thrive!
Im Thracian Greek. I can understand Pontic very well, although no Pontic myself, I grew up in an area that there were a lot of Pontic speakers. Griko is easy if you know a bit Italian, and I do. Tsakonika on the other hand its like a foreign language... I get a word here and there but thats about it.
That's because I would call Tsakonian a separate language whereas the other two are dialects. Thank you for your perspective!
For me it is just a matter of accent, nothing hard. Here is my transcription ot make things clear. I have put it as a seperate comment, but I am surprised by the many comments that complain that they find tsakonian dialect so distant!
Πουλάτζι έμα εχα τθο κουιβί τσαι μερουτέ νι εμα έχα. Ταχίγια νι έμα ζάχαρη, ποϊκίχα νι έμα μόσκο.
Πουλάκι είχα στο κλουβί και μερωμένο το είχα. Τάιζα το ζάχαρη, πότιζα το μόσχο.
Τσαι απο το μοσκο το περσού, τσαι απο τα νυρωδιά, εσκανταλίστε το κουιβί, τσαι έφυντζε μοι το αηδόνι.
Και απο τον μόσκο τον περισσό, και απο τη μυρωδιά, εσκανταλίστη το κλουβί, και μου έφυγε το αηδόνι.
Τσαι αφέγκι νι έκει τσυνηγού με το κουιβί τθο χέρε.
Και ο αφέντης του το κυνηγά με το κλουβί στο χέρι.
Έ(λ)α πουλί τθον τόπο ντι, έ(λ)α τθα καϊκοιτζίαι,
Έλα πουλί στον τόπο σου, έλα στην κατοικία
να άτσου τα κουδούνια νιτ, να βάλου άβα τσαινούρτζα.
να [αλλ]άξω τα κουδούνια σου, να βάλω άλλα καινούργια.
Well as a Greek speaker I can tell you that if I heard Griko or Tsakonian or Pontian out of the blue I wouldn't be able to make out a single word!
But if you familiarize yourself with the language even a little bit, you can make out a big part of it! save for a few foreign words.
Great video and unique, rarely talked about subject! Thanks!
I'm glad you enjoyed the video! Maybe try listening to videos of these languages/dialects being spoken?
@@CheLanguages yes, and also read from whatever you can gather!
@@nikolasmacedonites917 nice one!
Are there any English words derived from Doric Greek?
That's a really good question. The two I can think of that definitely do are the words Sparta (the Attic Greek equivalent is Sparti) and Machine (from Doric Makhana, Attic Greek equivalent Makhani). There might be more because of Magna Graecia and it's influence on early Roman culture but it's not really known
Thank you very much.
I am very interested in ancient languages like greek and Latin.
I never knew that Hellenic language family contains other languages like these language in this video. I am only know it contains only greek, but however thank you very much for sharing me the knowledges. 👏👏👏👏
There are more too, Cypriot Greek, Calabrian Greek, Crimean and Mariupol Greek, Cappadocian Greek, Caucasus Greek and some more minor dialects. I aim to cover some of these in the next installment. Thank you for your kind comment
My frend here is only one language. The language for the literate people was named Hellinika (Hellenic) and was written using the traditional style of classical greek. For all the illiterate people the language used was simpler and named as Romeika (i.e. "Language of the Romans"). And was named "romeika" in every area of the Romania (eastern roman empire). Nowdays (last 90 years) the "romaika" of southern greece (pelopones and cyclades) "renamed" as "New Greek" .But in reality is Romeika. An official simplification of the language made out of the "lazines" of the modern descentants of Greeks and Romans! Its sad I know!
You were absolutely correct to think that because the only member of the Hellenic branch of the I-E languages is Greek. There are lately some TH-camrs with no linguistic background that sell the idea of "hellenic languages" against the standard linguistic classification that you perfectly well know and that you shouldn't second guess.
@@CheLanguages These are dialects. Why are you calling them "languages"? Did you take a look at the Indo-European Tree? Do you see anything next to Greek under the Hellenic branch?
as a Pontic Greek we are very infatuated with our Italian cousins, the proud products of Megali Idea! we miss you and love you cousins!!!!! God bless you all
You're Pontic?! That's really cool. Southern Italia and Hellas are brothers in reality
Hi! I really enjoyed your video, great job. I live in Greece and I speak fluently tsakonian as my parents are still speaking all the time this dialect. Excellent video again
That's really cool. You need to make a channel dedicated to teaching it to preserve the language! If you do that, I'll shout you out
I'm a Greek from Greece. Have seen a few videos of people speaking Griko, and I can completely understand what they are saying. Sometimes I felt like they were speaking much better greek than us natives on the home land.
That's interesting you say that, does it seem that way to you because it's kore similar to Ancient Greek?
@@CheLanguages To me sounded like literally an Italian speaking common Greek with his respective Italian accent. Maybe some pronounciations, bits and pieces of speach are slightly sounding different, grammarly though everything is in order and makes sense understanding what they say. For example, when being affirmative we simply say "Nai/Ne", "Yes". Griko say "Ma Nai/Ne" which is superficial in simple cases using an exclamation phrase in Modern common Greek but in other languages would properly translate to something like "of course"
@@spinspir1741 ah fascinating, thank you for the information
For anyone wondering, this is the Griko folk song, Kalinifta th-cam.com/video/S9c66Z3or3Q/w-d-xo.html
Grazie mille
@@CheLanguages Non c'è di che. Mi piace molto la Grecia e tutto ciò che la riguarda 🇬🇷❤️❤️❤️
@@itacom2199 anch'io, i Greci ed Italiani sono fratelli in istoria, cultura ed anche cibo (un po' di lingue anche, c'è molte parole in italiano ed in greco che loro condividono
@@CheLanguages E' vero
@@itacom2199 100%
the video is great just could have added Mariupol Greek
Shhh, next time.....
I'm glad you liked the video though
@@CheLanguages yes also aorist tense i can give an explanation
@@yasagarwal859 that would be very helpful thank you
no just give the explanation here incase there are other people who are also wondering about the aortist case
Thank you for providing us with such an informative well made video! I’m from a Pontic family an interesting fact is that my great grandpa that survived the genocide was from a village in Pontus that spoke only Turkish(they had to choose between converting to Islam or abandon their language) when they came in Greece until the 60s in the school Modern Greek/Pontic/Turkish were all spoken. Btw according to a glosologist 60% of the dialect is Ionian words(eye in Anc Greek was Oma in Pontic is Omat) 20% Homeric words and the rest is words from Farsi,Armenian etc
I would say that "completely mutually unintelligable" is an overstatement for the case of Griko and Pontic, but I would confirm it in the case of Tsakonian. Recently I was given an unknown to me Griko song, and I translated about 60 to 70%. I would say, a similar thing holds about Pontic. I would say however, that I would feel even more comfortable translating a Koine text, however, such as an excerpt from the New Testament- given that it was pronounced in modern Greek pronunciation.
I would also like to point out that these languages do not necessarily preserve more features of Ancient Greek that Standard Modern Greek, but rather different ones
Thank you for your perspective
As Greek I give you Congratulations for this excellent video. It’s short, well informative and well pointed!!!
Thank you! I'm glad you liked it. It means a lot to hear from a Hellene!
Very interesting video...❤ Iam 4 generation Pontic Greek and still speak pontiaka... Hope people will continue to speak these languages before they die🥺❤❤❤
You still speak it? That's really cool!
@Che Languages Yes of course! I speak very simple...but I understand all! My generation is the last one 😔
@@Thamargoe that is sad to hear
This hellenic languages are the definition of "I still standing even after all this time, looking like a true survivor[...]"
For real, true Byzantine warriors 💪🏼
That was so cool you found tsakonika, and denoted the major fact it doesn't come from Ionian Greek. I first came to contact with that offshoot of our language last summer, and I couldn't understand almost anything, unlike any other dialect of Greek I had ever encountered. Being raised in the North of Greece I came to contact with Pontic as early as elementary school, and I found it fairly easy to understand. What surprised me is that the dialects of southern Italy where, despite of all their latin loans, more intelligible to me than tsakonian, and now I finally realised it's due to that fact you pointed out. Cheers from Thrace!
Did you get to experience Tsakonian first-hand on-location? If so, that would be awesome!
I suppose it's because Griko and Graiko (Calabrian Greek) are both Ionian, though there is evidence to show they have some Doric loanwords. Being Ionian makes it a lot easier to understand from Modern Greek, at least that's what I guess
Thanks for posting!👍
You are most welcome, I hope you enjoyed the video!
You should include audio/video of people speaking the dialects in your next video. For Cypriot Greek i'm going to email you some good videos,
Thank you for the feedback. I look forward to the email!
I am a tsakonian 2nd language speaker and I want to thank you for the video
You are very welcome! That's awesome to have s Tsakonian speaker here!!!
Love it. My favorite is Pontic.
That's great to hear! Pontic is so cool, it's sad what has happened to it though
Excellent work!
Thank you so much!
It was a very interesting video, thanks for featuring those. I have heard of them out, but don’t know much about them. I especially like Pontian! And I like their folk music. And I don’t think much about the Greek speaking people in Italy. Who have been there for thousands of years. It’s crazy that these communities can survive. Also, sad that within a few generations, there is always the potential that a language may die out. Thank you for spreading the information!
I'm glad you enjoyed the video and learnt something! Be sure to stick around for part 2 when I make it!
I already commented a bit before I'd watched the full video, but I'm coming back here to say how fascinating this video is. Please make a part 2 and don't forget to talk about Judeo-Greek!
Part 2 will made! I'm glad you enjoyed the video as always and yes, Judeo-Greek will be talked about
@@CheLanguages that's awesome, thanks Yair
@@AvrahamYairStern no problem
Dear friend in 1492 Yıldırım Beyazit time when Turks sent a 500 piece navy to Spain and brought many jews under pressure of catholic enquisition and oppression ,per capacity of the navy they settled them accross their country.1 of them was Selanik. And t that time there were no Rum or Greek in Selanik it was a Turk land. Till we lost our homelnd in 1912 it remained a Turk majority city with much jew population in Europe. In this context you cannot say something like judeo greek its not fair and not true meantime break the case from its true context. They are Turkish jews as a whole, But fallen under Rum hegemony from 1912 today. Like they ethnic cleansed many natives they also dissolved the jews from Selanik.
Suetonius's anecdote about Tiberius and Zeno is a fairly banal instance of an ancient author referring to the Greek dialects. As such, it represents a rather low level of awareness of dialectal variation. Several centuries before Suetonius, the Greek historian Herodotus (c. 485-424 BC) was more conscious of Greek diver sification, as he was in a position to distinguish four different varieties of lonic Greek in Asia Minor, part of present-day Turkey. He refers to them as trópous tésseras paragógéön, 'four manners of deviations,', and kharakteres glosses tésseres, 'four distinctions of tongue'.' Herodotus's wording indicates that he could not yet rely on an established conceptual apparatus and a corresponding metalanguage to talk about dialectal diversity. Instead, he had to resort to words lacking an obvious semantic link with language at that time, such as kharakter (xapakтýp), 'character(istic); distinctive mark; stamp', trópos (pónos), 'way; manner', and paragoge (mapayary), which for Herodotus apparently meant something like 'deviation', 'twisting', or 'seduction'. Paragógé did later become a metalinguistic term meaning 'derived form' and 'inflection', whereas the root kharak- featured prominently in later Greek definitions of the term dialektos."
Some generations later, the Athenian general and notoriously difficult histori ographer Thucydides (second half of the fifth century BC) went a little further still by trying to make sense of the different Greek dialects and to characterize their interrelationships. He reported, for instance, on a case of dialect mixture on Sicily (Historiae 6.5.1). The inhabitants of the city of Himera spoke, Thucydides claimed, a variety that occupied a middle ground between Chalcidian lonic and Doric, an assertion for which there is, by the way, no historical evidence (Vassallo 2005: 89). The Athenian historian also mentioned that the Greek spoken by the Aetolians was not understood by other Greeks (Historiae 3.94.5), thus apparently proving that not all varieties of Greek were mutually intelligible.
Van Rooy, R. (2021). Language or Dialect? (p. 16)). Oxford: Oxford University Press USA - OSO.
Very long to read but certainly interesting!
Με αναγωγή θα πρέπει να δεχτούμε ότι κάποτε θα υπήρξε μια αρχή οπότε δημιουργήθηκε η γλώσσα που πολύ αργότερα ονονάστηκε ελληνική και η οποία ομιλείτο από ανθρώπους που ζούσαν μαζί. Κάποτε για κάποιους λόγους οι άνθρωποι που μιλούσαν εκείνη τη γλώσσα 'εφυγαν από την κοινή πατρίδα και έμειναν χωρισμένοι για χιλιετείες. Κάποτε γύρισαν στην κοινή πατρίδα η οποία βρίσκεται στην χερσόνησο του Αίμου . Στη διάρκεια του μακροχρόνιου χωρισμού τους, την κάποτε κοινή τους γλώσσα την διαμόρφωσαν με διαφορετικό τρόπο όσο αφορά καταλήξεις λέξεων, γραμματικής δομής πρότασης απόδοσης όμοιου γεγονότως, τρόπου χρήσης των φωνηέντων για απόδοση των υποκειμένων και αντικειμένων στην γλωσσοποίηση γεγονότων και ακόμα την ονομασία όμοιων αντικειμένων από διαφορετικά χαρακτηριστικά τους . Μόνο βασικές λέξεις έμεινα όμοιες. Αποτέλεσμα, η κάποτε όμοια σε όλους γλώσσα να διαφοροποιηθεί στα διάφορα φύλα της κάποτε κοινής πατρίδας. Η Ελληνική γλώσσα είναι μια η οποία έχει διαφορετικούς τρόπους απόδοσης όμοιων εννοιών. Δεν υπάρχουν πολλές ελληνικές γλώσσες.
Nice and interesting video.
The word Romios instead of Hellene(Greek) was in use until 1821 and the War of Independence. The same goes with the language. It was called Romeika instead of Hellenic(Greek).
First time that officially the terms Hellene, Hellas and Hellenic was been used was during the 1st National assembly and the creation of the 1st constitution December 1821, January 1822.
After the creation of Greek State all the Greeks outside Greece, citizens of the Ottoman Empire, were called Romioi(Romans) and the language Romeika.
The remainders Greeks of Constantinople, still are called Romioi. The rum community.
A lot of people told me this. Thank you for going into more detail!
Great video thank you 😊
You're welcome
This is not even taught in greek schools (such a shame)..amazing video! thank you
I'm glad you liked it! There's also a part 2 to this video if you'd like to learn more about other Hellenic languages/dialects
Great video! Had trouble comprehending Tsakonian and Pontic, especially the former, but the rest seemed to be at least somewhat comprehensible. I descend from a tribe called Sarakatsani, who are thought to be descended from the Dorians who were isolated for centuries in the mountains of mainland Greece. Their language/dialect is also a big mystery for me, since my grandparents could speak it and I would randomly catch a few words here and there because of my exposure to it. I have searched online to find information on the language but information is just to scarce. Nevertheless I though it would be fun pointing out!
Ahhh interesting. I have read about Sarakatsanika and that dialect is very interesting, I wish I knew more about it. It has so many older preservations and is very resistant to outside words. Have a great day!
For me it is just a matter of accent, nothing hard. Here is my transcription ot make things clear. I have put it as a seperate comment, but I am surprised by the many comments that complain that they find tsakonian dialect so distant!
Πουλάτζι έμα εχα τθο κουιβί τσαι μερουτέ νι εμα έχα. Ταχίγια νι έμα ζάχαρη, ποϊκίχα νι έμα μόσκο.
Πουλάκι είχα στο κλουβί και μερωμένο το είχα. Τάιζα το ζάχαρη, πότιζα το μόσχο.
Τσαι απο το μοσκο το περσού, τσαι απο τα νυρωδιά, εσκανταλίστε το κουιβί, τσαι έφυντζε μοι το αηδόνι.
Και απο τον μόσκο τον περισσό, και απο τη μυρωδιά, εσκανταλίστη το κλουβί, και μου έφυγε το αηδόνι.
Τσαι αφέγκι νι έκει τσυνηγού με το κουιβί τθο χέρε.
Και ο αφέντης του το κυνηγά με το κλουβί στο χέρι.
Έ(λ)α πουλί τθον τόπο ντι, έ(λ)α τθα καϊκοιτζίαι,
Έλα πουλί στον τόπο σου, έλα στην κατοικία
να άτσου τα κουδούνια νιτ, να βάλου άβα τσαινούρτζα.
να [αλλ]άξω τα κουδούνια σου, να βάλω άλλα καινούργια.
Beautiful. I like the Pontic music more then the mainstream Greek music. Arvanitika Albanian is a minority language in Greece, and as other minority languages is on the way of extinction. Arvanitika is nor a Hellenic language, is is a form of Medieval Albanian with a lot of Greek words in its vocabulary.
I just saw a beautiful video about a Romaniote Jewish lady who's family left Greece for Albania when the Germans were advancing toward Athens. Her name is Anna Cohen (sometimes spelled in Albanian variant Ana Kohen). Her parents relatives that remained in Greece perished after they were captured and sent to concentration camps. A prosperous Jewish community before the WW2 in Greece was almost all wiped out. Anna's family settled in Vlore, Albania and were helped by the local population during the Nazi occupation of Albania. As a matter of fact many Jews moved to Albania during WW2 to find a small place to hide from the Nazis even though Albania itself being occupied by the Nazis. Anna told the story that her husband's family, Jewish from Poland, all perished during WW2. You can read a short excerpt of her book and fascinating story in the link www.ocnal.com/2022/07/the-flower-of-vlora-book-of-anna-cohens.html
There are more aromanian speakers in greece than arvatitika speakers
@@wankawanka3053 Yes, that's true. Romania is a much larger place than Albania, and Aromanians, or Vlah people as they are also called have been living for many centuries in Greece, especially in Macedonia and Epirus; and since independence, all over Greece. Aromanians/Vlahs are one of the best people around, very skillful, laborious and loyal to the country they live in; such are the Vlahs of Albania; although a minority, they have given the country many illustrious personalities for arts to politics and government.
@@wankawanka3053 No wrong
@@Albanesegotti Keep living in delusion city
@@ChronosHellas Did i hurt your feelings my Romanian bro 😂😂😂
Wait for angry Romanians here for that claim you made about the modern "Romans". An interesting detail: they changed their name from Rumânia to România to be "more" Romans. That "u" makes me think, if their name didn't come from the Eastern Rome as well...
The Pontic Greeks were also living in the Black Sea coastal areas of former Russian Empire, but by now, they are either left, or largely Russified.
There are also another, though by now largely Russified Greek "Roman" groups - the Turkic speaking Urums, who were deported from Crimea to Donbass by Catherine II of Russia, together with 'Ruméika' - the Crimean Greek speakers. For more information, check "Mariupol Greeks" (and if anyone wonders, where the city name Mariupol comes from...). Anyone who was Greek Orthodox, was considered a Greek, anyone who was Muslim was considered a Tatar; to avoid deportation, many Christians converted to Islam. That's how effective was Russia protecting the Orthodox faith.
To make it more complicated - the Caucasus Greeks were called "Urum" by the Turks as well. Perhaps, some Turk could clarify, how they have used the name "Rum" - in different time, it could mark any Christians, or even the Ottoman Empire itself and its people.
That makes sense, I have always wondered why it is spelled Rumania on old maps and I assumed it was just dodgy translation into English. I assume they probably took it from Turkish Rumca, then? I know Rumania has had a....history, let's say, with the Turks. As for Mariupol(is), I'm well aware and Mariupol and Crimean Greek almost made it on to this video, I will most likely include them in the next one too. I'd never heard the term Urum before, though I know Georgian/Caucasus Greeks exist....
Also, angry Romanians means more comments for my algorithm. By any means, share this video with any Romanians you know!!!
@@CheLanguages About the Urum language, better check Wikipedia in Russian with translator, the English page is representing some mess, putting Azov Urum and Caucasian Urum together. Azov Urum, today considered as a separate language, is coming from the Crimean Tatar Kipchak dialect. The Caucasian Tsalka Urum (Russian: Цалкский язык) speak a language or a dialect coming from Turkish.
@@forgottenmusic1 I'll have a look at it, thank you!!!!!
@@CheLanguages it's still called "Roumanía" in Greek (also Roumanie in French), which kind of helps distinguish it from the Roman Empire (what Greeks call Romanía)
Great video.
My family come from down near Kythira.
Many linguist believe Tsakonian was spoken that far south up until about 200 years ago.
I sent my mother some Tsakonian text. She could actually understand some of the Tsakonian words.
When I asked her how she knew them she said they were words used by the elderly people in her village when she was growing up.
That's amazing! It's very possible the language did spill over further than it does today. Also, Kythira is a beautiful island, I really want to visit it
5:31 - You point out how the word "ego" from Greek, changed to "evo" in Griko. While learning Russian, I found that any combination of "ego" in words is pronounced "evo" while in other combinations the "g" is pronounced as a hard "g". The Cyrillic alphabet does have a historic connection to the Greek alphabet - through Church Slavonic, etc. interesting factoid fyi
I wouldn't have had any idea about that, thank you for the perspective!
Tsakonian 9:40 has more similarities with Cypriot dialect
I talked about Cypriot in part 2, go and check it out!
Very good video.
Of course, the Greek language through its thousands of years of development, depending on the region, the influences, evolved differently.
But despite the apparent, but & substantial differences, communication between all the different dialects is possible, maybe not in complex concepts, but in basic everyday ones.
In the Greek language today, the Ionic-Attic dialect prevails, without missing Doric influences, for example the word Λαός / laos = people as pronounced today has a Doric accent, normally in Ionic-Attic dialect would be pronounced Λεώς / leos = people
but to say the word, bus we say Λεωφορείο / leoforio you would notice that the word is compound Λεω - φορείο / leo - forio
which means brings the people but here for the word people we use the Ionic-Attic dialect ( letter (ο) & letter (ω) have the same pronunciation)
Usually the differences are small and understandable even subconsciously by us, there are of course more complex differences.
I'll give you another example.
You will know the historical phrase of Spartan Mothers or Wives before the Spartans left for war, (either with it or on it) referring to the shield, that is either with the shield you will return, or on it you will be brought, today we would say either victorious with the shield or dead on it.
The phrase (either with it or on it) it was in Doric dialect ( η ταν η επί τας ) and at Ionic-Attic dialect it was ( η την η επί της ),
as you can see the difference is only the vowel α/a & the vowel η/e alternating (the pronunciation of e as in the word eat in English)
Sorry for my english is not very good I hope I added something more to your discussion.
Thank you for the comment! I'm aware of the α→η sound shift between Doric and Ionian. Even the name of the city itself in Doric is Sparta, and in Ionian is Sparte (later Sparti). It's crazy to see this still exists today
O=o
Ω=οο
@@Llyebbay I am quoting verbatim ( letter (ο) & letter (ω) have the same pronunciation)....
pronunciation....pronunciation....
You speak Greek ? Probably not
Because if you spoke Greek, you would know that (ο) and (ω) have an important role in grammar, but there is no difference in the pronunciation of the word...and that's what I'm saying....
@@AMat-vx3ew l'm a native speaker ... I know very well the official Athenian Greek pronunciation
You don't know that Ω pronunce as long
Also the η , ει , οι , αι
When Greeks they speak , you don't understand the differences of the pronunciation because you don't know the Language
@@Llyebbay Τότε αφού καταλαβαίνεις Ελληνικά εξήγησε μου τι δεν κατάλαβες από την πρόταση που είπα.....[το γράμμα (ο) & το γράμμα (ω) έχουν την ίδια προφορά].....Μίλησα για προφορά και όχι για γραμματική....
Νομίζω ότι απλά είπες κάτι, μόνο για να το πεις ή απλά δεν ξέρεις Ελληνικά......
Then since you understand Greek explain to me, what you didn't understand from the sentence I said.....[the letter (ο) & the letter (ω) have the same pronunciation].....I was talking about pronunciation and not about grammar. ...
I think you just said something, just to say it, or you just don't know Greek......
Why does Tsakonian use digraphs for sounds Ancient Greek had characters for?
So does Modern Greek. Sound shifts took place over the last 2,500 years which have led to the difference between the Ancient Greek alphabet from today's. Thus, old sounds have to ve represented in a different way e.g. β now makes a /v/ and not a /b/, si the digraph μπ represents /b/ today. There are more letters and diphthongs like this ad nauseam, but it's basically a solution to an Ancient problem. Again, Modern Greek does the same
I really enjoyed the video, already looking forward to the next one !
Thank you so much my love
This is fascinating!
I'm glad you enjoyed the topic!
For Griko: “it’s mutually unintelligible with modern Greek”
*understands mostly everything in the sample*
Some other Greek speakers had different opinions. It might depends on what dialect you speak yourself. Also the sample in the video was mentioned to be quite similar because it's poetic, but everyday Griko is much harder for Greek speakers
Cretan and Cypriot are both Greek dialects, but they are mutually unintelligible even for local Greeks from mainland Greece to hear and understand. I would probably say the same case works with Griko and Tsakonian.
@@angelb.823 so if they are mutually unintelligible, why persist that they are dialects?
@@CheLanguagesI may have made a paraphrase on my part. What I meant was me as a common Greek can't understand completely a Cretan or a Cypriot because of the different vocabulary and morphology in their speech. Same reason as an Athenian can't understand a Thessalonican (from Thessaloniki) in northern Greece at first glance.
Both of them originate from Koine Greek, bolstered through the efforts of the Greek Orthodox Church.
hey man, I'm from Crete (the southmost island of Greece) we have a unique language too our dialect has been petitioned to become its own language twice (both times greeve intervened) we used to be our own country over 100 years ago plus we are the decedents of the Minoans so a lot of our dialect may or not come from a COMPLETLY different language and culture. just thought I would let you know about us good video
Someone else said I should also talk about Cretan Greek. I will next time
Since you are going to talk about cretan greek in the future i want to tell you about an offshoot of it in my country Libya in Cyrenaica still spoken alongside Arabic by greek Muslims originally from Crete but when Greece got its independence from the ottoman empire they were persecuted by Christian Greeks and fleed to Cyrenaica Libya and several other countries Syria Lebanon ...etc
And since Libya is very tribal thay formed a tribe although thay were not related by blood thay were related by Crete,so thay called it the Cretans tribe and the language has evolved a bit from its original cretan
Sorry for not putting punctuation marks because i don't know how to
@@alzubyr.alhnach.2005 yes i know.of your culture, 1 quater of my island was muslim but they all got sent away during the population exhcange. It is sad to see cretans away from their island we have an attachment that goes back thousands of years and i wish for them to return someday to our home
@@alzubyr.alhnach.2005 when i said your culture i ment.the one you speak of, i re read my.coment i saw that wasent clear
@@potwatch9357
Yeah it's true I am not from that culture but a lot of my friends are
And thay told me thay still have a lot of property in Crete farmlands ...ect so they can Technically return whenever they want to, but things of course are a bit more complicated and the situation in Libya is not so simple
If Tsakonian and Griko both have ties to Doric Greek I wonder if they would understand each other a little better than they would standard Greeks. Or if Griko has diverged too much for there to be any understanding between the two.
So I did mention that Griko may have ties to Doric, but it is not Doric (from what we know). It's still descended from Koine (supposedly) but it does share some vocabulary with Doric, but not much in terms of grammar, so it is thought that local Doric Greek languages in Magna Graecia may have influenced it
A few Greeks said they can't understand Tsakonian very well, they can pick out words but they can't construct the sentences and understand the meaning. Given that Griko is further away from that, I'm guessing that they'd have an even harder time with Tsakonian
Also, thank you again for the video suggestion!
@@CheLanguages today's common Greek dialect that we speak in Greece is full of ancient Greek words and of course it has Doric. you can't speak modern Greek without mentioning ancient Greek words. not only us or today's Greeks but the whole western world speaks ancient Greek.if you look for the root of the words used in the different languages you spoke, they are ancient Greek.
@@ΓιώργοςΑ-ψ7ψ Well obviously, it is descended from Ancient Greek LOL. English, Italian and even Hebrew have many words of Greek origin that entered the language during Ancient times, and then some in more modern times.
Superb video. I had no idea these dialects/languages still existed.
I'm glad you enjoyed it! It's a wonderful world of languages out there
While from the other dialects I could understand up to 80% of the meaning, with Tsakonian I understood about 20%. Great video, thank you for sharing!
No problem, I'm glad you enjoyed it! It's always great to get the perspective of a native speaker
There is a huge difference between reading it and listening to these dialects. When reading you have time to "translate" and figure out the grammar and syntax, but when listening to it you dont have time to analyse what has been said and the pronunciation also throws you off. I could still identify it as greek but understood very little.
The dialects in Ukraine and Crimea are also difficult to understand. They were complaining to me. They had greek schools but Zelensky and his predecessor closed them down. I suppose the laws were made to close down russian schools, but in the end all non-ukrainian schools were closed. They were so proud of their greek ancestry, it makes me smile. 🙂
Well, I was able to detect a lot of words in Griko (as a greek) and make out a meaning, but as for Tsakonian or Pontic ( I am half pontic myself and my grandma speaks them with fluency) I was able to make out very very few words and no meaning
Interesting. I seem to have different answers from different Greek speakers in the comments, it makes me wonder if some of them speaj dialects. Do you speak a particular dialect?
Speak*
You should learn it off your grandmother
@@fnansjy456 he should, that's really cool
@@CheLanguages No, standard greek
Pontiac has some similarities with Zakytnthian mainly the preservation of the final ν but Zakytnthian is far closer to standard Greek with some Ancient and Italian words thrown in there than to Pontic they just have some similarities.
Interesting, they're on the other ends of Greece to each other too
@@CheLanguages yeah islands tend to be more conservative than the mainland. As for Griko there's actually not much similarity between Zakytnthian and Griko in spite of having both Italian influence, except from other Ionian Islands Cretan has some similarities with Zakytnthian mainly the use of τση instead of της but that's about it. There are some Medieval and ancient remnants like χωρίο(νε) and λιμιώνας which comes from ancient λιμήν. There is also a lot of Italian influence words like parla and bonora have entered into the everyday vocabulary.
@@Ratich interesting. As you said, islands tend to be more conservative and this goes for Cyprus too. Thank you for going into more detail with the examples too
@@Ratich does you speak the Zakytnthian
@@CheLanguages Yes as I grew up there, I don't speak the dialect as well as I used to because I've been away from the island for close to a decade now. I haven't completely lost the accent though and sometimes people will say that I talk weird.
Well, in reality, Pontiac dialect is the most difficult of the three to understand for me, because the accentuation is completely different from modern Greek language. The same is with Cyprian dialect. The Cretan dialect on the other hand, which is completely different from common (koine means common, and it is pronounced kenέ , κοινή) is very understandable for me, cause is similar with the dialect of Naxos from where i descend. Tsakonian maybe different from our dialect, but uses the same consonants for k, tz and ts. and of course sh. Generally, every place in Greece has a different dialect, and every dialect has its idioms, yet everybody can understand common Greek. And when a dialect is written, most of Greeks can understand what they read, because the roots of the words are the same with ancient greek. I understood all three dialects you illustrated very well. For example, the word "Lalia", is used in common Greek. It means "to speak, to make a sound with your mouth", and we mostly use it nowadays for... the roosters. The problem is when someone from a village speaks quickly with an idiom. What i am trying to say, is that all these are not different languages, they are dialects for us.
I see your point, but Tsakonian is derived from such a different root and so difficult for most Greek speakers to understand that it is generally accepted to be a separate language. The others I will agree are dialects, but very notable ones. Watch my part 2 video as I explain further what I mean in the intro
This was so educational. Please do a video on the Arvanitika/Albanian language
I possibly will
Άλλο η αρβανίτικη γλώσσα ..Άλλο η Αλβανική γλώσσα...
Afaik the "-ον" ending is much more present in Pontic Greek than iin modern Greek because:
a. The dialects on which Standard Modern Greek is based tended to drop final -ν while Pontic didn't
b. Pontic -along with many Cappadocian Greek varieties- only uses the neuter forms of the adjectives (which end in -ον in the Nominative) when describing inanimate nouns
c. 2nd declension nouns ending in -ος, ου in Ancient/Koine and Modern Greek, end in -ον, ονος in Pontic by analogy to Ancient/Koine Greek 3rd declension nouns ending in -ων, ωνος (so Koine Greek ὁ σκῦλος, τοῦ σκύλου --> Modern Greek ο σκύλος, του σκύλου // Pontic Greek ο σκύλον, τη σκύλονος)
The Hellenic languages don't get much attention, so thanks for this great video!
As a Greek, I have to tell you that Tsakonian was WAY harder to understand than Griko!
I imagine it is! Thank you for your comment
I can confirm that. Half Greek half Swedish brought up in Athens have a small house in Astros which is near tsakonia it's easier to understand griko than tsakonika.
When’s the next politcs video?
Good question Akhi. I don't know, I'm focusing on the main videos, I also have some surprise content on the way from my trip to Napoli.
On the topic of my politics channel, I got a lot of nasty comments on my one video I made which kinda discouraged me a bit. I feel a little bit under qualified and as if talking about politics is just asking for trouble....
@@CheLanguages I’m sorry to hear that 💙
I always remove nasty comments that I’ve gotten. You can ban words so the comments won’t get published, I’ve done that with “free palestine” and other swear words.
Turning off the comments is also an option.
@@ThiccPhoenix yes but if I removed them I'd have no comments left 💀💀💀 barely anyone had anything nice to say
All this despite the fact I was incredibly positive about Scotland and their independence movement in their video
Official Greek : Geia sou my friend how are you ?
Taskonian Greek : THIS IS SPARTAAA !
Είναι ΣπαρτΆ!!!!
Great video. There is still some hope that these dialects can be preserved, the internet certainly can be very empowering to that effect.
On the mutual intelligibility: I think the analogy with Romance languages is very apt. One can certainly recognize words but not all of them. One can on further careful study recognize structures and grammar features too to enhance the basic understanding afforded by common words. But other than that, two people speaking two different dialects will not be able to easily communicate.
Now, having said that, one correction: in modern Greek there are many local idioms and thus local pronunciations - accents if you will. Modern Greeks are very familiar with them, including the sounds of Pontic Greek. So, for example, in 9:27, the pronunciation of "κ" as the "ch" sound in English is very familiar to Greeks (as used e.g. in Cretan idiom) and thus the word is instantly recognizable.
Thank you for your perspective. I hope these languages and dialects can be preserved too!
good job man !
Thank you!
as a greek, thanks for a video about our language!
Thank you for leaving a comment! Did you understand all these languages/dialects?
@@CheLanguages Im sure they wouldnt be as comprehensible as regular greek, but from what i have seen they seem different but not that much
@@Veriox22 even Tsakonian? Some Greek viewers said they really can't understand it
@@CheLanguages yes, tasconian is very different from greek. It derives from doric while modern greek mainly derives from ionic that was used in koine
@@Veriox22 that's exactly what I say in the video. It's insane that it managed to survive!
Cypriot “Greek” th-cam.com/users/shortsqCkmPWpHvpU?feature=share
Pontic “Greek” th-cam.com/users/shortssTpkgHVkDBg?feature=share
Thracian “Greek” th-cam.com/users/shortszBX8CEkYV9U?feature=share
Albanian (Toskeria/Epirus) th-cam.com/users/shortsTX55OdpTHGo?feature=share
Albanian (Thrace/Macedonia) th-cam.com/users/shortsgbHBG-yupHI?feature=share
Albanian (Dardania/Kosova) th-cam.com/users/shortsKoD7FpwZVRI?feature=share
Great to see Albanians admit that they are Greeks and their country should be a part of Greece.
@@Κασσάνηρ And now it is time that “Greeks” admit they’re just impostors ☺️
We should be the ONLY Greece. Soon we’ll submit a name change request for your country… just like “Macedonia”.
LOL definitely
Thank you
@@CheLanguages you did it, didn’t you?
In Greece today the name Romios (Romeos) refers to:
Romios = Ellinas = Greek.
Romiosini = Ellada = Greece.
People use this in Greece? That's awesome
@@CheLanguages Indeed it is used, although it's considered to be a somewhat 'archaic', or 'rustic/folkloric' endonym. Some people use it interchangeably for 'Greek' (and often quote the famous words by the hero of 1821 revolution against the Turks, Athanasios Diakos who said "Εγώ Ρωμηός γεννήθηκα Ρωμηός θε να πεθάνω", i.e. "I was born a Romios and a Romios I will die"). A more nuanced take on the historical usage of the "Romios" ethnonym, would be that under the Ottoman Empire it mainly came to mean any Christian Orthodox Greek-speaking individual (being the conquered population of the Eastern Roman Empire... Byzantine was a term used much later). It's a really fascinating topic, for sure!
By the way, congrats for the awesome video; subbed!!
@@Freawulf very interesting, your example sounds very heroic (in the context of the Greek War of Independence I assume) and echoes back to the time of when the Greeks were Romans I guess. I'm glad you like the video and welcome to the channel!
@@CheLanguages Glad to have found it! :)
"Romiosyni" has a pretty vague meaning which absolutely doesn't equate to "Greece" ...and to answer CL's question, no people don't normally use these terms nowadays, except occasionally for ideological or rhetorical purposes (like among certain nationalistic circles...for alluding to the past... that kind of thing..) ... sort of like Frenchmen calling themselves "gaulois" ...I mean people may do it but imo it sounds a bit pretentious and can even invite mockery...
Also with regards to the Jewish "Romaniotim"(or Romaniotes) I think their name refers to Romanía, which was the colloquial greek name for the (eastern) Roman empire (not to be confused with a modern country of almost identical name) rather than to the Romans themselves.
I enjoyed your video a lot. Nice job! Will we be seeing any video in which you explain what the main differences between languages and dialects are? Such as the Thracian which is ambigious if it is after all a language or a dialect. Or the Pontic Dialect? Or the Macedonian one?
Well I just uploaded Part 2 to this video, go and find out!
I understood 90% of Romeika and Griko, but Tsakonian is something else man... It was separated way too long ago... Its like reading ancient greek man. To be honest, I understand much more Ancient Greek because in schools we are taught the Attic Dialect, which is the one that evolved to modern greek.
Tsakonian could be a whole other language. There are some words that are the same but that goes with Spanish-Italian, Spanish-Portuguese, German-Dutch etc etc.
Its not enough to call Tsakonian a dialect.
Its totally a whole other language.
Good work man
Agreed, Tsakonian should be considered a whole other language
Приазовские греки эллины (ионийцы , дорийцы) (урумы ,румеи ),мы тоже живые!!!!!!!!!!
Yet you write in Russian? Do you speak Greek?
@@CheLanguages потому что это ссср виновато они многие народы так сделали зависимые от ссср оккупированные российской империей , , в ссср постепенно начало переставание говорить своими диалектами , специально создали такие условия и дальше так рф что Россия виновата с поконивеков пример!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
@@CheLanguages мы в украине я в Элладе , мы трипольцы , мы киммерийцы , мы ямная культура еще ранее!!!!!!!
Griko
Griko
Griko
Griko
Griko
Griko
I don't know where you get your info on Pontic and Griko bur you neglected to relativize the data in the various papers on ancient dialect influences on them and place it in the larger context of Greek dialectology. Both these dialects are nothing else than local varieties derived from the Alexandrian Koinê, just like all the various dialects of Modern Greek (including Modern Standard), with some substrate from the Ancient Gk dialects (not an exceptional feature among the various regional languages.) Their relatively isolated development after the loss of Byzantine sovereignty does not make them "another Greek" in the vastly varied collection of Greeek dialects. Tsakonian, of course, is obviously Lacedemonian, one of the ancient dialects, in fact the only survivor from before the Alexandrian Koinê, which developed mainly on an Attic [-Ionian] basis.
I never made any claim that the other languages are not from Koine origins. There is some speculation about Griko, but some linguists now think that it is a Koine descendant with some influence from the nearby Doric dialects, mainly observed in some vocabulary. Pontic Greek is definitely from Koine and I never made any claim counter to this. Tsakonian on the other hand is firmly different from Koine, as you mentioned.
@@CheLanguages Very well; but then one should hear why these two mainly Koine-origin dialects among many should be elevated to a parallel branch status.
@@watching7650 well, they are not. In the video I describe these as languages/dialects with the slash being important here. Griko is not mutually intelligible with Greek, so I would call it a different language. Apparently Greeks can read it with some difficulty but they can't listen to it and understand. Pontic on the other hand is effectively a dialect and I say this in the video. Yet Pontic Greek is significant and has some interesting features that set it apart from Greek in the mainland and thus I wanted to talk about it
@@CheLanguages Fine. Jut wondered about your criteria. We could list a good number of dialects (whether one calls them "language" or not) that are not mutually intelligible vs. Pelopponesian Standard or Northern Greek speakers -- Pontic is definitely among them, and how!
@@watching7650 perhaps I could have stated things better either in the video or in tue description
Not crying for having my language recognised. Even more that the dialect my grandpa used to speak. Know you made me even more sure to learn italian and go to South Italy
That's wonderful to hear! Southern Italia is a beautiful place, and the Italian language is always in my heart. Good luck on learning it!
@@CheLanguages Thank you very much!!I know its a wonderful and interesting language especially the resemblance we have as Hellenes.
@@georgedialynas8143 I definitely agree
I don't know if you can put it in the same category as those dialects but the most endangered language in the EU is a Greek Whistling tongue found in the island of Euboea with only 20 people and it was discover a few decades ago when a millitary helicopter fell nearby.
Oh wow!!! I didn't know about that. There are a lot of those 'whistling languages' across the world that developed in small mountainous communities, the most famous example is Silbo Gomero. Super interesting, thank you!
When i look at the comments, I understood once again how strong the Greek diaspora is. Despite their small population, their organization is very well coordinated.
It definitely is. They are determined and willing to keep their identity, like us Jews too
Average turkish cospiracy theorist sounding like an Albanian day by day
@@wankawanka3053 👽👽👽
I genuinely thought basic Greek was the only Hellenic language left!
Thank you for this educational video!
There's more than just these too! Stay tuned for part 2
Many varieties exist really, most descend from Koine Greek except probably Tsakonian that descends from Doric with influences from Koine Greek varieties. Griko is quite influenced by Doric and Pontic from Ionian. Others are influenced to some degree from Ancient varieties too though
Tsakonian
Tsakonian
Tsakonian
Tsakonian
Tsakonian
Sparticoian Romantic
Very accurate and detailed map at the beginning of the video. Including Imvros, Tenedos, Occupied Cyprus, Northern Epirus and places in Southern Italy where Greek language is still spoken, outside the borders of the modern country.
I'm not sure where Imvros or Tenedos are, but it is a good map! It doesn't show Al-Hamidiyah in Syria or the Greek speaking populations of Levanon, Crimea, Mariupol or Constantinople however
Wow foarte interesant, felicitări Ali 🇬🇷👍
Thank you!