Raves[edit]

nice work, Enkyklikos, keep going! dab (ᛏ) 18:01, 7 December 2005 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Introduced to Greece[edit]

The first sentence is not said quite right. This topic is covered in Chapter 1 of Chadwick's The Mycenaean World. As Chadwick says, "The traditional view of waves of Greek speaking warriors marching down through the Balkans ... is an old one ... supported by ... Kretschmer..."

But, that view contains an insoluble contradiction, that the Greeks per se lived outside of Greece and then brought Greek to it! How then can it be called Greece, and why was the region where the Greeks lived NOT Greece?

So Chadwick rightly discards that view and so do most of the other linguists. The starting point is that Greece is defined to be where the Greeks are. Wherever the Dorians were, if they were speaking Doric, then that location was Greece. So, they did not enter Greece, they were already in it.

That there was an invasion or infiltration of Indo-Europeans into the Balkans there is no doubt. The question is whether they spoke Greek. Chadwick doubts if they spoke pure Indo-European but then neither did they speak Greek. Their language became or was Proto-Greek and was not divided into dialects. Chadwick goes on to argue that Proto-Greek divided into dialects.

In addition to that, there were some tribes living in the Balkans whose language was closely related to Greek but was not exactly Greek, such as the Phrygians, who emigrated to Turkey, and the Macedonians, who did not. In other words, Greek is a Greek phenomenon. It evolved in Greece, dividing from the closely related languages and becoming characteristically Greek right there in Greece.

So, the Dorians did not enter Greece. They were in it. Now, there is the additional problem that Doric is the most archaic dialect; that is, Attic-Ionic evolved from something like Doric. Mycenaean is already removed from Doric. So, the Dorians represented a more conservative and original Greek culture. Chadwick points out the difficulty in actually locating them because archaeology does not show the Dorian invasion. That is all we get from Chadwick in that book. He promises more at some other time.

Linguistically the dialects that are most Doric were in the rugged terrain of west Greece. Buck's Greek Dialects used to be a reference on this topic but so far I have seen no mention of it at all. (However, we are only getting started). If they were anywhere that (in addition to Doris) is where they would be; however, they were probably already down the outer arc of islands. They had to have been sea-going or they never could have got to Crete, which they most decidedly did enter as invaders. They took over Mycenaean Crete.

Now, the Dorians did not enter mainland Greece. Epirus IS the mainland or was. Mainland is usually used in opposition to the islands, such as Crete. In fact Epirus probably does mean "mainland" (but I'm not getting into that now). The Proto-Greeks might have come in through Albania; it is said by some there are some Albanian words like Greek ones. I believe you may find that discussion in the Encyclopedia Britannica.

My goodnes I have gotten wordy, but I am trying to show that the situation is not as the article says in the first few sentences but is more complex. I am not saying it has to espouse any one point of view but first of all the invasion theory is pretty well out. Some of the Greeks burned all the palaces and subsequently a people whose dialect later was called Doric took over those areas where the palaces were burned. Anything else is conjecture or theory.

I hope to have given enough of a background for you to see that the article needs work. So maybe it is good as far as it goes but that is not far enough to capture today's views. Those coast-watchers of the Pylos tablets combined with the burning of Pylos are pretty tempting evidence of an enemy from the northwest. It isn't certain who they were though and now it is believed the burnings were not simultaneous, perhaps not even contemporaneous. No one wants to let go of the "Dorian Invasion" but that term needs to be defined. It almost certainly does not mean bands of Doric speakers entering the Greek mainland from outside it and wrecking everthing on the same day. We may have some Mycenaean Greek but no contemporaneous Doric Greek. Who were those enemies of Pylos? The Dorian invasion is only a theory.

So, I presume someone might take some action on these words, maybe go over the article again. I'd like also to see the main features of the dialect, their range and their attested time window presented. Buck does that in only a few pages so we can do it in even less.

Well I think you will be hearing more from me on Greek and Greek dialects as soon as I finish with Crete. Hello Bachman, how are you. I will try not to use any sarcasm, just for you. I think I'm doing better at the references. Sooner or later I am going to be in a position to show that south Indo-European is asserted. This is just so enjoyable.Dave 06:13, 10 October 2006 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Doric greek and northwest Greek[edit]

"The dialects formerly known as North-Western Greek (in Delphi, Locri and Acarnania) are now considered a part of Doric Greek. " That unsourced statement is not true. I suppose it depends on what you mean by Doric Group. If you mean the dialects of the northwest Greek group are now the dialects of the Doric group, no, they aren't. No one thinks they are. Refer to Greek dialects. Also take a look at a few web sites such as ancient Greek and ancient macedonia. There's no general recognition that the two groups are being made one. The understanding or lack of it is as it always was, as far as I can see. If on the other hand by Doric greek you mean something like Buck's west Greek, nothing has changed there either. Nobody thought they were not Doric Greek. So, I'm going to do some work here filling in more detail and taking the unsourced statement out. If you find a linguist saying that linguists generally agree the two groups are being merged by the significant core linguists of the field or the latest standards symposia then by all means put it back in. Have you got the ace up your sleeve?Dave 02:04, 7 November 2006 (UTC)Reply[reply]


Check this! The language is a harsh but distinctly recognizable form of North-West or Doric Greek, and the low social status of its writer, as evidenced by her vocabulary and belief in magic, strongly hint that a unique form of Doric Greek was spoken by lay people in Pella at the time the tab was written (see below, Dating and Significance) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pella_curse_tablet

The article clearly states that the dialect originated in Epirus, but the region itself isn't listed as one where the dialect was spoken ? Isn't that a bit, to say the least, incongruous ? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 62.1.167.205 (talk) 11:35, 15 October 2007 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Links to Perseus Project in dialect glossaries[edit]

Great page, but I just wanted to alert whoever's editing it that the links to Perseus are broken, in the glossary section. This is true of the other dialect pages as well.

Sphinx896 (talk) 22:16, 9 September 2009 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Deus[edit]

Deus (in Laconian) = Zeus Böri (talk) 11:05, 14 March 2010 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Athana(Doric) = Athena Böri (talk) 12:18, 11 November 2010 (UTC)Reply[reply]

so what? If you want to contribute to discussions, please say clearly what in the article you wish to change. Fut.Perf. ☼ 14:07, 11 November 2010 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Doric Greek and Doric proper[edit]

What is the difference between Doric Greek and Doric proper? Is Doric proper and Northwest Greek subgroups of the Doric Greek? Or Doric Greek and Northwest Greek are just subgroups of the western group? If this is the case why Northwest Greek is in Doric Greek article instead of having its own? I think this article is a bit confusing and it wants reform. Thanks. Greek Macedon (talk) 10:18, 5 July 2016 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Wordlist[edit]

This is a mess. As far as I can tell it mixes at least three types of words:

  1. words with regular Attic equivalents, e.g. βείκατι, πάομαι
  2. words that differ morphologically from their Attic equivalents, e.g. οἴνωτρος, ὄπτιλλος
  3. words unrelated to or without Attic equivalents, e.g. αἶγες, κέστερ

The first type should perhaps be moved to the Phonology section as illustrations, or to a proper Doric–Attic–… comparison table if someone feels like whipping up one.

Additionally, even the list of words of the latter two types is much too long for the sake of simple illustration. Most of this should be probably be transwiki'd to Wiktionary, cf. the so far much shorter wikt:Category:Doric Greek (which has 129 terms as of this edit). Conveniently it's all in one place here though; I would like to ask editors not to delete words from this page until they have confirmed that they have been entered on Wiktionary.

--Trɔpʏliʊm • blah 14:31, 5 December 2019 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Vit Bubenik[edit]

@Alcaios, Future Perfect at Sunrise, and Florian Blaschke: might any of you have access to Vit Bubenik's "North-West Doric Koina and the Issue of 'Koineization': Sociolinguistic Concerns"? Hoping to be able to pull off a significant expansion of the NW Koine, which I believe is significant enough for its own page. --Calthinus (talk) 22:38, 5 May 2020 (UTC)Reply[reply]

It is on LibGen. Not encouraging anything, just saying it's there.--Bob not snob (talk) 06:49, 6 May 2020 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Thank you. And don't worry, I will return to my financially ruinous habits of actually purchasing my coveted hard copies once the economy returns to normal. Calthinus (talk) 07:42, 6 May 2020 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Achaean Doric[edit]

The list of varieties does not appear to include Achaean Doric in either sense, although there is an article on it and it appears in the map. Is this a lapse or is there something I am missing? Harsimaja (talk) 21:38, 3 August 2020 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Sicily and Italy?[edit]

There is a massive hole in this article. A large number of Doric speakers lived in Sicily and southern Italy. It would be interesting to know whether the individual cities retained the dialects of their parent cities in mainland Greece more or less unchanged or whether a distinctively "Sicilian" form of Doric evolved. Certainly there was later a "Doric koine" in this area, which may have been either a Doric-influenced koine or a koine-influenced Doric, and this is one of the ancestors of the Griko language spoken today. Can anyone provide more scholarly detail on this? --Sir Myles na Gopaleen (the da) (talk) 11:39, 17 June 2021 (UTC)Reply[reply]

@Sirmylesnagopaleentheda: I don't know much about Italiot Greek (Calabrian and Griko) elements and their relation to Doric, but you can find some information on the Doric of southern Italy in the following sources:
I did share the first one about a month ago in an edit summary of the article. In page 516 it mentions in which poleis of southern Italy, Doric was spoken. Unfortunately i don't have enough time to work on the article, but if anyone has the time, he/she might find the above helpful. Demetrios1993 (talk) 06:53, 18 June 2021 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Scope of article[edit]

The article needs some rephrasing, because its scope is not very clear by reading the first paragraph of the lede. It appears to be about the broader "Western group" of Ancient Greek dialects, comprised of Doric proper, Northwest Doric, and Achaean Doric. Also, the Variants section excludes Achaean Doric, and only mentions the former two; however, the first paragraph does include a sentence about Achaean Doric Koine. By the way, some of the older threads above also touched upon the same issues. Demetrios1993 (talk) 20:24, 2 June 2022 (UTC)Reply[reply]

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