[B-Greek] dialects
Mitch Larramore
mitchlarramore at yahoo.com
Thu Jun 16 23:32:39 EDT 2005
When grammars talk about their being many "dialects"
of ancient Greek, such as Attic, Doric, and Ionic,
what exactly does that mean?
Here's a definition of "dialect" on dictionary.com:
A variety of language that with other varieties
constitutes a single language of which no single
variety is standard: the dialects of Ancient Greek.
I've not read much on this, so my questions may be
obnoxiously simple, but are the different "dialects"
more so different spellings/pronunciations of
different words, or were the differences more
substantial? One example was the changing of -TT to
-SS in the word for "sea." I usally think of "dialect"
as being something quite different than "accents."
(And by "accents" I mean something close to how we in
southern USA say the word "car" different than a
Bostonian, who might say "khaa." There appears to be
two different words for "automobile" in this example,
although they seem related, but in reality of course
they are just different pronunciations of the same
word.) One other example I read was the use of
different suffixes for verb endings. But the
difference really seemed to be spelling rather than a
whole different conjugation.
Finally, would someone from Attic be quite fluent in
Doric and vice versa?
Mitch Larramore
Sugar Land, Texas
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