Arcadocypriot Greek

Proto-Arcadocypriot (around 1200 BC) is supposed to have been spoken by Achaeans in the Peloponnese before the arrival of Dorians, so it is also called southern Achaean. The isoglosses of the Cypriot and Arcadian dialects testify that the Achaeans had settled in Cyprus. As Pausanias reported:

Agapenor, the son of Ancaeus, the son of Lycurgus, who was king after Echemus, led the Arcadians to Troy. After the capture of Troy the storm that overtook the Greeks on their return home carried Agapenor and the Arcadian fleet to Cyprus, and so Agapenor became the founder of Paphos, and built the sanctuary of Aphrodite at Palaepaphos (Old Paphos).[2]

The establishment happened before 1100 BC. With the arrival of Dorians in the Peloponnese, a part of the population moved to Cyprus, and the rest was limited to the Arcadian mountains.

According to John T Hooker, the preferable explanation for the general historico-linguistic picture is

"that in the Bronze Age, at the time of the great Mycenaean expansion, a dialect of a high degree of uniformity was spoken both in Cyprus and in the Peloponnese but that at some subsequent epoch the speakers of West Greek intruded upon the Peloponnese and occupied the coastal states, but made no significant inroads into Arcadia."[3]

After the collapse of the Mycenaean world, communication ended, and Cypriot was differentiated from Arcadian. It was written until the 3rd century BC using the Cypriot syllabary.[4][5]

Tsan was a letter in use only in Arcadia until around the 6th century BC. Arcadocypriot kept many characteristics of Mycenaean, early lost in Attic and Ionic, such as the /w/ sound (digamma).

• Hesychius of Alexandria
• Cypriot Greek for the modern variety of Greek spoken on Cyprus

• A History of Ancient Greek: From the Beginnings to Late Antiquity- Arcado-Cypriot by A.Panayotou
• C. M. Bowra Homeric Words in Arcadian Inscriptions
• Yves Duhoux. Introduction aux dialectes grecs anciens. Lounain-la-Neuve: Cabay, 1983 ISBN 2-87077-177-0
• Rüdiger Schmitt. Einführung in die griechischen Dialekte. Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1977 ISBN 3-534-05672-8
• Markus Egetmeyer. Le dialecte grec ancien de Chypre. 2 vols., vol. 1: Grammaire; vol. 2: Répertoire des inscriptions en syllabaire chypro-grec. Berlin–NY: De Gruyter, 2010.

• Bakker, Egbert J., ed. 2010. A companion to the Ancient Greek language. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell.
• Christidis, Anastasios-Phoivos, ed. 2007. A history of Ancient Greek: From the beginnings to Late Antiquity. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
• Colvin, Stephen C. 2007. A historical Greek reader: Mycenaean to the koiné. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
• Horrocks, Geoffrey. 2010. Greek: A history of the language and its speakers. 2nd ed. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell.
• Palmer, Leonard R. 1980. The Greek language. London: Faber & Faber.