Tsakonian language

It is named after its speakers, the Tsakonians, which in turn may be derived from 'exo-Laconians' 'Outer Lakonians'.

Old ethnic map of Peloponnese; Tsakonian-speaking areas in blue

Tsakonian is found today in a group of mountain towns and villages slightly inland from the Argolic Gulf, although it was once spoken farther to the south and west as well as on the coasts of Laconia (ancient Sparta).

Geographical barriers to travel and communication kept the Tsakonians relatively isolated from the rest of Greece until the 19th century, although there was some trade between the coastal towns. The rise of mass education and improved travel beginning after the Greek War of Independence meant that fluent Tsakonian speakers were no longer as isolated from the rest of Greece. In addition, during the war, the Turkish army drove the Tsakonians east, and as a result, their de facto capital shifted from Prastos to Leonidio, further making the people significantly less isolated.[8] There began a rapid decline from an estimated figure of some 200,000 fluent speakers to the present estimate of a speaker count between 200 and 1,000.[7]

Since the introduction of electricity to all villages in Tsakonia by the late 1950s, Greek mass media can reach the most remote of areas and has profoundly affected the speech of younger speakers. Efforts to revive the language by teaching it in local schools do not seem to have had much success. Standard Modern Greek is the official language of government, commerce and education, and it is possible that the continued modernization of Tsakonia will lead to the language's disappearance sometime this century.

The area where the language is found today in some villages Tsakonia slopes of Parnon in the southern province of Kynouria, including the towns of Leonidio and Tyros and villages of Melana, Agios Andreas, Vaskina, Prastos, Sitaina and Kastanitsa.

There are three dialects of Tsakonian: Northern, Southern, and Propontis.

The Propontis dialect was spoken in what was formerly a Tsakonian colony on the Sea of Marmara (or Propontis; two villages near Gönen, Vatika and Havoutsi), whose members were resettled in Greece during the 1924 Population exchange between Greece and Turkey.[7] Propontis Tsakonian appears to have died out around 1970, although it had already stopped being the primary language of its community after 1914 when they were internally exiled with other Greeks in the region due to the outbreak of World War I.[10] Propontis Tsakonian was overall grammatically more conservative, but it was also influenced by the nearby Thracian dialects of Greek which were much closer to Standard Modern Greek.[11] The emergence of the Propontis community is either dated to the 13th century settlement of Tsakonians by Emperor Michael VII, explicitly referenced by Byzantine George Pachymeres[12] or around the time of the 1770 Orlov Revolt.[13] For an example of the standardizing Thracian Greek influence, compare the Northern and Southern word for water, ύο (ýo, derived from Ancient Greek ὕδωρ) to Propontic νερέ and Standard νερό (neré, neró).

Of the two mainland dialects of Tsakonian, Southern Tsakonian is spoken in the villages of Melana, Prastos, Tiros, Leonidio, Pramatefti and Sapunakeika, while Northern Tsakonian is found in Sitena and Kastanitsa. The Northern villages were much more exposed to the rest of Greek society, and as a result Northern Tsakonian experienced much heavier Standard Greek lexical and phonological influence, before it began to die out much faster than Southern Tsakonian.[14] As early as 1971, it became difficult for researchers in the northern villages to find any informants who could offer more than "a few isolated words".[15] There may have once been a fourth, Western, dialect of Tsakonian given the forms attested by Evliya Celebi in the 17th century.[16]

(Tsakonian/Greek) "Our language is Tsakonian. Ask and they'll tell you./Groússa námou eíni ta Tsakónika. Rotíete na nioúm' alíoi./I glóssa mas eínai ta Tsakónika. Rotíste na sas poun.", bilingual (Tsakonian and Standard Greek) sign in the town of Leonidio.

Another difference between Tsakonian and the common Demotic Greek dialect is its verb system – Tsakonian preserves different archaic forms, such as participial periphrasis for the present tense. Certain complementisers and other adverbial features present in the standard Modern Greek dialect are absent from Tsakonian, with the exception of the Modern που (/pu/) relativiser, which takes the form πφη (/pʰi/) in Tsakonian (note: traditional Tsakonian orthography uses the digraph πφ to represent aspirated /pʰ/). Noun morphology is broadly similar to Standard Modern Greek, although Tsakonian tends to drop the nominative, final -ς (-s) from masculine nouns, thus Tsakonian ο τσχίφτα for Standard o τρίφτης (o tshífta/o tríftis: "grater").

There has always been contact with Koine Greek speakers and the language was affected by the neighboring Greek dialects. Additionally, there are some lexical borrowings from Arvanitika and Turkish. The core vocabulary remains recognizably Doric, although experts disagree on the extent to which other true Doricisms can be found. There are only a few hundred, mainly elderly true native speakers living,[7] although a great many more can speak the language less than fluently.

Tsakonian has undergone considerable morphological changes: there is minimal case inflection.

The present and imperfect indicative in Tsakonian are formed with participles, like English but unlike the rest of Greek: Tsakonian ενεί αού, έμα αού "I am saying, I was saying" ≈ Greek ειμί λαλών, ήμην λαλών.

• Ένει (Ení) = I am
• Έσει (Esí) = you are
• Έννι (Éni) = he/she/it is
• Έμε (Éme) = we are
• Έτθε (Éthe) = you are
• Είνι (Íni) = they are
• Έμα (Éma) = I was
• Έσα (Ésa) = you were
• Έκη (Éki) = he/she/it was
• Έμαϊ (Émaï) = we were
• Έτθαϊ (Éthaï) = you were
• Ήγκιαϊ (Ígiaï) = they were
• ένει φερήκχου (masculine) ένει φερήκχα (femimine) ένει φερήκχουντα (neuter) (feríkhou/feríkha/ferikhouda) = I bring
• έσει φερήκχου (masculine) έσει φερήκχα (feminine) έσει φερήκχουντα (neuter) (feríkhou/feríkha/ferikhouda) = you bring
• έννι φερήκχου (masculine) έννι φερήκχα (feminine) έννι φερήκχουντα (neuter) (feríkhou/feríkha/ferikhouda) = he/she/it brings
• έμε φερήκχουντε (masculine, feminine) έμε φερήκχουντα (neuter) (feríkhude/feríkhuda) = we bring
• έτθε φερήκχουντε (masculine, feminine) έτθε φερήκχουντα (neuter) (feríkhude/feríkhuda) = you bring
• είνι φερήκχουντε (masculine, feminine) έμε φερήκχουντα (neuter) (feríkhude/feríkhuda) = they bring

Note: Participles change according to the gender of the subject of the sentence

Tsakonian has preserved the original inflection of the aorist indicative.

• ενέγκα (enéga) = I brought
• ενέντζερε (enédzere) = You brought
• ενέντζε (enédze) = He/She/It brought
• ενέγκαμε (enégame) = We brought
• ενέγκατε (enégate) = You brought
• ενέγκαϊ (enégaï) = They brought

Traditionally, Tsakonian used the standard Greek alphabet, along with digraphs to represent certain sounds that either do not occur in Demotic Greek, or that do not commonly occur in combination with the same sounds as they do in Tsakonian. For example, the [ʃ] sound, which does not occur in standard Greek, does occur in Tsakonian, and is spelled σχ (much like German sch). Another sound recalls Czech ř. Thanasis Costakis invented an orthography using dots, spiritus asper, and caron for use in his works, which has been used in his grammar and several other works. This is more like the Czech usage of hačeks (such as š). Lastly, unpalatalized n and l before a front vowel can be written double, to contrast with a palatalised single letter. (e.g. in Southern Tsakonian ένει [eɲi] "I am", έννι [eni] "he is" – the latter corresponding to Northern Tsakonian έμι [emi] and Standard Greek είμαι [ime].)

Note: (K) is for the northern dialect of Kastanitsa and Sitaina, (Λ) and (L) for the southern which is spoken around Leonidio and Tyros.

• Tsakonia

• Costakis, Athanasios (Thanasis) P. (1951). Σύντομη Γραμματική της Τσακωνικής Διαλέκτου (Brief Grammar of the Tsakonian Dialect). Athens: Institut Français d'Athènes.
• Horrocks, Geoffrey (2014). Greek: A history of the language and its speakers, 2nd ed. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley Blackwell. ISBN 978-1-118-78515-7.
• Nicholas, Nick (1999). "The Story of pu: The grammaticalisation in space and time of a Modern Greek complementiser". Final. Archived from the original on 2012-12-12. Cite journal requires |journal= (help)
• Pernot, H. (1934). Introduction à l'étude du dialecte tsakonien. Paris.
• Nicholas, Nick (2019). "A critical lexicostatistical examination of Ancient and Modern Greek and Tsakonian". Journal of Applied Linguistics and Lexicography. 1 (1): 18–68. doi:10.33910/2687-0215-2019-1-1-18-68.

Tsakonian language test of Wikipedia at Wikimedia Incubator

• Projet Homere (text sample and audio files)
• Tsakonian Bibliography
• The Lord's Prayer in Tsakonian (text sample)
• Church Service in Tsakonian (RealAudio)
• Greek-Tsakonian dictionary