Writing and Printing

Doric Greek

Doric or Dorian, also known as West Greek, was a group of Ancient Greek dialects; its varieties are divided into the Doric proper and Northwest Doric subgroups. West Greek was spoken in a vast area of the ancient Greek world, covering much of Central Greece and Northern Greece, most of the Peloponnese, islands of the Southern Aegean (including Crete and Rhodes), as well as many Doric Greek colonies further afield. It was also spoken in the Greek sanctuaries of Dodona, Delphi, and Olympia, as well as at the four Panhellenic festivals; the Isthmian, Nemean, Pythian, and Olympic Games. By Hellenistic times, under the Achaean League, an Achaean Doric koine appeared, exhibiting many peculiarities common to all Doric dialects, which delayed the spread of the Attic-based Koine Greek to the Peloponnese until the 2nd century BC. The only living descendant of Doric is Tsakonian, an outlying dialect of Modern Greek that is still spoken in a small area on the southern Argolid coast of the Peloponnese, in the modern prefectures of Arcadia and Laconia. It is now critically endangered, with only a few hundred – mostly elderly – fluent speakers left. Tsakonian is the only modern Greek dialect not descended from Attic-Ionic, and is considered a likely descendant of Laconic Doric.

Also on this shelf

See also

• ▸Islamic calligraphy
• ▸Purépecha Empire
• ▸Hindi

Uncatalogued shelf

Text from Wikipedia; plate via Wikimedia Commons. Text CC BY-SA 4.0; plate freely licensed (see Commons). Source record. Images and catalogue data are reproduced from open-access collections.