Talk:Tsakonian language

Comments

Tsakonian has "Albanian loanwords"---interesting. I want to read more about this. Decius 06:42, 23 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Most of them are shepherding terms, I believe. There is a quote from Pernot that goes something like "The Albanian's influence ends at the shepherd's door," i.e. the importation of vocabulary is limited to certain occupational terminology. There were villages in the area that were settled by Albanian shepherds, with whom the Tsakonians presumably had contact regarding sheep-related matters. --Jpbrenna 02:13, 15 August 2005 (UTC)

For the record: that was a personal communication from Costakis to me, in 1996. Opoudjis (talk) 12:46, 27 May 2008 (UTC)

Candidacy for page move and other issues

1. The most common name for this language in English is Tsakonian. Tsakonic is much less common, and this page should be moved back to where it was when I started it almost two years ago (my very first Wikipedia edit!), with this page redirecting, instead of the other way around. The present situation is like having the Greek language article at "Hellenic tongue." Sure, it's a much better literal translation of the Greek term, but it would strike an English speaker as rather odd.
2. The description of Tsakonic as a "Greek dialect" is incorrect (unless you take the minority position; see #4 below). While that is the correct name for it in Greek, and many Greeks think of it as being a dialect, it is actually considered a separate but related language in dialect continuum with Greek, like Flemish with Dutch, or the closely related Spanish and Portuguese. (See Ausbausprache - Abstandsprache - Dachsprache). There are actually three principal dialects of Tsakonian itself, although one (Propontic Tsakonian) is extinct and it seems that one of the other two has all but disappeared. Exact figures are hard to come by, but I believe that Prof. Costakis latest surveys have found there to be 2-5,000 true full native speakers, and many tens of thousands of secondary or tertiary speakers. That contrasts to an estimated 250,000 speakers a century ago. (If we were doing Babel for Tsakonian, we would have lots of TS-1, TS-2 and TS-3's, but relatively few TS-N's.) I would have to check with my friend Dr. Nicholas about this because it may quaiify as Wikipedia:No original research, but I think that the real "Tsaconic dialect" is not the Tsakonian language itself, but the speech of the thousands of Peloponnesians whose parents or grandparents spoke Tsakonian and whose descendants speak a Tsakonian-flavored dialect of Standard Modern Greek.
3. There is no bibliography here. I thought that the original article had a brief one with Pernot and Costakis' works mentioned. I actually have a copy of Syntomi Grammatiki tis Tsakonikis Dialektou sitting on my shelf here, so I'll put that in right away and add the others later.
4. Tsakonian is not uncontroversial, and we should note that. While the current consensus seems to be that it is a Hellenic language, there are some scholars around who dispute that classification. Again, while the consensus is that it is Doric-derived with a heavy Attic/Koine adstrate (and a little Albanian, Slavic and Turkish), scholars can be found to dispute this as well. Obviously, if you think that the extent of Doricisms to be found is overstated, you tend to lean less toward it being a separate language, and more toward it being just a dialect of Modern Greek.

--Jpbrenna 16:55, 28 July 2005 (UTC)

Move

• The page should be moved not to Tsakonian but to Tsakonian language in keeping with Wikipedia naming conventions for languages. --Angr/_{tɔk tə mi} 14:10, 29 July 2005 (UTC)

Oops, good point. --Jpbrenna 19:01, 30 July 2005 (UTC)

Voting

• For. Whether it should be classified as a separate, closely related language is still debated. What is not debatable is that Tsaconic as an adjective is almost non-existent in English, with most scholars calling the tongue Tsakonian, whether they argue that it is a separate Modern Greek language in its own right, or a mere dialect.--Jpbrenna 20:43, 31 July 2005 (UTC)
• Support. --Node

Tsakonic or Tsakonian, is classified as a Greek dialect not only by linguists [1] , but also its native speakers [2], and that's the bottom line. Therefore there is no basis to talk a about a separate language, unless of course you're willing to compare sources. The vote is pointless and it won't help anything. As for changing it back to "Tsakonian", I can't see any reason other than you being eager to satisfy your ego. It's already mentioned that it's also known as "Tsakonian" and the old name has been redirected here. Furthermore the termination -ic is more correct as it derives directly from the Greek "Tsakoniki" and it's less corrupted in translation. As a significant contributor to the articles of the Greek language, I think my opinion counts more than yours on this matter. Miskin 03:14, 14 August 2005 (UTC)

The article name should be the most common English name. Miskin, do you think that Tsakonic is more common? What are your sources for this? Doing a Google search on English pages for: "Tsakonian -Wikipedia" gives 692 hits [3], whereas searching for "Tsakonic -Wikipedia" gives 64 [4], a 10 to 1 ratio in favor of Tsakonian. Paul August ☎ 04:06, August 14, 2005 (UTC)

Actually, I want it to be moved to Tsakonian language, not Tsakonian (its original title). And as it has been pointed out by me, and now by Paul August, Tsakonian is the most common name in English. Talking about the word being "corrupted" in English is absurd - shall I go over to the Greek Wikipedia and change Αγγλική γλώσσα to Ινγκλίτς or the Γερμανική article to Nτοϊτς? No, that would be crazy, because it's not Greek.

I am willing to compare sources. We can start with the Ethnologue entry updated by Dr. Nick Nicholas. [5]. It is listed there as "not inherently intelligible with Modern Greek", although it notes that Propontis Tsakonian was much closer to Standard Modern Greek. I am not denying that some very knowledgeable people consider it only a dialect, not an entirely separate language - sometimes that merely comes down to how you classify a "dialect." I am saying that the preponderance of sources at present classify it as a separate language.

Where does this woman assert that she is a native speaker? She is a native of Leonidio (which has long since ceased to be a Tsakonian-speaking area) living in Canada, as far as I can tell from her webpage. Nowhere does she make the assertion that she is a native Tsakonian speaker. Neither do I remember her saying that when she made a post to the Yahoo! Tsakonian group asking if anyone there knew of links to Tsakonian music (one would think a native Tsakonian speaker would know where to look - except even they don't sing their songs in Tsakonian anymore!) A very nice lady, very polite in her Internet posts - unlike some people I could mention. What I find really interesting about that link is the part where she aserts that elderly people use Tsakonian as a "code language." Interesting - if the kids can't understand them, then doesn't that tend to support the theory that is a separate language and that Standard Modern Greek & the Modern Greek dialects lack mutual intelligibility with Tsakonian?

--Jpbrenna 08:45, 14 August 2005 (UTC)

Your example of Αγγλικά - Ινγκλιτς is out of context because it's comparing two different cases. The English language has a "built-in" way to translate or assimilate Greek words from "-ικη" to "-ic" and "-ικα" to "-ics". Greek doesn't have a similar functionality to deal with "-ish" or "-an" so there you go. Anyway to show how unbiased I am, I really don't have a problem to change the name of the article to anything you like. Everything is redirected at the same place so I really don't see the difference. You can even name it Tsakonian language if you want and make all those edits that don't change anything except your personal satisfaction. What I will not allow you to do however, is to change the article's content by implying a "separate language" status of Tsakonian from Greek, or unlist it from Modern Greek. As for the dialect-language conflict, yes there's a very thin line between the two, this is why we take the best established views. There's also a debatable intelligibility between Tsakonian and standard Modern Greek, but then again partial comprehensibility is the very thing that distincts a dialect from an idiom. If you think that this site is not the representative opinion of a native speaker of Tsakonian, then I can make sure I get you one. I can even gather documented information by people who have a native diglossy between Tsakonian and Greek, and see whether they consider it a seperate language or not. If you think on the other hand that linguists consider it a separate language, then start preparing your sources. The voting system of wikipedia is rediculous, and this case proves it. I can personally guarantee that User:Angr for example (who edited above) has not a slightest clue in the Greek language, and I have saved a couple of articles from his petty vandalism. Now he comes here, posing as an expert, and having the right to vote like any other editor. Miskin 12:03, 14 August 2005 (UTC)

Miskin: The reason that the name matters is because of WP:UE, which says that the most common English name should be used, notwithstanding the fact of redirects. By naming an article, we are implying that that is its most common English name. So do you agree that "Tsakonian" is the most common name in English? (By the way, I see no need to speculate on Jpbrenna's motives for suggesting the name change, and in any case, I see no reason to look further than the motive of wanting the name of the article to conform to WP:UE.) As for the voting issue, generally we try to decide things on Wikipedia by consensus. We generally use voting only to attempt to measure the presence or lack of a consensus. Paul August ☎ 18:38, August 14, 2005 (UTC)

I assumed that since the most common name was also stated, wikipedia's bureaucracy would be satisfied. If it's so evident then you should proceed with the change already. It only strikes as a weird thing to me because I fail to see how can someone make such a big fuss such a unimportant matter. Miskin 22:34, 14 August 2005 (UTC)

I've moved the page and merged the edit histories (since the original "move" was done via a cut and paste, and the previous edit histories were "lost". Paul August ☎ 01:07, August 15, 2005 (UTC)

Citations needed

1. My addition claiming that Tsakonians traditionally did not call themselves Tskanones - it was in one of Dr. Nicholas's papers, with appropriate citation from his source, but I need to dig it up.
2. It says Tsakonian is officially classified as a dialect. Is this the official position of the Greek government? Who makes this determination, the Vouli or the Ministry of Education or what? I don't dispute the fact that the Greek government considers it a dialect - I'd just like to know the who, what, when, where and how if possible, because I'm curious.--Jpbrenna 19:08, 7 May 2006 (UTC)

Stop accusing the fascist Greek government, it's getting monotonous already. Tsakonian being a Greek dialect is not another Greek government evil scheme, it actually exists in both Greek and neutral linguistic sources. See Robert Browning's "Medieval and Modern Greek", among many others. Miskin 23:20, 7 May 2006 (UTC)

Minority position

I think the title of this page is misleading since it advocates a minority position. Tsakonian is a variety of the Greek language, not a separate language. I think the page should be renamed to Tsakonian, Tsakonian Greek, Tsakonian dialect, Tsakonian (Greek) or another possible variation. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Demonax (talk • contribs)

Hi Demonax, thanks for your comments, and welcome. As you can see from the talkpage above, there has been quite a bit of discussion about these names. I would personally go simply for Tsakonian, in fact, but as there were several well-respected fellow editors who had different preferences, I wouldn't unilaterally force a change at this point. There are quite a number of articles in Wikipedia that have "...language" in the title without necessarily implying separate language - take it just like this: a dialect is a language too, the word in the title just serves to disambiguate from "Tsakonian people", "Tsakonian culture", or whatever. Fut.Perf. ☼ 22:46, 8 November 2006 (UTC)

I realize that, I also see a Pontic language and a Griko language. If the article is to retain its present title, then the article should make it very clear that we are talking about a dialect, not an independent language.

Fair enough. But the current text "... is a dialect of Greek" in the lead sentence is already pretty clear, isn't it? Fut.Perf. ☼ 23:06, 8 November 2006 (UTC)

Russian, Ukranian and Belorussian are at most 600 years old, yet we call them separate languages. This one is more than 3000 years old. YOMAL SIDOROFF-BIARMSKII (talk) 09:44, 3 January 2014 (UTC)

Minor add

I will add the following sourced statement in the article, I welcome any constructive suggestions :

In reality, although it is accepted that Tsakonian Language spoken in the eastern Peloponnese comes from ancient Greek is not necessary koiné. Although the language resulting in almost distinction , teaching material written in Tsakonian are provided in some school of Greece.

Reference : Variation in modern Greek Two varieties of Greek are sufficiently different that linguists might want to suggest that they are actually separate languages. Tsakonian (see Newton 1972b), spoken in the eastern Peloponnese, is descended from Ancient Greek but not by way of the koiné. It is reported to be dying out, but some schools in the area have acknowledged the degree of difference between it and other forms of Greek by providing teaching materials written in Tsakonian. Source : Ammon, Ulrich(Editor). Sociolinguistics.Berlin, , DEU: Mouton de Gruyter (A Division of Walter de Gruyter & Co. KG Publishers), 2006. p 152 Dodona--Burra (talk) 21:49, 21 January 2008 (UTC)

Sorry, but your sentence isn't correct English, and it makes no sense logically. What is the "although"..."although" doing there? And the "in reality"? What do you mean "not necessary"? You seem to be trying to express some logical relation between the parts of your sentence, but it just doesn't become clear what that relation is. I would gladly help you rewrite this in correct English, but I can't figure what exactly you mean. Fut.Perf. ☼ 22:42, 21 January 2008 (UTC)

Please feel free of any change, now i think the meaning is clear.Dodona--Burra (talk) 10:43, 23 January 2008 (UTC)

I'll put in a sentence about the teaching materials, okay. But you need to tell me the author of the article you're quoting. Fut.Perf. ☼ 11:15, 23 January 2008 (UTC)

The phonology additions are welcome, but not particularly scholarly, I'm afraid. Lots of amateur speculation. I'm cleaning them up. The argumentation against Macedonian b and some other bits are WP:OR (and certainly not compelling or relevant here). Opoudjis (talk) 12:46, 27 May 2008 (UTC)

70% similarity

A nasty situation arises with the claim of 70% similarity between Standard Modern Greek and Tsakonian, deleted six months ago because "Ethnologue is unreliable". Ethnologue sources its claim to me, and my claim is in an unpublished paper written 10 years ago, which I'm thinking I might as well post online. I think that will satisfy the claims of verifiability (albeit tenuously), and that therefore the 70% para should be restored. Any objections?

I further note that under any linguistic notion of what constitutes a separate language, 70% is conventionally agreed to mean Tsakonian is separate. (Any standard modern Greek speaker who claims Tsakonian is mutually intelligible with Greek is not, I would say, being honest.) There is no evidence for a distinct Tsakonian ethnic identity, and no great push to call it a separate language, but the 70% figure is straightforward... Opoudjis (talk) 09:12, 8 June 2008 (UTC)

I was wondering about consistency across the pages on the varieties of Greek: right now, we have "Tsakonian language" but merely "Pontic", for example. While we can argue (endlessly) about the applicability of various metrics (and I merely note that I for one would love to see a source for the claim that "70% is conventionally agreed" to grant "language" status), there being no particular scientific one, only political, cultural, historical, sociological ones, it is common practice in the English-language literature on the development of Greek in all its varieties to refer to Tsakonian as a dialect (see for example Horrocks 1997:300 "... led to the creation and consolidation of the principal dialect divisions of modern Greek"; he lists eight, with Pontic and Cappadocian as one group, Tsakonian as another, etc.). This terminology should not be taken to imply mutual intelligibility: I can attest that Pontic Greek (especially spoken, though also to a great extent written) is not intelligible to standard modern Greek speakers, and I have no reason to doubt Opoudjis's similar claim for Tsakonian). But by wikipedia convention, the most usual term should be used (this is why Tsakonian is clearly preferable to Tsakonic). I note here as well that the sources that Horrocks 1997 cites (Pernot 1934 in French, Kostakis 1951, 1980 in Greek, and Kharalambopoulos 1980 in Greek) all also use the term "dialect" in their works. Therefore it seems reasonable to maintain some sort of consistency across the labelling of these varieties, with a preponderance of scholarly usage favoring 'dialect'. Something like "Tsakonian (Greek)", "Pontic (Greek)" would seem clear. I wish we could rely on some other authority, but the ISO 639-3 codes are themselves inconsistent on this point (assigning separate ISO codes to Pontic and Tsakonian (not under Greek), but listing Cappadocian with Greek).Mundart (talk) 16:03, 29 April 2009 (UTC)

First, Cappadocian does have its own ISO 639-3 code: here. The label "Greek" with the name Cappadocian should not be interpreted as anything other than a traditional name--the assignment of a separate ISO code itself indicates the consideration of this variety as a separate language.

Second, only 70% similarity between two speech forms is generally considered by most linguists to mean two separate languages. This is specifically noted in Ethnologue as 70% lexical similarity. Most linguists who work with lexicostatistics mark the borders of language/dialect at about 85%. I'll have to find a reference, but I know that in my reading of lexicostatistic studies from various places in the world, that is the range where dialects are separated into languages. This goes back to the use of lexicostatistics and measuring the rate of language change. Using the Swadesh 200-word list, it was assumed that languages retained about 81% of core vocabulary over 1000 years. Using the revised 100-word list, that rate of retention changed to 86%. Most linguists who use these numbers equated 1000 years of separate existence to becoming a separate language. Thus, two speech varieties that only share 70% of basic vocabulary would clearly be two distinct languages. While lexicostatistics is seldom used today, the 85% figure is still quite firmly fixed in the collective linguistic consciousness as a strong indicator of two separate languages.

Third, mutual intelligibility is nearly always equated with distinct languages, especially when there is not a dialect chain involved. If two speech varieties are mutually unintelligible, they are two separate languages. This overrides any "traditional usage" of the words "dialect" or "language" by locals in the minds of most linguists trying to standardize usage around the world. Thus, while Chinese linguists and Greek linguists call the different varieties "dialects" (in this case, Tsakonian, Pontic, and Cappadocian), global-oriented linguists call them separate "languages". (Conversely, they often link--with various levels of acceptance--Norwegian, Danish, and Swedish.) Tsakonian has not been mutually intelligible with Greek for at least 500 years. Here is one Greek/Tsakonian specialist who clearly states that Tsakonian can be considered a separate language because of the number of differences between Greek and Tsakonian at all levels of grammar and vocabulary.

Fourth, there is a photo of a sign at the border of Tsakonian territory in the article. It clearly uses the Tsakonian term groussa (Greek, glossa) and not dialektos (or whatever the Tsakonian word for "dialect" is) to distinguish their speech variety from Greek. Heck, just looking closely at the grammar and vocabulary on the sign convinces me that these are two separate languages.

By two separate objective measurements--percentage of shared vocabulary and mutual intelligibility--Tsakonian and Greek are separate languages. By the Tsakonian people's own judgement, they are separate languages. It is only by using subjective non-linguistic considerations that they are not separate languages. Ethnologue, Linguasphere, Voegelin & Voegelin, etc. all mark Tsakonian as a separate language. (Taivo (talk) 17:33, 29 April 2009 (UTC))

"Fourth, there is a photo of a sign at the border of Tsakonian territory in the article. It clearly uses the Tsakonian term groussa (Greek, glossa) and not dialektos (or whatever the Tsakonian word for "dialect" is) to distinguish their speech variety from Greek." lol 3rdAlcove (talk) 18:57, 29 April 2009 (UTC)

Try telling a Norwegian or a Dane that he speaks "Swedish" and see the reaction you get. If a group recognizes their speech variety as a separate language, that is a very powerful indicator of its perceived separateness. Group consciousness is at least as important as objective linguistic factors, although when the two conflict other factors must be considered (as in the case of Norwegian-Danish-Swedish). Tsakonian consciousness is clearly that they speak a different language than Greek. In this case, group consciousness and objective linguistic facts both agree that Tsakonian is a separate language. (Taivo (talk) 19:22, 29 April 2009 (UTC))

Excuse me, but what do you know about linguistic "group consciousness" in Greece? I can tell you linguistic group consciousness down there is an extremely thorny issue, with people very often holding linguistic lay theories that to us outsiders appear hopelessly wrong or self-contradictory (well documented in the case of Albanian-speakers and other minorities), and I highly doubt if you asked speakers of Tsakonian what they thought Tsakonian was you'd get any coherent answer at all, let alone a clear-cut consensus it was a "separate language". People would probably have no clear conception what that notion means in the first place. Drawing a conclusion as you did from that one street sign photo is, well, to put it mildly, a rather bold conjecture. Fut.Perf. ☼ 07:52, 30 April 2009 (UTC)

Bold conjecture, but with at least one piece of evidence ;) Never claimed to be an expert, I just look at what is in front of me. But we've discussed this before and you know that I put a greater value on objective linguistic evidence--mutual intelligibility and lexical similarity versus the opposite. (Taivo (talk) 11:25, 30 April 2009 (UTC))

Yep, just as you know I put a greater value on usage in the pertinent specialised literature, so I'm with Mundart in principle here, even though I wouldn't necessarily draw the conclusion we need to rename the article: "... language" can serve as a title disambiguation tag without implying "separate...". Hey, Mundart, are you my sockpuppet? ;-) Fut.Perf. ☼ 11:54, 30 April 2009 (UTC)

First, a tiny clarification: when I said "listed", I really just meant listed (as here): Greek, Modern; Greek, Cappadocian; etc, but no Greek, Pontic. I know there's a separate code for it. (What I meant by inconsistency in Ethnologue was only this, nothing more; Ethnologue does--and should--err on the side of more, not less, as it does for "Jamtska" for example here--which it claims has a "perhaps 95% lexical similarity to other Norwegian or Swedish dialects").

My own druthers would be to call Tsakonian (and Pontic etc) a language, but I wasn't necessarily advocating that, only that there be some consistency. (And Joseph's article--thanks! [I heard him present these results in Cyprus in 1999, but it had slipped my mind]--is nice, but he's typically very careful in picking his words: "Standard Modern Greek and Tsakonian (a Greek 'variety' spoken in the eastern Peloponnesos) — are customarily thought of as dialects rather than as separate languages, though conceivably they could be different languages since they show numerous and very evident differences in phonology, lexicon, morphology, and syntax." (p.1)--on p. 6 he also slips back into the 'dialect' nomenclature: "These facts show therefore that the borrowing of negation and the relevant social context for such an outcome of contact are not just a peculiarity of contact between Greek and Turkish or involving Greek dialects,..." .) I really have no dog in this fight, so to speak. I'm happy either way. (And I wouldn't dream of raising this issue over Macedonian/Bulgarian...! 48% the same? or 88%? who knows? A perfect case study of why lexicostatistics aren't the be-all and end-all of the "dialect"/"language" debate. Mutual intelligibility seems a better 'objective' criterion, while admitting that the socio/etc aspects are also determinative.)Mundart (talk) 15:59, 30 April 2009 (UTC)

Yes, it takes more than just one factor usually, although, like you, I rate mutual intelligibility quite high on the list. Jamtska's been demoted to dialect status in ISO 639-3. It wasn't even transferred over from Ethnologue to ISO. I think that Joseph might like to call Tsakonian a separate language, but there may be non-linguistic (political) factors involved in why he doesn't make the leap. (Taivo (talk) 20:22, 30 April 2009 (UTC))

I'm sure you hit the nail on the head there. Likewise for Geoff Horrocks. Mundart (talk) 22:47, 30 April 2009 (UTC)

Honestly, I find the language/debate debate uninteresting, but I'm putting up samples of Tsakonian at http://hellenisteukontos.blogspot.com/search/label/Tsakonian , so the reader can judge. Lexicostats are like IQ tests, which only tell you how good you are at doing IQ tests. From a purely linguistic POV, mutual intelligibility is the be-all and end-all—or rather, if it isn't, I don't see what else. But the issue of what counts as a separate language is seldom judged on purely linguistic criteria. I'm not objecting to it being called a dialect at all—everyone does it; I just would rather people keep in mind that, whether you call it a dialect or not, it is radically different from Standard Modern Greek. (I've gotten back to editing that 70% paper, btw.) Opoudjis (talk) 06:30, 3 June 2009 (UTC)

I personally would prefer to call Tsakonian (and Cypriot, etc) languages (esp. since that would make for a nice Greek/Hellenic language family), but I have a feeling that wouldn't make me many friends among certain Greek traditionalists (e.g. of the Andriotis ilk: I can't help remark that his 1960 screed just was reprinted in the Dec 2008 issue of Philologos, with his assertion about Tsakonian being "accepted" by "all linguists" as part of the "unified language" of Greek, p.513). But what I'd really like to see is the kind of work that people (esp the Groningen group) are doing on Dutch/Scan/etc, as here. It's much harder to argue with the results of such methods than with an eyeball comparison of vocab from Swadesh lists, etc. (I agree with you about lexicostats, of course.)

Aside from the dubious old chestnut about IQ tests, while I'm certainly no champion of lexicostats, the issue of whether Greek should be called a single language or a family is exactly what makes the language/dialect question relevant, even though it is not really relevant for linguistic research in practice. The following convention is interesting: "Most linguists who use these numbers equated 1000 years of separate existence to becoming a separate language." In his PhD thesis (p. 481f.), Opoudjis mentions – with regard to the history of Modern Greek dialects – that Cypriot, Cretan, Pontic and Cappadocian are thought to have diverged from the 6th to 9th centuries on, and "characteristic dialect phenomena" can be shown as early as the 6th century AD. This means that by 1900, more than 1000 years had elapsed from the start of the divergence of these varieties, and thus it is justified to suspect that from a purely linguistic perspective, Cypriot, Cretan, Pontic, Cappadocian, and probably Griko (Italiot) as well, have sufficiently diverged from Standard Greek so that they could be classified as separate languages. What's more, according to Klingenschmitt 2005 (cited in German Wikipedia), Proto-Greek started to split up in the first half of the 2nd millennium BC (some might put Proto-Greek slightly earlier, but surely not later considering that Mycenaean Greek is not identical to Proto-Greek and already exhibits diagnostic features found in dialects attested in the first millennium). This means that by 500 BC, the 1000 years of divergence had certainly elapsed and it could be said that Ancient Greek was not a single language anymore per our established rule. Therefore, Greek may have been a language family rather than a single language for 2500 years now. The case of Armenian is similar: Generally considered a single language, some dialects are poorly intelligible to speakers of either standard, and it is completely conceivable that some dialects have been diverging from the standard for more than 1000 years now. The third so-called Indo-European isolate, Albanian, is now thought by some to be at least two languages, Gheg and Tosk (though my understanding is that Gheg has more internal variety, while Tosk is closer-knit, though there are outlying dialects especially in Italy and Greece), and the divergence probably started around 1000 AD. As a final example, German is notorious for its wealth of dialects, some of which (such as Walser German dialects) may well have been practically completely isolated from the main dialect continuum for more than 1000 years, and are expectedly divergent. In any case, the larger dialect groupings were already in place much more than 1000 years ago. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 03:40, 5 October 2015 (UTC)

A further point, specifically about Tsakonian: According to the thesis cited above, p. 484, phonologically, Tsakonian split from the Koine around 800 AD. Moreover, several grammatical innovations that had occurred before the 6th century AD are absent in Tsakonian. Even if the language does not continue Doric directly, more than a millennium had undoubtedly elapsed since the split by 1900. Per the argument above alone, its split from Standard Greek is definitely sufficiently ancient that it has to be called a separate language. Of course, other arguments support this too. Even though Tsakonian may continue a variant of Koine that was influenced by Doric (much like Italiot) rather than Doric directly, it has clearly followed a course of separate development for much more than 1000 years now (despite continuous contact with mainstream Greek), and obviously diverged quite radically from every other variety of Greek. Consequently, insisting that Modern Greek including Tsakonian and all other varieties is a single language is at least (!) on the same level as insisting that North Germanic, Slavic, Arabic (including all its spoken varieties), Quechuan, Aymaran, Chinese (not including Min, even) or Japonic (including Ryukyuan) is a single language. If "single language" is supposed to be meaningful as an indication of internal variation, this verdict plainly makes no sense, and is guided by ideology or dogma rather than fact. The internal diversity of Modern Greek – including its outlying varieties, with Tsakonian being the most divergent – is far larger than what "single language" implies. If Modern Greek did not have a literary tradition (a continuous tradition that's close to 2800 years old, and including Mycenaean, over 3400 years) and had not been described before the 19th century, it would not occur to any contemporary linguist inspecting the data to describe Modern Greek as a single language – it would be treated as a family as a matter of course. A family of closely related languages, to be sure, yet still independent, single languages. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 04:00, 1 March 2020 (UTC)

Examples IPA

What calls itself "Tsakonian (IPA)" in the examples is clearly not using the International Phonetic Alphabet as all the characters are from the Greek alphabet. Is it supposed to be phonetic in some other sense?--Rumping (talk) 22:20, 30 June 2009 (UTC)

Yes, that is the Costakian notation. I will change the column heading.--Jpbrenna (talk) 22:54, 12 November 2009 (UTC)

some audio material

can be found here. It may be useful. [N.P. 188.4.71.43 (talk) 00:06, 5 April 2011 (UTC)]

Maniot

Is Maniot really closest to Tsakonian? Rem. from lead until we have a source. — kwami (talk) 03:28, 13 November 2013 (UTC)

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Nicholas 2019

@Calthinus: Can you please add the full citation? --Florian Blaschke (talk) 02:57, 1 March 2020 (UTC)

 Done--Calthinus (talk) 05:48, 3 March 2020 (UTC)

Thank you! Funny enough, on Friday I accidentally downloaded the PDF from here (I clicked on a Ghit and it downloaded automatically) – I suspected it's the same paper, but wasn't sure. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 06:05, 3 March 2020 (UTC)