Pontic Greek

Pontic Greek
ποντιακά, pontiaká, понтиакá, Roméika
Regionoriginally the Pontus on the Black Sea coast; Greece, Russia, Georgia, and Turkey
EthnicityPontic Greeks
Native speakers
778,000 (2009–2015)[1]
Dialects
Greek, Latin, Cyrillic
Language codes
ISO 639-3pnt
Glottologpont1253
ELPPontic
Linguasphere56-AAA-aj
Pontic Greek is classified as Definitely Endangered by the UNESCO Atlas of the World's Languages in Danger (2010)
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Pontic Greek (Pontic: Ποντιακόν λαλίαν, romanized: Pontiakón lalían or Ρωμαίικα romanized: Roméika; Greek: Ποντιακή διάλεκτος, romanized: Pontiakí diálektos; Turkish: Rumca) is an endangered variety of Modern Greek indigenous to the Pontus region on the southern shores of the Black Sea, northeastern Anatolia, and the Eastern Turkish/Caucasus region. Today it is spoken mainly in northern Greece. Its speakers are referred to as Pontic Greeks or Pontian Greeks. It is not completely mutually intelligible with modern Demotic Greek.[3][4][5][6]

The linguistic lineage of Pontic Greek stems from Ionic Greek via Koine and Byzantine Greek, and contains influences from Russian, Turkish, Kartvelian (namely Laz and Georgian) and Armenian.

Pontic Greek is an endangered dialect of Greek spoken by about 778,000 people worldwide.[1] Many Pontians live in Greece; however, only 200,000–300,000 of those are considered active Pontic speakers.[7] Although it is mainly spoken in Northern Greece, it is also spoken in Turkey, Russia, Georgia, Armenia, and Kazakhstan, as well as by the Pontic diaspora. The language was brought to Greece in the 1920s after the population exchange between the Christian Pontic Greeks and the Turkish Muslims from their homelands during the 1923 population exchange between Greece and Turkey. However, it is still spoken in pockets of the Pontus today, mostly by Pontic Greek Muslims in the eastern districts of Trabzon Province. Pontic Greek is one of the languages of the Greek (Hellenic) branch separate from Mainland Greek. Pontic Greek and typical demotic, Mainland Greek is generally mutually unintelligible.[1] It is primarily written in the Greek script; in Turkey and Ukraine the Latin script is used more frequently; in Russia and former Soviet countries, the Cyrillic alphabet is used.

  1. ^ a b c "Pontic". Ethnologue. Archived from the original on April 12, 2018. Retrieved 2018-04-11.
  2. ^ Cite error: The named reference Cambridge was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  3. ^ Tsekouras, Ioannis (2016). "Nostalgia, Emotionality, and Ethno-Regionalism in Pontic Greek Parakathi Singing" (PDF). University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. pp. 65–69.
  4. ^ Fann Bouteneff, Patricia (September 2003). "Greek Folktales from Imera, Pontos". Fabula. 44 (3–4): 292–312. doi:10.1515/fabl.2003.018.
  5. ^ Popov, Anton (2003). "Becoming Pontic: "Post-Socialist" Identities, "Transnational" Geography, and the "Native" Land of the Caucasian Greeks". Ab Imperio. 2003 (2): 339–360. doi:10.1353/imp.2003.0114. S2CID 131320546.
  6. ^ Hionidou, Violetta; Saunders, David (November 2010). "Exiles and Pioneers: Oral Histories of Greeks Deported from the Caucasus to Kazakhstan in 1949". Europe-Asia Studies. 62 (9). JSTOR: Taylor & Francis: 1480. doi:10.1080/09668136.2010.515794. JSTOR 25764696. S2CID 144384647.
  7. ^ Sitaridou, Ioanna; Kaltsa, Maria (2010). "Topicalisation in Pontic Greek". Modern Greek Dialects and Linguistic Theory. 4: 259–279.

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