Ancient Greek dialect spoken in Arcadia in the central Peloponnese and in Cyprus
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In Cyprus the dialect was written using solely the Cypriot syllabary. The most extensive surviving text of the dialect is the Idalion Tablet.[3] A significant literary source on the vocabulary comes from the lexicon of 5th century AD grammarian Hesychius.
History
The prevailing dialect spoken in southern Greece (including Achaea, the Argolid, Laconia, Crete, and Rhodes) at the end of the Bronze Age, was Proto-Arcadocypriot.[4] The Mycenaean and Arcadocypriot dialects belong to the same group, known as Achaean. Certain common innovations of Arcadian and Cypriot, as attested in the first millennium BC, indicate that they represent vernaculars that had slightly diverged from the Mycenaean administrative language, sometime before a migration to Cyprus; possibly during the 13th or 12th century BC.[2]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).[5]
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.[6]
Later developments
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.[7][8]
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).
κίριςkiris or kirris (cypriotic epithet for Adonis) (Laconiankirrisλύχνοςlychnos light, lamp)
κίτταριςkittaris Cypriot Diadem.Κίτταροι Kittaroi, the ones who wear it
κιχητόςkichêtos the vessel or the substance where the censer(Attic libanôtos) is being dyed εἰς ὃ ἐμβάπτεται ὁ λιβανωτός
κυνύπισμαkunupisma drink from pomace (stemphyla), i.e. left-overs of pressed grapes.
λήνεα lênea or λείνα leina (Attic ἔριαeria wools)
μόψοςmopsos 'stain on the clothes' (Attic kêlis κηλὶς ἡ ἐν τοῖς ἱματίοις) (Mopsus mythology) (Mopsopia old name of Attica and Attic tales of Euphorion of Chalcis)
ἐς πόθ' ἕρπεςes poth' herpes? (Attic πόθεν ἥκειςpothen hekeis? where do you come from?) (Attic ἕρπεινherpein to creep, to crawl, move slowly like a serpent
Rüdiger Schmitt. Einführung in die griechischen Dialekte. Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1977 ISBN3-534-05672-8
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.
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