Pontic Greek

Pontic Greek (Greek: Ποντιακή διάλεκτος or Ποντιακά), sometimes called Rumaiic, is a form of the Greek language originally spoken in the Pontus area on the southern shores of the Black Sea, northeastern Anatolia, Eastern Turkish/Caucasus province of Kars, southern Georgia, and today mainly in northern Greece. Its speakers are referred to as Pontic Greeks or Pontian Greeks, although many Greeks mistakenly refer to some Pontic Greek speakers from Georgia as Russo-Ponti.

The linguistic lineage of Pontic Greek stems from Ionic Greek via Koine and Byzantine Greek and contains influences from Georgian, Russian, Turkish and to a lesser extent, Persian (via Ottoman Turkish) and various Caucasian languages. Pontic is most closely related to Cappadocian Greek, and the Greek spoken in Mariupolis (and formerly in Crimea, Ukraine) (see Mariupolitan Greek).

Read more about Pontic Greek:  Name of The Language, Dialects, Geographic Distribution, Culture, Pontic Alphabets, Archaisms

Famous quotes containing the words pontic and/or greek:

    Like to the Pontic Sea,
    Whose icy current and compulsive course
    Ne’er knows retiring ebb, but keeps due on
    To the Propontic and the Hellespont,
    Even so my bloody thoughts with violent pace
    Shall ne’er look back, ne’er ebb to humble love,
    Till that a capable and wide revenge
    Swallow them up.
    William Shakespeare (1564–1616)

    He degraded himself by the vice of drinking, which, together with a great stock of Greek and Latin, he brought away with him from Oxford and retained and practised ever afterwards.
    Philip Dormer Stanhope, 4th Earl Chesterfield (1694–1773)