Epirote Greek

The Epirote dialect is a variety of Northwest Doric that was spoken in the ancient Greek state of Epirus during the Classical Era. It outlived most other Greek dialects that were replaced by the Attic-based Koine, surviving until the first or second century CE, in part due to the existence of a separate Northwest Doric koine.

The Greek population of Epirus proper (not including colonies founded on or near the coast by southern Greeks) spoke a dialectal variety of Northwest Doric, joining Epirotic with Locrian, Phocian, Delphic, Aenanian, Aetolian, Acarnian, and possibly Ancient Macedonian. Doric, including Northwest Doric and its sister branches, may also be called "West Greek" or "North Greek".

Nevertheless, Epirote lacked some of the features that are described as salient diagnostics of Northwest Doric, including the athematic dative plural -ois, the third person imperative -nton, and the mediopassive participle forms in -ei-. Likewise, the uncontracted Doric -eo- sequence is barely attested in Epirus, because it was usually sidelined by the contraction of -ou--, though it does appear in anthroponyms in Epirus.

Méndez Dosuna argued for a distinction of four subgroups within Northwest Doric, in which Epirote, Eastern Locrian, Epizephyrian Locrian and Acarnian were "Medial Northwest" (on the other hand, the "most Northwest" were Delphic, Aetolian, Elean, and West Locrian). Dosuna argues that North-West Greece was an area of dialectal convergence that became increasingly homogenous from the fifth century BCE onwards, coinciding with the rise of different koinai and political integration.

Epirote is considered to be under-investigated. Speaking in a broad sense of the history of Epirus, as of 2018, a number of advances have been made in the last few decades, largely powered by ongoing progress in archaeological research in both Greece and Southern Albania. However, there is no up-to-date comprehensive work incorporating all the recent archaeological advances, meaning the least outdated summary is Hammond 1967. Likewise, despite newly available epigraphic corpora from Dodona and Bouthroton (modern Butrint), Greek linguist Filos notes that there remains no holistic linguistic account of Epirus at all that extends beyond a "non-piecemeal description of the epichoric variety", though Filos himself offers a summarized account.

In 2013, a collection of over 4000 texts from the Dodona lamellae was published.

Evidence from epigraphy starting in the late Archaic period (sixth to fifth centuries BCE) as well as ancient literary evidence indicates that the people of Epirus spoke a dialectal variety of Northwest Doric. On the other hand, southern Greek dialects were spoken by some of the coastal colonies established by southern Greeks, while in the north, there was a language border with Illyrian. There is earlier attestation of texts from the southern Greek colonies on the coast, but these spoke different varieties of Greek (Corinthian in Ambracia, Elean in Pandosia, etc.). The variety manifested in the early texts of Dodona is also not representative of Epirotic Greek.

Except for the unrepresentative oracular tablets at Dodona, Epirus was among a set of Greek regions that practically lacked documentation until the Classical period, this set also including Macedonia, Pamphylia, and Aetolia. In terms of early written records, Epirus and the rest of north-west Greece also lagged behind other Northwest-Doric speaking areas, with areas such as Delphi and West Locris providing earlier sources.