Old Grekelin

Old Grekelin
Grekélin
Created by	Aggelos Tselios
Date	2023
Native to	Kingdom of Hungary, Ottoman Empire
Language family	Indo-European Hellenic Old Grekelin
Dialects	Danubian Savvian Slavic Western
Writing systems	Latin

Old Grekelin (Grekelin: Paleá Grekelénikin, [pɑ.ɫɛ.ˈɑ ɡrɛkɛˈɫɛnikin]) is the initial stage of Grekelin, when it first began splitting from Greek between the 11th to 16th centuries during the Greek migration to Hungary. While considered a single language, it was a dialect continuum stretching from Belgrade to Budapest. It can also be described as a dialect, since it remained mutually intelligible with Medieval Greek at that point.

The migration of Greek populations and their settlements in the Kingdom of Hungary created a massive distance between Greek and Grekelin, and with little education and linguistic isolation, the Greek populace began speaking a divergent dialect, with lots of Hungarian influence, that eventually made the language split from Greek. By the time of Greek independence (19th century), the Grekelin speakers had already a highly divergent language that didn't resemble Greek as much.

Old Grekelin is the linguistic link between the Byzantine Greeks that settled in Hungary, who spoke the vernacular Medieval Greek language, and Standard (Modern) Grekelin which is the final product of this dialect.

History

In the 11th century, following the Battle of Manzikert and with the Byzantine Empire constantly declining, many Greeks from the south of Asia Minor (Where later the Cappadocian dialect would develop) began settling parts of the Kingdom of Hungary, which offered them prestigious rights within the state in exchange for volunteering in the army and protecting the Kingdom's borders. As the number of them began increasing, they began founding Greek villages in the countryside, where they could still communicate as they now amounted up to 100.000. The first villages were built along the Danube, in Hungarian and Serb majority areas back then.

From the mid-14th to the 17th century Ottoman expansion in the Balkans reached Grekelin-speaking areas, reducing the spoken language's population significantly. Regardless, the language managed to remain alive within the Austrian Empire (Where the most conservative dialects are found as well), which had conquered the northernmost parts of what is now Slovakia and Czechia. Ottoman rule imported some words that are cognates with Greek ones (Eg. **Χαράτσι, Haradza** (Unjustified high tax), **Μπαχάρι, Baharya** (Spice)). The language however, being spoken for over 300 years at this point, had changed significantly, and, due to constant wars and rebellions in the region, now had three different dialects.

Already by the 16th century however, Grekelin was largely different, both in phonetics and grammar. In addition, Grekelin was by now written exclusively with the Latin alphabet, as few Greek scholars were left to teach the Greek one. Further attempts in the 17th century to convert the Grekelin-speaking population to Catholicism resulted in the introduction of many foreign (Latin and Hungarian) words, and by the 19th century Grekelin would be completely different, grammatically and lexically.

Pre-Grekelin

Pre-Grekelin refers to the original Medieval Greek dialect that Grekelin developed out of in Asia Minor. Not much is known about this dialect, except that it is the same dialect that Cappadocian Greek developed out of. As such, Pre-Grekelin might've been distinct from Mainland Greek, which is generally the base for Modern Greek. Pre-Grekelin itself is possibly a dialect of Pontic Greek, as shown by the absence of Iotacism and the use of archaic vocabulary.

Phonology

Old Grekelin's phonology is very close to the Medieval Greek one, unlike modern Grekelin which has come closer to the Hungarian phonology (depending on the dialect, also Slavic and German influences exist).

Consonants in Old Grekelin

↓Manner/Place→	Place of Articulation
	Bilabial	Labiodental	Alveolar	Alveolo-palatal	Palatal	Velar
Nasal	/m/	/n/			/ɲ/	/ŋ/
Stop	/p/ /b/		/t/ /d/		/c/ /ɟ/	/k/ /g/
Affricate			/d͡z/			/k͡x/
Fricative	/f/ /v/	/s/ /z/	/θ/ /ð/		/ç/ /j/	/x/ /ɣ/
Tap			/ɾ/
Lateral approximant			/l/		/ʎ/

Vowels in Old Grekelin

	Height
	Front	Back
High	/i/	/y/	/u/
High-mid			/o/
Low-mid	/e/
Low			/a/

Dialects

Old Grekelin was spoken from Belgrade to Budapest, so it didn't take long to split into different dialects. Those dialects are usually categorized in 4 groups. Modern Grekelin derives directly from the Danube dialect (Although the Slavic dialect is basically the result of the homonymous Old Grekelin dialect), and the last two have gone extinct. The following are the 4 groups of Old Grekelin and their status today.

- Danubian Dialects (Once spoken between Budapest and Northern Vojvodina, now the basis of Modern Grekelin, with about 3/4's of all Grekelin speakers)

- Slavic Dialects (The only surviving variant of this language, currently spoken in spread out places of Eastern Hungary, Slovakia and Southern Vojvodina)

- Northern Dialect (Dialects that developed when Grekelin speakers yet again fled the Ottoman threat in the Alps. No longer spoken)

- Savvian Dialect (The least significant in socio-linguistic terms, due to its low population (Just above 2.000) and their late divergence from Greek).

The Savvian dialects were far more divergent than the other three, possibly due to their late settlement (13th century, during the Slavic raids into Greece) and their nearly complete isolation from Hungarian influence. Some could call them an entirely separate language, as they remained very conservative and close to Greek up until the 19th century (When the last speaker was identified). The following parts compare the sentence "I saw it with my eyes" (Modern Grekelin: " Ivlo davto mi ek opiek mei, /iv.ˈlo ˈdɑv.to mi ɛk ˈopjɛk mʲi/"

Danubian dialects

The Danubian dialects are the root of Modern Grekelin. They were named after the Danube river, which crossed the Grekelin-speaking areas or even separated them. The basic changes in this dialect were:

- Palatalization of /k/ and /t/ into /t͡s/

- Meltdown of the tense system of Medieval Greek into four tenses: Present, Past, Past Perfect and Future.

- Voicing of the /ks/ affricate into /gz/

- Rounding of the /i/ vowel into /y/ in first or final syllable

- Introduction of the /nd/ consonant cluster where Medieval Greek has /d/

- Loss of the future article ([θa] in Modern Greek) and replacement with [ɛˈnɑ]

Slavic Dialects

The Slavic dialects, which took their name from the Slavic-speaking areas they evolved at, and their quite Slavic sound (Palatalization, nasal vowels, raising unstressed vowels) are the only dialect group to actually survive to this day in the form of Slavic Grekelin. The Slavic dialects used to be far more spoken than their Danubian counterparts; This would last until the rise of nationalism saw the mass assimilation of them. This dialect shares the same changes with the Danubian ones (Except for the /nd/ introduction and the rounding of /i/) due to their common ancestor, along with the changes mentioned above.

For the sake of convenience, nasal vowels take an accute accent above them.

Northern Dialect

This dialect is the only dialect to replace word-final /n/ with a glottal stop in the next word. A few subdialects went a step ahead and completely replaced the /k/ plosive with the /q/ one in multiple occasions, and another interesting change is the collapse of /v/ into /u/. The northern dialect is technically itself a subdialect of the Danubian dialects, as it developed following mass fleeing of Grekelin Orthodox people (Following the battle of Mohacs) into Austria and Bavaria. It would evolve into Western Grekelin and eventually die out in the 18th century.

Ido dauto mi uges mu [ˈiːdo ˈdauːto mi ʉːges mu]

Savvian Dialect

The Savvian dialect is not directly a dialect of Old Grekelin as it split off from Medieval Greek about two centuries afterwards. However, it is conventially treated as one, for two reasons: (1) The same origin with Grekelin itself and (2) their settlement near Grekelin-speaking areas. The dialect takes its name from the Sava river between Hungary and Croatia. It was a small and very conservative dialect, and, as a result, it was already extinct by the late 15th century. One of its most interesting features is the deletion of definite articles and their replacement by a word-final -e, possibly influenced by Hungarian.

Idha tutto me oftalmuse m' [ˈiðɑ tuto me of.talmʲusem]

Example Texts

Digenes Acritas (Translated)

This is a small part of the Digenes Acritas song, translated into Old Grekelin. It was one of the few surviving Byzantine songs in the era, and it's one of the few texts to be written using the Greek script. Notable parts include the use of the digamma to denote the now lost /w/ sound, the use of [ζ̌] to indicate the /ʑ/ sound and the introduction of the [σζ] digraph to show the /ʃ/ sound.

For comparison, the original verse is put by the side. Do note that the tildes do not mean much in pronunciation of the text, they were kept for historical reasons mainly. The version of the text displayed here is from the 17th century, about 5 centuries after the original was written down:

Verse from Digenes Acritas in Old Grekelin and Medieval Greek

Old Grekelin	Medieval Greek
Κί σάμα είϝλαϊν τα ἀδέρφια τἐ ά κόρα μαραμέναν, μασζἇ αῑ πένδε ρεστένατσζαν, δάτο λόγο λάλιαν: 'Ρἐστάσζε, ά λεγένυα, εῑδεσζην αδερφήν μἦ εχὧμεθα σἧ άς δήζ̌ήϝετην κὶ ά Θιὸς φέλατσζε σἧ έτσζ σέπυως κάλλεως σἧ. Πόλεμους οὐκ φοβὧμεθα έκ ἀγάπης σἧ.'	Καὶ ὡς εἴδασιν τὰ ἀδέλφια της τὴν κόρην μαραμένην, ἀντάμα οἱ πέντε ἐστέναξαν, τοιοῦτον λόγον εἶπαν: 'Ἐγείρου, ἠ βεργόλικος, γλυκύν μας τὸ ἀδέλφιν˙ ἐμεῖς γὰρ ἐκρατοῦμαν σε ὡς γιὰ ἀποθαμένην καὶ ἐσὲν ὁ Θεὸς ἐφύλαξεν διὰ τὰ ὡραῖα σου κάλλη. Πολέμους οὐ φοβούμεθα διὰ τὴν σὴν ἀγάπην.'