Content uploaded by Sam Topalidis
Author content
All content in this area was uploaded by Sam Topalidis on Nov 18, 2018
Content may be subject to copyright.
A Brief Introduction to the Pontic Greek Dialect
Sam Topalidis (Pontic Historian) 2018
Introduction
Greeks colonised Pontos in the north-east corner of Anatolia near the
Black Sea from at least the 7th century BC (Tsetskhladze 1994). After
around 2,500 years of occupation in Pontos the Greeks were expelled from
Turkey in the 1920s during the Population Exchange between Greece and
Turkey (Note 1). When these Pontic Greeks arrived in Greece most of them
spoke Pontic Greek, an old form of the Greek language.
Today, the Pontic Greek dialect spoken in Greece has included terms
from Demotic Greek (the modern vernacular form of Greek). The Pontic
Greek dialect is still spoken by relatively few Muslim Turks in Pontos, who
not exposed to modern Greek terms, speak a ‘cleaner version’ of the dialect
called Romeyka. Most of the ancestors of these Muslim Turks were forced
to convert to Islam [between the 15th and 18th century]—but they
maintained their language (Mackridge 1987).
Pontic Greek is also spoken by descendants of Pontic Greeks in
Georgia and Russia. This form of Pontic Greek also varies from the Pontic
Greek spoken in Greece and Romeyka still spoken in Turkey due to the
addition of local loan words (Berikashvili 2017). Pontic Greek and Romeyka
are also spoken in the wider diaspora and they probably have absorbed
local terms from the communities in which these people live.
Pontic Greek Dialect in Pontos, Anatolia
In the 11th century when the Seljuk Turks invaded Anatolia, Pontos
and the Pontic Greek dialect became isolated from other Greek speaking
areas. This would help to explain both the preservation of many medieval
characteristics in Pontic Greek spoken today that have disappeared
elsewhere and the development of many radically new features that have not
appeared in other dialects. There are hundreds of words in Pontic Greek
that are unfamiliar to other Greek dialects. There is also a number of
archaic words and forms that are preserved in the dialect (Mackridge 1987).
So it is not surprising that to Demotic Greek speakers, Pontic Greek is
generally incomprehensible.
The most archaic form of the Pontic Greek dialect (Romeyka) has
survived among the Muslims from the ‘Of’ region (east of Trabzon, see
Figure 1), who were predominantly Christian Greek descendants of this
region, who under pressure from the derebeys [valley lords] in the
17th century converted to Islam (Dawkins 1937). In the past, many Turkish
settlers near Of became [Pontic] Greek speakers since it was the major local
language (Mackridge 1987).
Özkan (2013) states that today Romeyka is spoken in certain villages
in the following four parts of the Trabzon region (Figure 1):
The Tonya district (south-west of Trabzon).
Beşköy in the Köprübaşi districts (east of Trabzon) in the upper valley
of the Manachos River which flows into the Black Sea at Sürmene.
1
The Of district (east of Trabzon): in the Çaykara, the Dernekpazari
(north of Çaykara) and the Uzungöl districts.
The Maçka district (south of Trabzon) in the Galyana valley. (These
Greek speakers came from Beşköy after 1929.)
The highest concentration of Romeyka speakers also come from the
region around Of. Although the number of speakers of Romeyka is
decreasing, it remains a preferred means of communication when Romeyka
speakers meet (Özkan 2013).
Figure 1: North-east corner of Turkey near the Black Sea (Nişanyan &
Nişanyan 2001, p. 217). (Scale: 90 km Tonya to Uzungöl.)
Sağlam (2017) states that children today do not speak Romeyka with
the same proficiency as their Romeyka-speaking parents due to a number of
factors which include the growing influence of the Turkish language via
television and radio into these once remote villages. In addition, the
Turkish language and not Romeyka is taught in schools.
Dr Sitaridou, at: www.romeyka.org/the-romeyka-
project/rediscovering-romeyka (accessed October 2018) states that when
the Islamisation of many Christians in Pontos took place (15th–
18th centuries), the Romeyka of the Muslims was isolated from the
Christian Greek speakers. The movement of Muslim Romeyka speakers
from the Trabzon region, coupled with the influence of the Turkish-speaking
majority, has left Romeyka vulnerable to extinction.
Pontic Greek Dialect in the Former Soviet Union
Pontic Greeks had been emigrating to Russia and the Caucasus from
the 18th century up to the Population Exchange (by 1924). In the
20th century and especially in the years following the collapse of the Soviet
Union (December 1991), many people of Pontic Greek descent moved from
the former Soviet Union to settle in Greece.
2
Dawkins (1937) stated there were 100,000 Pontic Greek speakers at
Rostov on Don in Russia who spoke Pontic Greek consistent with the Pontic
Greek spoken in the Gümüşane district (south of Trabzon) so the great
mass of them came from this Pontic district. Another feature of the Pontic
Greek dialect is the influence of other languages, especially Turkish and in
the former Soviet Union, Russian and Caucasian languages as well. Pontic
Greek spoken by the Pontic-speaking community of Georgia differs from the
other Pontic Greek varieties spoken in Turkey or in Greece, in terms of
contact-induced changes. There are a lot of lexical borrowings in Pontic
Greek spoken in the former Soviet Union, but it also keeps Turkish
borrowings that are inherited from the period Pontic people lived in Anatolia
(Berikashvili 2017).
Conclusion
The history and development of the Pontic Greek dialect and Romeyka
and how they became distinct from the other Greek dialects should be
studied. Recently there has been an effort by Pontic Greek associations in
Greece and in the diaspora and in some Greek Universities to teach the
Pontic Greek dialect. As a result, the future of the Pontic Greek dialect now
looks much brighter. However, the future of Romeyka in Turkey is dire.
The future of the Pontic Greek dialect spoken in Russia and Georgia is
unknown. It is unknown how many Pontic Greek or Romeyka speakers
exist in Greece or Turkey or indeed worldwide today. Are you one of them?
Note 1
In January 1923, Greece and Turkey signed the Lausanne Convention
concerning the Population Exchange between Greece and Turkey. This convention
stipulated the compulsory exchange of Turkish nationals of the Greek Orthodox
religion in Turkish territory and the Greek nationals of the Moslem religion in
Greek territory. The Greeks in Constantinople and the Muslims in Western Thrace
were exempt from this exchange. The exclusion of the Orthodox inhabitants of the
islands of Imbros and Tenedos was specified later in the wider Treaty of Lausanne
signed in July 1923 (Hirschon 2008).
Acknowledgement
Thanks to Russell McCaskie for his comments on an earlier draft.
References
Berikashvili, S 2017, Morphological aspects of Pontic Greek spoken in Georgia,
Lincom GmbH, Munich.
Dawkins, RM 1937, ‘The Pontic dialect of modern Greek in Asia Minor and Russia’,
Transactions of the Philological Society, pp. 15–52.
Hirschon, R 2008, ‘Notes on terminology and orthography’, in R Hirschon (ed.)
2008, Crossing the Aegean: an appraisal of the 1923 compulsory population
exchange between Greece and Turkey, Berghahn Books, New York, pp. xi–
xiii.
Mackridge, P 1987, ‘Greek-speaking moslems of north-east Turkey: prolegomena to
a study of the Ophitic sub-dialect of Pontic’, Byzantine and modern Greek
Studies, vol. 11, pp. 115–37.
3
Nişanyan, S & Nişanyan, M 2001, Black Sea: a traveller’s handbook for northern
Turkey, 3rd edition, Infognomon, Athens.
Özkan, 2013, ‘The Pontic Greek spoken by Muslims in the villages of Beşköy in the
province of present-day Trabzon’, Byzantine and Modern Greek Studies,
vol. 37, no. 1, pp. 1–21.
Sağlam, E 2017, Constitutive ambiguities: subjectivities and memory in the case of
Romeika-speaking communities of Trabzon, Turkey, Unpublished PhD thesis
in Sociology Psychosocial Studies, Birkbeck, University of London, London.
Tsetskhladze, GR 1994, ‘Greek penetration of the Black Sea’, at
www.karalahana.com/english/greeks_black_sea.htm (viewed 2015).
4