Cappadocian Greek

Cappadocian Greek (endonym: Καππαδοκικά, Καππαδοκική διάλεκτος), also known as Cappadocian, is a dialect of Modern Greek, originally spoken in Cappadocia (modern-day Central Turkey) by the descendants of the Byzantines of Anatolia. The language originally diverged from Medieval Greek after the late 11th century migrations of the Seljuk Turks from Central Asia into what is now Turkey began cutting the Cappadocians off from the rest of the Greek-speaking Byzantine Empire.

As a result of the population exchange between Greece and Turkey in 1923, all remaining speakers (known in Turkey as Rûm, and referred to now as Cappadocian Greeks) were forced to emigrate to Greece where they were resettled in various locations, primarily in Central and Northern Greece. The Cappadocians were encouraged to shift to Standard Modern Greek as part of their integration into Greece, and their language was thought to have been extinct since the 1960s. In June 2005, Mark Janse (Ghent University) and Dimitris Papazachariou (University of Patras) discovered Cappadocians in Central and Northern Greece who could still speak their ancestral language fluently. Many are middle-aged, third-generation speakers who take a very positive attitude towards the language, as opposed to their parents and grandparents. The latter are much less inclined to speak Cappadocian and more often than not switch to Standard Modern Greek.

From Wikipedia · Cappadocian Greek · CC BY-SA 4.0