Cappadocian Greek
| Cappadocian | |
|---|---|
| Region | Greece, originally Cappadocia (Central Turkey) |
|
Native speakers
|
2,800 (2015) (previously thought to be extinct) |
| Language codes | |
| ISO 639-3 | |
| Glottolog | capp1239 |
Cappadocian, also known as Cappadocian Greek or Asia Minor Greek, is a mixed language formerly spoken in Cappadocia (Central Turkey). In the population exchange between Greece and Turkey in the 1920s, all Cappadocian Greeks were forced to emigrate to Greece, where they were resettled in various locations, especially in Central and Northern Greece. The Cappadocians rapidly shifted to Standard Modern Greek and their language was thought to be 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. Amongst them 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. A survey of Cappadocian speakers and language use is currently in preparation.
By the fifth century AD, the last of the Indo-European native languages of Asia Minor ceased to be spoken, replaced by Koine Greek. At the same time the communities of central Asia Minor were becoming actively involved in affairs of the Greek-speaking Eastern Roman Empire, and some, now Greek-speaking, Cappadocians, such as Maurice Tiberius (r. 582-602) and Heraclius (r. 610 to 641), would even rise to become Emperors.
Cappadocian Greek first began to diverge from the Medieval Greek common language of the Eastern Roman (Byzantine) Empire six centuries later, following the Byzantine's defeat at the Battle of Manzikert in 1071. This defeat allowed Turkish speakers to enter Asia Minor for the first time, severing Cappadocia from the rest of the Byzantine world. Over the next centuries Cappadocian Greek would be heavily influenced by Turkish, but, unlike Standard Modern Greek, it would not be influenced by Venetian and French from the Frankokratia period, which followed the Fourth Crusade's sack of Constantinople in 1204.
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