NW Greek

Doric Greek
Region	Peloponnese, Crete, Rhodes
Era	c. 800–100 BC; evolved into the Tsakonian language
Language family	Indo-European Hellenic Ancient Greek Western Doric Greek
Language codes
ISO 639-3	–
Linguist List	grc-dor
Glottolog	None
Distribution of Greek dialects in Greece in the classical period. Western group:   Doric proper   Northwest Doric   Achaean Doric Central group:   Aeolic   Arcado-Cypriot Eastern group:   Attic   Ionic

Doric, or Dorian, was an Ancient Greek dialect. Its variants were spoken in the southern and eastern Peloponnese as well as in Sicily, Epirus, Southern Italy, Crete, Rhodes, some islands in the southern Aegean Sea and some cities on the south east coast of Anatolia. Together with Northwest Greek, it forms the "Western group" of classical Greek dialects. By Hellenistic times, under the Achaean League, an Achaean-Doric koiné language appeared, exhibiting many peculiarities common to all Doric dialects, which delayed the spread of the Attic-based Koine Greek to the Peloponnese until the 2nd century BC.

It is widely accepted that Doric originated in the mountains of Epirus in northwestern Greece, the original seat of the Dorians. It was expanded to all other regions during the Dorian invasion (c. 1150 BC) and the colonisations that followed. The presence of a Doric state (Doris) in central Greece, north of the Gulf of Corinth, led to the theory that Doric had originated in northwest Greece or maybe beyond in the Balkans. The dialect's distribution towards the north extends to the Megarian colony of Byzantium and the Corinthian colonies of Potidaea, Epidamnos, Apollonia and Ambracia; there, it further added words to what would become the Albanian language, probably via traders from a now-extinct Illyrian intermediary. Local epigraphical evidence is restricted to the decrees of the Epirote League and the Pella curse tablet (both in the early 4th century BC) as well to the Doric eponym , first attested in Macedonia (early 5th century BC).