By Nicolas Bard

The Tsakonian language is ancient Greek in the Doric idiom, and many residents in Leonidio and more in the area of ​​Kynouria still speak it today. But except for older ones, younger children are also learning it today. After all, they hear the dialect at home from their parents and grandparents and want to learn the language itself so as not to be lost. For them they are not just a dialect, it is their story, the particular identity of their place, and they try to learn it with love and love. For the Tsakones the language is home and they feel proud to have this bond with their place and dialect.

The Tsakonian dialect belongs to the residual Doric zone of Modern Greek. It came from the Doric dialect of ancient Greek, as opposed to the modern Greek language, which came from the Hellenistic Common (mainly the Attica -John). Specifically, it is believed that it came from a broader Doric common, which had dominated the Peloponnese after the establishment of the Achaic Coalition and, therefore, resisted more to the Common, perhaps because it was spoken in inaccessible areas.

The first writer to mention the existence of a special Tsakonian dialect is Mazaris in the 15th century. He considers the Tsakonian barbaric Laconians but the few words he cites as an example are not Tsakonian. According to sources, the Tsakonian spoken in the past by dialectic populations on the southern coast of Hellespont. The Tsakonian idiom of Propontis had several influences from the northern idioms of Thrace, and therefore is placed closest to the modern Greek common.

If he had a large number of speakers, a strong literary tradition and administrative autonomy, which would lead to recognition and school teaching, it could be classified as a separate Greek language in contrast to dialects such as Pontian, Cappadocian and Kato. Its modern vocabulary has been greatly influenced by official Greek.

The first mention of the dialect is made in 1668 by Turkish traveler Evliya Tselebis, who recorded a few words. In the 1907 census, the Tsakonika were declared as a main language of 823 people. According to more recent reports (1981, J. Werner), Tsakonia spoke in 1981 by about 300 people. There are still reports of 2,000 elderly speakers, whose first descendants have only passive knowledge of the dialect. Today the dialect is to disappear, according to the UNESCO list.

His camera where there is Greece traveled to the picturesque Leonidio of Arcadia and talked to the people who are struggling daily, so as not to erase this special and separate Greek dialect. And the dedication of the younger speakers of the Tsakonian dialect is moving …