File talk:AncientGreekDialects (Woodard) en.svg

I would like to make some observations about this map, which has a good level of accuracy. First of all, Thessalian and Beotian should not be so easily included under the aeolic branch. Thessaly was indeed inhabited by approximately fifteen aeolic tribes but many of these people were forced to move eastwards to the island of Lesbos and Aeolia by their Thessalian conquerors. The three tribes Thessalians, Beotians and Athamanes were probably speaking western greek with some aeolic influence. Athamanes stayed in the mountains of Pindus, Thessalians organized Thessaly in four regions of their own and peripherically many smaller aeolic puppet states which they controlled. Beotians moved south after some collisions with Thessalians. The division of greek dialects between western, central and southern has to do with their relative position when the presumambly indoeuropean speaking greek population entered the peninsula: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/fd/Proto_Greek_Area_reconstruction.png Even this map shows a wider spread of what they initially had. So the term southern would be preferable to the term eastern when referring to the attic-ionic group. Later, the Athenians made their way up to Chalkidiki and Thrace in search of wood for their ships so they made some colonies there. Macedonian did not exist as a separate language family, unlike Illyrian or Thracian. It is best included as a western speaking dialect of greek. Macedonians moved north and conquered Thracian tribes, whereas their relatives Magnetes choosed to move south to the Pelion mountain. Lydian and Carian could be included in the Anatolian branch of the Indoeuropean family of languages where they both belonged. Also, we should be reluctant to mark Cephalonia, Zacynthos and Achaea as doric. They should be no different from the rest of western dialects and so is doric. Actually Dorians could be best described as a confederation of western speaking greek tribes which united in the area of Focida or Pindus and made their invasion in Peloponnesus. At some point in ancient greek history, the southern island of Melos in Cyclades complex was attacked and its population was slaughtered by the Athenians upon rejecting a ultimatum, so I guess that it was later replaced by ionic. Dorian and the rest invaders found an achaean substratum of central dialectical extract which was responsible for the campaign in Troy. Modern day Tsakonian dialect is the only survivor of doric and its native speakers come from ancient Spartan slaves who were able to maintain the language which was imposed on them due to the highly mountainous terrain of northeastern Laconia. Ionian sea name is unrelated to Ionians, since they are written differently in greek. Source for all these have been solely the volumes B and C1 of the greek version of the "History of the Greek Nation" by Εkdotike Αthenon.