298 PROCEEDINGS OF THE AMERICAN ACADEMY 



On the eastern shores of Peloponnesus there is a small district 

 called Tzakoma, or Tzakonid (in three syllables). It is contained in 

 the ancient Gynuria, which lay between Argolis and Laconia.* The 

 language spoken by the inhabitants of this region is unintelligible to 

 those whose mother tongue is the Romaic. To the philologist it is 

 nothing more than a very barbarous Romaic. In the common lan- 

 guage of the Greeks, the corruptions or changes are in a great meas- 

 ure systematic, and it is very easy for the critical schotar to trace 

 them to their medianal and ancient sources. But the dialect of Tza- 

 konia is apparently a jargon, in the usual acceptation of the term. It 

 is broken Greek. Many of its roots, indeed, are traceable to the 

 Greek, but its inflections usually deviate from the Gi'eek type. In 

 short, it is not a regularly developed modern Greek patois. And 

 the question is, when and under what circumstances it came into 

 being. 



In investigating the affinities of a language, one of the first requisites 

 is to examine its pronouns, pronominal adjectives, pronominal adverbs, 

 numerals, case-endings, and personal endings (which are in reality 

 fragmentary pronouns). These elements constitute its essential char- 

 actei'istics. And when a language loses them, it loses, as it were, its 

 consciousness. If we apply this rule to the language of Tzakonid, it 

 will be found that many or most of these characteristics are so ditierent 

 from those of the Romaic, and their resemblance to the corresponding 

 words in Greek is so general, that they may be referred to more than 

 one of the Indo-European languages. Thus, its word for eyi> is i a ov , 

 which has the elements of the ecclesiastical Slavic af. For av it has 

 eKtov (in two syllables), and for ri, r^es, which does not ditfer from 

 the Slavic tshea-6 . 



Some scholars fancy they discover Doricisms and lonicisms in this 

 dialect ; and by a natural process of reasoning they infer that the Tza- 

 koniots are a remnant of the ancient Cynurians, an aboriginal people, 

 whom Herodotus was inclined to regard as Doricized Juiiians, that is, 

 lonians who in the course of time adopted the manners, customs, laws, 



* The villages in which this dialect is spoken are the following : fj Kaora- 

 viT^a, T] SiVei/a, to Upaarov, to Afft'St, to MeXavov, to Aepou, to KaXv/3(a tov 

 ayiov 'AuSpeov, to. Kovvovnia. The original forms of SiVfi-a, Upaarov, and 

 Aen'St are npodareiov, Atavibas, and 6 2lTavas, all found in Phi{ANTZES, 

 p. 159. 



