Read this post only if you’re a linguistics geek like me…

One of the more interesting elements of Bulutlari Beklerken (Waiting for the Clouds)—the film I saw with Joe and friends last Friday—was the use of Pontic Greek (Ποντιακά), the dialect spoken by the Greeks from the southern coast of the Black Sea (also referred to as Pontos/Trebizond, or Trabzon in Turkish). I had known about the existence of a Pontic Greek dialect, which evolved independently of the language spoken by the Greeks living in Greece and Western Asia Minor, but had never actually heard it spoken until last week. Because of its relative isolation, it is said to have preserved elements of ancient Greek. However, it is also generally recognized to have incorporated Turkish and Persian elements.

Admittedly, it was difficult for me to understand, though there were times when I could make out some of the words. I decided to do a bit of poking around on the web and found some interesting resources.

There’s a great lexicon comparing Pontic Greek with Modern Greek (along with English translations) on Pontos.gr, a web portal for the Pontic Greek diaspora. The site is in Greek, but the lexicon is easy enough to figure out. Also, Wikipedia has some useful information on the historic evolution of Pontic Greek with some interesting grammatical analysis and comparison to ancient Greek. Finally, I found the entry for Pontic Greek on ethnologue, which is a really cool site in its own right.