Varieties of Modern Greek

Northern vocalism (high vowel loss). In the north, unstressed (/i/ and /u/) are typically deleted (e.g. [skon] vs. standard [ˈskoni]) 'dust'). Unstressed mid vowels (/e/ and /o/) are raised to [i] and [u] instead (e.g. [piˈði] vs. standard [peˈði] 'child'). Subtypes of this phenomenon can be distinguished as follows: in "Extreme Northern" dialects these two processes apply throughout. In mid "Northern" dialects the deletion of /i/ and /u/ applies only to word-final vowels. "Semi-Northern" dialects only have the deletion of word-final /i/ and /u/, but not the raising of /e/ and /o/.^[49] The latter include Mykonos, Skiros, Lefkada and the urban dialect of the Greeks of Constantinople.

Palatalisation. Standard Greek has an alternation between velar consonants ([k], [ɡ], [x], [ɣ]) and palatalised counterparts (([c], [ɟ], [ç], [ʝ]) before front vowels (/i/, /e/). In southern dialects, the palatalisation goes further towards affricates (e.g. [tʃe] vs. standard [ce] 'and'). Subtypes can be distinguished that have either palato-alveolar ([tʃ], [dʒ], [ʃ], [ʒ]) or alveolo-palatal sounds ([tɕ], [dʑ], [ɕ], [ʑ]). The former are reported for Cyprus, the latter for Crete, among others.^[50]

Tsitakism. In a core area in which the palatalisation process has gone even further, covering mainly the , palatalised /k/ is further fronted to alveolar [t͡s] and thus merges with the original phoneme /t͡s/.^[51] This phenomenon is known in Greek as tsitakism (τσιτακισμός). It was also shared by Old Athenian.

Ypsilon. A highly archaic feature shared by Tsakonian, the dialect, and the Old Athenian enclave dialects, is the divergent treatment of historical /y/ (<υ>). While this sound merged to /i/ everywhere else, these dialects have /u/ instead (e.g. [ˈksulo] vs. standard [ˈksilo] 'wood').^[50]

Geminate consonants. Most Modern Greek varieties have lost the distinctively long () consonants found in Ancient Greek. However, the dialects of the south-eastern islands, including Cyprus, have preserved them, and even extended them to new environments such as word-initial positions. Thus, the word <ναι> 'yes' is pronounced with a distinctively long initial [nː] in Cypriot, and there are minimal pairs such as <φύλλο> [ˈfilːo] 'leaf' vs. <φύλο> [ˈfilo] 'gender', which are pronounced exactly the same in other dialects but distinguished by consonant length in Cypriot.^[52]

Dark /l/. A distinctive marker of modern northern vernaculars, especially of , is the use of a "dark" (velarised) [ɫ] sound.

Medial fricative deletion. Some dialects of the , especially in the Dodecanese, have a tendency of deleting intervocalic voiced fricatives /v/, /ð/, /ɣ/ (e.g. [meˈalo] vs. standard [meˈɣalo] 'big').^[53]

Nasals and voiced plosives. Dialects differ in their phonetic treatment of the result of the assimilation of plosives with preceding nasals. All dialects have a voicing of the plosive in this position, but while some dialects also have an audible segment of prenasalisation, others do not; thus <πομπός> (pompós) 'transmitter' may be realised as either [poˈᵐbos] or [poˈbos].^[54] Furthermore, prenasalisation tends to be preserved in more formal registers regardless of geography. In informal speech, it tends to be more common in northern varieties.

Lack of of -ía, éa > /ja/. Standard Greek and most dialects have a pattern whereby Ancient Greek /e/ or /i/ immediately before an accented (later stressed) vowel have turned into a non-syllabic glide /j/, for instance in <παιδιά> [peˈðʝa] 'children', from Ancient Greek <παιδία> [pa͜idía]. In some dialects this process has not taken place or has done so only partially. These dialects display either full preservation of [e, i], or a schwa sound [ə], leading to forms such as <φωλέα> [foˈle.a] 'nest' and <παιδία> [peˈði.a] 'children'. The phenomenon is common in Griko and Pontic. It is also reported in Mani and Kythira.^[55] On the other hand, in some dialects that have /j/, the glide gets further reduced and deleted after a preceding sibilant (/s, z/), leading to forms like <νησά> [niˈsa] 'islands' instead of standard <νησιά> [niˈsça] (de-palatalisation of sibilants^[56]).