ABSTRACT
The fact of the geographical diversity of languages is one of the first observations known to have been made about language. The Greeks were aware that there were a number of different mutually comprehensible idioms, which they themselves termed ‘dialects’, which could all be designated as ‘Greek’ and each of which was used in a particular region, cf. Saussure (1973:262), Haugen (1972:238) and Hudson (1980:31). This linguistic and cultural bond served to distinguish them from alien peoples, the ‘barbarians’, who were defined by the fact that they did not speak Greek.
