Pontic

Pontic Greeks are the Greek-speaking people of the Pontus, the southern Black Sea coast of Anatolia, where Greek colonies were founded from the 7th-6th centuries BC and where the Empire of Trebizond survived until 1461. Their speech, Pontic Greek (Romeyka), descends from Hellenistic Greek and developed apart from the other Greek dialects. Under Ottoman rule part of the population, especially in the valleys around Of, Sürmene and Tonya, became Muslim while keeping the language. Christian Pontic Greeks suffered massacres and deportations in 1916-1923 and were sent to Greece in the 1923 population exchange; others had moved to Russia and Georgia since the 18th century. Today most Pontic Greeks are Orthodox Christians in Greece and the former Soviet Union, while a few thousand Muslim Romeyka speakers remain in Trabzon.

Pontic culture is known for the kemenche (three-stringed fiddle), circle dances such as the horon (Greek: tik, serra), lyrical laments and strong regional associations. Christian Pontians in Greece keep the memory of the homeland through associations, festivals and the annual remembrance of the 1916-1923 killings on 19 May; the Soumela monastery near Maçka draws pilgrims each 15 August. In Trabzon the Muslim speakers share eastern Black Sea village life: hazelnut and tea gardens, summer pastures and the same kemençe and horon.

Pontic Greeks abroad are Eastern Orthodox, with the Panagia Soumela icon as a focus of devotion. Türkiye's Romeyka speakers are devout Sunni Hanafi Muslims who converted under the Ottomans, mostly in the 17th-19th centuries; the crypto-Christian Stavriotes of Gümüşhane, who lived outwardly as Muslims, left in 1923-24.

Pontic has no Bible translation or GRN recordings; Orthodox Pontians use Greek or Russian Scripture, and Türkiye's Muslim speakers use Turkish. The Cambridge-led Crowdsourcing Romeyka platform collects recordings of the language but has no religious content.