| Group | Greek |
| Geography | Ionic was the dialect of the numerous islands of the Aegean Sea: Cyclades, Sporades etc. Its speakers also inhabited the central part of the shore of Asia Minor. Ionic polises were extremely active in migrations during the Great Colonization of the Mediterranean by Greeks since the 8th century BC. |
| History | Forms of Ionic dialects were a basis of the famous works written by Herodotus ("Historia") and numerous poets of Ancient Greece. In the epoch of Hellenism the Greek Koine (the common Greek written language) included a lot of Ionic features. |
| Phonetics | The Common Greek *á becomes *é (Ionic métér vs. Doric mátér 'mother'). About 8th century BC the sound *w was dropped: this was a widespread process in Greek but in Ionic it happened rather early. In general, Ionic was rather progressive in phonetics. |
| Morphology | One of specific Ionic traits was its system of personal pronouns in the plural: Ionic hémeis 'we' vs. Doric hames). As for the verb, Ionic athematic infinitives seem interesting having the ending -nai (e.g. didonai 'to give'). Iterative (habitual) forms of the verb were used in colloquial speech with the suffix -sk-, an archaic Indo-European element. |
| Lexicon | The vocabulary of Ionic was quite rich and is well known from the poetry. |
| Writing | Greek alphabet |
| Close Contacts | One of the varieties of Ionic was the Attic dialects of Athens which early developed a few important peculiarities. |
| Sample | Λεγουσιν α'ι γυναικες
"Aνακρεων γερων ει. λαβων εσοπτρον αθρεις κομας μεν ουκ ετ' ουσας ψιλον δε σευ μετωπον. The girls said:
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