During the Genoese and later the Turkish Occupation, Southern Chios was a
restricted area. Nobody could go there, unless there was a serious
reason for that. That isolation allowed villagers of Mastihohoria to
maintain their traditional values and customs unaltered. Furthermore,
each separate village, confined within its walls, formed a small world
of its own. That probably explains the paradox why in such a
geographically limited space, neighbouring villages are so different as
to their local costumes, their customs but mainly their dialect. Every
village has its own accent, often its own words. In those villages that
are closer to Chios town, their divergences were gradually erased as
years went by, but in the most remote ones, there are still manifest
differences as to local dialect.
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