Ancient Greek Language

The Greek language is unique.

The Greek language has an attested continuity rare in the linguistic history of mankind.

The primitive language of the Mycenaeans (the heroes described several centuries later in the Homeric poems) is now known, though imperfectly, from the "Linear B" tablets found at Knossos and on the Greek mainland and deciphered in 1952.

Though their date is controversial, they are at least as old as the l3th century B.C. Classical Greek, which flourished between 750 and 350 B.C., shows a rich and varied expressiveness, accomodating the simplicity and grandeur of Homer, the dense syntax and bold metaphors of Aeschylus, the complex antitheses of Euripides and Thucydides, and the exuberant lexical inventiveness of Aristophanes.

From about 350 B.C. to 330 A.D., Attic Greek was the basis of a common language (Koine) used throughout Greece and conquered territories.

In Byzantine Greek (330-1453 A.D.) the pronunciation, syntax, and morphology of the ancient language were simplified and the vocabulary much changed, and these alterations continued into modern Greek. Yet, for all these changes, the basic structure of Greek has remained remarkably conservative.

By about 1600 B.C., the opening of the Late Helladic or Mycenaean age, the population of Greece was dominantly Greek (Hellenic).

Before that time, Greece and the islands had a population termed Aegean, and thought to be akin to the inhabitants of Asia Minor.

As progress is made in deciphering the languages of Asia Minor, it becomes increasingly evident that a number of them (of which Hittite is the only one already well-known) belong to a single group that may be called Anatolian; Whether the Aegean people�s language was related to Anatolian or not, it cannot be asserted: inscriptions found on Crete in an unknown linear- script ("Linear A"), inscriptions found on Cyprus in a syllabary closely resembling "Linear B" (which has been deciphered as Greek), and an inscription from Lemnos in a language that seems related to Etruscan, remains undeciphered.

Attempts have been made to relate the Minoan language to the Semitic, but without results. Whoever they were, the Helladic and other Aegean peoples were overcome by the invading Hellenes.

The conditions portrayed in the Homeric epics are largely those that presumably prevailed before the coming of the Dorians about 1200 B.C. It used to be widely believed that Ionians, Achaeans, Aeolians - the pre-Dorian speakers (or Mycenaeans) - followed one another in successive waves.

But modern scholarship is favoring a single wave of Greek speakers and a north-south division of settlement.

The southern Greeks (the Ionians and Achaeans) held mainland Greece possibly as far north as Boeoti�, many of the islands (including Cyprus, Rhodes, and perhaps for a time Crete), and areas on the south Anatolian coast.

The northern Greeks (the Dorians in the extreme north and the Aeolians) held the rest of northern and northeastern Greece (with the possible but problematic exception of Achaean Phthia or Phthiotis), Lesbos, and parts of the north Anatolian coast.

The southward movement of the Dorians about 1200 B.C. forced these Aeolian peoples into the mountains of Arcadia and toward the east, thus creating the later division between East Greek (Arcado-Cypriot, Aeolic, Attic-Ionic, and derivatives) and West Greek (Doric and derivatives) .

West Greek supplanted Aeolic in Phocis, Locris, and Aetolia and mingled with it in Boeotia and to some extend in Thessaly.

The dialects were now localized in the districts that they were to continue to occupy throughout their existence. So long as Greece remained independent, its various regional dialects were also independent, and no dialect became standard or official; each community used its own dialect in all its state documents.

Because of the importance of Athens in both politics and literature, its speech was destined to play an especially prominent part; but the custom of treating 5th and 4th century Attic as the standard form of Greek, and divergencies from it in other dialects as abnormalities, while it may be convenient pedagogically, is indefensible linguistically.

The Greek dialects are as follows:

  • Attic-Ionic: subdivided into Ionic, including East Ionic, in the Ionian cities along the coast of Asia Minor(for example, Ephesus) , in the adjacent islands (as in Samos and Chios), and in their colonies; Central Ionic, in the Cyclades (as in Delos); and West Ionic, in Euboea (as in Chalcis, in Eretria and in the colonies of Chalcis in Italy, Sicily and Chalcidice); and Attic, in Attica, notably Athens.

  • Achaean: subdivided into Arcadian, in Arcadia (for example, Tegea and Mantinea); Cyprian, in Cyprus (as in Idalizzm, the modern Dali); and Pamphylian.

  • Aeolic: subdivided into Lesbian in Lesbos, a few other islands and the neighboring Asiatic coast; Thessalian, in Pelasgiotis, Thessaliotis, Phthiotis (where however, West Greek was largely used) and elsewhere; and Boeotian, in Boeotia (as in Thebes and Orchomenus).

  • Doric: found in the Peloponnesus, central Greece and colonies east and west, subdivided into Laconian-Heraclean, in Laconia and its Italian colonies Tarentum (modern Tar�nto) and Heraclea; Messenian, in Messenia; Argolic, in Argolis (for example, Argos and Mycenae), in the Acte peninsula (as in Epidaurus) and in Aegina; Megarian, in Megara and its colonies, in the east (as in Byzantium), and in Sicily (as in Selinus); Corinthian, in Corinth (as in Corinth and Sicyon), and the Corinthian colonies, such as Syracuse, (modern Siracusa) in Sicily, and Corcyra (modern Corfu); Rhodian, in Rhodes and the neighboring islands, in Peraea and Phaselis on the mainland, and in the Sicilian colonies Gela and Agrigentum (modern Agrigento); Theran-Melian, in Thera, in Cyrene in Africa and in Melos; Coan-Calymnian, in Cos (Kos) and Calymna (Kalymnos); and Cretan, in Crete, notably Gortyna.

  • Northwest Greek: subdivided into Phocian, in Phocis, notably Delphi; Locrian, in Locris (for example, Oeanthea); and Elean, in Elis (Olympia exclusively). (Presumably the dialects of Epirus, Acarnania, and Aetolia in northern Greece, and possibly that of Achaea in the Peloponnesus belonged to this group, but evidence is lacking.)

    All five dialectal groups are abundantly recorded in inscriptions, some perhaps as early as the 8th century B.C.; but only three are represented in literature: Ionic, Aeolic, and Doric. Homeric, an artificial literary language not reflecting any spoken dialect, is fundamentally Old Ionic, with an admixture of Aeolic. With some modifications, Hesiod used the language of Homer.

    Attic formed the basis of the common language, or Koine, par excellence (a Doric Koine and the Northwest Greek Koine of the Aetolian League had no permanent influence).

    The Attic Koine was employed in Hellenistic times throughout the lands conquered by Alexander the Great; it is the language of the Septuagint and of the New Testament, and its use facilitated the spread of Christianity. Naturally, a lapse of two millenia is bound to produce enormous changes in any living language.

    But when the l9th century restored to Hellas the freedom lost under Philip II and Alexander, the Greeks were led by justifiable pride in past glories, and understandable exultation in new liberties, to try to restore their language to its ancient state, and thus gave it an artificial form, the Katharevusa (Katharevousa) which as written, though not as pronounced, would have been intelligible to Plato.

    - Chris Cos

    
    
    
    
    
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