History UsefulNotes / GreekLanguage

The language of Creator/{{Homer}}, Creator/{{Sappho}}, Creator/{{Sophocles}} and Creator/{{Plato}}, not to mention every other poet, writer and playwright of UsefulNotes/AncientGreece, as well as the language of the New Testament of Literature/TheBible and the UsefulNotes/ByzantineEmpire. \\\

Since Western Civilization is based on the culture of Ancient Greece and on UsefulNotes/{{Christianity}} (whose scriptures were written in Greek), Ancient Greek literature is very important indeed. The term "Ancient Greek" is a catch-all for the periods and dialects of Greek spoken up till around the fifth century AD. Of course Greek did not die out, but evolved into Medieval Greek and then the Modern Greek spoken today. However, Ancient Greek is considered a "dead" language, since it no longer has any native speakers.\\\

Unlike English, Ancient Greek is an inflecting language, meaning that grammatical information is primarily indicated through the forms of nouns and verbs, rather than through word order. In fact, Greek word order is extremely free; the subject, object and verb of a sentence may be placed in any order, and the order chosen conveys nuance and emphasis rather than grammatical information. In this respect Greek is very similar to Latin, and in fact the two languages have a lot in common. This isn't because they are that closely related to each other, but more because their grammars both conserve many features of Proto-Indo-European, their mutual ancestor.\\\

Ancient Greek has been and still is one of the most widely studied languages in the West, because of the importance of its literature, history, and religious writings, as well as for the information it gives us about the Proto-Indo-European language, the common ancestor of most languages spoken in Europe.It was traditionally studied after [[UsefulNotes/LatinLanguage Latin]], which is more familiar in terms of vocabulary and less menacing in grammatical complexity. Nowadays, few students learn Greek at all, especially in high school.\\\

The ancients only used the uppercase letters; the lowercase forms are later developments. In addition, there were many different variant forms of the alphabet. The form presented here was originally the Ionic Alphabet. It was adopted in Athens around 402 BC, and went on to become the standard throughout Greece. If you're wondering why English uses H and X for totally different sounds than the standard Greek alphabet,
it's because the Latin alphabet doesn't derive from the Ionic alphabet, but from an Etruscan adaptation of a dialectal alphabet used in Italy, where H and X had the values they do in the Latin alphabet.\\\

The pronunciation given here is intended to be that of 5th century Attic. However, be warned that few teachers or students of Greek attempt to follow the reconstructed pronunciation, but use pronunciations following various traditions, often influenced by later Greek. In particular, few attempt to use the aspirate pronunciations of '''th ph ch'''. Fortunately for us, early Greek writing was obsessively phonetic; the concept of standard spelling that differed from pronunciation had not fully developed yet, so everyone just wrote how they spoke. Therefore, there are no silent letters, or multiple distinct pronunciations of the same letter (mostly).\\\

The vowels '''a i y''' can be short or long; the distinction isn't indicated in writing. On the other hand, '''e o''' are always short, and '''ê ô''' are always long. All diphthongs (sequences of vowels pronounced together) are long.\\\

Thus '''au''' is pronounced like the vowel of "house." There are two apparent diphthongs that are actually just long vowels: '''ei''', which is a long version of '''e''', and '''ou''', which represents that "moon" vowel.\\\

The three diphthongs '''êi''', '''ôi''', and long '''ai''', when lowercase, are typically written in an unusual way; the '''i''' is written small underneath the first vowel, as ῃ ῳ ᾳ. This is called "iota subscript."\\\

Ancient Greek was originally written with uppercase letters only, with no other adornments. Modern texts use a complicated system of diacritics invented in the Middle Ages to indicate breathing and accents. "Breathing" is simply whether or not a vowel is preceded by an ''h'' sound, which was not indicated in the Ionic Alphabet, even though it was a phonological distinction of Ancient Greek.\\\

but with an increase in pitch. (Stressed syllables in English are higher pitched, but it's not the primary distinction.)
Sometimes this gets presented as "Ancient Greek was a tonal language like Chinese", or, worse, "Ancient Greek was sung, not spoken."
Neither of these is quite true; the Greek pitch accent is structurally more similar to English than to Chinese,
in that accent is a feature of a word or group of words, not of individual syllables.
And poetry and music all ignore the pitch accent almost completely, preferring to base their organization on syllable ''length'', so take from that what you will.

-> ''"Naturally I am biased in favour of boys learning English. I would make them all learn English: and then I would let the clever ones learn Latin as an honour, and Greek as a treat."''

-> ''"Graecum est, non potest legi"''

[[/folder]]

The language of Creator/{{Homer}}, Creator/{{Sappho}}, Creator/{{Sophocles}}, and Creator/{{Plato}}, not to mention every other poet, writer and playwright of UsefulNotes/AncientGreece, as well as the language of the New Testament of Literature/TheBible. \\\

Since Western Civilization is based on the culture of Ancient Greece and on UsefulNotes/{{Christianity}}, Ancient Greek literature is very important indeed. The term "Ancient Greek" is a catch-all for the periods and dialects of Greek spoken up till around the fifth century AD. Of course Greek did not die out, but evolved into Medieval Greek and then the Modern Greek spoken today. However, Ancient Greek is considered a "dead" language, since it no longer has any native speakers.\\\

Since you asked: it's not as remarkable as people make it sound. Greek does indeed have multiple words for love; four, in fact.
The most common are '''philia''' and '''erôs'''. '''Philia''' basically means "friendship", and is derived from the word '''philos''' "friend".
The associated verb '''phileô''' is used for all sorts of liking and loving, including possibly the romantic kind;
it can also mean "to show affection" or "to kiss". '''Erôs''' is associated more with sexual desire, but it's used for many other kinds of love as well.
In general, '''philia''' and '''erôs''' are not strict terms for specific kinds of love, but are used for many purposes in different contexts.
Much like the English word "love", for that matter.
(As a side note, by these meanings the usage of "X-philia" in English to mean "a sexual fetish for X" is etymologically inaccurate;
the old-fashioned forms like "pederasty" are more accurate to the Greek.)

The other two words for love are '''agapê''' and '''storgê'''. These two aren't especially common in Classical writing;
'''agapê''' is notable for being the word used in the New Testament for God's love, and generally covers charity and good will.

The language of Creator/{{Homer}}, Creator/{{Sappho}}, Creator/{{Sophocles}}, and Creator/{{Plato}}, not to mention every other poet, writer and playwright of UsefulNotes/AncientGreece, as well as the language of the New Testament of Literature/TheBible. \\
Since Western Civilization is based on the culture of Ancient Greece and on UsefulNotes/{{Christianity}}, Ancient Greek literature is very important indeed. The term "Ancient Greek" is a catch-all for the periods and dialects of Greek spoken up till around the fifth century AD. Of course Greek did not die out, but evolved into Medieval Greek and then the Modern Greek spoken today. However, Ancient Greek is considered a "dead" language, since it no longer has any native speakers.\\

Unlike English, Ancient Greek is an inflecting language, meaning that grammatical information is primarily indicated through the forms of nouns and verbs, rather than through word order. In fact, Greek word order is extremely free; the subject, object and verb of a sentence may be placed in any order, and the order chosen conveys nuance and emphasis rather than grammatical information. In this respect Greek is very similar to Latin, and in fact the two languages have a lot in common. This isn't because they are that closely related to each other, but more because their grammars both conserve many features of Proto-Indo-European, their mutual ancestor.\\

Ancient Greek has been and still is one of the most widely studied languages in the West, because of the importance of its literature, history, and religious writings, as well as for the information it gives us about the Proto-Indo-European language, the common ancestor of most languages spoken in Europe.It was traditionally studied after [[UsefulNotes/LatinLanguage Latin]], which is more familiar in terms of vocabulary and less menacing in grammatical complexity. Nowadays, few students learn Greek at all, especially in high school.\\

it's because the Latin alphabet doesn't derive from the Ionic alphabet, but from an Etruscan adaptation of a dialectal alphabet used in Italy, where H and X had the values they do in the Latin alphabet.\\

The pronunciation given here is intended to be that of 5th century Attic. However, be warned that few teachers or students of Greek attempt to follow the reconstructed pronunciation, but use pronunciations following various traditions, often influenced by later Greek. In particular, few attempt to use the aspirate pronunciations of '''th ph ch'''. Fortunately for us, early Greek writing was obsessively phonetic; the concept of standard spelling that differed from pronunciation had not fully developed yet, so everyone just wrote how they spoke. Therefore, there are no silent letters, or multiple distinct pronunciations of the same letter (mostly).\\

The vowels '''a i y''' can be short or long; the distinction isn't indicated in writing. On the other hand, '''e o''' are always short, and '''ê ô''' are always long. All diphthongs (sequences of vowels pronounced together) are long.\\

Thus '''au''' is pronounced like the vowel of "house." There are two apparent diphthongs that are actually just long vowels: '''ei''', which is a long version of '''e''', and '''ou''', which represents that "moon" vowel.\\

The three diphthongs '''êi''', '''ôi''', and long '''ai''', when lowercase, are typically written in an unusual way; the '''i''' is written small underneath the first vowel, as ῃ ῳ ᾳ. This is called "iota subscript."\\

Ancient Greek was originally written with uppercase letters only, with no other adornments. Modern texts use a complicated system of diacritics invented in the Middle Ages to indicate breathing and accents. "Breathing" is simply whether or not a vowel is preceded by an ''h'' sound, which was not indicated in the Ionic Alphabet, even though it was a phonological distinction of Ancient Greek.\\

One very important thing to understand about Ancient Greek is that it was never a monolithic language, but a group of related dialects, which were associated both with specific regions, and, importantly, with different kinds of literature. Most of those dialects are only known through local inscriptions. Only a handful have survived in literature.\\

Ionic Greek, in turn, is a widespread dialect very similar to Attic. In fact, the two are often referred to collectively as "Attic-Ionic." Herodotus wrote Literature/TheHistories in Ionic. Ionic is also the primary basis of Homeric Greek, the dialect used by, well, Homer. No one ever spoke Homeric Greek in conversation; it's an artificial mixture of dialects used exclusively in poetry. A side effect of this is that there are often many alternate ways of forming the same word. In Attic, if you want to say "to be" you say '''einai'''; if you're Homer, you can take your pick from '''einai''', '''emmenai''', '''emenai''', '''emmen''', or '''emen'''. This variation is very helpful when you're trying to write metered poetry. Homeric Greek is also rather archaic, which shows itself in all kinds of odd ways. Most noticeably, he doesn't use the article much, and when he does he often uses it in ways not consistent with later usage.\\

Since Western Civilization is based on the culture of Ancient Greece and on UsefulNotes/{{Christianity}}, Ancient Greek literature is very important indeed.
The term "Ancient Greek" is a catch-all for the periods and dialects of Greek spoken up till around the fifth century AD. Of course Greek did not die out, but evolved into Medieval Greek and then the Modern Greek spoken today. However, Ancient Greek is considered a "dead" language, since it no longer has any native speakers.

Unlike English, Ancient Greek is an inflecting language, meaning that grammatical information is primarily indicated through the forms of nouns and verbs, rather than through word order. In fact, Greek word order is extremely free; the subject, object and verb of a sentence may be placed in any order, and the order chosen conveys nuance and emphasis rather than grammatical information.
In this respect Greek is very similar to Latin, and in fact the two languages have a lot in common.
This isn't because they are that closely related to each other, but more because their grammars both conserve many features of Proto-Indo-European, their mutual ancestor.

Ancient Greek has been and still is one of the most widely studied languages in the West,
because of the importance of its literature, history, and religious writings, as well as for the information it gives us about the Proto-Indo-European language, the common ancestor of most languages spoken in Europe.
It was traditionally studied after [[UsefulNotes/LatinLanguage Latin]], which is more familiar in terms of vocabulary and less menacing in grammatical complexity.
Nowadays, few students learn Greek at all, especially in high school.

it's because the Latin alphabet doesn't derive from the Ionic alphabet, but from an Etruscan adaptation of a dialectal alphabet used in Italy, where H and X had the values they do in the Latin alphabet.

The pronunciation given here is intended to be that of 5th century Attic. However, be warned that few teachers or students of Greek attempt to follow the reconstructed pronunciation, but use pronunciations following various traditions, often influenced by later Greek. In particular, few attempt to use the aspirate pronunciations of '''th ph ch'''. Fortunately for us, early Greek writing was obsessively phonetic; the concept of standard spelling that differed from pronunciation had not fully developed yet, so everyone just wrote how they spoke. Therefore, there are no silent letters, or multiple distinct pronunciations of the same letter (mostly).

The vowels '''a i y''' can be short or long; the distinction isn't indicated in writing. On the other hand, '''e o''' are always short, and '''ê ô''' are always long. All diphthongs (sequences of vowels pronounced together) are long.

Thus '''au''' is pronounced like the vowel of "house." There are two apparent diphthongs that are actually just long vowels: '''ei''', which is a long version of '''e''', and '''ou''', which represents that "moon" vowel.

The three diphthongs '''êi''', '''ôi''', and long '''ai''', when lowercase, are typically written in an unusual way;
the '''i''' is written small underneath the first vowel, as ῃ ῳ ᾳ. This is called "iota subscript."

Ancient Greek was originally written with uppercase letters only, with no other adornments.
Modern texts use a complicated system of diacritics invented in the Middle Ages to indicate breathing and accents.
"Breathing" is simply whether or not a vowel is preceded by an ''h'' sound, which was not indicated in the Ionic Alphabet,
even though it was a phonological distinction of Ancient Greek.

One very important thing to understand about Ancient Greek is that it was never a monolithic language, but a group of related dialects,
which were associated both with specific regions, and, importantly, with different kinds of literature.
Most of those dialects are only known through local inscriptions.
Only a handful have survived in literature.

Ionic Greek, in turn, is a widespread dialect very similar to Attic. In fact, the two are often referred to collectively as "Attic-Ionic." Herodotus wrote Literature/TheHistories in Ionic. Ionic is also the primary basis of Homeric Greek, the dialect used by, well, Homer. No one ever spoke Homeric Greek in conversation; it's an artificial mixture of dialects used exclusively in poetry. A side effect of this is that there are often many alternate ways of forming the same word. In Attic, if you want to say "to be" you say '''einai'''; if you're Homer, you can take your pick from '''einai''', '''emmenai''', '''emenai''', '''emmen''', or '''emen'''. This variation is very helpful when you're trying to write metered poetry. Homeric Greek is also rather archaic, which shows itself in all kinds of odd ways. Most noticeably, he doesn't use the article much, and when he does he often uses it in ways not consistent with later usage.

The ancients only used the uppercase letters; the lowercase forms are later developments. In addition, there were many different variant forms of the alphabet.
The form presented here was originally the Ionic Alphabet. It was adopted in Athens around 402 BC, and went on to become the standard throughout Greece.
If you're wondering why English uses H and X for totally different sounds than the standard Greek alphabet,
it's because the Latin alphabet doesn't derive from the Ionic alphabet, but from an Etruscan adaptation of a dialectal alphabet used in Italy,
where H and X had the values they do in the Latin alphabet.

Pronunciation is a bit of a tricky issue, since "Ancient Greek" covers a millennium of linguistic change, all before tape recorders,
but we actually have a pretty good idea of how certain dialects of Ancient Greek were pronounced.
The pronunciation given here is intended to be that of 5th century Attic.
However, be warned that few teachers or students of Greek attempt to follow the reconstructed pronunciation,
but use pronunciations following various traditions, often influenced by later Greek.
In particular, few attempt to use the aspirate pronunciations of '''th ph ch'''.
Fortunately for us, early Greek writing was obsessively phonetic; the concept of standard spelling that differed from pronunciation had not fully developed yet,
so everyone just wrote how they spoke. Therefore, there are no silent letters, or multiple distinct pronunciations of the same letter (mostly).

The vowels are of two kinds, short and long.
Long and short vowels differ only in the length of the sound.
The vowels '''a i y''' can be short or long; the distinction isn't indicated in writing.
On the other hand, '''e o''' are always short, and '''ê ô''' are always long.
All diphthongs (sequences of vowels pronounced together) are long.

Speaking of diphthongs, there are quite a few. So '''ai''' is pronunced like "eye" and '''oi''' as in "coin".

Thus '''au''' is pronounced like the vowel of "house."
There are two apparent diphthongs that are actually just long vowels: '''ei''', which is a long version of '''e''',
and '''ou''', which represents that "moon" vowel.

Ionic Greek, in turn, is a widespread dialect very similar to Attic. In fact, the two are oftened referred to collectively as "Attic-Ionic."
Herodotus wrote Literature/TheHistories in Ionic.
Ionic is also the primary basis of Homeric Greek, the dialect used by, well, Homer. No one ever spoke Homeric Greek in conversation;
it's an artificial mixture of dialects used exclusively in poetry. A side effect of this is that there are often many alternate ways of forming the same word.
In Attic, if you want to say "to be" you say '''einai'''; if you're Homer, you can take your pick from '''einai''', '''emmenai''', '''emenai''', '''emmen''', or '''emen'''.
This variation is very helpful when you're trying to write metered poetry.
Homeric Greek is also rather archaic, which shows itself in all kinds of odd ways.
Most noticeably, he doesn't use the article much, and when he does he often uses it in ways not consistent with later usage.

Nowadays few students learn Greek at all, especially in high school.

The term "Ancient Greek" is a catch-all for the periods and dialects of Greek spoken up till around the fifth century AD.
Of course Greek did not die out, but evolved into Medieval Greek and then the Modern Greek spoken today.
However, Ancient Greek is considered a "dead" language, since it no longer has any native speakers.

The language of Creator/{{Homer}}, Creator/{{Sappho}}, Creator/{{Sophocles}}, and Creator/{{Plato}},
not to mention every other poet, writer and playwright of UsefulNotes/AncientGreece, as well as the language of the New Testament of Literature/TheBible. \\

not to mention every other poet, writer and playwright of Ancient Greece, as well as the language of the New Testament of Literature/TheBible.
Since Western Civilization is based on the culture of UsefulNotes/AncientGreece and on UsefulNotes/{{Christianity}},
Ancient Greek literature is very important indeed.

Unlike English, Ancient Greek is an inflecting language, meaning that grammatical information is primarily indicated through the forms of nouns and verbs,
rather than through word order. In fact, Greek word order is extremely free; the subject, object and verb of a sentence may be placed in any order,
and the order chosen conveys nuance and emphasis rather than grammatical information.

This isn't because they are that closely related to each other, but more because their grammars both conserve many features of Proto-Indo-European,
their mutual ancestor.