How Did the Greek Language Evolve and Affect Other Languages

7/22/2019 How Did the Greek Language Evolve and Affect Other Languages

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Bethany Deibler

Dr. Owen Ewald

History of Classical Civilizations

10 December 2009

The History of the Greek Language

I. IntroductionIf Alexander the great were travel in time to present day Greece, would he be able to

communicate with modern Greeks using his ancient Greek? Would he understand them and

would they understand him? We all know that things change over time, including languages.

But how much change can occur before something is completely unrecognizable to someone

from the past? It depends on how quickly things change. Based on what we know about Greek

from Alexanders time, he would probably be able to understand most of the Greek he would

hear today and vice versa. Thus, the Greek language did not change as drastically as most other

languages. This paper will briefly mention the general history of each era of Greek. Second, it

will separately analyze the change that occurred in the phonology, morphology, and syntax of the

language.

II. Brief history of GreekThe Greek language started out in the Mycenaean civilization. The first evidence of

writing we have is from about 1300 BC. After that, Greek can be split into several time periods.

Ancient Greek, Koine, Medieval, and Modern Greek are four periods of the language. Ancient

Greek spans from about 800 to 330 B.C. The Greek empire was split into many small pieces at

different times throughout history, causing many different dialects throughout time. The three

main divisions of Greek dialects are West Greek, Archaean, and Attic-Ionic (Cowgill 77). When


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referring to Ancient Greek, this will most often be a reference to Attic, unless otherwise

mentioned for comparing purposes. This period also sometimes referred to as Classical Greek or

the Golden age of Greek. Homer wrote his epic poem near the beginning of this time. The

literature took off from there and a plethora of dramas, histories, and writings were created.

With Alexanders great expansion of Greece, the Greek language and culture went with him.

Soon a much larger area was speaking Greek. This brought about Koine Greek which

literally means common. It was spoken by all the common people and is most likely the

language that the New Testament was written in originally.

During the medieval times, Greek was continually used for literature. Many poems,

literature, stories, love poems, and plays were created. Much of the change of the language also

seems to have happened. We see this in Iakovos Trivolis poem that has three different words

for lion all in one poem (Browning 6). Greek continued to be used and currently there are about

12 million speakers of Modern Greek (Mackridge 1). It became the official language of the state

of Greece in 1821, at the time of its independence (Duff 10).

III. Phonology

It is difficult to know how Greek sounded in Ancient times due to the lack of technology

and methods of preserving it. It is a well-known problem that research on past forms of

language is hampered by the imperfect nature of the data; indeed it has been claimed that

historical linguistics is the art of making the best use of bad data.(Manolessou, 64)

Nevertheless, in The Sound of Greek,Stanford says that we have several ways to tell what

Ancient Greeks sounded like. First, Ancient Greeks spent time describing how certain letters

were pronounced. Dionysios describes the pronunciation of rho like this: It is sounded with

the tip of the tongue fanning out the breath and rising toward the palate near the teeth,


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(Stanford 122). Second, there are statements written about phonetic changes. Third, there are

documents that compare Latin pronunciation to Greek. Fourth, there are some transliterations

into other languages such as Latin, Persian, Hebrew, Coptic, and Gothic from Greek. Fifth,

some Greek authors compare the sounds of the language. For example, Thucydides is said to

have compared o plague with hunger. ...the sounds of o and were similar, but

not identical (Stanford123). Stanfords sixth point mentions that onomatopoeia was used in

poems which compare sounds. He also asserts that the Ancient Greeks had a more phonetically

dependent spelling system than Greek does today. While

these points help us discover what it may have sounded

like, we can never know for sure due to both the fact that

we have no recordings as well as the fact that language

changes daily from person to person.

The Ancient Greek alphabet and the Modern

Greek alphabet have the same twenty-four letters as

shown on the left (. The only differences are in the

sounds that they represent. The International Phonetic

Alphabet will be used to describe the sounds each letter

makes. The iota and the eta both make a [i] sound while

in Ancient Greek iota was [] while the eta was [e]. The

omicron and omega also sound the same today while

Ancient Greek distinguished the omicron [] from omega

[o]. Some of the consonants changed as well. As far as the writing, the theta is the only one

that looks different. The sigma now may sound like a [z] as well as the original [s] sound. The


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delta changed from a [d] to a []. The gamma changed from a [g] to a [] or [j] (Mackridge 16).

The rest of the consonant sounds did not change much if at all. However, these changes are not

so drastic that the language would be incomprehensible thousands of years later.

Like all languages, Greek had many different dialects through each time period. There

were variants of words and speech. For example, Elean was part of the Archaeic dialect and

Attic was also a separate dialect. The Eleans used different vowels in their writing. in Elean

was the same things as in Attic. This was consistent throughout the inscriptions of the two

dialects and may represent a disagreement in pronunciation as well. There were about 10 vowel

sounds in Ancient Greek. Even in the different dialects there were differing vowels. According

to Vt Bubenck in The Phonological Interpretation of Ancient Greek, Elean had three low

vowels and five front vowels while other dialects had only two low vowels and four front

vowels. There were also as many as nine diphthongs used in Attic (Bubenck 39).

As the Greeks expanded throughout the Middle East, koine was learned by many people

and went through a process of simplification as people learned it as a lingua franca. This shift

caused a vowel shift over the 9th

to 4th

centuries BC. The Greek language continued to develop

throughout the medieval times. During these times, the people continued to write using Attic, or

koine Greek, but did not keep up with the language as it changed. Eventually in the 12th

century,

the spoken language began to appear again as a commonly written language. This writing is

recognizable as Modern Greek, but with some minimal differences. There were more dialects at

that time than there are now. These were the main sources of the changes as the Greek language

had not yet assimilated into Modern Greek. As time moved on, the other dialects of Greek

slowly disappeared, leaving us with what the Greeks now call Standard Modern Greek that is

used today.


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Even today as language changes and develops in different ways in different areas, people

still argue about the differences in pronunciation, and word stress. This is rather ridiculous, as

not one person can be correct while everyone else is incorrect. We all just simply have a

different way of speaking unique to each person.

IV. OrthographyWhile the Greeks communicated verbally, the Greek language was not written out until

the Linear B tablets, which date back to around 1300 BC (Duff 9). These were some sort of an

ancient Mycenaean dialect of Greek written down. However, writing once again disappears

during the dark ages. We see it appear again after the Greek Dark ages in about 800 BC with the

fall of the Mycenaean civilization.

The New Testament is the most famous book originally written in Greek. This was using

koine Greek and was written between the years 50 and 130 (Boatwright 350). Similar to the

spoken Greek, people in the ancient world insisted that writing in its oldest form was the best.

They thought that it was not subject to slang or common day usage which was considered vulgar.

For this reason, writing used koine Greek for a prolonged period of time. For many years poets,

writers, historian, and politicians insisted on the use of koine Greek for writing. Even in the early

nineteenth century, groups of people insisted on using - the purifying language in

place of - the peoples language, distinguishing good, proper Greek from the

common Greek.

V. MorphologyEach part of speech also changed during the course of Greek history. Nouns are the first

for our discussion purposes. This chart is of classical Greek and all the morphological changes

that occurred.


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Compared to a table of Modern Greek morphological changes

(both charts Moser, 6)

The obvious distinctions between these charts are the loss of optative, which is very similar to

the subjunctive, and infinitive and the gain of the imperfective future, the perfective future, and

the (present) perfect. Also, half of the participles disappeared.

a. NounsEach case in Greek correlates to its use in the sentence. Duff states in his koine Greek

text book, Nominative is the subject, accusative is the direct object (26), genitive shows

possession or English use of of, and dative is the indirect object (31). These are the most


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common cases; however, the vocative is also used in Greek for addressing people. Each of these

cases calls for a different ending of the word. These morphological changes of the word will then

tell the reader what role it plays in the sentence. Over time, this aspect of Greek did change

somewhat. The dative case specifically changed throughout the Byzantine period. Dative case

was used in speech less and less. Eventually people began to use either genitive or accusative

case instead. This continued through the Middle Ages. Browning says it was eventually

discontinued all together. In the noun, the dative case forms passed out of living use finally,

surviving only in lexicalised clichs(58) The genitive endings for the 1stdeclension

masculine nouns changed over time as well. The original genitive form was, however, this

changed to for the alpha type and for the eta type. These changes were caused by the loss

of vowel-distinction (Horrocks 216).

b. VerbsVerbs in Greek change morphologically to match the person, number, and tense of the

verb. Each ending represents a different person, 1st, 2

nd, or 3

rd, and each of these can be singular

or plural; thus, in the present tense, there are six different ending for each verb. There are also

four different tenses the verb can be in; present, future, imperfect, or aorist. A couple other

forms of the verb are present as well, such as the infinitive, subjunctive, imperative, and

participle as seen on the previous chart. The aorist infinitive changed in the later middle Ages. It

changed to match the present infinitive form. These changes along with several others brought

about the eventual creation of the imperfective future, the perfective future, and the (present)

perfect tenses that we do not see in classical Greek (Horrocks 227-8). The participles changes

over time as well. Horrocks mentions which ones change, The remaining participles, with

complex 3rd

declension paradigms, progressively disappeared amid growing confusion of gender


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and number, eventually leaving only an indeclinable active form in. (228). Duringthe

early Byzantine period, neither a perfect or a future tense existed. Instead, Greeks would use the

verb I intend () or I have or hold () plus the infinitive. This eventually went back to

using the future tense, even though () plus the infinitive is still considered correct in Modern

Greek. ( I want, wish) was and is also used throughout the history of Greek(Moser, 13).

While in ancient Greek, aorist, imperfect and perfect active tenses were all separated; they

became fused together with time. The aorist and perfect active differentiated by the sigma and

kappa infixes respectively. With present tense verbs, the deponent verb endings changed. -

became because of a phonemic developments. Also, - becomes . This is

because it was influence by a new active ending (Horrocks, 249).

c. AdjectivesAdjectives also change according to case similar to nouns. In fact, the adjectives must

always change to match the noun that it modifies. Adjectives changed mostly in the later Middle

Ages. There were some ancient participles that used the, or otype endings that were

used as adjectives. Horrocks gives the example of the word for interesting, (222).

There were also other adjective uses that fell out of speaking, but were retained in writing. Some

of them were even incorporated back into Modern Greek as they were rediscovered in ancient

writings. These were the type of adjectives that end in a sigma stem (Horrocks, 222).

d. PrepositionsPrepositions are what we use to link nouns to other nouns. They often describe where an

object is in relation to other objects. Each preposition in Greek calls for a specific case to be

used after for the noun that follows. Over the years both the case that followed as well as the

preposition itself changed. During the Byzantine period, the accusative case was the only case


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used with the spoken prepositions. There were only a few prepositions spoken at the time.

at/in/on/to/into/onto was used with the accusative. It was later which now in Modern Greek,

often drops the final epsilon to become simply and is added to the beginning of the word if it

begins with a vowel. - from/since/by is also used with the accusative and was occasionally

found in texts as . In spoken Greek today it can be shortened to as well. for/about

used the accusative and was later simplified to which is still used today. with used the

accusative and is probably a shortened version of the earlier . - without, and - up

to/until also used accusative (Horrocks 217).

A generalization of all the morphological changes of Greek over time would be simply to

say that endings got easier. As the charts pointed out in the beginning, many of the endings were

lost as people found other, simpler ways to say them.

VI. SyntaxThere are several ways to construct a sentence in Greek. The cases in Greek allow this to

be possible. A sentence can be verb, subject, object (VSO); subject, verb, object (SVO); or

subject, object, verb (SOV). While in Ancient Greek it was most commonly SOV, a sentence

could be put in any of the above orders. During a transition period between Ancient and

Medieval Greek, the word order changed. After a series of complicated processes involving clitic

pronouns place in the sentence, Greek ends up having a VSO word order. It originally only

affected conjunctions, but later was applied to the main clauses as well (Horrocks, 208).

VII. ConclusionThroughout the centuries, Latin has split into what are collectively known as the

Romance languages - French, Italian, Spanish, etc and disappeared itself all together. Similarly,

Old Norse split into Swedish, Norwegian, and Danish. To catch a glimpse of how much other


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languages change, take a look at the difference between the original Latin language compared to

the current day Spanish. Compare the Latin version of Matthew 5:3,Beati pauperes spiritu with

the SpanishDichosos los pobres en espritu. Also in French,Heureux ceux qui se reconnaissent

spirituellement pauvresblessed are the poor in spirit (Matt. 5:3). In these four sentences,

including English, we can see that the word for poor starts with a p in each language, and the

word for spirit does not change drastically either. However, the construction of the sentence

changes drastically in each case. Greek, on the other hand, has stayed relatively intact and can be

easily understood through each dialect over time. Matthew 5:3 in koine Greek is

, and in Modern Greek it is . These two

translations have minimal differences. In fact, the only difference is the diacritics which do not

appear in Modern Greek. This makes Greek unique from many other languages; it is

recognizable all the way back to its roots. While Alexander would have some difficulties, not

only with culture shock, but the language as well, he would probably be able to get around in

modern day Greece about 2,000 years later.


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Works Cited

artonk, Antonn.Development of the Long-Vowel System in Ancient Greek Dialects. raha:

Sttn pedagogick nakl, 1966.Print.

Biblica: Transforming Lives Through Gods Word. 2009. Web. 9 December 2009.

Boatwright, Mary T. The Romans. From Village to Empire. Oxford: Oxford University Press,

2004. Print.

Browning, Robert.Medieval & Modern Greek.Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1969.

Print.

ubenk, Vt. The Phonological Interpretation of Ancient Greek: A Pandialectal Analysis .

Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1983. Print.

Cowgill, Warren C.Ancient Greek Dialectology in the Light of Mycenaean. Berkeley and Los

Angeles, California: University of California Press, 1966. Print.

Duff, Jeremy. The Elements of New Testament Greek.Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,

2005. Print.

Holy Bible: Greek (Modern) Translation. Christian Classics Ethereal Library. Web. 9

December, 2009.

Horrocks, Geoffrey C. Greek: A History of the Language and Its Speakers.New York:

Longman Linguistics Library, 1997. Print.

La Santa BibliaNueva Versin Internacional. Miami; Editorial Vida, 1999. Print.

Mackridge, Peter. The Modern Greek Language. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1985. Print.


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Manolessou, Io. On historical linguistics, linguistics variation and Medieval Greek.Byzantine

and Modern Greek Studies 32.1(2008): 63-79. Web.22 October, 2009

Moser, Amalia. The changing relationship of tense and aspect in the history of Greek.

Sprachtypologie und Universalienforschung. 61.1 (2008) : 5-20. Print.

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