Ancient Greek language belongs to the category of “dead”: today you cannot meet a person who would use it in everyday colloquial speech. However, it can not be called forgotten and irretrievably lost. Individual words in the ancient Greek language can be heard anywhere in the world. Learning its alphabet, grammar and pronunciation rules is not uncommon today.
From the depths of centuries
The history of the ancient Greek language began with the invasion of the territory of the future Hellas of the Balkan tribes. It happened between the XXI and XVII centuries. BC. They brought with them the so-called proto-Greek language, which would give a little later beginning to Mycenaean, dialects of the classical period, and then koine (Alexandrian dialect) and the modern form of Greek. He stood out from the pre-Indo-European and underwent considerable changes during the birth, heyday and fall of the great state.
Written evidence
Up to the Doric invasion of the Bronze Age, from the 16th to the 11th centuries BC e., in Greece and Crete used the Mycenaean form of language. Today it is considered the most ancient version of Greek. To this day, the Mycenaean has been preserved in the form of inscriptions on clay tablets found on the island of Crete. Unique samples of texts (totaling about 6 thousand) contain mainly business records. Despite the seemingly insignificant information recorded in them, the tablets revealed to scientists a lot of information about the bygone era.
Dialects
The ancient Greek language in each tribe acquired its own characteristics. Over time, several of his dialects have developed, which are traditionally combined into four groups:
In the Hellenistic era, which began after the conquests of Alexander the Great, on the basis of the Attic dialect, Coine, a pan-Greek language, spread throughout the entire Eastern Mediterranean. Later, it is from him that the majority of modern dialects will “grow”.
Alphabet
Today, one way or another, but almost everyone knows the ancient Greek language. The letter "may" ("tau"), as well as the letters "beta", "alpha", "sigma" and so on are used in mathematics, physics and other sciences. It should be noted that the alphabet, like the language itself, did not come from the air. He is in the X or IX century. BC e. was borrowed from the Phoenician (Canaanite) tribes. The original meanings of the letters were lost over time, but their names and order were preserved.
In Greece at that time there were several cultural centers, and each of them introduced its own characteristics into the alphabet. Among these local varieties, Miletus and Chalcis were most significant. The first will later be used in Byzantium. It was him that Cyril and Methodius will put in the basis of the Slavic alphabet. The Chalkidic version was adopted by the Romans. He is the progenitor of the Latin alphabet, still used throughout Western Europe.
Ancient Greek language today
The reason that prompts a sufficiently large number of people today to study the "dead" language of the ancient Greeks seems unobvious. And yet she is. For philologists involved in comparative linguistics and related subjects, understanding of ancient Greek is part of the profession. The same can be said of culturologists, philosophers and historians. For them, ancient Greek is the language of numerous primary sources. Of course, all this literature can be read in translation. However, everyone who has at least once compared the original and its “adapted” version for the local language knows how usually the versions differ. The reason for the differences lies in the worldview, the peculiarities of history and perception of peoples. All these nuances are reflected in the text, transform it and generate the very untranslatable expressions, the fullness of the meaning of which can be comprehended only after learning the original language.
It would be useful to know the ancient Greek for archaeologists and numismatists. Understanding the language makes dating easier, and in some cases helps to quickly identify a fake.
Borrowing
Ancient Greek words in Russian are found in large numbers. Often we do not even suspect their origin, which indicates antiquity and familiarity. The names Elena, Andrey, Tatyana and Fedor came to us from Ancient Greece after the adoption of Christianity. During the time of strong trade and other ties with the Greeks and Byzantines, a lot of new words appeared in the language of the Slavic tribes. Among them can be called “pancakes”, “sail”, “vinegar”, “doll”. Today, these and similar words are so familiar that it is difficult to believe in their foreign origin.
The scientific literature of various fields of knowledge is also literally replete with borrowings from the ancient Greek. The names of various disciplines (geography, astronomy, etc.), political and social (monarchy, democracy), as well as medical, musical, literary and many other terms came to us from the territory of Hellas. The basis of new words denoting objects and phenomena that did not exist in antiquity are Greek roots, or they are formed using Greek prefixes (telephone, microscope). Other terms are used today, having lost their original meaning. Thus, the ability to control a ship was called cybernetics in Greece of bygone ages. In a word, and after so many centuries, the language of the ancient inhabitants of the Peloponnese remains in demand.