Greek language

The Greek language ( Greek: ελληνική γλώσσα Ellinikí Glóssa listen? / I, ancient Greek ἑλληνικὴ γλῶσσα hellēnikē glossa ) is an Indo-European language, which forms a separate branch of this family of languages. The Ancient Greek and today spoken in Greece Modern Greek used in ancient times and today learned at school are different stages of the Greek language. Greek has a scriptural tradition for over 3,400 years. With the exception of the Aramaic and the Chinese language has no other living language over such a long time has been handed down in writing. The Western culture is strongly influenced by the language and culture of ancient Greece. In Greek, European literature, philosophy and science begins. Significant works of world literature as the Homeric epics, the great dramas of Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides, the philosophical writings of Plato and Aristotle and the New Testament are written in Greek. In numerous Lehn and Greek loan words is alive in many modern languages.

Linguistic relationship

The Greek language belongs to the family of Indo-European languages. For the ancient Macedonian language a closer relationship could have existed. The classification of the Macedonian but is highly uncertain due to the scarcity of tradition.

As a next of kin of the Armenian and Albanian come into question. This Balkanindogermanisch hypothesis is supported by quantitative methods.

History

Origins

As a member of the Indo-European family of languages ​​, the Greek comes from the Indo-European proto-language. Many scientists believe the splitting in the 3rd millennium BC. The predecessors of the Greek tribes invaded, perhaps in several waves, around 2000 BC to Greece one. There they met a culturally high- aboriginal population, which is called Pelasgians. The language of the Pelasgians is unknown, but it can be detected as a substrate in the Greek. These include loanwords as θάλασσα, Thalassa ( "sea" ) and νῆσος, nesos ( "island" ) and numerous place names such as Κόρινθος ( Corinth ) and Παρνασσός ( Parnassus ). The Pelasgian language (or languages) was probably not Indo-European, via a connection with the Minoan Crete language is speculated. The Greek was probably also influenced by an unknown Indo-European language that was close to possibly extinct Illyrian.

Mycenaean period

The oldest written records of the language written in Linear B. They appear from the 14th century BC - ie in Mycenaean times - as very short texts on transport amphorae, where they describe the content. Longer texts on numerous clay tablets, also a purely practical nature, were found in the archives of some Mycenaean palaces. They date from the early 12th century BC After the destruction of most of the known Mycenaean palaces in the 12th century, knowledge of the Linear B was lost. However, the structurally similar Cyprian syllabary in Cyprus remained until the 3rd century BC in use.

Classical time

Towards the end of the " Dark Ages ", probably around 800 BC, the Greeks adopted the Phoenician writing system, transforming it from the introduction of vowel-signs. One of the most famous early examples of the new alphabetic script shows the Nestor cup. In classical times, a variety of dialects can be determined to the most important are ( today in the schools as a Greek scholar ) Attic, the Ionian, the Dorian - northwest Greek, the Aeolian and the Arcadian - Cyprian.

The standing at the beginning of the written tradition Homeric epics, the Iliad and the Odyssey are written in an artistic form of language, for example, the words in different dialects used, often according to the requirements of meter, in the whole, however, Ionic with numerous Aeolian elements and archaisms.

Hellenistic period

The political, economic and cultural supremacy of Athens in the 5th century BC Attic dialect spoken there made ​​the basis for a national standard language ( Koine Greek κοινή, the Common or General ), which by the conquests of Alexander the Great in the 4th century BC rose to become the global language and lingua franca. In this language, among other things, the New Testament was written.

Even in the Roman Empire remained Greek in addition to Latin, the official language of the eastern provinces, and it has been assumed in the West in the educated classes, this is also because of the cultural dependence of the Romans from the Greeks. In the eastern half of the empire Greek was the dominant language since the Hellenistic period. Under the influence of foreign languages ​​and the continuing dialects were made against the Delian some simplifications in grammar and the sound inventory. This resulted from the late 1st century BC and over again, especially in the 2nd century to efforts to " clean " the Greek language by resorting to the classical Attic ( Atticism ). This form of language that the BC in Athens Greek spoken artificially raised to 400 for standard and vehemently propagated by writers such as Dionysius of Halicarnassus, now became the language of literature and the upper class, while the vernacular increasingly solidified by this form away. It came so to a marked diglossia, which should be typical for centuries for the Greek.

Byzantium

The "adjusted " form of the Ancient Greek Attic remained even after the division of the Roman Empire in 395, the literary language of the late antique Eastern Empire. After the loss of the Latin-speaking territories on the Balkan peninsula, the official language was Latin quickly abandoned around 630, and Ostrom was definitely from a Roman to the Byzantine Empire. The pronunciation of everyday Greek had already changed greatly at this time, particularly with regard to the vowels and diphthongs ( disappeared, the distinction between long and short vowels, and several vowels were pronounced as [i ] as in "rent", a phenomenon which is referred to as Itazismus ). The beta has now been universally pronounced as the V in " vase ". No later than 700 already resembled very much the pronunciation of modern Greek, since the 10th century it is with their virtually identical.

After about 640 Ostrom / Byzantium experienced a serious crisis phase; This meant that for about 150 years barely emerged classical literature. In addition, in common with most poleis disappeared and the teaching of grammar, as well as the local elites who had defined themselves for centuries about their education ( paideia ). As in the late 8th century began again a significant literary production, the language of these texts therefore generally was much closer to the spoken Greek of this time than it had been the case in the late antique again. The changes in debate led in everyday language to considerable simplifications in Flexionsbildung and grammar that also influenced the literary language. However, most literary works of the Byzantine period are written in ancient Greek, at least approximate form of language in which the degree of deviation from the "classical" form of language can be very different.

In Syria and Egypt, Greek remained after the Arab conquest initially for several decades official language before losing this function from about 700 to the Arab.

Modern Times

The attitude of the Ottoman Empire to the Greek language was generally tolerant: education in Greek was not prohibited, even if that is until now likes to claim, and many Greeks came because of their language skills in the civil service. The first newspaper in Constantinople Opel was written in Greek. In addition, the Greek (especially the Koine ) was a church language. The use of the language was released everyone an open repression did not take place. The loss of status as the official language but led to the fact that the Greek was again subjected to a change in a row, especially by the trend to simplify the classic, complex grammatical structure.

After the founding of the modern state 1829/30, the so-called Katharevousa was (Greek καθαρεύουσα, " Pure [ language ] ", the foundations were laid of Korais ) formal education and official language, an artificially created high language and first as a middle ground between strongly classicizing vulgaristischen models was designed for the new state language, but increasingly oriented with respect to vocabulary and grammar from the 1830s to the classical Attic. The centuries- long coexistence ( diglossia ) of these high-level language and the vernacular ( Dimotiki, Greek δημοτική ) attracted widespread problems in education by itself, since children were substantially impaired in their natural language development and prevented from freely express themselves in their mother tongue. After numerous legislative initiatives during the 20th century to the establishment of the vernacular and equally numerous setbacks and Archaisierungstendenzen (analogous to each incumbent government ), the vernacular was only in 1976 finally to the language of state administration and science - in the modern Greek literature, the decision was for however, the vernacular like in the 19th century ( poetry) or at the beginning of the 20th century ( prose ). Many words and grammatical structures have been taken from the katharevousa in the modern vernacular, which is why this is also regarded as a synthesis of Katharevousa and Dimotiki and " Koine Modern Greek " ( νεοελληνική κοινή, Standard Modern Greek ) is called. The Orthodox Church and some sprachpuristische circles consider the written use continues to hold to the katharevousa.

Font

Before the invention and introduction of the still used Greek script from about the 9th century BC Mycenaean Greek was detained in the so-called Linear B script, however, came with the fall of the Mycenaean culture of non- use. Its predecessor, the Linear A script was probably not used in the Greek language.

Although the pronunciation of Greek has changed over the millennia in many cases, the orthography remained largely constant thanks to many efforts to keeping the language. Introduced in the Hellenistic period in the Greek written language accents ( acute, grave and circumflex ) and symbols for breath sounds ( Spiritus asper and spiritus lenis ) were still in use until recently. By Decree No. 297 of the President of Greece on 29 April 1982, the breath mark was abolished and replaced by a single character accents ( tonos ), indicating the stressed syllable. The Tonos looks like an acute, but is not ( Tonos and acute are represented by different codes in Unicode) identical with it. In particular literary texts are, however, often printed up today with touch characters and accents - whether it is Dimotiki or katharevousa.

Importance

The Greek language and script had immense influence on the development of Europe: developing Both the Latin and the Cyrillic alphabet was based on the Greek alphabet.

The New Testament was originally written in Hellenistic Greek ( see Greek Bible ) and the first time of Erasmus of Rotterdam printed.

One of the main sources of the Renaissance and humanism was the return to the almost forgotten in the West Greek, caused inter alia by the flight of many Byzantines in the West after the fall of Constantinople in 1453.

Even today, scientific terms are often international in character, drawing on Greek ( and Latin ) words. In the Greek language itself this almost only Greek words are used, many Latin burly technical terms that are common in almost all other modern languages ​​, so loud in Modern Greek different.