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The Greek language (Ελληνικά /ɛˌliniˈka/) is an Indo-European language spoken by about 12 million people mainly in Greece and Cyprus but also in many other countries, including Albania, Armenia, Australia, Austria, Bulgaria, Canada, Egypt, France, Georgia, Germany, Italy, Turkey and the USA.

NOTE: Greek is written in a non-Latin script. Most examples below are in the Greek alphabet, with transcriptions in the Latin alphabet and the IPA.error: ISO 639 code is required (help) Greek has been spoken in the Balkan Peninsula since the 2nd millennium BC. The earliest evidence of this is found in the Linear B tablets dating from 1500 BC. The alphabet normally used was adapted from the Phoenician syllabary in c. 1000 BC and with various modifications formed the alphabet which is still in use today.
Modern Greek is a living language and one of the richest surviving languages today, with more than 600.000 words. Two main forms of the language currently exist: Δημοτική (Dēmotikḗ /ðiˌmotiˈci/), the Demotic (common) language and Καθαρεύουσα (Kathareúousa /kaθaˈɾɛvuˌsa/), an imitation of classical Greek, which is used for literary purposes. Δημοτική (Dēmotikḗ /ðiˌmotiˈci/) however, is gaining ground, not only in conversation but also in literature.
Some scholars have overly stressed Modern Greek's similarity to the millennia-old Greek languages. However, its intelligibility with ancient Greek is a matter of debate. It is claimed that a "reasonably well educated" speaker of the modern language can read the ancient dialects, but it is not made clear how much of that education consists of exposure to vocabulary and grammar obsolete to normal communication.
Greek word forms continue to have a great influence in the world's scientific and technical vocabulary, and make up a large part of the technical vocabulary of many languages including Latin, Italian, German, French, and English e.g. astronomy, democracy, philosophy, thespian, anthropology etc. (For a more complete list, see List of English words of Greek origin)

History

Origins

There are many theories about the origins of the Greek language. One theory suggests that it originated with a migration of proto-Greek speakers into Greece, which is dated to any period between 3200 BC to 1900 BC. Another theory maintains that Greek evolved in Greece itself out of an early Indo-European language.

Linear B

The first known script for writing Greek was the Linear B syllabary, used for the archaic Mycenaean dialect. Linear B was not deciphered until 1953. After the fall of the Mycenaean civilization, there was a period of about five hundred years when writing was either not used, or nothing has survived to the present day. Since early classical times, Greek has been written in the Greek alphabet, said to be derived from Phoenician. This happened about the time of Homer, and there is one obscure, fleeting reference in Homer's poetry suggesting that he might have been aware of writing in Linear B.

Ancient Greek dialects

In the archaic and classical periods, there were three main dialects of the Greek language, Aeolic, Ionic, and Doric, corresponding to the three main tribes of the Greeks, the Aeolians (chiefly living in the islands of the Aegean), the Ionians (mostly settled in modern day Turkey), and the Dorians (primarily the Greeks of the Pelopennesus, such as the Spartans). Homer's Illiad and Odyssey were written in a kind of literary Ionic with some loan words from the other dialects. Ionic, therefore, became the primary literary language of ancient Greece until the ascendancy of Athens in the late fifth century. Doric was standard for Greek lyric poetry, such as Pindar and the choral odes of the Greek tragedians.

Attic Greek

Attic Greek, a subdialect of Ionic, was for centuries the language of Athens. Most surviving classical Greek literature appears in Attic Greek, including the extant texts of Plato and Aristotle, which were passed down in written form from classical times.

Hellenistic Greek

As Greeks colonized from Asia Minor to Egypt to the Middle East, the Greek language began to evolve into multiple dialects. Alexander the Great (356 BC-323 BC) was instrumental in combining these dialects to form Κοινή /ˌciˈni/. The Greek word for "common," Κοινή is often transliterated into English as koinḗ. Koine Greek is also called "New Testament Greek" after its most famous work of literature.
Imposing a common Greek dialect allowed Alexander's combined army to communicate with itself. The language was also taught to the inhabitants of the regions that Alexander conquered, turning Greek into a world language.

Byzantine Greek

The Greek language continued to thrive after Alexander, during the Hellenistic period (323 BC to 281 BC). During this period the Septuagint, a Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible, appeared.
For many centuries Greek was the lingua franca of the Roman Empire. It was during Roman times that the Greek New Testament appeared. After the empire's fall in 476, the Greek language continued to be widely spoken. Greek was the official language of the Eastern Roman Empire (or Byzantine Empire), until Constantinople fell to the Turks in 1453.
The decline of reading and writing among Greek speakers during the Ottoman Empire's domination of much of the Mediterranean, caused the language to change considerably during their rule. Ottoman rule lasted many places until the end of World War I in 1919.

Modern Greek

From these roots evolved the Modern Greek of today. After the uprising of 1821, and specifically from 1834 to 1976, the Καθαρεύουσα (Kathareúousa /kaθaˈɾɛvuˌsa/) (Greek for "purified language") dialect (an artificial construct aimed at undoing centuries of natural linguistic changes) was the only acceptable form of Greek in Greece. The fall of the Junta of 1967 and the end of the era of the Metapolíteusē 1976-1981, brought the acceptance of the Δημοτική (Dēmotikḗ /ðiˌmotiˈci/) (Demotic) dialect as both the de facto and de jure forms of the language for use by the Greek government.

Grammar

Greek, like all of the older Indo-European languages, is highly inflected, for example, nouns (including proper nouns) have five cases (nominative, genitive, dative, accusative and vocative), three genders (masculine, feminine and neuter), and three numbers (singular, dual and plural). Verbs have four moods (indicative , imperative , subjunctive and optative ), three voices (active, middle and passive), as well as three persons (first, second and third) and various other forms. Modern Greek is one of the few Indo-European languages that has retained a synthetic passive.
The Dhimotikí (Δημοτική) /ðiˌmotiˈci/ (Demotic) dialect has lost the dative, except for in a few expressions like εν τάξει (en táxei /ɛn ˈdaˌksi/), which means "in order" or "OK".
Other noticeable changes in its grammar include the loss of the infinitive, the dual number and the simplification of the system of grammatical prefixes, like augment and reduplication.

Phonology

Greek has sandhi rules, some written, some not. ν before bilabials and velars is pronounced /m/ and /ŋ/ respectively, and is written μ (συμπάθεια) and γ (συγχρονίζω) when this happens within a word. The word ἐστὶ (estí /ˌɛsˈti/), which means "is" in Greek gains ν, and the accusative articles τόν and τήν in Modern Greek lose it, depending on the start of the next word; this is called "movable nu". In ton patéra (τον πατέρα), which means "the father" (accusative case), the first word is pronounced /tom/, and in Modern Greek (but not Ancient Greek, which had an independent /b/ sound) the second word is pronounced /ˌbaˈtɛɾa/ because mp is pronounced /mb/.

Vowels

In the International Phonetic Alphabet:

  Front Back
Close i u
Close-mid o
Open-mid ɛ
Open a  

Consonants

In the International Phonetic Alphabet:

Bilabial Labiodental Dental Alveolar Palatal Velar
Plosive p b t d c ɟ k g
Nasal m ɱ n ɲ ŋ
Tap ɾ
Fricative f v θ ð s z ç ʝ x ɣ
Affricate ts dz
Approximant j
Lateral approximant l ʎ

Historical sound changes

The main phonetic changes between Ancient and Modern Greek are a simplification in the vowel system and a change of some consonants to fricative values. Ancient Greek had five short vowels, seven long vowels, and numerous diphthongs. This has been reduced to a simple five-vowel system. Most noticeably, the vowels i, ē, y, ei, oi have all become i. The consonants b, d, g became v, dh, gh (dh is /ð/ and gh is /ɣ/). The aspirated consonants pʰ, tʰ, kʰ became f, th, kh (where the new pronunciation of th is /θ/ and the new pronunciation of kh is /x/).

Writing system

Greek is written in the Greek alphabet which dates from the 8th century BC. The Greek alphabet consists of 24 letters which are:
Α, Β, Γ, Δ, Ε, Ζ, Η, Θ, Ι, Κ, Λ, Μ, Ν, Ξ, Ο, Π, Ρ, Σ, Τ, Υ, Φ, Χ, Ψ, Ω .

Examples

Πάτερ ἡμῶν ὁ ἐν τοῖς οὐρανοῖς ἁγιασθήτω τὸ ὄνομά σου·
ἐλθέτω ἡ βασιλεία σου· γενηθήτω τὸ θέλημά σου, ὡς ἐν οὐρανῷ καὶ ἐπὶ τῆς γῆς·
τὸν ἄρτον ἡμῶν τὸν ἐπιούσιον δὸς ἡμῖν σήμερον·
καὶ ἄφες ἡμῖν τὰ ὀφελήματα ἡμῶν, ὡς καὶ ἡμεῖς ἀφίεμεν τοῖς ὀφειλέταις ἡμῶν·
καὶ μὴ εἰσενέγκῃς ἡμᾶς εἰς πειρασμόν, ἀλλὰ ρῦσαι ἡμᾶς ἀπὸ τοῦ πονηροῦ.
Ὅτι σοῦ ἐστιν ἡ βασιλεία καὶ ἡ δύναμις καὶ ἡ δόξα εἰς τοὺς αἰῶνας·
ἀμήν.

Πιστεύω εἰς ἕνα Θεόν, Πατέρα, παντοκράτορα, ποιητήν οὐρανοῦ καί γῆς, ὁρατῶν τε πάντων καί ἀοράτων.
Καί εἰς ἕνα Κύριον Ἰησοῦν Χριστόν, τόν Υἱόν τοῦ Θεοῦ τόν μονογενῆ, τόν ἐκ τοῦ Πατρός γεννηθέντα πρό πάντων τῶν αἰώνων. Φῶς ἐκ φωτός, Θεόν ἀληθινόν ἐκ Θεοῦ ἀληθινοῦ, γεννηθέντα, οὐ ποιηθέντα, ὁμοούσιον τῷ Πατρί, δι’ οὗ τά πάντα ἐγένετο.
Τόν δι’ ἡμᾶς τούς ἀνθρώπους καί διά τήν ἡμετέραν σωτηρίαν κατελθόντα ἐκ τῶν οὐρανῶν καί σαρκωθέντα ἐκ Πνεύματος Ἁγίου καί Μαρίας τῆς Παρθένου καί ἐνανθρωπήσαντα.
Σταυρωθέντα τε ὑπέρ ἡμῶν ἐπί Ποντίου Πιλάτου καί παθόντα καί ταφέντα.
Καί ἀναστάντα τῇ τρίτῃ ἡμέρᾳ κατά τάς Γραφάς.
Καί ἀνελθόντα εἰς τούς οὐρανούς καί καθεζόμενον ἐκ δεξιῶν τοῦ Πατρός.
Καί πάλιν ἐρχόμενον μετά δόξης κρῖναι ζῶντας καί νεκρούς, οὗ τῆς βασιλείας οὐκ ἔσται τέλος.
Καί εἰς τό Πνεῦμα τό Ἅγιον, τό κύριον, τό ζωοποιόν, τό ἐκ τοῦ Πατρός ἐκπορευόμενον, τό σύν Πατρί καί Υἱῷ συμπροσκυνούμενον καί συνδοξαζόμενον, τό λαλῆσαν διά τῶν προφητῶν.
Εἰς μίαν ἁγίαν, καθολικήν καί ἀποστολικήν Ἐκκλησίαν.
Ὁμολογῶ ἕν βάπτισμα εἰς ἄφεσιν ἁμαρτιῶν.
Προσδοκῶ ἀνάστασιν νεκρῶν.
Καί ζωήν τοῦ μέλλοντος αἰῶνος.
Ἀμήν.

See also

External links

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