Greek language

Greek, or ελληνικά in Modern Greek, is an ancient and important language. It belongs to the Indo-European language family and has the longest history of any language in this family. Written records of Greek are more than 3,400 years old. The Greeks have lived in many places for thousands of years, including Greece, Cyprus, and parts of Italy, Albania, and Turkey.

Greek has had a big effect on the Western world. Many important books about literature, science, and philosophy were first written in ancient Greek. For example, the famous epic poems of Homer and the New Testament of the Christian Bible were originally in Greek. In ancient times, Greek was the most common language spoken across the Mediterranean world.

Today, Greek is the official language of Greece and Cyprus. It is also one of the official languages of the European Union. Over 13 million people speak Greek as their first language. Many English words come from Greek roots, and Greek helps create new scientific words around the world.

History

Main article: History of Greek

Greek has been spoken in the Balkan peninsula for a very long time, since around the year 2000 BC. The oldest writing we have is on a Linear B clay tablet from Messenia, made between 1450 and 1350 BC. This makes Greek one of the world's oldest languages that is still spoken today.

Greek has changed over time into different forms. First was Proto-Greek, the very early form. Then came Mycenaean Greek, used by the Mycenaean civilisation and written in the Linear B script. After that was Ancient Greek, spoken during the Archaic and Classical times and known in the Roman Empire. Later, Koine Greek developed, mixing different styles and becoming a common language in many places, from Egypt to far-off lands. This was the language used when Christianity began, as the Apostles shared their message.

The language continued to change into what we call Medieval Greek and finally into the Modern Greek spoken today. Even with these changes, Greek has kept strong ties to its ancient roots, and people today still feel connected to writings from long ago.

Geographic distribution

Further information: Greeks and Greek diaspora

Greek is spoken by many people today. Most live in Greece and Cyprus, but some also live in Albania near the border with Greece. People in Albania know Greek because of old ties and travel between the countries.

In the past, Greek was spoken in many more places, including areas that are now Turkey, Bulgaria, Italy, and around the Black Sea. Today, Greek communities can be found all over the world, especially in the United States, Australia, Canada, and many parts of Europe.

Official status

Today, Greek is the official language of Greece and Cyprus. Because Greece and Cyprus are part of the European Union, Greek is one of the official languages used by the group. It is also recognized as a minority language in Albania, Italy, and several other countries.

Characteristics

See also: Ancient Greek grammar, Koine Greek grammar, and Modern Greek grammar

The Greek language has kept many of its old sounds, shapes, and word uses while also changing in some ways over time. People often split Greek into different time periods, but these splits are not exact because Greek has always been valued.

Phonology

Main articles: Ancient Greek phonology, Koine Greek phonology, and Modern Greek phonology

Greek words have had a steady shape over many years. They allow complex beginnings to words but only simple endings. Greek uses only mouth sounds and a stable group of consonant sounds. Big changes in sounds happened during the time of the Hellenistic and Roman periods (see Koine Greek phonology for details):

• change from a pitch accent to a stress accent.
• simplifying vowels and two-sound vowel groups.
• turning the sounds /pʰ/ and /tʰ/ into /f/ and /θ/, respectively; the similar change of /kʰ/ to /x/ may have happened later (these sound changes are not shown in writing).

Morphology

In all its stages, Greek shows many ways to change words to show meaning. While its word shapes have stayed mostly the same, there have been changes, especially in how nouns and verbs work. The big change in noun shapes since the classical time was stopping the use of the dative case. The verb system lost the infinitive and the optative mood. Many of these were replaced by new, built-up forms.

Nouns and adjectives

Pronouns show differences in person, number, and gender, and change for case. Nouns, articles, and adjectives show all the differences except for a person.

Verbs

The ways verbs change have mostly stayed the same over the history of the language.

Syntax

Many parts of how Greek sentences are put together have stayed the same: verbs only match with their subject, the use of the remaining cases is mostly the same, articles come before nouns, and word connectors are mostly adding words before. But, the changes in word shapes also show up in how sentences are built, and there are differences between the way sentences were built in ancient times and in the modern form of the language. Ancient Greek used lots of parts that act like verbs, and the modern form uses parts that act like verbs more carefully. Ancient Greek usually put the verb last, but the normal order in the modern language is verb–subject–object or subject–verb–object.

Vocabulary

Modern Greek gets most of its words from Ancient Greek, which is an Indo-European language, but also includes some words from the people who lived in Greece before the Proto-Greeks arrived. Words from other languages (called loanwords) have come into Greek, mostly from Latin, Venetian, Ottoman Turkish and Semitic languages. In the older times of Greek, words from other languages took on Greek ways to change. Modern borrowings, especially from French and English, usually do not change their shape; other modern borrowings come from Slavic languages, Albanian and Eastern Romance languages (Romanian and Aromanian).

Loanwords in other languages

Further information: English words of Greek origin and List of Greek and Latin roots in English

Many words from the Greek language are used in other languages, like English. Some common examples are mathematics, physics, astronomy, democracy, philosophy, athletics, theatre, rhetoric, baptism, and evangelist. Greek words and word elements are still used to create new terms today, such as anthropology, photography, telephony, isomer, biomechanics, and cinematography. Together with Latin words, they help form many scientific and technical words around the world, especially those ending in ‑logy, which means 'study of'. There are many English words of Greek origin.

Classification

Greek is a special language on its own in the big family of Indo-European languages. Many people think Greek stands alone, but some believe there are other languages close to it.

Some think Ancient Macedonian might have been similar to Greek, while others say it was just a different form of Greek. There is also a language called Phrygian that shares some traits with Greek.

Scholars wonder if Greek might be related to languages like Armenian or Indo-Iranian languages, but they haven’t found strong proof yet. Some also think Albanian might be linked to Greek in a bigger group of old Balkan languages.

Writing system

See also: Greek Braille

Linear B

Main article: Linear B

Linear B was the first way to write Greek, used as early as the late 15th century BC. It is a type of writing where each symbol stands for a syllable. Experts figured out what it meant in the 1950s. The words written in Linear B are the oldest form of the Greek language that we know about.

Cypriot syllabary

Main article: Cypriot syllabary

Another way to write Greek was the Cypriot syllabary. It is similar to Linear B but uses different signs to show sounds. People in Cyprus used it from the 11th century BC until they started using the normal Greek letters.

Greek alphabet

Main articles: Greek alphabet and Greek orthography

Greek has been written with its own special letters since around the 9th century BC. Someone changed the letters used by the Phoenicians to make them work for Greek, adding letters for sounds that the Phoenicians did not use. Today we use a version of these letters that came from a place called Ionic, starting in 403 BC. At first, only big letters were used. Later, small letters were added to make writing faster.

The Greek alphabet has 24 letters, each with a big and a small shape. The letter sigma has a special small shape used at the end of words.

Diacritics

Main article: Greek diacritics

Besides the letters, Greek also uses special marks above or beside the letters. These marks used to show how the words were said and other details. Today, most of these marks are not used. Now we mainly use one mark to show how a word is said and another to show when a vowel is said alone.

Punctuation

In Greek, the question mark looks like the English semicolon. There is a special mark called ano teleia (άνω τελεία) that does the work of the colon and semicolon. The comma can also act like a quiet sound in some words.

Old Greek writing sometimes had no spaces between words. And sometimes writing went back and forth across the page.

Latin alphabet

Greek has sometimes been written with the letters we use in English, especially in places ruled by Venice or by people who followed the Catholic religion. This is called Frankolevantinika when it is used by Greek Catholics. Frankochiotika is the name for this kind of writing used on the island of Chios. Today, some Greek-speaking people in Southern Italy still use the Latin letters to write Greek.

Hebrew alphabet

The Yevanic dialect was written by some Jewish groups using the Hebrew Alphabet.

Arabic alphabet

Some Greek Muslims from Crete wrote their language using the Arabic alphabet. This also happened in places like Ioannina, Lebanon, Palestine, Syria, and Jordan.

Example text

Here is Article 1 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in Greek:

Όλοι οι άνθρωποι γεννιούνται ελεύθεροι και ίσοι στην αξιοπρέπεια και τα δικαιώματα. Είναι προικισμένοι με λογική και συνείδηση, και οφείλουν να συμπεριφέρονται μεταξύ τους με πνεύμα αδελφοσύνης.

You can see the Transcription of this text using the Latin alphabet:

Óloi oi ánthropoi gennioúntai eléftheroi kai ísoi stin axioprépeia kai ta dikaiómata. Eínai proikisménoi me logikí kai syneídisi, kai ofeíloun na symperiférontai metaxý tous me pnévma adelfosýnis.

In English, this means:

"All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood."