Ancient Greek belongs to the category of "dead": today you can not meet a person who would use it in everyday conversation. However, it cannot be called forgotten and irretrievably lost. Individual words in ancient Greek can be heard in any part of the world. Learning its alphabet, grammar, and pronunciation rules is not uncommon these days.
From time immemorial
The history of the ancient Greek language began with the invasion of the territory of the future Hellas by the Balkan tribes. This happened between the 21st and 17th centuries. BC. They brought with them the so-called Proto-Greek, which would give rise to Mycenaean, the dialects of the classical period, and then Koine (Alexandrian) and the modern form of Greek a little later. It stood out from the Proto-Indo-European and underwent considerable changes during the birth, heyday and fall of the great state.
Written evidence
Up until the Dorian invasion of the Bronze Age, from the 16th to the 11th centuries BC. e., in Greece and Crete, the Mycenaean form of the language was used. Today it is considered the most ancient version of the Greek. To this day, Mycenaean has survived in the form of inscriptions on clay tablets found on the island of Crete. Unique samples of texts (about 6 thousand in total) contain mainly household records. Despite the seemingly insignificant information recorded in them, the tablets revealed to scientists a lot of information about a bygone era.
Dialects
The ancient Greek language in each tribe acquired its own characteristics. Over time, several of its dialects have developed, which are traditionally combined into four groups:
- eastern: this includes the Ionian and Attic dialects;
- Western: Dorian;
- Arcade-Cypriot or South Achaean;
- Aeolian or North Achaean.
In the Hellenistic era, which began after the conquests of Alexander the Great, on the basis of the Attic dialect, Koine arose, a common Greek language that spread throughout the entire eastern Mediterranean. Later, most modern dialects will “grow” from it.
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 appear out of thin air. He is in the 10th or 9th 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 brought its own characteristics to the alphabet. Among these local variants, Milesian and Chalcidian were of the greatest importance. The first will begin to be used in Byzantium a little later. It is him that Cyril and Methodius will lay at the basis of the Slavic alphabet. The Romans adopted the Chalkid version. It is the progenitor of the Latin alphabet, which is still used throughout Western Europe.
Ancient Greek today
The reason that prompts a sufficiently large number of people today to study the "dead" language of the ancient Greeks seems to be non-obvious. And yet it exists. For philologists involved in comparative linguistics and related subjects, understanding ancient Greek is part of the profession. The same can be said about 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, anyone who has ever compared the original and its “adapted” version for the local language knows how different versions usually differ. The reason for the differences lies in the worldview, features of history and the perception of peoples. All these nuances are reflected in the text, transformit is generated by those very untranslatable expressions, the full meaning of which can be comprehended only after studying the original language.
Knowledge of ancient Greek would be useful for archaeologists and numismatists as well. Understanding the language makes dating easier and, in some cases, helps you quickly spot a fake.
Borrowings
Ancient Greek words in Russian are found in large numbers. Often we are not even aware of their origin, which indicates antiquity and familiarity. The names Elena, Andrei, Tatyana and Fedor came to us from Ancient Greece after the adoption of Christianity. In times of strong trade and other ties with the Hellenes and Byzantines, many new words appeared in the language of the Slavic tribes. Among them are "fritters", "sail", "vinegar", "doll". Today, these and similar words are so familiar that it is difficult to believe in their foreign origin.
Scientific literature of various fields of knowledge is also literally replete with borrowings from ancient Greek. From the territory of Hellas came to us the names of various disciplines (geography, astronomy, etc.), political and social (monarchy, democracy), as well as medical, musical, literary and many other terms. New words denoting objects and phenomena that did not yet exist in antiquity are based on Greek roots or they are formed using Greek prefixes (telephone, microscope). Other terms are used today, having lost their original meaning. So, cybernetics in Greece of bygone eras was calledability to navigate a ship. In a word, even after so many centuries, the language of the ancient inhabitants of the Peloponnese remains in demand.
