User:Future Perfect at Sunrise/Greek language
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- Note: This article contains special characters.
| Greek Ελληνικά Ellinika |
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|---|---|---|
| Spoken in: | Greece and elsewhere mainly in the eastern Mediterranean | |
| Total speakers: | 15 million at present | |
| Ranking: | 74 | |
| Language family: | Indo-European Greek |
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| Writing system: | Greek alphabet | |
| Language codes | ||
| ISO 639-1: | el | |
| ISO 639-2: | gre (B) | ell (T) |
| ISO 639-3: | either: grc – Ancient Greek ell – Modern Greek |
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| Note: This page may contain IPA phonetic symbols in Unicode. | ||
Greek (Ελληνικά, IPA [eliniˈka] — "Hellenic") is an Indo-European language with a documented history of 3,500 years. It is also one of the earliest attested Indo-European languages, after the Anatolian and the Indo-Iranian languages. Today, it is spoken by approximately 15 million people, mainly in Greece and Cyprus.
During most of its recorded history, Greek has been written in the Greek alphabet, invented in the 9th century BC. Earlier writing was in Linear B and in the Cypriot syllabary. Greek literature has a continuous history of nearly 3000 years.
Contents |
[edit] Classification
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Indo-European topics |
|---|
| Indo-European languages |
| Albanian · Armenian · Baltic Celtic · Germanic · Greek Indo-Iranian (Indo-Aryan, Iranian) Italic · Slavic extinct: Anatolian · Paleo-Balkans (Dacian, |
| Indo-European peoples |
| Albanians · Armenians Balts · Celts · Germanic peoples Greeks · Indo-Aryans Iranians · Latins · Slavs historical: Anatolians (Hittites, Luwians) |
| Proto-Indo-Europeans |
| Language · Society · Religion |
| Urheimat hypotheses |
| Kurgan hypothesis Anatolia · Armenia · India · PCT |
| Indo-European studies |
Greek is an independent branch of the Indo-European language family. The ancient languages which were probably most closely related to it, ancient Macedonian (which may have been a dialect of Greek) and Phrygian, are not well enough documented to permit detailed comparison. Among living languages, Armenian seems to be the most closely related language (see Graeco-Armenian).
[edit] Geographic distribution
[Short description of history of settlement: core Greek-speaking area in the southern Balkans; 1st Millenium BC colonisations; Hellenistic expansion; status as supraregional stnadard language in Roman era; Byzantine era; status and settlements of Greeks in Ottoman times; territorial losses in 20th century (Asia minor, Alexandria); linguistic homogeneization within Greece in 20th century (assimilation of Vlachs, Arvanites etc.); 20th cent. emigrant communities in Europe, America and Australia...]
[edit] History and periodisation
| History of the Greek language |
| Proto-Greek |
| Mycenaean |
| Homeric Greek |
|
| Medieval Greek |
| Greek alphabet |
[Mainly introduce issue of periodisation: mention "Ancient Greek" vs "Modern Greek" dichotomy as first, rough periodisation scheme; but then present a more detailed division:]
[edit] Proto-Greek
Proto-Greek refers to [...]
[edit] Mycenean Greek
Mycenean Greek is [...]
[edit] Homeric Greek
Homeric Greek is [...]
[edit] Classical Greek
Classical Greek refers to the Greek spoken and written during the "Classical Era" of Ancient Greece, i.e. roughly the 6th to 4th centuries B.C. The term is usually understood to refer prototypically, but not exclusively, to the Attic dialect of Ancient Greek, the most prestigious of the literary dialects (used in drama, philosophy, rhetorics and other important genres). It was this form of Greek that came to serve as a model of learned writing in the Greek world as well as in the rest of Europe across the centuries. However, other contemporary dialects such as Ionian and Doric were also used in ancient literature and are also comprised under the term Classical Greek in the proper sense.
- See also: Ancient Greek grammar, Ancient Greek phonology, and [[:../Ancient Greek dialects|../Ancient Greek dialects]]
[edit] Koine Greek
Koiné Greek (from κοινή 'common') refers to the supra-regional standard form of Greek used in the Hellenistic and Roman era, after the expansion of Greek brought about by the conquests of Alexander the Great. It was based mainly on Classical Attic, but with the admixture of some regularisations, simplifications and compromise forms based on other dialects. The term Biblical Greek is today also used to describe Koiné, because Koiné was the variety of Greek the New Testament was written in. The time of Koiné Greek brought some radical changes to the phonological system of the language, which make it stand in some sense halfway between Ancient and Modern Greek [...]
- See also: [[:../Koine Greek phonology|../Koine Greek phonology]]
[edit] Medieval Greek
Medieval Greek is used as a cover term for all forms of Greek spoken and written in the Byzantine era. This comprises a very heterogeneous set of stylistic varieties, ranging from a highly stylised learned language closely imitating Classical Attic, through continuations of earlier Koiné, to the popular spoken vernacular of the time. [...]
[edit] Modern Greek
The term Modern Greek comprises all forms of Greek spoken and written since the end of the Byzantine era, with the symbolic cutoff point usually set at the Fall of Constantinople in 1453. During much of the 19th and 20th centuries, Modern Greek was divided into the popular spoken Demotic and the artificial, learned Katharevousa varieties. Since 1975, Demotic, in the form of Standard Modern Greek, has been the sole official language both in Greece and in Cyprus.
- See also: [[:../Varieties of Modern Greek|../Varieties of Modern Greek]], [[:../Modern Greek phonology|../Modern Greek phonology]], and [[:../Modern Greek grammar|../Modern Greek grammar]]
[edit] Continuity
[Question of status as single language; perception of intelligibility...]
[edit] Effects on other languages
[Role of Greek for Western European civilization and for neighbouring Balkan languages...]
[edit] Writing system=
[Archaic writing systems: Linear B, Cypriot Syll. - Invention of Greek alphabet; genealogy of alphabet from Phoenician; status as oldest "true" alphabet; later innovations; development of classical orthography; Hellenistic innovations; polytonic and monotonic...]
[edit] References
- Herbert Weir Smyth, Greek Grammar, Harvard University Press, 1956 (revised edition), ISBN 0-674-36250-0. The standard grammar of classical Greek. Focuses primarily on the Attic dialect, with comparatively weak treatment of the other dialects and the Homeric Kunstsprache.
- W. Sidney Allen, Vox Graeca - a guide to the pronunciation of classical Greek. Cambridge University Press, 1968-74. ISBN 0-521-20626-X
- Geoffrey Horrocks, Greek: A History of the Language and Its Speakers (Longman Linguistics Library). Addison Wesley Publishing Company, 1997. ISBN 0-582-30709-0. From Mycenean to modern.
- Andrew Sihler, "A New Comparative Grammar of Greek and Latin", Oxford University Press, 1996. An historical grammar of ancient Greek from its Indo-European origins. Some eccentricities and no bibliography but a useful handbook to the earliest stages of Greek's development.
- Robert Browning, Medieval and Modern Greek, Cambridge University Press, 2nd edition 1983, ISBN 0-521-29978-0. An excellent and concise historical account of the development of modern Greek from the ancient language.
- Brian Newton, The Generative Interpretation of Dialect: A Study of Modern Greek Phonology, Cambridge University Press, 1972, ISBN 0-521-08497-0.
- Crosby and Schaeffer, An Introduction to Greek, Allyn and Bacon, Inc. 1928. A school grammar of ancient Greek
- David Holton et al., Greek: A Comprehensive Grammar of the Modern Language, Routledge, 1997, ISBN 0-415-10002-X. A reference grammar of modern Greek.
- Dionysius of Thrace, "Art of Grammar", "Τέχνη γραμματική", c.100 BC
