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 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages |  | |
| Sulpicius Diglot Groupie United States Joined 6028 days ago 89 posts - 91 votes  Speaks: English*, Latin Studies: French, Arabic (Written) | Message 1 of 31 05 March 2009 at 5:26am | IP Logged | ||
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I was wondering if anyone would be helpful and elaborate about this language. My questions, for the sake of clarity and organization are presented in the following formatted list.
1.) Does the Greek language have an abudance of modern printing? Are there many modern works on history, politics and philosophy, essays, in sum, social sciences? How would the amount of modern literature on the social sciences compare with other languages? 2.) How big is the gap between modern Greek and being able to read Byzantine Romance and novels? Thanks! 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| metordorus Newbie United States Joined 5749 days ago 26 posts - 31 votes Speaks: English* | Message 2 of 31 06 March 2009 at 11:49pm | IP Logged | ||
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There is a huge amount of stuff printed in modern Greek. Greeks have high literacy rates and value reading.
There is a huge gap between Ancient and Modern Greek--like that between, say, Latin and French. I'm not familiar with Byzantine authors, but writing in the Byzantine period tried to stick to the model of ancient Greek. I suspect that it would be difficult to go from Modern Greek to Byzantine Greek. Edited by metordorus on 06 March 2009 at 11:51pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Sulpicius Diglot Groupie United States Joined 6028 days ago 89 posts - 91 votes Speaks: English*, Latin Studies: French, Arabic (Written) | Message 3 of 31 07 March 2009 at 12:32am | IP Logged | ||
That's what I understand, but I also know that suddenly there were works in the vernacular, like the Accritic songs. Thanks for your post. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Jeito Triglot Groupie United States Joined 5818 days ago 55 posts - 63 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, French Studies: Mandarin, German, Italian, Portuguese | Message 4 of 31 08 March 2009 at 2:30am | IP Logged | ||
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It may even be more complicated...Here's what I think I know. There is Ancient (Attic) Greek of Homer, Troy and all of that. There is modern vernacular Greek (called Demotic) which is the language of everyday life. There is a formal, ceremonial Greek called (Kathurevsa, or something very similar to that).
I wouldn't count on Byzantime Greek being like Ancient Greek. As Greek spread as a language of culture and commerce during the Hellenistic period following the death of Alexander the Great, it changed because non-native Greeks started to use it. One example of this is New Testament Greek in which Jews and Gentiles who became Christian wrote the New Testament. If I had money to wager, I would bet that Byzantium used a form of Hellenistic Greek and not an imitation of Ancient Greek. Remember Latin changed dramatically from the time of the Romans to the Middle Ages when it was used by everybody as a lingua franca. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| William Camden Hexaglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 6273 days ago 1936 posts - 2333 votes Speaks: English*, German, Spanish, Russian, Turkish, French | Message 5 of 31 09 March 2009 at 2:51pm | IP Logged | ||
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Koine, the language of the New Testament, was apparently much simplified compared to Classical Greek, and was widespread as an L2 and lingua franca. Sometimes it was influenced by the L1s of the people who spoke it - some have detected Aramaic influences in New Testament Greek, for example. I am not an expert on this area but I read that Byzantine Greek is a development of Koine.
An informer accusing the Elizabethan playwright Christopher Marlowe in 1593 of atheism said that Marlowe had claimed the New Testament was "filthily written". Marlowe had at least some knowledge of Classical Greek, and if the informer reported his remarks accurately, it might have been a criticism of New Testament Greek as opposed to Classical. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| JWC Groupie United States Joined 7099 days ago 69 posts - 107 votes Speaks: English* Studies: French | Message 6 of 31 12 March 2009 at 5:10pm | IP Logged | ||
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Byzantine Greek would range from the fourth to the 16th centuries A.D. (when the eastern Roman empire finally fell), so we are talking about a broad swathe of time.
The patristic Greek of the 4th-5th century was written in an era in which a form of simple koine Greek was spoken in places such as Constantinople or Antioch but the writing of educated church fathers was in a style that consciously mimicked Attic Greek (for example, employing optative verb forms and other features that dropped out of koine Greek) but was often more convoluted than natural, original Attic Greek. That writing in turn became a pattern for subsequent church liturgical texts, hagiographies, and patristic writings that formed much of the corpus of Greek texts through the fall of the Byzantine empire. The closest comparison with Latin would be to look at the writings of the Renaissance Latin authors who returned to Cicero as the pattern for proper (but very complex) Latin in place of the simplified ecclesial Latin of the Vulgate that is the Latin equivalent of New Testament koine Greek. The way I would put it is this--if you can read Attic Greek you can read Byzantine Greek patristic writings and perhaps court documents that maintain the same "high" style of Greek that mimic Attic constructions and vocabulary, with of course many new words that came about in the context of the eastern Roman empire that did not exist in the era of Alexander the Great. -JWC 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| leblebi Tetraglot Newbie Greece Joined 5374 days ago 6 posts - 14 votes Speaks: Greek*, EnglishC2, GermanC1, TurkishA1 | Message 7 of 31 03 January 2011 at 4:25pm | IP Logged | ||
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Acquiring a sound basis of modern Greek will help you comprehend a very big deal of an older "byzantine" or "post-byzantine" (15th cen. onwards) text, provided it is not written in a very twisted or very elaborate scholarly manner. In fact, demotic (common) language from the 11th century onwards is amazingly close to modern Greek. With the help of a good dictionary you will have great fun in reading everyday life texts such as demotic poems or even contracts. Of course, for a more serious search into scholarly material (church texts, hymns, official texts, chronicles etc) you need at least a basic knowledge of ancient Greek (grammar and syntax). Byzantine scholars, Church and State hierarchy had a generally conservative attitude against language; they relied heavily on the ancient literary tradition, at the same time when common people had long rendered the dative case and other grammatical phenomena obsolete.
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| Merv Bilingual Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5274 days ago 414 posts - 749 votes Speaks: English*, Serbo-Croatian* Studies: Spanish, French | Message 8 of 31 03 January 2011 at 4:40pm | IP Logged | ||
How profound are Turkish, Armenian, Slavic, Albanian, Italian, etc. influences on modern Greek? Has the language tended to use such loanwords freely (cf English) or does it tend to go for Greek equivalents (cf French)? 1 person has voted this message useful |
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