GREEK LANGUAGE AND IDENTITY

INDO-EUROPEAN FAMILY GROUP Like most of the European languages, Greek belongs to the Indo-European language family group.

But contrary to other European languages it is only spoken by Greeks, approximately 15-22 million people.

It is spoken in Greece but also in the Greek communities throughout the world.

European Union has recognized Greek as a minority language in Albania, Turkey and Italy

HISTORY OF THE GREEK LANGUAGE

The ancestor of Greek is the Proto-Greek language that was spoken in 3rd millenium in the Balkan area.

There are no written documents of the Proto-Greek.

The very first writings in Greek are written in a script known as Linear B, between 1500 and 1200 BC.

Linear B is an evolution of the Linear A, which has not have been deciphered yet, so we are uncertain as to what language it represents. Writings containing the Linear A script have been found on the island of Crete and are associated with the Minoan Civilization that flourished at that island between 2400 to 1750 BC.

HISTORY OF THE GREEK LANGUAGE

Linear B has approximately 200 signs, divided into syllabic signs with phonetic values and logograms (or ideograms) with semantic values.

The script was deciphered in 1952 be the British architect and amateur code-breaker Michael Ventris.

The script represent the Mycenaean dialect of Greek.

HISTORY OF THE GREEK LANGUAGE

Around 1200 BC the Mycenaean civilization is destroyed. The reason remains unknown.

The art of writing was lost and had to be reinvented.

The period between 1200 BC to 800 BC is called the Greek Dark Ages.

Approximately at the 800 BC two major developments occur in Greece

A)The creation of the Alphabet

B) The writing of the Homeric Epics

GREEK ALPHABET

The Greek is the first and the oldest alphabet in the history of mankind.

It has 24 letters and it is the root of English as well as other European alphabets (Russian, Celtic etc.)

It is descended from the Phoenician Alphabet, which however did not represent the vowels with distinct symbols.

The names of the letters of the Greek alphabet come from the Phoenician letter names.

HISTORY OF THE GREEK LANGUAGE

The ancient Greek language was divided in various dialects who were spoken locally and corresponded to the Greek tribes (Arcadian, Ionic, Dorian, etc.)

Attic Greek is a subdialect of Ionic, and was spoken in Athens. Most surviving classical Greek literature is written in Attic Greek (Plato, Aristotle etc.)

This is the language that you learn when you learn ancient Greek.