Greece - Language

History of the Greek language

 

 

Greek belongs to the Indo-European languages. But unlike for example Latin which  developed into Italian, Spanish, French and partly English, the Greek language has not spread beyond Greek territory.

 
Among the earliest written evidence from the Greek territory, is the famous Phaistos disc that supposedly dates from the 17th century BC. The clay disc, with a diameter of 16 cm, is stamped on both sides with the so-called Cretan hieroglyphs used in the Early Palace Period (2000-1700 BC). The script has not yet been deciphered so it is not known whether it is an early form of Greek.

 

At the end of the period, Crete was struck by several strong earthquakes which laid the old palaces in ruins. But soon new and even more magnificent palaces were built to mark the new age, the so-called Late Palace Period (1700-1450 BC). The writing system, Linear A which has not yet been deciphered either, dates from this period.
During the Post palatial Period (1400-1100 BC) that developed after the destruction of the Minoan palaces and cities, a third writing system Linear B, presumably developed from Linear A, was used. When the British architect Michael Ventris, working during World War II as a code expert, in 1953 deciphered Linear B, the language proved to be an early form of Greek. As the same writing system has also been found on the Greek mainland, it is theorized that entering Achaeans from Peloponnese (Mycenae) brought the script to Crete.

 
The Post palatial Period ended after an additional destruction, probably as a result of the Dorian invasion from the Greek mainland. The new immigrants founded cities all over Crete and brought with them new customs and traditions plus not least a new language, the Doric dialect. Small groups of the original inhabitants of the island, the Eteocretans, fled into the mountains, where they for a longer period of time kept up their Minoan customs and language, but gradually Crete became a part of the ancient Hellenic world.

 
Among the earliest written evidence from the Doric Crete, is the law inscription in Gortyna from the early 5th century BC. It is written by turns from left to right and right to left (boustrophedon).

 

 
In Antiquity the Greek language consisted of several dialects, for example Doric, Aeolic and Ionic, but from the 5th century the Ionic sub dialect "Attic" became the predominant. Attic is the language, known today as Ancient Greek, as it was spoken and written in Athens by for instance Plato, Aristotle and Thucydides during the city's great period in the middle of the 5th century BC.

 
Even after the Roman capture of Greece in 146-86 BC, the Greek language did not die out. As a matter of fact it continued to be so widespread that even children from the middle classes in Rome had private lessons (often by a Greek slave). The New Testament as well as many other early Christian manuscripts are written in Koine (common Greek).

 
When the Roman Empire was divided in 395 AD, Greek became the official language of the Byzantine Empire and the Orthodox Church, but the distance between the spoken and the written language increased constantly as a revival of the ancient Attic language was attempted.

 

After the 4th crusade, Crete was sold to Venice in 1204. At the end of the Venetian period, a combination of Italian and Greek culture developed into the flourishing Cretan renaissance, expressing itself in numerous poetic works and theatre plays. The most famous work from that time is the Erotokritos of Vitsentzos Kornaros (1553-1613) from Eastern Crete.
 

 
After the Ottoman capture of first Constantinople (1453) and then the rest of the "Greek" territory during the 15th-17th centuries (Crete 1669), the usage of the Greek language continued actively in the local political management and also in the church, as the Muslims allowed the Greek inhabitants to keep their orthodox faith. The Greeks themselves called their language Roméika, i.e. Roman.

 
During the Ottoman hegemony, Greek adopted numerous Turkish loan words, just like many Italian words had been adopted earlier during the Venetian period.

 
At the establishment of the new Greek state in 1829, Modern Greek was introduced as the official language. During the 19th and 20th century there was a long conflict about which language was to be the official language: The naturally developed common language (dimotiki ) or the puristic written language (katharevousa). Katharevousa was an "artificial product", developed in connection with the independence of Greece in an attempt to revive the ancient Attic language. In reality the dispute was not settled until 1976, two years after the fall of the junta, when the parliament passed an act making Demotic the official language of Greece. This law is still effective.

 
The Greek language has in newer time adopted quite a few loan words from English, and the Latin alphabet is moreover being used more and more frequently in the new words.

 

 
Outside Greece itself, Greek is spoken in Cyprus, by the Greeks in Istanbul and Alexandria and in a few villages in Southern Italy. There are moreover large Greek minorities all over the world where people still speak their old native language among themselves.

 
The Greek alphabet was originally borrowed from Phoenician in the 9th century BC, but some of the symbols were phonetically modified into the lacking vowels, as were a few consonants added. From Greek is derived as well the Latin alphabet as the Cyrillic, which underlies the Russian alphabet.