Ancient Greek

Ancient Greek (proper name: ἡ ἑλληνικὴ (γλῶσσα [Attic: γλῶττα]), hē hellēnikḗ (glṓssa [Attic: glṓtta]), "the Greek language") is the ancient linguistic stage of the Greek language, an Indo-European language in the eastern Mediterranean that constitutes a distinct branch of this language family, possibly via an intermediate Balkan Indo-European stage.

The term Ancient Greek covers language forms and dialects that were used between the introduction of Greek writing (about 800 BC) and the beginning of the Hellenistic era (about 300 BC) and, at least in literature, for much longer, until the end of antiquity (about 600 AD). The standard for classical ancient Greek is considered to be the literary Attic dialect of the 5th and 4th centuries BC, the language of Sophocles, Plato and Demosthenes. The language stage between about 600 and 1453 (conquest of Constantinople by the Ottomans) is commonly referred to as Middle Greek or Byzantine Greek; the subsequent Modern Greek, the state language of modern Greece, has traceably developed continuously from Old or Middle Greek.

The ancient Greek language has, on the one hand, through its mediation by Latin, the most important language of education in Western Europe until the 19th century, and on the other hand, through its exemplary preserved literature, especially in the fields of philosophy, natural science, historiography, poetry, music and theatre, an outstanding importance for the entire Occident. Added to this is its importance as the language of the New Testament for the religion and theology of Christianity. Through this influence, it has also shaped the other European languages: a large number of loan translations, loan words and foreign words have found their way into European languages and are used in various specialist languages.

The ISO 639 language code for Ancient and Middle Greek (up to 1453) is grc.

Sample text

Spoken^{? /i}

Translation: "Convinced myself, I try to convince others also that, for the attainment of this good, it is difficult to find a better helper for human nature than love."

(Plato: Symposion)

Classification

Ancient Greek can be classified as an Indo-European language, i.e. it is derived from Ur-Indo-European, which probably split into the branches known today in the 3rd millennium BC. The sounds and vocabulary of Ancient Greek, however, differ from all other languages of the family to such an extent that it is regarded as a separate branch of Indo-Germanic in the narrower sense and a strong substrate effect of the "pre-Greek" language stages on the Greek idioms is assumed.

The origin of many non-Indo-European words of Greek (such as θάλασσα thalassa "sea" and νῆσος nēsos "island") is thought by researchers to be in the language or languages of the inhabitants of Greece before the arrival of the Indo-European peoples around 2000 BC, also known as the Aegean languages. The pre-Greek population was called Πελασγοί Pelasgoi "Pelasgians" in ancient Greek, among other names. Certainly Minoan and Eteocretan, pre-Greek languages on Crete, also influenced the vocabulary of early Greek.