akritas
12-30-2005, 05:18 AM
The history of the Greek Language begins, as far as the surviving texts are concerned, with the Mycenaean civilization at least as early as the13B.C. Greek dialects were attested as early as the Linear B of the Mycenaean tablets found on Crete and mainland Greece (around 1200 B.C.). After the collapse of the Mycenaean civilization (around 1200 BC) writing disappeared from Greece.
In the late ninth to early 8th BC a script based on the Phoenician syllabary was introduced, with unneeded consonant symbols being reused to represent the Greek vowels.
The major difreent between Phoenician and the Hellenic is that the first is Consonantal Alphabetic when the second is a C&V Alphabetic.
Phoenician alphabet has no vowels. Both scripts belong in Proto-Sinaitic family tree.
From the shape of the letters, it is clear that the Greeks adopted the alphabet the Phoenician script, mostly like during the late 9th BC. In fact, Greek historian Herotodus (5th century BCE) called the Greek letters "phoinikeia grammata" (foinikia grammata), which means Phoenician letters When the Greeks adopted the alphabet; they found letters representing sounds not found in Greek. Instead of throwing them away, they modified the extraneous letters to represent vowels. For example, the Phoenician letters 'aleph (which stood for a glottal stop) became the Greek letter alpha (which stands for [a] sound).
Although many people identify ancient Greece with classical Athens, much of what made classical Athens and its neighbors distinctive had its origins in what is called the "Archaic period," that is, the period traditionally dated from the first Olympiad in 776 B.C. to the end of the Persian Wars in 479 B.C. Far from being "archaic" in the modern sense, the Archaic period of Greek history witnessed the reintroduction of writing to Greece, the development of the city-state (polis), the creation of Homer's epics and of the intensely personal poetry of Archilochus and Sappho, as well as the birth of western philosophy in Ionia and the rise to prominence of the great powers of the 5th century, Athens and Sparta.
· Homer's Iliad (English (http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/cgi-bin/ptext?doc=Perseus:text:1999.01.0134), Greek (http://www.fh-augsburg.de/~harsch/graeca/Chronologia/S_ante08/Homeros/hom_il00.html))
· Archilochus (http://www.fh-augsburg.de/~harsch/graeca/Chronologia/S_ante07/Archilochos/arc_intr.html)
· Plutarch's Life of Solon (http://classics.mit.edu/Plutarch/solon.html)
There were many variants of the early Greek alphabet, each suited to a local dialect. Eventually the Ionian alphabet was adopted in all Greek-speaking states, but before that happened, the Euboean variant was carried to the Italic peninsula and adopted by Etruscan and eventually the Romans.
In the classical or Hellenic period Greek existed in several major dialects, each of which has its own significance for the history of the language, but the most influential of these would ultimately prove to be the one spoken in Athens, called Attic. Well within the hellenic period, though, Attic and Ionic—the form of the language spoken mainly in the Greek city states directly across the Aegean Sea from Athens—exerted significant influence on each other as the preferred forms of the language for oratory and philosophical prose, eventually producing a dialect now called Attic-Ionic.
Recently and after the discovering of plenty of inscriptions as the Pella katadesmos in Macedonia we have the officially recognition of the Ancient Macedonian Language as a part of the Hellenic family and a Subgrouping Code Indo European Greek B (IEGB)
As I said the Pella katadesmos was the main cause of the independent recognizing. Bellow I present opinion of two undependable and not Greek origin linguistics that prove the Hellenic origin of the ancient inscription and also the opinion of what was the spoken language of the Ancient Macedonians:
“A 4th BC curse tablet from Pella shows word forms which are clearly Doric, but a different form of Doric from any of the west Greek dialects of areas adjoining Macedon. Three other, very brief, fourth century inscriptions are also indubitably Doric. These show that a Doric dialect was spoken in Macedon, as we would expect from the West Greek forms of Greek names found in Macedon. And yet later Macedonian inscriptions are in Koine avoiding both Doric forms and the Macedonian voicing of consonants. The native Macedonian dialect had become unsuitable for written documents." [James L. O'Neil's (of the University of Sydney) presentation at the 2005 Conference of the Australasian Society for Classical Studies, entitled "Doric Forms in Macedonian Inscriptions]
And
"Yet in contrast with earlier views which made of it {i.e. Macedonian} an Aeolic dialect (O.Hoffmann compared Thessalian) we must by now think of a link with North-West Greek (Locrian, Aetolian, Phocidian, Epirote). This view is supported by the recent discovery at Pella of a curse tablet (4th cent. BC) which may well be the first 'Macedonian' text attested (provisional publication by E.Voutyras; cf. the Bulletin Epigraphique in Rev. Et. Grec. 1994, no.413); the text includes an adverb "opoka" which is not Thessalian." (OCD, 1996, pp 905, 906). [Oxford Classical Dictionary, Professor Olivier Masson]
The ancient language of the Macedonian kingdom had spoken in N. Greece and South F.Y.R.O. Macedonia during the later 1st millennium BC. Survived until the early 1st millennium AD. Not to be confused with the modern Macedonian language, this is a close relative of the Slavic Bulgarian.
Sources:
http://www.greek-language.com/historyofgreek/ (http://www.greek-language.com/historyofgreek/)
http://cf.linguistlist.org/cfdocs/new-website/LL-WorkingDirs/forms/langs/LLDescription.cfm?code=xmk (http://cf.linguistlist.org/cfdocs/new-website/LL-WorkingDirs/forms/langs/LLDescription.cfm?code=xmk)
http://www.school-explorer.com/info/Pella_katadesmos (http://www.school-explorer.com/info/Pella_katadesmos)
http://www.utexas.edu/cola/depts/lrc/iedocctr/ie-lg/Hellenic.html (http://www.utexas.edu/cola/depts/lrc/iedocctr/ie-lg/Hellenic.html)
Akritas
In the late ninth to early 8th BC a script based on the Phoenician syllabary was introduced, with unneeded consonant symbols being reused to represent the Greek vowels.
The major difreent between Phoenician and the Hellenic is that the first is Consonantal Alphabetic when the second is a C&V Alphabetic.
Phoenician alphabet has no vowels. Both scripts belong in Proto-Sinaitic family tree.
From the shape of the letters, it is clear that the Greeks adopted the alphabet the Phoenician script, mostly like during the late 9th BC. In fact, Greek historian Herotodus (5th century BCE) called the Greek letters "phoinikeia grammata" (foinikia grammata), which means Phoenician letters When the Greeks adopted the alphabet; they found letters representing sounds not found in Greek. Instead of throwing them away, they modified the extraneous letters to represent vowels. For example, the Phoenician letters 'aleph (which stood for a glottal stop) became the Greek letter alpha (which stands for [a] sound).
Although many people identify ancient Greece with classical Athens, much of what made classical Athens and its neighbors distinctive had its origins in what is called the "Archaic period," that is, the period traditionally dated from the first Olympiad in 776 B.C. to the end of the Persian Wars in 479 B.C. Far from being "archaic" in the modern sense, the Archaic period of Greek history witnessed the reintroduction of writing to Greece, the development of the city-state (polis), the creation of Homer's epics and of the intensely personal poetry of Archilochus and Sappho, as well as the birth of western philosophy in Ionia and the rise to prominence of the great powers of the 5th century, Athens and Sparta.
· Homer's Iliad (English (http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/cgi-bin/ptext?doc=Perseus:text:1999.01.0134), Greek (http://www.fh-augsburg.de/~harsch/graeca/Chronologia/S_ante08/Homeros/hom_il00.html))
· Archilochus (http://www.fh-augsburg.de/~harsch/graeca/Chronologia/S_ante07/Archilochos/arc_intr.html)
· Plutarch's Life of Solon (http://classics.mit.edu/Plutarch/solon.html)
There were many variants of the early Greek alphabet, each suited to a local dialect. Eventually the Ionian alphabet was adopted in all Greek-speaking states, but before that happened, the Euboean variant was carried to the Italic peninsula and adopted by Etruscan and eventually the Romans.
In the classical or Hellenic period Greek existed in several major dialects, each of which has its own significance for the history of the language, but the most influential of these would ultimately prove to be the one spoken in Athens, called Attic. Well within the hellenic period, though, Attic and Ionic—the form of the language spoken mainly in the Greek city states directly across the Aegean Sea from Athens—exerted significant influence on each other as the preferred forms of the language for oratory and philosophical prose, eventually producing a dialect now called Attic-Ionic.
Recently and after the discovering of plenty of inscriptions as the Pella katadesmos in Macedonia we have the officially recognition of the Ancient Macedonian Language as a part of the Hellenic family and a Subgrouping Code Indo European Greek B (IEGB)
As I said the Pella katadesmos was the main cause of the independent recognizing. Bellow I present opinion of two undependable and not Greek origin linguistics that prove the Hellenic origin of the ancient inscription and also the opinion of what was the spoken language of the Ancient Macedonians:
“A 4th BC curse tablet from Pella shows word forms which are clearly Doric, but a different form of Doric from any of the west Greek dialects of areas adjoining Macedon. Three other, very brief, fourth century inscriptions are also indubitably Doric. These show that a Doric dialect was spoken in Macedon, as we would expect from the West Greek forms of Greek names found in Macedon. And yet later Macedonian inscriptions are in Koine avoiding both Doric forms and the Macedonian voicing of consonants. The native Macedonian dialect had become unsuitable for written documents." [James L. O'Neil's (of the University of Sydney) presentation at the 2005 Conference of the Australasian Society for Classical Studies, entitled "Doric Forms in Macedonian Inscriptions]
And
"Yet in contrast with earlier views which made of it {i.e. Macedonian} an Aeolic dialect (O.Hoffmann compared Thessalian) we must by now think of a link with North-West Greek (Locrian, Aetolian, Phocidian, Epirote). This view is supported by the recent discovery at Pella of a curse tablet (4th cent. BC) which may well be the first 'Macedonian' text attested (provisional publication by E.Voutyras; cf. the Bulletin Epigraphique in Rev. Et. Grec. 1994, no.413); the text includes an adverb "opoka" which is not Thessalian." (OCD, 1996, pp 905, 906). [Oxford Classical Dictionary, Professor Olivier Masson]
The ancient language of the Macedonian kingdom had spoken in N. Greece and South F.Y.R.O. Macedonia during the later 1st millennium BC. Survived until the early 1st millennium AD. Not to be confused with the modern Macedonian language, this is a close relative of the Slavic Bulgarian.
Sources:
http://www.greek-language.com/historyofgreek/ (http://www.greek-language.com/historyofgreek/)
http://cf.linguistlist.org/cfdocs/new-website/LL-WorkingDirs/forms/langs/LLDescription.cfm?code=xmk (http://cf.linguistlist.org/cfdocs/new-website/LL-WorkingDirs/forms/langs/LLDescription.cfm?code=xmk)
http://www.school-explorer.com/info/Pella_katadesmos (http://www.school-explorer.com/info/Pella_katadesmos)
http://www.utexas.edu/cola/depts/lrc/iedocctr/ie-lg/Hellenic.html (http://www.utexas.edu/cola/depts/lrc/iedocctr/ie-lg/Hellenic.html)
Akritas