Ancient Greek is the form of Greek used during the periods of time spanning c. the 9th – 6th century BC (known as Archaic), c. the 5th – 4th century BC (Classical), and c. the 3rd century BC – 6th century AD (Hellenistic) in ancient Greece and the ancient world. It was predated in the 2nd millennium BC by Mycenaean Greek. The language of the Hellenistic phase is known as Koine (common) or Biblical Greek, while the language from the late period onward features no considerable differences from Medieval Greek. Koine is regarded as a separate historical stage of its own, although in its earlier form, it closely resembled the Classical. Prior to the Koine period, Greek of the classic and earlier periods included several regional dialects. Ancient Greek was the language of Homer and of classical Athenian historians, playwrights, and philosophers. It has contributed many words to English vocabulary and has been a standard subject of study in educational institutions of the West since the Renaissance. This article primarily contains information about the Epic and Classical phases of the language.Dialects Main article: Ancient Greek dialects The origins, early form and development of the Hellenic language family are not well understood because of the lack of contemporaneous evidence. There are several theories about what Hellenic dialect groups that may have existed between the divergence of early Greek-like speech from the common Proto-Indo-European language. They have the same general outline but differ in some of the detail. The only attested dialect from this period[2] is Mycenaean, but its relationship to the historical dialects and the historical circumstances of the times imply that the overall groups already existed in some form. The major dialect groups of the Ancient Greek period can be assumed to have developed not later than 1120 BC, at the time of the Dorian invasion(s), and their first appearances as precise alphabetic writing began in the 8th century BC. The invasion would not be Dorian unless the invaders had some cultural relationship to the historical Dorians; moreover, the invasion is known to have displaced population to the later Attic-Ionic regions, who regarded themselves as descendants of the population displaced by or contending with the Dorians. The Greeks of this period believed there were three major divisions of all Greek people—Dorians, Aeolians, and Ionians (including Athenians), each with their own defining and distinctive dialects. Allowing for their oversight of Arcadian, an obscure mountain dialect, and Cyprian, far from the center of Greek scholarship, this division of people and language is quite similar to the results of modern archaeological-linguistic investigation. One standard formulation for the dialects is:[3]West vs. non-west Greek is the strongest marked and earliest division, with non-west in subsets of Ionic-Attic (or Attic-Ionic) and Aeolic vs. Arcado-Cyprian, or Aeolic and Arcado-Cyprian vs. Ionic-Attic. Often non-west is called East Greek. The Arcado-Cyprian group apparently descended more closely from the Mycenaean Greek of the Bronze Age. Boeotian had come under a strong Northwest Greek influence, and can in some respects be considered a transitional dialect. Thessalian likewise had come under Northwest Greek influence, though to a lesser degree. Pamphylian, spoken in a small area on the south-western coast of Asia Minor and little preserved in inscriptions, may be either a fifth major dialect group, or it is Mycenaean Greek overlaid by Doric, with a non-Greek native influence. Ancient Macedonian was an Indo-European language closely related to Greek, but its exact relationship is unclear because of insufficient data: possibly a dialect of Greek; a sibling language to Greek; or a close cousin to Greek, and perhaps related to some extent, to Thracian and Phrygian languages. The Pella curse tablet is one of many finds that support the idea that the Ancient Macedonian language is closely related to the Doric Greek dialect. Most of the dialect sub-groups listed above had further subdivisions, generally equivalent to a city-state and its surrounding territory, or to an island. Doric notably had several intermediate divisions as well, into Island Doric (including Cretan Doric), Southern Peloponnesus Doric (including Laconian, the dialect of Sparta), and Northern Peloponnesus Doric (including Corinthian). The Lesbian dialect was a member of the Aegean/Asiatic Aeolic sub-group. All the groups were represented by colonies beyond Greece proper as well, and these colonies generally developed local characteristics, often under the influence of settlers or neighbors speaking different Greek dialects. The dialects outside the Ionic group are known mainly from inscriptions, notable exceptions being fragments of the works of the poetess Sappho from the island of Lesbos and the poems of the Boeotian poet, Pindar. After the conquests of Alexander the Great in the late 300s BC, a new international dialect known as Koine or Common Greek developed, largely based on Attic Greek, but with influence from other dialects. This dialect slowly replaced most of the older dialects, although Doric dialect has survived to the present in the form of the Tsakonian dialect of Modern Greek, spoken in the region of modern Sparta. Doric has also passed down its aorist terminations into most verbs of Demotic Greek. By about the 500s AD, the Koine had slowly metamorphosized into Medieval Greek.
Posted on: Sun, 14 Sep 2014 19:42:51 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015