Greek Lessons

Μάθημα ένα (Mathima Ena)

Lesson 1  

History of the Greek language

The earliest records of written Greek are inscribed on mud tablets found at the beginning of the present century in the ruins of the palace of Knossos on Crete and, later, at sites on the Greek mainland. Written in a syllabic script known as Linear B in which each symbol represents a consonant plus vowel combination, they can be dated to the period immediately before the demise of the Minoan civilization of Knossos which occurred in about 1450 B.C. Most of the tablets are inventories of property or deal with agricultural production and produce. They represent the earliest records of any European language.

The earliest inscriptions in the forerunner of today's Greek alphabet date from about 750 B.C., long after the Mycenaeans, mainland successors to the Minoans and heroes of the Trojan war, had declined in influence and at about the time the poet Homer is said to have lived.

When considering ancient Greece it is important to be aware of the cultural and political background. For much of this period Greece was fragmented into city states with their satellite colonies, each with its own political system and cultural values; these may, at various times, have traded with each other, fought each other or formed military alliances. In many cases they did all three. This separateness was reinforced by the Greek language which had evolved as a number of regional dialects through successive southern movements of Greek speaking peoples. The distribution of these dialects reflected patterns of migration and colonization and it did not follow that geographical closeness led to similarities in dialect.

Bearing in mind that while Homer flourished in the 8th century B.C. (and some of his language was archaic even for that period) and Aristotle did not die until 322 B.C., not only do the texts popularly associated with ancient Greek writing span a considerable period of time (at least equal to the period between the present day and Shakespeare) but are composed in a number of distinct dialects. There is thus, at least in one sense, no such thing as standard ancient Greek common to all speakers - although maybe one such candidate did emerge. During the classical period Athens acquired such political and cultural dominance among the Greek city states that the Attic dialect of the 4th century B.C. began to be accepted as the universal standard, at least for Greek prose.

However politics were soon to bring about further and more radical change to the Greek language. Philip II of Macedon (382 - 336 B.C.) followed by his yet more ambitious son, Alexander the Great (356 - 323 B.C.), swept away the traditional city states, uniting Greece and the near and middle east into a massive empire extending south to Egypt and east into India. Although the Macedonian court was thought of by other Greeks of the time as provincial and only half civilized, Philip seems to have been a man of culture and used his wealth to bring to his court only the best money could buy (among his imports was the philosopher Aristotle as tutor for the young Alexander) and adopted the Attic dialect as the language of his empire. The far reaching effect of this was, for the first time, to replace the dialects with a standard national language. However the extent of the empire also meant many people whose native tongue was not Greek attempted to express themselves through the medium of the classical Attic dialect resulting in an erosion and simplification of the language and changes in pronunciation that remain until this day. This form of Greek is known as the common language or koine. It is the language in which the Christian Gospels were originally composed and which is still used, largely unchanged, in the Greek Orthodox liturgy.

It may be supposed that when the Romans arrived in Greece (Greece became a Roman protectorate in 146 B.C.) and the near east, Greek would have been replaced by Latin. However if anything the reverse was true, the study of Greek being mandatory for the educated Roman, and the use of Greek was widespread throughout the eastern part of the Empire. The Empire itself was to be divided in 395 A.D. with the eastern half being ruled from Constantinople, the capital founded by the Emperor Constantine the Great in 330 A.D. In the 6th Century A.D. Greek became the official language of the Eastern or Byzantine Empire. Long after the Western Empire and Rome itself fell prey to invaders, the Byzantine Empire persisted under increasing pressure from Islam in the east and crusaders and Frankish and Italian princes in the west until the final fall of Constantinople to the Ottoman Turks in 1453. By this time most of present day Greece had been occupied and colonized by Franks and Venetians, themselves later to fall to the expanding Ottoman Empire. Thus just as western European was beginning to emerge with the start of the renaissance, a dark age finally descended on the Greek-speaking world.

It was not until the uprising against the Turks in 1821 that the modern Greek state was born. However this did not stop Greek intellectuals of the eighteenth century dreaming about the institutions of an independent Greece, in particular the language that was, together with Orthodox Christianity, to be one of the unifying factors of the new nation. Reinventing a language may today seem a rather pointless occupation but to the Greeks of the late 18th century plotting revolution against the Ottoman Turks, there were important practical questions to be resolved. Although a tradition of Greek literature had been maintained through the years of occupation by Frank, Venetian and Turk, this had been achieved mainly through the flowering of isolated centres of culture over relatively brief periods (e.g. Crete during the 16th & early 17th centuries and later in the Ionian islands after the fall of Crete in 1669). However in the main land, Greek had become a largely oral culture and the problem perceived by the founders of the Greek state was in what language should the constitution and laws of Modern Greece be drafted and what should be the language used in education and administration? Historically the answer would have been to revert to the Attic Greek of classical Athens, the language in which Plato had written over two thousand years earlier. Such a solution was also attractive owing to the preoccupation with classical culture then widespread in western Europe and which was the stimulus for much of the support given to the movement for Greek independence by Philhellenes such as the poet Lord Byron. Even though Greek has undergone fewer changes over time than most languages, such a radical solution was seen by most as, although possibly desirable, in practice, impossible. So there was found a middle way of reforming the spoken language of the time on ancient principals and thus katharevousa (καθαρεύουσα), literally "purifying language" came into existence.

Needless to say, even from the earliest days, not everyone was happy with this middle way. Some thought the proposed reforms had not gone far enough while others, particularly literary writers, thought katharevousa was too remote from the speech of the common people. It was not long before an alternative was proposed, adapting and systematizing the common spoken language of the people, demotiki (demotic Greek). The debate between proponents of these two approaches was fierce; academics were sacked for using demotiki and the language question even led to rioting in the streets. In the twentieth century the language debate took on a political significance with social reformers claiming that katharevousa was being used as an instrument to deny the common man access to education and advancement while nationalist governments generally tended to favour katharevousa.

The battle was finally won as recently as 1976 with the adoption of demotiki as the language of education and administration. Katharevousa is still sometimes encountered in legal texts but its demise will no doubt be spurred by the fact that classical Greek is no longer widely taught in Greek schools. There is a now a reasonable, if not perfect, consensus on what comprises "good" Modern Greek based largely on demotiki but not averse to the occasional inclusion of a katharevousa phrase where tradition or common sense would justify it. For example, the ancient word for "house" is οίκος (Which is the root of words like economy and ecology). A publishing house in Greek is called εκδοτικός οίκος and a fashion house is called οίκος μόδας. When you are talking about a house in general though, you will use the demotic word σπίτι and not the word οίκος.

The alphabet - Το αλφάβητο (to alfavito) 

The Basics

The articles

The definite article (the)

In Greek, nouns have 3 genders: masculine, feminine and neuter. Although the endings of nouns (and adjectives) are often indicative of their gender, a more certain way of identifying them is by their definite article:

ο for masculine nouns

η for feminine nouns

το for neuter

For example:

the man = ο άντρας (o antras)

the woman = η γυναίκα (i gineka)

the car = το αυτοκίνητο (to aftokinito)

Something that you should note is that in Greek we use articles before names, cities, countries etc. too. In English you would never say something like "The Chris" but in Greek you will say "Ο Χρήστος", or you would never say "The Greece" but in Greek you will say "Η Ελλάδα".

The indefinite article (a, an)

ένας (enas) masculine

μία (mia) feminine

ένα (ena) neuter

The indifinite article is also a good guide to the gender of a greek noun or adjective.

a man = ένας άντρας (enas antras)

a woman = μία γυναίκα (mia gineka)

a car = ένα αυτοκίνητο (ena aftokinito)

The plural definite article

Both the definite and indefinite articles decline just as nouns do (we'll talk about this later) and the definite article also has both a singular - for one object or person - and a plural - for more than one.

the man = ο άντρας (o antras)                   the men = οι άντρες (i antres)

the woman = η γυναίκα (i gineka)             the women = οι γυναίκες (i ginekes)

the car = το αυτοκίνητο (to aftokinito)        the cars = τα αυτοκίνητα (ta aftokinita)

Accentuation

In 1982 the system of accentuation was simplified to just one accent. Before that, there were 2 breathings and 3 different accents, which were similar to the French ones.

All words with more than one syllable (there are some exceptions but we will deal with them later) have an accent, which indicates the syllable to be read with extra emphasis. The position of an accent is important in establishing the meaning of words. Not infrequently the only distinguishing mark between two words, otherwise identical but with two different meanings, is the accent. For example consider the word γερος. If the accent goes to the epsilon (γέρος) we have a noun which means "old man". If the accent goes to the omicron (γερός) we have an adjective meaning "strong" or "tough".

A useful rule to remember for longer words is that a Greek word can have an accent only on one of the last three syllables.

I should also indicate how to put the accents on words in the computer. When you have switched to Greek keyboard, in order to place an accented letter, press the ; button and then after it the vowel you want to accent. For example, if you want to type the word γερός that I used above, you should press g (for γ), e(for ε), r (for ρ), ; and then o (for ό) and w (for ς). When we write in full capitals we don't use accents but when we have the first letter of a sentence (which means that it must be a capital followed by small letters) we accentuate it. For example, if you write the word Ενας, it should be like this: Ένας. To accentuate the E, you press ; and then Symbol shift with E to create the capital letter.

 If you press ' (the button next to ;) and then the vowels i or u, the diairesis symbol comes up (ϊ ϋ), which I will discuss below (I have enlarged the fonts so that you can clearly see the diairesis symbol). For an accented diairesis, you should press Symbol shift and ; and then i or u (ΰ ΐ). The reason I mentioned only ι and υ is because the diairesis symbol is used only with these two vowels, while the accent symbol is used with all vowels (ά έ ή ί ό ύ ώ).

The diairesis rule

As I already mentioned, when the letters αι are next to each other like this, they should be read as ε. There are some exceptions to this rule however.

1)The accent is placed on the first vowel of the two, e.g. consider the word τσάι (tea). According to the general rules you would try to pronounce that as tse but because of the accent on top of the α, the correct pronounciation is tsa-i. So when you have any of the two-vowel combination, if the accent is on the first vowel, each vowel keeps its indivindual sound. If the accent is on the second vowel or there is no accent on any of the two vowels, it keeps the combined sound, unless:

2)The second vowel has the diairesis symbol ( ¨ or ΅ ) over it. The word διαίρεση means division, and that's what this symbol does, it divides the sound bvetween the two vowels. For example, we have the word γαϊδούρι (donkey). The diairesis over the ι means that it should be pronounced separately from the α, like that: ya-i-dhou-ri. Now, it may happen that the ι is accented, so we use diairesis with accent, like in the word φαΐ (food), which reads as fa-i. The diairesis can also be used with εϊ, οϊ, υϊ, αϋ, εϋ. But as I say again, this is an exception, 90% of the times you encounter a word which has αι together, it should be read like ε and so on for the other two-vowel combinations. Don't trouble yourself too much with the diairesis as it is used very rarily.

Vocabulary

January = Ιανουάριος or Γενάρης (ianuarios or Genaris)

February = Φεβρουάριος or Φλεβάρης (Fevruarios or Flevaris)

March = Μάρτιος or Μάρτης (Martios or Martis)

April = Απρίλιος or Απρίλης (Aprilios or Aprilis)

May = Μάιος or Μάης (Maios or Mais)

June = Ιούνιος or Ιούνης (iunios or iounis)

July = Ιούλιος or Ιούλης (iulios or ioulis)

August = Αύγουστος (Avgustos) (The Αύ is pronounced as Αβ)

September = Σεπτέμβριος or Σεπτέμβρης (Septemvrios or Septemvris)

October = Οκτώβριος or Οκτώβρης (Oktovrios or Oktovris)

November = Νοέμβριος or Νοέμβρης (Noemvrios or Noembris)

December = Δεκέμβριος or Δεκέμβρης (Dekemvrios or Dekemvris)

Note: All months are masculine so we say: ο Ιανουάριος, ο Μάης, etc...

Simple useful words:

yes = ναι (ne)

no = όχι (ohi)

and = και (ke)

or = ή (Note that the definite article η has no accent, but ή meaning "or" does have an accent, in order to distinguish the 2 words)

but = αλλά (alla)

maybe = ίσως (isos)

today = σήμερα (simera)

tomorrow = αύριο (avrio) (the αύ is pronounced as αβ)

yesterday = χτες (htes)