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LESSON 1
THE GREEK LETTERS 

by George Valsamis

Page 10

Elements of the history of Greek language

 

Greek belongs to the Indoeuropean languages, together with Sanskrit, Latin, Slavic, German, etc. It was the language of Danaoi, Iones, Achaeoi - the Greek races that inhabited Greece in 2.000 B.C. - and Dorieis (1.100 B.C.). Before them there lived in Greece Pelasgoi, from whom the new language kept some elements, like names of places ending in -nthos, -ssos, -ttos (e.g. Ko/rinthos, Lycabetto/s), names of Mediterranean plants, like elaia (olive tree), etc. In later years very few foreign words were adopted by Greeks, some Semitic, like kados (bucket), some Persian, like paradeisos (paradise) and some Egyptian, like baris (boat).

It has been said that Greeks modified the Phoenicean (north-semetic) alphabet at about 1000-850 B.C. [cf. James Joyce, Ulysses: "KYRIOS! Shining word! The vowels the Semite and the Saxon know not."] The 'discovery' of the vowels is considered by linguists as a crucial turn in World history, yet recent research tends to reject the whole 'phoenicean theory', since evidence has appeared that the consonants also are of Greek origin.

Greek evolved into three main dialects, the Ionian-Attic, the Aeolian and the Dorian. In these dialects, and mainly in the Attic, we have all of the Ancient Greek literature and most of the Byzantine works. A fourth dialect, the Arcadian-Cyprian, did not produce any important literature, neither the Linear B writing. The first work of literature written in Greek is the work of Homer. 

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