Lessons in Greek

Your first lesson in Greek probably happened while you were at school. It could have started with mathematics or perhaps athletics. You probably already know of astronomy. How about democracy and philosophy? These are all Greek words.

The Greek language is one of the Indo-European languages with a recorded history stretching back more than 3,400 years – the longest of any of the languages belonging to this group which includes Bengali, English, French, German, Hindi, Italian, Marathi, Portuguese, Punjabi, Russian, Spanish and Urdu. In its ancient form, it is the language of ancient Greek literature and of the Christian Bible’s New Testament. The modern form is the official language of both Greece and Cyprus – the first language for around 15 million people. As Greece is a member of the European Union, Greek is also one of its 23 (at the time of writing) official languages. The Greek language is also officially a minority language in Armenia and the Ukraine, as well as in parts of Albania, Italy and Turkey. The written form uses the Greek alphabet.

Modern Greek is generally considered to have originated around 1100 CE (CE is known variously as “Common Era”, “Christian Era”, or “Current Era”. It has the same date system as the Christian AD date form). There are several dialects of it, but there is also a Standard Modern Greek. The Pimsleur Language Learning Technique is a highly effective and proven method to learn Greek quickly and easily.

The Greek language has undergone a slow but steady change over its recorded history. So gradual has been this change (especially compared to other languages) that, although different stages of the development of the language can be identified, it is still possible to understand even the oldest versions of Greek without too much difficulty. Literary works written in ancient Greek are still considered to be part of the current language, which is not the case for a lot of other languages. As one example, over a similar time period, Latin has evolved into a wide range of completely separate languages.

As you have already seen, Greek words are widely used in other languages especially in the areas of the sciences and arts.

Written Greek

The Greek alphabet has been in use since around 800 BCE (Before Common Era/Before Christian Era, Before Current Era, Christian BC). The classical alphabet only used UPPER-CASE letters with the more familiar Mixed-Case style being developed later to allow scribes to write faster with ink and quill.

Originally Greek was written from right-to-left. At some time this changed so that alternate lines were written in different directions. The final change in direction is thought to have happened around 500 BC when writing from left-to-right only was introduced.

It is the first recorded language to use vowels.

There are 24 letters in the modern alphabet:

So, that completes this lesson in Greek. The rest is up to you.

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