• DORIAN in the Big Russian Encyclopedic Dictionary:
  DORIAN MODE, see Natural modes, Ancient Greek modes ...
• DORIAN in the New explanatory and derivational dictionary of the Russian language Efremova:
  adj. 1) Pertaining to the Dorians, associated with them. 2) Peculiar to the Dorians, characteristic of them. 3) Owned...
• DORIAN in the Dictionary of the Russian Language Lopatin:
  
• DORIAN full spelling dictionary Russian language:
  Dorian (to the Dorians; Dorian mode, ...
• DORIAN in the Spelling Dictionary:
  Dor`yan (to the Dor`yans; Dor`yan l`ad, ...
• DORIAN in the Explanatory Dictionary of Efremova:
  Dorian adj. 1) Pertaining to the Dorians, associated with them. 2) Peculiar to the Dorians, characteristic of them. 3) Owned...
• DORIAN in the New Dictionary of the Russian Language Efremova:
  
• DORIAN in the Big Modern explanatory dictionary Russian language:
  adj. 1. Pertaining to the Dorians, associated with them. 2. Peculiar to the Dorians, characteristic of them. 3. Owned…
• DORIAN LAD
  see Natural modes, Ancient Greek…
• DORIAN LAD
  mode (musical), the name of one of the ancient Greek modes, as well as a different structure of the medieval mode and the corresponding natural mode. Natural D...
• HELMET The Illustrated Encyclopedia of Weapons:
  DORIAN - a closed Greek helmet that could be worn like a Viotian one (in this case it shifted to ...
• AKRAGANT
  Agrigentum ACRAGANTn. Girgenti, a city on the southern coast of Sicily, a few stages from the sea, between two rivers, the Acragas (n. S. Biagio) …
• DORIUS in the Directory of Characters and Cult Objects of Greek Mythology:
  Dorian Epod. ix. 6. (source - ...
• DORIUS in the Directory of Characters and Cult Objects of Greek Mythology:
  Dorian Epod. ix. 6. (lat, from ...
• COLUMNA in the Directory of Characters and Cult Objects of Greek Mythology:
  COLUMN, sthlh or stulos, also kiwn, ​​post, column. Initially, the pillars served only for convenience, as a support for the roof; At first they were...
• AKRAGAS in the Directory of Characters and Cult Objects of Greek Mythology:
  AKRAGANT (Greek Akragas), see Agrigent. AGRIGENT (lat. Agrigentum, until 1927 Girgenti), a city on the southern coast of Sicily. Agrigent was founded by residents…
• DUMES in the Big Encyclopedic Dictionary:
  lyric-epic genre of Ukrainian verbal and musical folklore. Arose among the Cossacks in the 15-17 centuries. They sang the struggle against the Turkish, Tatar and Polish invaders, expressed ...
• UKRAINIAN SOVIET SOCIALIST REPUBLIC in big Soviet encyclopedia, TSB:
  Soviet Socialist Republic, Ukrainian SSR (Ukrainian Radianska Socialist Republic), Ukraine (Ukraine). I. General information The Ukrainian SSR was formed on December 25, 1917. With the creation of ...
• NATURAL FRETS in the Great Soviet Encyclopedia, TSB:
  modes in music, a group of seven-step strictly diatonic modes that do not include modifications of the main steps - chromatisms, alterations (see Diatonic). N. ...
• SLOW (IN MUSIC) in the Great Soviet Encyclopedia, TSB:
  in music, the quality of the mode, which is determined by which third is formed between the I and III steps - large or small. From here…
• INDO-EUROPEAN LANGUAGES in the Great Soviet Encyclopedia, TSB:
  languages, one of the largest linguistic families of Eurasia. The common features of I. Ya., which oppose them to the languages ​​of other families, come down to ...
• ANCIENT GREEK MODES in the Great Soviet Encyclopedia, TSB:
  modes, the system of melodic modes in the music of ancient Greece, which did not know polyphony in our sense. The basis of the modal system was tetrachords (originally ...
• ARMENIAN SOVIET SOCIALIST REPUBLIC in the Great Soviet Encyclopedia, TSB.
• CHURCH FRATS
  borrowed from the ancient Greeks; those scales on which ancient church singing is built catholic church. C. frets consist of a gradual alternation ...
• CHORAL POETRY in the Encyclopedic Dictionary of Brockhaus and Euphron:
  by the ancient Greeks. - The choral principle in the development of poetry is one of the essential elements of the so-called. primitive poetic syncretism, i.e. ...

BRIEF INFORMATION ON THE HISTORY OF THE ANCIENT GREEK LANGUAGE. ANCIENT GREEK DIALECTS

Greek belongs to the Indo-European family of languages. The separation of the totality of Greek dialects from the rest of the Indo-European languages ​​dates back approximately to the 2nd millennium BC.

Greek writing began to take shape around the 9th century BC. It was preceded (from the 14th century BC) by the Cretan-Mycenaean linear script. The oldest written records that have come down to us Greek belong to the 8th-7th centuries. BC. These are inscriptions on objects made of stone, ceramics, metal, found mainly on the islands. Aegean Sea. Egyptian papyri with Greek texts date back to the 4th-3rd centuries. BC, parchment manuscripts - to the first centuries of our era. Ancient Greek literary monuments have come down to us mainly in medieval manuscripts.

The history of the Greek language does not represent a successive change from one state to another. The specifics of the development of the whole Greek culture, as well as the special education system created, contributed to the preservation of archaic forms of the language. Therefore, it is very difficult to talk about the exact isolation of the periods of development of the Greek language. Usually the history of the Greek language is conditionally divided in accordance with the socio-political history of Hellas and the following periods are distinguished:

1) Mycenaean and post-Mycenaean periods (XV - IX centuries BC);

2) the language of ancient Greece (VIII century BC - IV century AD);

3) the Middle Greek language of Byzantium (IV - XV centuries AD);

4) modern Greek language (XVI century - up to our time).

Ancient Greek (Ó (Ellhnik \ gl ^ tta) is the language of the Greek tribes that lived on the Balkan Peninsula, on the islands of the Aegean Sea, the western coast of Asia Minor, as well as in numerous colonies Northern Black Sea. The ancient tribes of the Greeks spoke various dialects. The main ones are the following:

1) Aeolian ( Ó A>olj~ or Ó A>olik\ di=lekto~);

2) Dorian ( Ó Lwrj~ or Ó Dwrik \ di=lekto~);

3) Ionian ( Ó `I=~ or Ó`Iwnik\ di=lekto~).

1. The Aeolian dialect was spoken by an Aeolian tribe inhabiting the northwestern coast of Asia Minor, the island of Lesbos, Boeotia, Thessaly. The famous ancient Greek poet Alcaeus (first half of the 6th century BC) and the Lesbos poetess Sappho (6th century BC) wrote in this dialect, whose works are only partially preserved.

2. The Dorian dialect is the language of the Doric tribe that lived on the southwestern coast of Asia Minor, occupied almost the entire Peloponnese, Crete, Rhodes, and other islands of the Aegean Sea, and also founded its colonies in Southern Italy and Sicily. The Dorian dialect is written mainly lyric writings Pindar (522 - 442 BC), idylls of Theocritus (III century BC), as well as Dorian forms are found in the choral parties of Greek tragedies.

3. The Ionian dialect is the language of the Ionian tribe of the western coast of Asia Minor, Attica, some islands of the Aegean Sea and the Ionian colonies. This dialect became the first language of ancient Greek poetry and prose. Over time, three of its types were formed:

a) Old Ionic dialect or epic, known from the poems of Homer "Iliad" and "Odyssey", as well as the writings of Hesiod (VIII - VII centuries BC);

b) the neo-Ionic dialect was preserved primarily in the "History" of Herodotus;

c) Attic dialect ( Ó `Atqj~ or Ó `Attik\ di=lekto~). This dialect developed from the Ionic and Dorian dialects (VI - V centuries BC) and was the main Greek dialect spoken by the inhabitants of Attica and its main city of Athens. This dialect is the basis of Greek grammar. Most of the surviving writings are written in the Attic dialect. literary works, namely: the tragedies of Aeschylus (525 - 456 BC), Sophocles (496 - 406 BC), Euripides (484 - 406 BC), comedies of Aristophanes ( died in 388 BC), the philosophical dialogues of Plato (427 - 347 BC), the speeches of Demosthenes (383 - 322 BC), Isocrates (436 - 338 BC). BC), etc.

4. The common Greek dialect (Ó koin \ di=lekto~ ), arose from the Attic dialect after the fall of the power of the Athenian state. After the conquests of Alexander the Great, the Attic dialect lost its purity and passed into Koine (3rd century BC). The work of the famous Greek philosopher Aristotle (384 - 322 BC) belongs to the transition period from Attic to the common Greek dialect. Polybius (2nd century AD), Plutarch (46-120 AD), Strabo (1st century AD) and others wrote their works in Koine.

Features of the language of the last centuries of the existence of the Greek ancient culture reflected the language of the New Testament.

evolved into Middle Greek classification() : Paleo-Balkan branch Greek group : Language codes : No : grc : grc See also:

Ancient Greek - (other Greek (att.) ἡ Ἑλληνικὴ γλῶττα) language, ancestor, common in Greek territory in the era from the end to the beginning of our era.

There are different periods of language development: archaic (XI-VI centuries BC), classical (V-IV centuries BC), Hellenistic (III century BC - IV century AD); at each stage of the development of the language, there were different local variants.

Ancient Greek is the language of poems and, philosophy and literature of the Golden Age, the Bible. It was spoken in the policies of the classical era, empires and kingdoms, ancient Greek was the second language official language and main on early stages existence (gradually degenerating into medieval Byzantine Greek).

Dialects of Ancient Greek

Origin, early forms and initial development language is not clear enough. There are different views on which groups of dialects emerged in the time interval from the separation of the Proto-Greek dialect from the common Indo-European language (no later than the 20th century BC) and approximately the 13th century BC. e. The only documented language of that era is Mycenaean.

The main groups of dialects of the ancient Greek language were formed, presumably, no later than 1100 BC. e., that is, by the time of the mythical Dorian conquest, and begin to be reflected in documents from the VIII century BC. e.

The ancient Greeks believed that their people were divided into three tribes: the Aeolians and (including the Athenians); each of the groups had a certain and distinct dialect. If we omit the fact of the absence in this classification of little-known and dialects that are practically unknown in cultural centers ancient greece, in general, this division is correct and coincides with the results of modern archaeological and linguistic research.

Standard classification of dialects:

• Northwestern dialects
  • Northwestern
  • Doric

• Aeolian dialects
  • Aegean/Asian Aeolian
  • Thessalian
  • Boeotian

• Ionic dialects
  • Eastern Ionic
  • Central Ionic
  • Western Ionic
  • Attic

• Arcado-Cypriot dialects
  • Arcadian
  • Cypriot

Exist various options groupings of dialects by opposition and proximity to each other.

The Arakado-Cypriot group is directly derived from the Mycenaean language bronze age.

The Boeotian dialect was subjected to strong influence northwestern group, and in some respects it can be considered as transitional (between the Aeolian and northwestern). The Thessalian dialect also did not escape the influence of this group, although to a lesser extent.

There was special variety Greek language in, a small area on the southwestern coast of Asia Minor, very poorly recorded in writing; it can be singled out in the fifth large group dialects or be considered Mycenaean with overlapping Doric and local non-Greek influences.

The fact of the relation of the ancient Macedonian language to Greek is quite controversial: it could be both a non-Greek Indo-European language, and a distantly related branch of the northwestern dialects.

The Doric dialect had several markedly different variants: insular (including Doric), Doric of the south (there is also an adverb -), and Doric of the north of the peninsula, which was spoken, for example, in. The well-known Lesbos dialect was part of the Aegean-Asiatic subgroup of the Aeolian dialect. In the colonies outside of Greece, there was a "mixing" of people from different regions of Hellas, and as a result, a mixture of dialect forms.

In practice, the division can be brought down to the "languages" of city-states and adjacent territories or one island.

Dialects that do not belong to the Ionian group are known from the surviving records of fragments of the works of the Lesbos poetess and the Spartan poet.

Linguistic characteristic

Writing

The ancient Greeks used the Greek alphabet, which is believed to be derived from the Phoenician script. In its classical form, the Greek alphabet, consisting of 24 letters, developed by the end of the 5th century. BC e. In the oldest inscriptions, the direction of writing went from right to left, then for some time a technique called (literally “turn of the bull”) was used - the direction of writing alternated from line to line. In the IV century. BC e. the modern direction was finally established - from left to right. AT Hellenistic era superscripts began to be used in the inscriptions, denoting three types of stress and two types of aspiration.

Phonological information

stress

In ancient Greek, stress was musical, that is, it was characterized by a change in the tone of the substressed vowel. A short (one-more) stressed vowel could only have an ascending tone, indicated by the acute accent sign " ́ ", a two-more (long) vowel or diphthong could have both an acute accent (with a tone rising to the second sea), and a lightened "~" or " ˆ ", with a refracted tone rising on the first sea and descending on the second. Stress in the Attic dialect was determined by the law of trisyllabia ( τρεîς συλλαβή - three syllables), was free within the last three syllables of the word. The acute stress at the end of the word changed in some way, which was reflected in the letter by setting the heavy stress "̀"

Syllable

Ancient Greek, like most other ancients, has a highly developed structure that retains the features of archaic forms. Nouns had five ( , and

The ancient Greek language belongs to the category of "dead": today you cannot meet a person who would use it in everyday life. colloquial speech. However, it cannot be called forgotten and irretrievably lost. Individual words in ancient Greek can be heard in any part of the world. Studying its alphabet, grammar and pronunciation rules is not uncommon these days.

From the depths of centuries

Story ancient Greek began with the invasion of the territory of the future Hellas by the Balkan tribes. This happened between the 21st and 17th centuries. BC. They brought with them the so-called proto-Greek language, which will give some late start Mycenaean, dialects of the classical period, and then Koine (Alexandrian dialect) and the modern form of Greek. It stood out from the Proto-Indo-European and at the time of the birth, heyday and fall of the great state, it underwent considerable changes.

Written evidence

Until the Dorian invasion of the Bronze Age, from the 16th to the 11th century BC. e., in Greece and Crete, the Mycenaean form of the language was used. Today it is considered the most ancient version of the Greek. To this day, Mycenaean has survived in the form of inscriptions on clay tablets found on the island of Crete. Unique sample texts ( total number about 6 thousand) contain mainly business records. Despite the seemingly insignificant information recorded in them, the tablets were revealed scientists set information about a bygone era.

Dialects

The ancient Greek language in each tribe acquired its own characteristics. Over time, several of its dialects have developed, which are traditionally combined into four groups:

eastern: this includes the Ionian and Attic dialects;

western: Dorian dialect;

Arcado-Cypriot or South Achaean;

Aeolian or North Achaean.

In the Hellenistic era, which began after the conquests of Alexander the Great, on the basis of the Attic dialect, Koine arose, a common Greek language that spread throughout the entire eastern Mediterranean. Later, most of the modern dialects will “grow” from it.

Alphabet

Today, one way or another, but almost everyone is familiar with the ancient Greek language. The letter "may" ("tau"), as well as the letters "beta", "alpha", "sigma" and so on are used in mathematics, physics and other sciences. It should be noted that the alphabet, like the language itself, did not appear out of thin air. He is in the 10th or 9th century. BC e. was borrowed from the Phoenician (Canaanite) tribes. The original meanings of the letters have been lost over time, but their names and order have been preserved.

In Greece at that time there were several cultural centers, and each of them brought its own characteristics to the alphabet. Among these local options highest value had Milesian and Chalcidian. The first will begin to be used in Byzantium a little later. It is him that Cyril and Methodius will lay at the basis of the Slavic alphabet. The Romans adopted the Chalkid version. It is the progenitor of the one still used throughout Western Europe.

Ancient Greek today

The reason that prompts a sufficiently large number of people today to learn a "dead" language seems to be non-obvious. And yet it exists. For philologists who comparative linguistics and related subjects, understanding ancient Greek is part of the profession. The same can be said about culturologists, philosophers and historians. For them, ancient Greek is the language of numerous primary sources. Of course, all this literature can be read in translation. However, anyone who has ever compared the original and its “adapted” version for the local language knows how different versions usually differ. The reason for the differences lies in the worldview, features of history and the perception of peoples. All these nuances are reflected in the text, transform it and give rise to those very untranslatable expressions, the full meaning of which can be comprehended only after studying the original language.

It would be useful to know ancient Greek for archaeologists and numismatists. Understanding the language makes dating easier, and in some cases helps to quickly identify a fake.

Borrowings

Ancient Greek words in Russian are found in in large numbers. Often we are not even aware of their origin, which indicates antiquity and familiarity. The names Elena, Andrei, Tatyana and Fedor came to us from Ancient Greece after the adoption of Christianity. In times of strong trade and other ties with the Hellenes and Byzantines, many new words appeared in the language of the Slavic tribes. Among them are "fritters", "sail", "vinegar", "doll". Today, these and similar words are so familiar that it is difficult to believe in their foreign origin.

The scientific literature of various fields of knowledge is also literally replete with borrowings from ancient Greek. Names came to us from the territory of Hellas various disciplines(geography, astronomy, etc.), political and social (monarchy, democracy), as well as medical, musical, literary and many other terms. New words denoting objects and phenomena that did not yet exist in antiquity are based on Greek roots or they are formed using Greek prefixes (telephone, microscope). Other terms are used today, having lost their original meaning. So, cybernetics in Greece of bygone eras was called the ability to control a ship. In a word, even after so many centuries, the inhabitants of the Peloponnese remain in demand.

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Ancient Greek includes the forms of Greek used in ancient greece and the ancient world, starting from the period of the 9th century BC. before 6 AD It is often roughly subdivided into the Archaic period (9th to 6th centuries BC), the Classical period (5th to 4th centuries BC) and the Hellenistic period (3rd AD). . to 6 centuries AD). It was preceded by Mycenaean Greek in the second millennium BC. .

The language of the Hellenistic period is known as Koine (Common Greek). Koine is regarded as its own historical stage, although in its early form it resembles the Attic Greek dialect, and in its latest form it approaches the Middle Greek language. Before the Koine period, into Classical Greek and more early period several regional dialects were included.

Ancient Greek is the language of Homer and the 5th century Athenian historians, playwrights and philosophers. He added many words to the dictionary of English language and became a mandatory subject of study in educational institutions Western world since the Renaissance. This article mainly contains information about the epic and classical phases of this language.

Dialects of Ancient Greek

Ancient Greek was a pluricentric language and consisted of many dialects. The main dialect groups are Attic, Ionic, Aeolian, Arcado-Cypriot and Doric, many of which had several subdivisions. Some dialects occur in standard literary forms, while others are recorded only in inscriptions.

There are also several historical forms. Homeric Greek is the literary form of Archaic Greek (derived mainly from the Ionian and Aeolian groups) used in the epics, the Iliad and the Odyssey, and later poems by other authors. Homeric Greek had significant differences in grammar and pronunciation from Classical Attic and other Classical dialects.

History of the ancient Greek language

Roots early forms and the development of the Hellenistic language family not fully understood due to lack of comparable evidence. There are several theories about the possible existence of Hellenic groups of dialects between the branch of the early Greek-like dialect of the Proto-Indo-European language and the dialects of the classical period. They have general scheme but differ in some details. The only attested dialect of this period is Mycenaean Greek, but its relation to historical dialects and the historical circumstances of the time imply that common groups already existed in one form or another.

Scholars suggest that the bulk of the dialect groups of the ancient Greek period developed no later than 1120 BC, during the invasion of the Dorians, and that the first distinct signs of alphabetic writing appeared in the 8th century BC. The invasion would not have been "Dorian" if the invaders did not have some cultural ties to the historical Dorians. The invasion is known to have facilitated the movement of populations who considered themselves descendants displaced or rival by the Dorians to the more distant Attic-Ionic regions.

The Greeks of this period were supposedly divided into three main groups: the Dorians, the Aeolians, and the Ionians (including the Athenians), each of which had its own distinctive dialect. According to the results of modern archaeological-linguistic research, given their control over Arcadia, its little-known mountain dialect, and the Cypriot dialects have a lot in common.

The earliest and clearest division of the ancient Greek language is the western and non-western. The non-Western group includes many Ionic-Attic (or Attic-Ionic), Aeolian or Arcada-Cypriot dialects, etc. Often non-Western Greek is found under the name Eastern Greek.

Arkada-Cypriot seems to have common roots with Bronze Age Mycenaean Greek.

The Boeotian dialect was formed under strong northwestern Greek influence, and in some respects is regarded as a transitional dialect. Thessalian similarly came under northwestern Greek influence, but to a lesser degree.

The Pamphylian Greek dialect, spoken in a small area on the southwestern coast of Anatolia and little preserved in ancient inscriptions, was either part of one of the five main dialect groups or was a mixture of Mycenaean-Greek and Doric, with influences from non-Greek dialects.

Most of the dialect groups listed above have additional sub-groups, usually referring to individual city-states and their surrounding territories, or islands. The Doric group in particular had several intermediate groups such as Insular Doric (including Crete-Doric), South Doric (including Laconian, a dialect of Sparta), and North Doric (including Corinthian).

The Lesbo dialect belonged to the Aeolian Greek group.

All dialect groups were introduced in the Greek colonies outside of Greece. These colonies tended to contribute their own local characteristics to the development of the language, often influenced by settlers or neighbors who spoke different Greek dialects.

Dialects that are not part of the Ionic group became known mainly through ancient inscriptions. Notable exceptions are fragments of the works of the poet Sappho from the island of Lesvos and the poems of Pindar, the poet of Boeotia.

After the conquests of Alexander the Great at the end of the 4th century BC, a new international dialect was formed, known as "Koine" or "Common Greek". It was based largely on Attic Greek, but not without influence from other dialects. This dialect gradually replaced most of the older dialects, although the Doric dialect survived in Tsakonian, which is spoken in the area of ​​present-day Sparta. Doric is also recognizable by its aoristic endings in most Greek dimotic verbs. Around the 6th century AD, Koine gradually became a Middle Greek language.

Related languages ​​of Ancient Greek

The ancient Macedonian language was part of the Indo-European group and was closely related to Greek, but their exact ratio remains unclear due to lack of information: perhaps it was a dialect of the Greek language, or had related roots with Greek, and, perhaps, was connected to a certain extent with the Thracian and Phrygian languages. The curse tablet from Pella is one of many finds that indicate that the ancient Macedonian language is closely related to the Doric Greek dialect.

Phonology of Ancient Greek

Differences from the Proto-Indo-European language

Ancient Greek differs in some respects from Proto-Indo-European and other Indo-European languages. In phonotactics, ancient Greek words could only end in a consonant or /n s r/. Over time, the endings were reduced, as in γάλα "milk", compared with γάλακτος "milk" (genitive case). The ancient Greek language of the classical period also differed in phonemic structure.

Debukkalization: transition /s/ > /h/ between vowels and at the beginning of a word before a vowel (for example, Proto-IE *septḿ̥ "seven" > other Greek ἑπτά).

Loss of ultimate explosives; final /m/ >/n/

Dissimilation of aspirated sounds - loss of aspiration, in the presence of aspiration in the next syllable.

Transition o > u (later > υ) between sonorants (/r/, /l/, /m/, /n/) and lip sounds.

Fortition (strengthening) of the initial y- to dy- (later > ζ-): *yugóm > ζυγόν "yoke" ("yoke")

Stunning voiced aspirates: bh, dh, gh > ph, th, kh (in writing in ancient Greek - φ, θ, χ).

Phonemic structure of the ancient Greek language

The pronunciation of ancient Greek was very different from modern Greek. Ancient Greek had long and short vowels, there were many diphthongs, double and single consonants, voiced, voiceless and aspirated sounds, as well as tone stress. In modern Greek, all vowels and consonants are short. Many vowels and diphthongs that were worn out earlier became distinctly pronounced as /I/ (iotacism). Some semivowel consonants in diphthongs became fricative, and tone stress changed to accented. Many changes took place during the Koine Greek period. The writing system of modern Greek, however, does not reflect all the phonetic changes.

The examples below are Attic Greek in the 5th century BC. The pronunciation of Ancient Greek cannot be reconstructed with complete certainty. There is some disagreement among linguists on the issue general sounds that represent letters.

Consonants

Noisy stops/ Voiced β [b]δ [d]γ [g]

Voiceless π [p]τ [t]κ [k]

Aspirated φ θ χ

Sonants/ Nasals μ [m]ν [n]

Smooth λ [l] ρ [r]

Affricates ψ ζ ξ

Fricatives/ Fricatives σ [s]

Vowel sounds

Short α [ă]ο [ŏ]ε [ĕ]ι [ ĭ ]υ [ ǚ ]

Long ᾱ [ā]ω [ō]η [ē]ῑ [ ī ]ῡ [ ǖ ]

Morphology of Ancient Greek

Greek morphology, like the morphology of all early Proto-Indo-European languages, has changed greatly. It is quite outdated in its Proto-Indo-European forms. In ancient Greek, nouns (including proper names) have five cases (nominative, genitive, dative, accusative, and vocative), three genders (masculine, feminine, and neuter), and three numbers (singular, dual, and plural). Verbs have four moods (indicative, imperative, subjunctive, and optative) and three voices (active, neuter, and passive), as well as three persons (first, second, and third) and various other forms. Verbs are conjugated in seven variations in tense and aspect (usually referred to simply as "tenses"): the present, future, and imperfect tenses refer to imperfect view; aoristic (perfect form); present perfect, past perfect, and future perfect. Most verbs are able to display all four moods and three voices, although there is no subjunctive or imperative mood. Infinitives and participles correspond to the final combination of tense, aspect, and voice.

Gain

The presence of the past tense (conceptually, at least) is determined by the prefix /e-/, which is called augment. It was probably originally single word, meaning something like "then". So, in ancient Greek, the aorist, formed from the verb ἀκούω (akouō), is written ἤκουσα (ḗkousa). In modern Greek, the augment in the aorist drops out in this verb: άκουσα (ákousa).

There are two types of amplification in Greek: syllabic and quantitative. A syllabic augment is added to stems beginning with a consonant, and a simple prefix e (the r stem, however, is added with er). A quantitative augment is added to stems beginning with a vowel, and implies lengthening of the vowel sound.

a, ā, e, ē → ē

i, ī → ī

o, ō → ō

u, ū → ū

ei → ēi or ei

au → ēu or au

eu → ēu or eu

Some verbs are intensified inconsistently; the most common variant is e → e. The unevenness can be explained by the diachronic loss of vowels. In verbs with a prefix, the augment is placed not at the beginning of the word, but between the prefix and the original verb. For example, προσ (-) βάλλω becomes προσέβαλoν in the aorist.

Following the practice of Homer, the augment was sometimes not used in poetry, especially in epic.

Augment is sometimes replaced by a doubling. See below.

Doubling

In almost all forms of the perfect, past and future perfect tenses, the initial syllable of the verb is doubled. There are three types of reduplication:

Syllabic reduplication: where most verbs start with a single consonant, or stop cluster with a sonorant, add a syllable consisting of an initial consonant followed by an e. The aspirated consonant, however, doubles in its non-aspirated equivalent: Grassmann's law.

Augment: Verbs that start with a vowel, like those that start with a cluster, except those mentioned earlier, are doubled in the same way as intensifying. This persists in all forms perfect look and not only in the indicative mood.

Attic doubling: Some verbs beginning with a, e, or o followed by a sonorant (or sometimes d or g) are doubled by adding a syllable consisting of an initial vowel and after a consonant, lengthening the next vowel. Hence er → erēr, an → anēn, ol → olōl, ed → edēd. It is not actually a specific feature of Attic Greek, despite its name. This initially implies a doubling of a cluster consisting of guttural and sonorous sounds, hence h₃l → h₃leh₃l → olōl with (forms with a pause were similar)

Reduplication is also possible in the stems of some present tense verbs. These stems add a syllable consisting of a root-initial consonant followed by i. Nasal delay in some verbs appears after reduplication.

Ancient Greek writing

Ancient Greek was written based on the Greek alphabet, with some differences in different dialects. Early texts were written in the boustrophedon style, but the left-to-right style became standard during the classical period. Modern editions Ancient Greek texts were usually written with accents and aspirations, word spacing, modern punctuation, and sometimes a mixture of them, but these were all introduced later.

Examples of texts in ancient Greek

The beginning of the Homeric Iliad exemplifies the archaic period of Ancient Greek (see Homeric Greek for more details):

The beginning of Plato's Apology is an example of the Attic Greek Classical period of Ancient Greek:

Ὅτι μὲν ὑμεῖς, ὦ ἄνδρες Ἀθηναῖοι, πεπόνθατε ὑπὸ τῶν ἐμῶν κατηγόρων, οὐκ οἶδα · ἐγὼ δ "οὖν καὶ αὐτὸς ὑπ" αὐτῶν ὀλίγου ἐμαυτοῦ ἐπελαθόμην, οὕτω πιθανῶς ἔλεγον. Καίτοι ἀληθές γε ὡς ἔπος εἰπεῖν οὐδὲν εἰρήκασιν.

IPA Usage:

Transliterated in letters Latin alphabet, using a modern version of the Erasmian schema:

Hóti mèn hūmeîs, ô ándres Athēnaîoi, pepónthate hupò tôn emôn katēgórōn, ouk oîda: egṑ d" oûn kaì autòs hup" autōn olígou emautoûepelathómēn, pithoútō. Kaítoi alēthés ge hōs épos eipeîn oudèn eirḗkāsin.

Translated into English:

How you people of Athens feel under the power of my accusers, I do not know: in fact, even I myself almost forgot who I was because of them, they spoke so convincingly. And yet, to put it bluntly, nothing they said is true.

Modern use of Ancient Greek

The study of ancient Greek, in addition to Latin, took important place in curriculum European countries from the beginning of the Renaissance to the beginning of the 20th century. Ancient Greek is still taught as a compulsory or optional subject, especially in traditional or elite schools throughout Europe, such as public Schools and grammar schools in the United Kingdom of Great Britain. It is compulsory in the Classical Lyceum in Italy, in the gymnasiums in the Netherlands, in some schools in Austria, in the classical gymnasiums in Croatia, Belgium, Germany on an optional basis (usually as a third language after Latin and English, from ages 14 to 18 years). According to the German Federal Statistical Office in 2006/07, 15,000 students studied Ancient Greek in Germany and 280,000 students in Italy. It is a compulsory subject, along with Latin, in the branches humanities in Spanish universities. Ancient Greek is also taught at most major universities around the world, often combined with Latin as part of the classics. It is planned to teach ancient Greek in state primary schools UK to improve the language skills of children, as well as foreign language for pupils in all primary schools, starting from 2014, with the aim of improving the level of education, along with Latin, Chinese, French, German, Spanish and Italian. Ancient Greek is taught as compulsory subject in grammar schools and lyceums in Greece.

Modern authors rarely write in Greek, although Jan Krzesadlo wrote poetry and prose in that language, and Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone and some volumes of Asterix have been translated into Ancient Greek. Ὀνόματα Kεχιασμένα (Onomata Kechiasmena) was the first crossword and puzzle magazine in ancient Greek. Its first issue was published in April 2015 as an appendix to the Hebdomada Aenigmatum. Alfred Ralphs included in his 1935 edition of the Septuagint a preface, a brief history text of the Septuagint, as well as other introductory materials translated into ancient Greek.

Ancient Greek is also used by organizations and individuals, mostly Greeks, who wish to emphasize their respect, admiration or desire for the use of this language. Such usage is sometimes perceived as graphic, nationalistic, or amusing. However, the fact that modern Greeks are still able to fully or partially understand texts written in the timeless ancient Greek forms shows the closeness of modern Greek to its generic predecessor.

In an isolated community near Trabzon, Turkey, an area where the Pontic Greek dialect is spoken, the use of a variety of Greek has been found that has parallels in structure and vocabulary with ancient Greek. Only 5,000 people speak this dialect, but linguists consider it the closest living dialect to Ancient Greek.

Ancient Greek is often used in the word formation of modern technical terms in European languages: cm English words Greek origin. Latinized forms with ancient Greek roots are used in many scientific names.