Classical Greek Home

Phonology/Writing System

Basic grammar and morphology, with examples.

Orthographic History

The development of the Greek Alphabet.

Anthropological History

Who were these Greek speakers?

Links

Classics links as well as others of interest.

Ancient Greek is an Indo-European language. The language appears to have splintered from Indo-European just after the Hittite language. The Greek language emerged as a distinct entity towards the 2nd half of the 2nd millenium B.C.

Although the language was distinct, it existed in many regional dialects. For instance, Attic Greek and Ionic Greek differ slightly in grammatical form. However, the two dialects share so many qualities that they are considered the same language.

"Greek, despite its numerous dialects, has been a single language throughout its history. It has been spoken in Greece since at least 1600 B.C., and, in all probability, since the end of the 3rd millenium. The earliest texts are the Linear B Tablets, some of which may date from as far back as 1400 B.C. (the date is disputed), and some of which certainly date to 1200 B.C. This material, very sparse and difficult to interpret, was not identified as Greek until 1952. The Homeric epics - The Iliad and The Odyssey - probably dating from the 8th century B.C., are the oldest texts of any bulk."

Taken from Encylopedia Brittanica Online

The Ancient Greek language is of course no longer spoken in modern society. However, modern day Greek is a descendent of Ancient Greek. Greek dialects eventually evolved or degraded into to separate languages: Koine and Byzantine Greek. It was these two languages from which modern day Greek was derived.

Ancient Greek has several distinguishing features from other Indo-European languages. For instance, the phonetic system differs subtly from the other Indo-European languages. Vowels, such as "a" and "o", remain distinct in Greek, whereas they are confused in Hittite or Germanic, or others. Greek seems to be the only language that retains certain sounds of Indo-European. This suggests that Greek represents one of the most closely related languages to Indo-European.