Greek language

Begining Gospel of John in Codex Alexandrinus

Greek (Modern Greek: Ελληνικά, Elliniká; Ancient Greek: Ἑλληνική, Hellēnikḗ) is an independent branch of the Indo-European family of languages, native to Greece, Cyprus, Italy (in Calabria and Salento), southern Albania, and other regions of the Balkans, the Black Sea coast, Asia Minor, and the Eastern Mediterranean. It has the longest documented history of any Indo-European language, spanning at least 3,400 years of written records. Its writing system is the Greek alphabet which arose from the Phoenician script and was in turn the basis of the Latin, Cyrillic, Coptic, Gothic, and many other writing systems.

The Greek language played a key role in the history of the Western world. Starting with the epics of Homer, ancient Greek literature includes many works of lasting importance in the European canon. Greek is also the language in which many of the foundational texts in science and philosophy were originally composed. The New Testament of the Bible was also written in Greek. Together with the Latin texts and traditions of the Roman world, the Greek texts and Greek societies of antiquity constitute the objects of study of the discipline of Classics.

Quotes

• To speakers of modern Greek the Homeric poems of the 7th century BC are not written in a foreign language. The Greek language has enjoyed a continuous tradition from earliest times until now. [...] The only other language which enjoys comparable continuity of tradition is Chinese.
  • Robert Browning, Medieval and Modern Greek (Cambridge University Press, 1983)

• She knew the Latin—that is, ‘the Lord's prayer,’
    And Greek—the alphabet—I’m nearly sure.
  • Lord Byron, Don Juan, canto I, stanza 13

• He was still in a world of Greek gods and sacrifices, of Greek plays and Greek language, though the natives might speak Greek with a northern accent which hardened 'ch' into 'g','th' into 'd' and pronounced King Philip as Bilip.
  • Robin Lane Fox, Alexander the Great (1973), p. 30

• Small Latin and less Greek.
  • Ben Jonson, from the famous preliminary poem to Shakespeare's First Folio (1623)

• Cassius: Did Cicero say anything?
  Casca: Ay, he spoke Greek.
  Cassius: To what effect?
  Casca: Nay, and I tell you that, I’ll ne’er look you i’ the face again. But those that understood him smil’d at one another and shook their heads; but for mine own part, it was Greek to me.
  • Shakespeare, Julius Caesar, act 1, scene 2. Cp. the Latin Graecum est, non legitur and the Medieval Latin proverb Graecum est; non potest legi (i.e., "It is Greek; it cannot be read")

• The Greeks Had a Word for It
  • Zoe Akins, Title of play (1930)

• I have no remembrance of the time when I began to learn Greek, I have been told that it was when I was three years old. My earliest recollection on the subject, is that of committing to memory what my father termed vocables, being lists of common Greek words, with their signification in English, which he wrote out for me on cards. Of grammar, until some years later, I learnt no more than the inflexions of the nouns and verbs, but, after a course of vocables, proceeded at once to translation; and I faintly remember going through Æsop's Fables, the first Greek book which I read. The Anabasis, which I remember better, was the second. I learnt no Latin until my eighth year. At that time I had read, under my father's tuition, a number of Greek prose authors, among whom I remember the whole of Herodotus, and of Xenophon's Cyropædia and Memorials of Socrates; some of the lives of the philosophers by Diogenes Laertius; part of Lucian, and Isocrates ad Demonicum and Ad Nicoclem. I also read, in 1813, the first six dialogues (in the common arrangement) of Plato, from the Euthyphron to the Theoctetus [sic, read 'Theaetetus'] inclusive: which last dialogue, I venture to think, would have been better omitted, as it was totally impossible I should understand it. But my father, in all his teaching, demanded of me not only the utmost that I could do, but much that I could by no possibility have done. What he was himself willing to undergo for the sake of my instruction, may be judged from the fact, that I went through the whole process of preparing my Greek lessons in the same room and at the same table at which he was writing: and as in those days Greek and English lexicons were not, and I could make no more use of a Greek and Latin lexicon than could be made without having yet begun to learn Latin, I was forced to have recourse to him for the meaning of every word which I did not know. This incessant interruption, he, one of the most impatient of men, submitted to, and wrote under that interruption several volumes of his History and all else that he had to write during those years.
  • John Stuart Mill, Autobiography (1873), pp. 5-6

External links

• Greek language edition of Wikiquote
• Greek phrasebook at Wikivoyage