What's the level of mutual intelligibility/transferrenc between ancient/modern Greek?

[fomalhaut]

The fact that if you speak Latin (not Greek) you will not really understand much if any Greek (and vice versa) does not make learning the other useless. Have you already studied Latin? Greek? I don't study either, I'm not a classicist. But study them if you intend on reading these ancient works in their original form. I'm sure you will be well rewarded and that you will not find these languages useless at all.

ita latinum studeo :)

But i'm not necessarily a classicist either, i'm actually more interested in Latin as a living language and then as the lingua franca than I am in the works of Caesar or Cicero. That doesn't mean I don't very very much intend to be able to read Cicero :)

but Greek just seems to esoteric beyond its use of reading the (high high quality and number) ancient texts if it barely applies to modern Greek. Like I said, the benefits to learning Latin are innumerable and there is still a pretty strong Latin speaking community internationally and its basically a prerequisite to get into many of the great works of science and literature.

I'll probably learn it eventually, i don't doubt it's beauty or importance, but i can only justify learning one non living language per like 3 living ones :P

[Geticus]

Ok well I'll yield especially since I started dragging from the original post. But FWIW Dionysios of Halicarnassos is sorely missing from many courses on ancient Rome, and his history is actually of very high quality, and he does make in my opinion a cogent case that the Aborigines, i.e. the proto-Latins, were of Arkadian Hellenic provenance, and not indigenous, and had passed over the Adriatic in the mid-late Bronze prior to the Trojan War Era, and the Sea-People invasions. So if Dionysios, and presumably Cato the Elder as well, were right, then the early language of the Aborigines was some kind of late Bronze Hellenic, progressively modified by Pelasgian, Etruscan, Oscan influences etc.

[Mulceber]

1. I do very much appreciate Dionysios. He does some very good scholarship. For example, I personally think his reasoning for why the Etruscans were indigenous is very sound.

2. As for whether the Latins were indigenous, I think modern scholars have provided a more realistic explanation - namely that the Latins were a hodge-podge melting pot of the Etruscans, the other Italian peoples and also Hellenes. I think that makes far more sense than the idea of one people coming over, colonizing and then somehow switching to a completely different language that is admittedly a distant relative of their first language. -M

[Ibrahim]

and I though Classical Arabic sounded funky compared to modern dialects


speaking of the recognizable: what other indoeuropean language is closest to Greek? I know Latin is actually not that close; doubtless there is a known language that is closer, alive or extinct? and what's the closest modern, living language?

I really don't know, just wanted to find out.

[Mulceber]

Just thought this might help:

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikiped...ropeanTree.svg

[Ibrahim]

Just thought this might help:

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikiped...ropeanTree.svg

this will take some time to process.... but if I'm reading it right, wouldn't it mean that Indo-Iranian languages are the closest to the Greek Branch? didn't know ancient Dorian was a seperate language from classical Greek, or do I misunderstand?

been augmented by the Persian-hate displayed by Muhammad himself and his early followers. Most notably Omar and his ilk who conquered Persia and prohibited the Persian language.

I will need a source for that bolded part. you're half right about the rest.

because I don't recall it being banned by anybody in this era as a spoken (or even written) language. I do recall that in the Omayyad period, it was ordered that the various provinces were to cease taking records in local languages, and to use only Arabic (in keeping with their heavily pro-Arabic position, and to simplify administration). prior to that point, Persian was an official language of the Empire (along with Arabic, Aramaic, Coptic, and Greek-depending on province. wierd.)

i.e. It would not make sense for Persian to be outlawed during this period, yet still use it for administration.

yeah, I'm just gonna need the source for this last sentence-bold part especially. the rest of the post I don't see a problem with.

[Saldunz]

this will take some time to process.... but if I'm reading it right, wouldn't it mean that Indo-Iranian languages are the closest to the Greek Branch? didn't know ancient Dorian was a seperate language from classical Greek, or do I misunderstand?

It's not really a separate language, but I believe linguists argue that all dialects are separate languages. There's a lot of mutual intelligibility though. The differences between all those dialects tends to mostly be phonological, a little bit lexical, and almost not at all grammatical.
I think the dialects are just separated like that on the chart to illustrate that Modern Greek and Tsakonian descend from two different ancient dialects.

Also, the chart is organized in such a way that hypothesizes how late/early certain language families branched out of Common IE, rather than how closely "related" the language families are. But besides the Anatolian family, which in all likelihood branched out first, it's impossible to suggest any order with certainty.

[vartan]

Saldunz, when we draw language trees we are pointing out languages in a family, not dialects. Linguists do not put dialects on a family tree. You may draw a tree for a single language that points out the dialects, but that's not what an IE tree does. The IE tree shows the different sub-groups and all the languages within those groups, not their dialects (many of the languages in the tree may have many similarities but they are not dialects of one another). And you're right about Armenian. Latin is closer in some regards, not in others. I don't know about Sanskrit, that seems a bit far-fetched. I brought up Phrygian due to their being in the Balkan peninsula before their migration into western Anatolia.

[vartan]

and I though Classical Arabic sounded funky compared to modern dialects


speaking of the recognizable: what other indoeuropean language is closest to Greek? I know Latin is actually not that close; doubtless there is a known language that is closer, alive or extinct? and what's the closest modern, living language?

I really don't know, just wanted to find out.

Armenian. But we're talking a long time ago, like when our words for God would sound more similar. When you had these IE people living in the older Phrygia, before the further stages of migration south and back east across the Hellespont. Armenian itself has subsumed parts of the Anatolian (mainly Luwian, some Hittite; these are IE) and Caucasian (its own family) tongues.

[fomalhaut]

that's interesting. it seems the IE family was far more widespread before the rise of Islam and Arabic. But then again Aramaic was the lingua franca before Arabic, another Semitic tongue

[vartan]

that's interesting. it seems the IE family was far more widespread before the rise of Islam and Arabic. But then again Aramaic was the lingua franca before Arabic, another Semitic tongue

Yes but the 'death' of many IE languages has nothing to do with 'the rise of Islam and Arabic'. States were subsumed and/or conquered, not by Arabs usually.

[athanaric]

that's interesting. it seems the IE family was far more widespread before the rise of Islam and Arabic. But then again Aramaic was the lingua franca before Arabic, another Semitic tongue

The decline of IE languages in Western and Central Asia is mainly due to the spread of Turkic and other "Altaiic" (Mongol, Kyrgyz, ...) tribes and languages westward. However this development has also been augmented by political movements of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, specifically Turkish/Turkic nationalism which led to the physical and/or cultural extermination of IE-speaking minorities (Armenians, Kurds, Zaza, Tâjiks, Persian-speaking Âzaris, and so on) as well as the clerical-fascist system of Ruhollah Khomeini Kunollah Gohmeini, who deemed Arabic superior to Persian. So you see the connection to Islam is somewhat indirect, but it has arguably been augmented by the Persian-hate displayed by Muhammad himself and his early followers. Most notably Omar and his ilk who conquered Persia and prohibited the Persian language.

[Saldunz]

Armenian. But we're talking a long time ago, like when our words for God would sound more similar. When you had these IE people living in the older Phrygia, before the further stages of migration south and back east across the Hellespont. Armenian itself has subsumed parts of the Anatolian (mainly Luwian, some Hittite; these are IE) and Caucasian (its own family) tongues.

I have read Classical Armenian. It has almost no similarity to Greek beyond some common Indo-European properties, like Latin and Sanskrit.
Actually, morphologically I find Latin and Sanskrit more similar to Greek than Armenian.

I don't think any ancient language would have seemed recognizable to any contemporary speakers of Greek, except for maybe the other really poorly attested Balkan languages (Macedonian, Thracian, Phrygian).