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

[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.

[Saldunz]

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.

I was only referring to the IE tree that Mulceber posted above, and the "languages" under the Hellenic family group, which Classicists call dialects. I wanted to clarify that Doric is not a "separate language" (as Ibrahim put it) from, say, Attic-Ionic Greek. It's a separate dialect. What many of us know as "Classical Greek" (Attic-Ionic) is also a dialect.

As for the similarity between Sanskrit and Greek, you might be misled because of the vowel changes that happened to Indo-Iranian. PIE 'e' and 'o' merge with 'a' in Indo-Iranian languages. But just comparing the Greek o-declension and the Sanskrit a-declension you can see the similarities (Sanskrit nom. sg. -as for Greek -ος, acc. sg. -am for -ον < -ομ, abl. sg. -āt for -ως < -ωδ, etc.) They also share some features which aren't shared with Latin, like retention of the verbal augment, the dual number and a separate aorist and perfect aspect.

But shared conservative linguistic features do not mark how "related" languages are. Shared linguistic innovations do, and Greek does not share any innovation with Latin or Sanskrit so far as I know. Which is why it would, I think, also be wrong to say "Greek is most closely related to the Indo-Iranian languages."

[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).