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

[fomalhaut]

Cicero was not a linguist. He knew multiple languages, but you don't have the study of linguistics until 19th/20th century, afaik. Latin and Ancient Greek are related, yes, but the one is not a dialect of the other - this is especially true when you remember that one of the qualifications to be a dialect is mutual intelligibility - ie. if Greek speakers can't understand Latin just by listening to it, it isn't a dialect of Greek. -M

Yes, exactly. hence my original question in the first place! ; Is there even a slight degree of mutual intelligibility between ancient and modern Greek? Seeing as classical Hebrew was revived on emergence of Israel, was a sort of classical form of Greek reinstituted as the 'standard' Greek to give newly independent Greeks a political-linguo identity?

Man, i just want to know if i'm wasting my time learning ancient Greek :P

ps: I just don't see strong evidence that the Italic languages are subordinate, or are drawn from, Greek. the idea that Latin was a dialect implies Italics as a subordinate culture. sounds good for Hellenists but I think studying each language scientifically sees only the commonality found in Indo European languages, not commonality found within a sub family (like German and her Germanic sisters)