Greek: A History of the Language and Its SpeakersGreek: A History of the Language and its Speakers traces the development of this fascinating language from the Mycenaean period of the second millennium BC to the present day, combining both external and internal history into a single narrative. It is the first book in English to explore the evolution of the Greek language as a whole, in all its regional and social heterogeneity, and in both its spoken and written forms, which, from late antiquity until surprisingly recently, were strikingly different in character, and provided the classic textbook example of what has now come to be known as diglossia. The cultural roots of this phenomenon and its profound implications for the development of the language provide a continuing theme throughout the book. Greek: A History of the Language and its Speakers will prove essential reading for second and third year students taking courses in the history of Greek, Classical civilization, Byzantine and Modern Greek Studies, and historical linguistics. |
Contents
Ancient Greek and its dialects | 3 |
official and literary standards | 17 |
The rise of Attic | 24 |
Copyright | |
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Common terms and phrases
1st declension 3rd declension accent accusative af'tos already ancient aorist aphaeresis archaizing Asia Minor Athenian Attic began Byzantine period century BC clauses clitic clitic pronouns Constantinople contemporary context control verbs Cretan Cretan Renaissance Crete cultural Cypriot Cyprus dative declension demotic dialects diglossia early educated emperor empire eventually example final forms genitive Greece Hellenistic imperfect infinitival infinitive innovative Ionic katharévousa Koine late antiquity later Latin learned linguistic literary Macedonian major medieval medieval Greek Middle Ages modern Greek neuter nouns of-me of-the official original Ottoman paradigm participles Peloponnese perfect plural popular prepositional pronouns pronunciation prose reflect remained replaced Roman speech spoken Greek spoken language standard modern Greek style subjunctive suffix survived synizesis texts tion tradition Turkish usage varieties verbs vernacular vowel West Greek writing written Greek written language δὲ εἰς ἐν καὶ νὰ οἱ πρὸς τὰ τὴν τῆς τὸ τὸν τοῦ τῶν