Is it all Greek to you?
By
Anastasia Kalyva-Stavridis
Introduction and scope
The belief
among the Europeans that the Greek language is one of the most difficult
languages in the world is so strong that it is considered rather as an exotic
one than as a member of the European languages family and a solid part of their
own languages DNA.
But this
belief is directly in opposition to the fact that all the European languages have been
enormously affected by the Greek language and through the ages, have
incorporated hundreds of pure Greek words, as well as, have used prefixes and
suffixes of Greek origin to produce new ones. But how and why did that happen?
Brief history of the Greek
Language
About 2000
BC, the "Proto-Greeks", the Indo-European ancestors of the Greeks,
established themselves on the Greek Peninsula, where their language developed
into Greek, borrowing also numerous elements from the language of the earlier
populations, such as leon=lion, elaia=olive,
selinon=celery, elephas=elephant, kyparissos=cypress and so on. Until the end of Mycenean period, four distinct dialects had
been evolved, the Ionic, Arcadian, Aeolic and Doric. At about the 12th
century BC, the movement of Doric speakers to the south, probably caused the
Mycenean cities to be destroyed and the Mycenean script, known as Linear B, to
be abandoned. But also caused a great migration wave eastward to the western
coast of Anatolia and Cyprus. The 8th century BC, a great
colonization movement around the Mediterranean Sea took place that expanded the
Greek linguistic area even more. It was at about the same period that the epic
poems of Homer, "Iliad" and "Odyssey" appeared, in the
Ionic dialect. With the rise of Athens in succeeding centuries, a dialect of
Ionic, known as Attic began to produce the great literature of the classical
period (5th and 4th centuries BC). After the classical
age, in the years between 300 BC and 300 AD, the Attic dialect will be the
dominant form of the Greek language and the basis of the "Koine" or Common
language. At the same time, Alexander the Great conquered the Middle East,
bringing the Greek language as far as India and Romans adopted it as a second
language in their empire, being deeply influenced by it. The New Testament was
written in the Common language (Koine), which is used by the Eastern Orthodox
Church through the present day.
Gradually and because had been so widespread, the language lost
its old form and developed some new features that foretold the language spoken
today. The 7h century AD was adopted as official language by the
Byzantine Empire and so remained until the 15th century, when the
Byzantine Empire diminished. It continued to be spoken by Greeks under Turkish
rule, being influenced by the Turkish and Italian languages, to take its
present form. In addition to the common speech, known as "Demotic",
an imitation of classical Greek, known as "Pure" was revived in the
19th century for literary purposes and was taught at schools but it
was abandoned few decades ago to the favor of Demotic.
The Greek alphabet was borrowed from the Phoenicians, between 11th
and 8th century BC and had an extraordinary success as a model for
other alphabets, like Latin and Cyrillic. Greek scriptures have been discovered
that date back to the second millenium BC and literature work more than 2500
years old.
Greek and Latin
By the end of 1st century BC Romans had conquered the
whole Mediterranean World and most of the West. During this period, they were
enormously influenced by the Greeks at any aspect of their life. Their language
affected too. Latin extensively absorbed Greek cultural ideals, imitated Greek
literary techniques, adopted grammatical rules and imported Greek terminology.
Through these influences, the Classical Latin was evolved, over the next
centuries and produced masterpieces in literature and poetry. With the victory
of Christianity, Latin borrowed again from the Greek language large part of the
Christian vocabulary, at the end of 4th century AD. After the fall
of the Western Empire, the spoken Latin changed gradually and gave birth to the
languages of South Europe. The Christianization, during Middle Ages and the
revival of the Latin scholarship, during Renaissance, resulted in even deeper
impact on the Western languages, which actually have been marked by Latin with
an indelible stamp.
Latin was the main vehicle through which the Greek language
reached and influenced the other European languages until Renaissance. Some of
these early influences are easily detectable, like abyss,
abacus, climate, crystal, anthology, diamond, dragon, barbarian, baptism,
Genesis, ecclesiastical, Christ, dogma, orthodox, paradox, liturgy, martyr,
angel, evangelist etc. Others have
changed beyond recognition, like oyster, brave, doctor, document, card,
acre, cure, tourism, govern, monument, butter, money, church, paper, pirate,
priest, pain, calm, clergy, clerk, bishop, monk, chart etc. Here are some cases to exemplify these changes. The english "butter" (ger. Butter, fr. beurre, dut. boter, ital. burro), came from the ancient Greek "butyros"(bous=ox and tyros=cheese), through the
Latin "butyrum". The
english "paper" (ger. Papier, fr. papier, dut. papier), came from
the ancient Greek "papyros"
through the Latin "papyrum".
The english "monk" (ger. Moench, fr. moine, dut. monnik, sp. monje), came from the later Greek "monachos"=alone, through the Latin "monachus". In a similar way the word "macaroni" came from the Greek words "macarios"=blessed and "aionios"=eternal, which are used by the Greeks
to memorialize the dead while offer a starchy food. But they ended up to mean
the food itself. Some of these changed words returned to the Greek language
later, through the Italian language.
The revival of the Greek
scholarship
Whereas in
the West, secular education had tended to die out in the early Middle Ages, in
Byzantium, it was sustained. In each generation those who took their education
beyond the age of fourteen, would be instructed in the works of the ancient
Greek poets, historians, dramatists and philosophers.
At the
beginning of the 15th century AD, well before the capture of
Constantinople by Turks in 1453, many Greeks had found their way to the
Christian West, especially to Italy. Venice was the most important center of
Greeks in Italy, with a Greek population of about 4000 people by mid 15th
century. The Greek presence was also intense in Southern Italy, while the high
profile Byzantine emigres tended to congregate in Rome. There were the scholars
too, who either taught in the schools of Florence and Rome, Ferrara and Naples,
Padua and Milan, or translated from Greek to Latin, a job of major importance,
since opened them to a much wider readership. We will mention here Cardinal
Bessarion, prior Metropolitan of Nice, whose household in Rome, known as the
"Academy", became the meeting place for Greek and Italian scholars
and the center of the debate over the works of ancient Greek philosophers,
particularly those of Plato. All these were supported by the vast number of anonymous
individuals who patiently copied manuscripts of Greek texts or assisted in
preparing those texts for printing, when the first press was established in
Venice, at the end of 15th century.
The timing
was correct. At the end of the long Medieval Age, Italy seemed to be a land of
freedom, wealth and curiosity, a fertile land that accepted every drop of the
offered knowledge. The age of feverish intellectual activity that started there
and then, the so-called Renaissance swept the whole Europe over the next cetnuries
and was devoted to the complete recovery of the ancient heritage. To the
translations of Plato with his mathematical harmonies, were soon added those of
Galen with his experiments in physiology and anatomy and of Archimedes on
theoretical physics. And also of Hermes Trismegistos with his alternative story
of creation, which Nicolaus Copernicus actually justified, observationally and
mathematically, (1543), throwing the opening shot to a Scientific Revolution
with consequences greater than those of any other intellectual event in the
history of mankind and effects not yet exhausted.
The search
for antiquity kept the Greek language in the center of the interest of scholars
and intellectual people, flooding the European languages with Greek words, like
grammar, logic, rhetoric, arithmetic, geometry,
astronomy, music, drama, theatre, comedy, tragedy, episode, scene, climax,
dialogue, catastrophe etc. Almost all
sciences, (pure and applied) and areas of knowledge have Greek names, like Physics,
Biology, Geology, Geography, Theology, Philosophy, Archeology, Paleontology,
Psychology, Anthropology, History, Economy, Ecology and so on. The revival of Latin scholarship too, resulted in many
doublets, like metamorphosis and
transformation, periphery and
circumference, sympathy and
compassion, hypothesis and
supposition, metathesis and
transposition, synthesis and
composition.
Through the
next centuries the knowledge of both languages remained a mark of the educated
person and their teaching was consolidated in the educational systems of the
Western countries.
This
preservation led to a further Greek influence during the 19th and 20th
centuries, with the creation of a large number of neologisms, made up of Greek
prefixes and suffixes added to Greek or other roots, to supply new terms for
all the sciences that were developing very fast. Prefixes such as poly-(many), mega-(big), micro-(small), nano-(very small),
tele-(distance), chrono-(time), anti-(against), auto-(self), hemi-(half), hetero-(different), eu-(well), nau-(naval), geo-(earth), physio-(nature), photo-(light), hydro-(water), litho-(stone), phono-(sound), philo-(love), meta-(after), biblio-(book), di-(two), derm-(skin), ped-(child), pod-(foot), eco-(home) and
suffixes such as -meter (measure), -gram (letter), -graph (write), -scope (see), -phone (sound), -phobia (fear), are of Greek origin.
The words method, analysis, emphasis, idea, encyclopedia, aristocrat, myth,
magic, crisis, cosmos, school, metaphor, energy, sphere, analogy, problem,
center, hierarchy, hieroglyph, politic, monarch, scheme, phenomenon, anatomy,
technique, metal, skepticism, antipode, harmony, theory, prophet, system,
sarcophagus, planet, aesthetic, galaxy, logic, symbol, organism, euthanasia,
eureka, erotic, toxic, democracy, electric, magnetic, parameter, pedagogy,
period, catalogue, thesaurus, bibliography, dinosaur, genes, acrobat,
enthusiast, paradigm, irony, instinct, bomb, diplomat and hundreds more are also Greek words.
It is
interesting that some of the Greek words have been used with a metaphorical
meaning, such as the word "gas", which was invented by the Dutch
chemist J.B. van Helmont, in 17th century, with deliberate
similarity to the Greek word "chaos". Another paradigm is the term "bacteria" with which, in the 19th
century, the French biologist Luis Pasteur named the specific causes of most of
the diseases, actually because they looked like "walking sticks" or "bacteria" in the ancient Greek language.
At the
present time, the already imported Greek roots continue to produce meaningful
words such as, the rather recent "nanotechnology", and "cosmonaut". But also other roots, such as "clone"=branch and "cybernetics"=govern, have been recently pulled
out to cover new needs.
Synopsis
The Greek
language is the first Great language of the Western Civilization and its
similarity to the other European languages, goes far beyond their common
Indo-European roots. Its impact on them should be distinguished in:
Indirect, until Renaissance: Latin was enormously
affected by the Greek language, during the Roman and first Christian Age. At
the other hand the impact of Latin on the Western languages has been
monumental. Through these relationships, many Greek roots found their way to
the West very early and most of them are hardly recognizable any more.
Direct, since Renaissance: The revival of the
Greek scholarship, during this period, improved the level of its knowledge in
the West and resulted to an extensive embodiment of Greek loanwords into the European
languages. This long tradition continues to produce new meaningful terms till
the present day.
Bibliography
1.
Encyclopaedia Britannica: Greek lang.- Latin lang.- Classical
scholarship - Science, history of - Neologisms, at http://www.britannica.com/.
2.
Latin language - Etymology - Medieval Latin, http://latin.about.com/
3.
Greek and the Hellenic lang. subgroup, at http://www.fas.harvard.edu/~olmsted/kcole/greek.htm.
4.
Harris, Jonathan, "Byzantines in Renaissance Italy", 1996,
at http://orb.rhodes.edu/encyclop/late/laterbyz/harris-ren.html.