differences between spoken and written Ancient Greek

[daivid]

John, that is a good question and I think the best way to answer it would be to briefly state the situation and expand the question. Which Greek? The thing is you've got several Greek dialects spread over various territories, within those you have several sociolects too. Even within a tightly bound group there is a considerable variation in register of speech. Then bear in mind you have the problem of time.

Our evidence is good for some places and some aspects of the language at some of the time, there's not always the ideal amount of coverage. For my money the best place to get started with this is Greek comedy, there's been two good books by a teacher of mine, Andreas Will which talks about these questions of language - how we can identify low speech, foreigner speech, female speech etc. To my mind Latin is slightly better served, I recently read through Adam's book on social variation in Latin and WOW. There's also a good edited volume, Colloquial and Literary Latin, by Dickey and Chahoud which has a lot of great essays.

I have branched this to a different forum because what interests me about this question is the extent that the literary language diverged from the spoken language and how that influences what we think of the texts themselves.

The second sophistic seems to me, at least at first glance, to be a classic elite code. They were privileged elite collaborating with Romans in a system that excluded the lower orders. For them to choose a dialect that made it impossible for anyone who could not afford a high level of education is exactly what I'd expect.

But that makes it even harder for me to explain the language of Athenian tragedy with Doric chorus' and the spoken parts packed full archaic words. Not the sort of think I would expect of democratic Athens at all.

And when we have, say, women's speech, how can we tell if we a reading a genuine attempt to portray the distinct features of the Greek spoken by women or if in fact it is a parody. The answer to a question like that changes dramatically how we rate the author.

 I did try googleing Andreas Will but nothing came up.

[Scribo]

Oops, must have been my auto correct. I meant Andreas Willi.

Obviously divergences vary with time and place and some of the better examples of this are collected in specific grammars. There's one out there with a name like "language of the papyri" which is a good start for examples of everyday speech.

I don't think archaicms and so on are necessarily a problem in tragic speech: modern Classicists have basically massively over-emphasised the "democratic" aspect of Athens in any case due to ideological reasons and it's very, very, unlikely that 100% of the audience understood 100% of the production. There's just no evidence for that and no convincing parallel anywhere in the world. People heavily inculcated in drama and related genres (lyrics, dithyrambs) would have got it all but they weren't 100% of the audience. Think a tiered audience response .

That said the "Doric" is often a gloss anyway rather than genuine, yes Athenian handling of accents is often a bit...stereotypical (but probably no more than those poetae docti in Alexandria who hyper-corrected θ > Σ in Alkman even though the sound change had not taken place so consistently in his time, amongst other things). It's not as if they were suddenly shifting into street Doric after all.

[Qimmik]

Anyway, the "Doric" of choruses in Attic drama is just a thin veneer of Doric features everyone recognized, overlaid on basically Attic-Ionic Greek.

[daivid]

Oops, must have been my auto correct. I meant Andreas Willi.

Found him! Looks as if he does indeed deal with the social significance of differences in language. I'll check him out.

Obviously divergences vary with time and place and some of the better examples of this are collected in specific grammars. There's one out there with a name like "language of the papyri" which is a good start for examples of everyday speech.

The extent that the divergence between the written and spoken language varied over time is of course which interests me.

I don't think archaicms and so on are necessarily a problem in tragic speech: modern Classicists have basically massively over-emphasised the "democratic" aspect of Athens in any case due to ideological reasons and it's very, very, unlikely that 100% of the audience understood 100% of the production. There's just no evidence for that and no convincing parallel anywhere in the world. People heavily inculcated in drama and related genres (lyrics, dithyrambs) would have got it all but they weren't 100% of the audience. Think a tiered audience response .

Then is it tenable to argue that the playwrights of the 5th century BCE were part of a cultural elite who wrote so that at least part of what they wrote would be over the heads of a section of the audience so that those "in the know" would enjoy being part of the select group who did fully understand?

That said the "Doric" is often a gloss anyway rather than genuine, yes Athenian handling of accents is often a bit...stereotypical (but probably no more than those poetae docti in Alexandria who hyper-corrected θ > Σ in Alkman even though the sound change had not taken place so consistently in his time, amongst other things). It's not as if they were suddenly shifting into street Doric after all.

Anyway, the "Doric" of choruses in Attic drama is just a thin veneer of Doric features everyone recognized, overlaid on basically Attic-Ionic Greek.

Was it the kind of thing that your average Athenian could produce will by throwing in a few Doric features or was it a sophisticated litery language that amaters would attempt at their peril?

[Scribo]

Was it the kind of thing that your average Athenian could produce will by throwing in a few Doric features or was it a sophisticated litery language that amaters would attempt at their peril?

Well, it depends. I think one of the effects of the Peloponessian war was to make sure that even bumpkins were somewhat acquainted with Doric to at least be able to stereotype it. Think of how an Englishmen can sort of put on a Scottish accent and throw out a few stereotypical words like bairn but won't necessarily know how the dialect/language of Scots functions. That's the kind of level we're talking about more or less. Those people who were aristocrats and had guest friends, or traders and merchants and so on? definitely.

There's a really good introduction to tragic language in Mastronade's commentary on the Medea btw (Cambridge green and yellow). If you're near a library that has it it's worth photocopying those pages, especially since they're very very brief.

Then is it tenable to argue that the playwrights of the 5th century BCE were part of a cultural elite who wrote so that at least part of what they wrote would be over the heads of a section of the audience so that those "in the know" would enjoy being part of the select group who did fully understand?

There's the massive question. It's certainly evident that in oral poetry more generally the concept of the highly exclusive audience within an audience is very important worldwide, that we see some of this in archaic lyric. With tragedy it's kind of difficult based on what we have. Kritias wrote tragedies and he was certainly insanely elitist and all writers were from good backgrounds generally but I don't think we have a systematised poetic elite here. That said there were clearly many people who revelled in their trained knowledge in symposia (where Andrew Ford has convincingly argued Greek literary criticism began) and some authors like Euripides clearly reference earlier works and so expect his audience to be well acquainted with the genre.

I think the best approach is to imagine a mixed audience in terms of abilities. One thing I would say though is that it's best not to imagine a hard line between poet and audience. Aeschylus' tomb stone only recorded his participation at marathon. That's a good example of how professional these men were.

[daivid]

Then is it tenable to argue that the playwrights of the 5th century BCE were part of a cultural elite who wrote so that at least part of what they wrote would be over the heads of a section of the audience so that those "in the know" would enjoy being part of the select group who did fully understand?

There's the massive question. It's certainly evident that in oral poetry more generally the concept of the highly exclusive audience within an audience is very important worldwide, that we see some of this in archaic lyric. With tragedy it's kind of difficult based on what we have. Kritias wrote tragedies and he was certainly insanely elitist and all writers were from good backgrounds generally but I don't think we have a systematised poetic elite here. That said there were clearly many people who revelled in their trained knowledge in symposia (where Andrew Ford has convincingly argued Greek literary criticism began) and some authors like Euripides clearly reference earlier works and so expect his audience to be well acquainted with the genre.

I think the best approach is to imagine a mixed audience in terms of abilities. One thing I would say though is that it's best not to imagine a hard line between poet and audience. Aeschylus' tomb stone only recorded his participation at marathon. That's a good example of how professional these men were.

Those who defend the beauty of standard languages and high art do not necessarily defend it on the basis of explicitly elitist values as would a Kritias. I recall one of my teachers at school telling us how she hoped that over time, thru listening to the BBC, everyone would learn BBC English. If I were able to speak to her now I would ask her what was so special about BBC English if not that it was the badge of educated people like herself and wouldn't it lose its appeal if her dream were in fact to become a reality.

When you emphasize that the cultural elite of Athens was in no way systemized it doesn't seem to me so alien from the cultual elite of modern western countries such as Britain. The biggest divergence is the way Greek tradgedy seems to have been both high art and mass entertainment. Though am I reading too much in what you wrote in taking it that this was far more typical of the ancient world?

[Victor]

When you emphasize that the cultural elite of Athens was in no way systemized it doesn't seem to me so alien from the cultual elite of modern western countries such as Britain. The biggest divergence is the way Greek tradgedy seems to have been both high art and mass entertainment.

I don't see any great divergence. Shakespeare was both high art and mass entertainment; surely you've heard mention of the "groundlings" of the Globe Theatre.

[daivid]

When you emphasize that the cultural elite of Athens was in no way systemized it doesn't seem to me so alien from the cultual elite of modern western countries such as Britain. The biggest divergence is the way Greek tradgedy seems to have been both high art and mass entertainment.

I don't see any great divergence. Shakespeare was both high art and mass entertainment; surely you've heard mention of the "groundlings" of the Globe Theatre.

Good point. I have a "small" gap in my knowledge of cultural history (between 146 and 1800 ) So maybe the split is a very modern phenomena?

[Scribo]

I wouldn't say that necessarily and the "split" was also apparent and sometimes important in classical Greece too. For example, while men like Aeschylus were not poetic professionals others like Stesichorus were. Likewise while tragedy could have both high and low brow aspects to it you do go on to get Hellenistic poetry which is highly, highly, complex and basically inaccessible to those who aren't familiar with god knows how many different texts and local traditions and obscure language and so on. Hence the appelation "poetae docti" - learned poets.

Note the occasion though (physical occasion is one of the most important aspects of Greek lit): with men like Callimachus you have a closed off reading/recital public with small circulation and therefore you can get these kinds of elite play (a natural outcome of the symposium? probably). On the other hand with drama you have a public event which is going to draw people from every walk of life.