Modern Greek: Would it help?

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Arvid
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Modern Greek: Would it help?

Post by Arvid »

There's a question I've always wondered about, and now that we have some Modern Greek speakers posting to the forum, perhaps they could shed some light on it for me.

There are of course many resources available to learn Modern Greek; I've downloaded the 3-volume course from http://fsi-language-courses.com/ for example, tapes and all. Before really getting into it, though, I was wondering how much of a help (or hindrance) that would be in learning Ancient Greek?

If Modern Greek is to Ancient Greek as Italian is to Latin, let's say, I could see how it would be a considerable help. If I were fluent in Italian, I'm sure learning Latin would be much easier than it is for me as a monoglot English-speaker.

On the other hand, if Modern Greek is to Ancient Greek more like Modern English is to Anglo-Saxon, which I always thought was closer to the truth, then it wouldn't be any help at all (other than building up your brain's language muscles that much more.)

Of course, Modern Greek would be of interest in and of itself, but if anyone could throw any light on how much help it would be in the long, slow process of getting somewhere with Ancient Greek, I would appreciate it!

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Post by modus.irrealis »

I would say that it won't make learning Ancient Greek any easier -- my thinking is that the easiest way to learn a language is to learn it directly and that no other language is going to provide a shortcut. I mean, if you did learn Modern Greek first, then of course whatever it shares with Ancient Greek you won't have to relearn, but you would have had to learn those aspects anyway and plus you still have to learn everything which differs between Ancient and Modern Greek and that is not insignificant.

But as for how similar they are, I'd say Modern Greek is more similar to Ancient Greek than Italian is to Latin, and much more similar than Modern English is to Old English. This is true even superficially in that Modern Greek words look like Ancient Greek words since the spelling is very conservative, but there's other things like the preservation of case and the declensions are still reasonably close. Modern Greek also draws more on Ancient Greek, which is not really felt of as being a separate language, even to the point that Ancient Greek declension pattern have been put back into use, and that also increases the number of similarities.

I mean, obviously, learning both Ancient Greek and Modern Greek should take less time and effort than learning Ancient Greek and some other language, but learning just Ancient Greek should take less time and effort than learning both -- but if you are interested in learning both, it might be better to get a good start in one of them before starting the next one because they are similar enough to cause confusion.

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Post by Bert »

I can see one major advantage; We can learn MG by immersion or at least with the aid of a MG speaker. That would help "thinking in Greek" and that can only be beneficial when it comes to learning AG.

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Post by edonnelly »

Another potential advantage, though this is getting way off topic, is that if you ever do get to go to Greece I hear that the Greeks are among the most appreciative in the world when they hear you are trying to learn their language, even if your skills are the most basic (as opposed to say, the French, who have a reputation for being indignant if your French is not all but perfect). I'm not sure why this is, maybe most visitors to Greece make no effort to learn the language. Anyway, I would love to get to Greece someday, and it's always been my goal to study some modern Greek before I do (though I suspect this is all many years away, and I've got a lot of ancient Greek to conquer before I can even think of beginning with modern).
The lists:
G'Oogle and the Internet Pharrchive - 1100 or so free Latin and Greek books.
DownLOEBables - Free books from the Loeb Classical Library

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Post by spiphany »

Vaguely related to this topic: one of my Greek professors has a story about a time he was in Greece and had arranged to stay somewhere for a certain amount of time and had a change of plans and needed to talk to the owner of the place he was staying. But he had trouble communicating. So...being, of course, well-read in his Greek, he flipped through Medea until he found the passage where Medea begs Kreon, who is sending her into exile μίαν με μεῖναι τῆνδ' ἔασον ἡμέ?αν ("let me stay just one more day"), and showed it to the man, who read it, laughed and let him stay another night.

Which goes to show that classical Greek can have surprising applications.
IPHIGENIE: Kann uns zum Vaterland die Fremde werden?
ARKAS: Und dir ist fremd das Vaterland geworden.
IPHIGENIE: Das ist's, warum mein blutend Herz nicht heilt.
(Goethe, Iphigenie auf Tauris)

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Post by Aristoklhs »

I think at first they will seem as two completely different languages. Modern greek as in those scripts of FSI (I have downloaded them as well because of the polytonic system) are based on an oral language and ancient on a written.

Although I have never lived in an anglophonic country I use the textkit books plus some german books. That is because I find the greek system of teaching ancient greek terrible. I now use North and Hillard where only english sentences are being translated into ancient Greek and I cannot see any advantage at all. The words I would choose to express the meaning are different than those used in the key.
So I learn ancient greek as a totally different language using english and german books because otherwise I shall never learn it.

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Re: Modern Greek: Would it help?

Post by perispomenon »

Arvid wrote:Of course, Modern Greek would be of interest in and of itself, but if anyone could throw any light on how much help it would be in the long, slow process of getting somewhere with Ancient Greek, I would appreciate it!
I just recently decided to try to learn modern Greek (after an earlier attempt some years ago), but I do not have the idea that it will be very helpful in learning ancient Greek.

When reading ancient Greek, I at least can recognize the construction of the sentence. Up to now, modern Greek has been totally alien to me. The construction of sentences seems to be quite different, and ancient vocabulary is only of limited help.

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Re: Modern Greek: Would it help?

Post by Arvid »

perispomenon wrote:The construction of sentences seems to be quite different, and ancient vocabulary is only of limited help.
That was the point of my example of Italian vs. Latin. A lot of the words would be recognizable (although less so than in Greek, because spelling has been allowed to change with pronunciation to a much greater extent in Italian) but structurally, the languages are completely different. In Italian, word order and separate words used as grammatical particles carry most of the load, as opposes to the inflections of Latin. It's my understanding that much the same is true of Modern Greek as opposed to Ancient Greek.

Still, it seems as if things might be easier if more of the words looked familiar (however they're pronounced nowadays) so you could concentrate on the grammatical mechanism.

I've always wanted to visit Greece too, and I'm glad to hear they're appreciative of any efforts you make in the direction of using their language. (Although the first time I pronounced "yee-ros" as "gü-raws" that would probably evaporate!

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Post by IreneY »

Well, I've mentioned my opinion before (if you know it it helps, if you don't go straight to ancient Greek) but I must admit myself surprised by some things I've read.

Aristoklh a different language? I was never taught of AG this way and using modern Greek to explain ancient Greek has always been one of my favourite tools that I miss when explaining things to non-Greek speakers. And I can't understand that point about oral language I'm afraid.

Perispomenon, in general modern Greek sentence structure is just more simplified and analytical than ancient Greek :D Other than that it follows the same structure as ancient Greek is less freely (and the loss of the infinitive and severe restriction of use of the participle hamper us something dreadful comparatively speaking but, again, it only means that we go for more analytical structure).

As for the ancient words well, the trick is to forget the third declension and think of the AG accusative as the nominative more or less in these cases :D

True, it's not as if our vocabulary hasn't changed along grammar but in general Greek is rather "conservative" really.

Pronunciation? God help you there :lol:

Anyway, from friends of mine who have gone either way (from one form of the language to the other) I've heard that it helped. It's too much of a bother if you are not interested in one of the two forms and if we're talking about Homeric and not classical or Koine Greek then things start looking a bit tricky but it is true that we don't expect any visitor to know modern Greek so we tend to react very enthusiastically when one does :D :wink:

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Post by Lucus Eques »

I'd say learn one and then the other. I think going in chronological order makes the most sense, Ancient to Modern. I tried learning both simultaneously — I performed well, but I would have been much happier knowing Ancient Greek before taking on Modern, which would fall into place easier thereafter.
L. Amādeus Rāniērius · Λ. Θεόφιλος Ῥᾱνιήριος 🦂

SCORPIO·MARTIANVS

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Post by perispomenon »

IreneY wrote:Perispomenon, in general modern Greek sentence structure is just more simplified and analytical than ancient Greek :D Other than that it follows the same structure as ancient Greek is less freely (and the loss of the infinitive and severe restriction of use of the participle hamper us something dreadful comparatively speaking but, again, it only means that we go for more analytical structure).

As for the ancient words well, the trick is to forget the third declension and think of the AG accusative as the nominative more or less in these cases :D

True, it's not as if our vocabulary hasn't changed along grammar but in general Greek is rather "conservative" really.
Well, I'm going for it! Hope to be able to utter a few sentences in modern Greek on my next holiday... Who scared me, was my first teacher of modern Greek, who said: "I admire you all for wanting to learn modern Greek. You are very brave and also very naive, because you will n-e-v-e-r learn the language. Greek is too difficult."

He was fired shortly afterwards; I have to mention that :D

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Post by IreneY »

!! Greek in any form is not one of the easiest languages around. However, with the exception of learning how each letter is pronounced, modern Greek is much simpler than ancient Greek really. And what about all these people I know who learnt to speak modern Greek then?
Glad you decided to fire him. Weird teacher by the way if you think about it.

Anyway, if you ever need any help just holler. I promise to be more careful with both my Greek and, more importantly my English, if I try to explain something. I'm still wincing from thinking the number of mistakes I managed to shoehorn in a few lines in my previous post.

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Post by perispomenon »

IreneY wrote:Glad you decided to fire him. Weird teacher by the way if you think about it.

<snip>

Anyway, if you ever need any help just holler.
I will surely do that, actually have a question for you right now. But I just have to check some more, before I ask.

By the way, it wasn't a private teacher, so it was not me who fired him, but the institution where I took the course.

megas_yiannakis

Post by megas_yiannakis »

for me anyway it the idea that greek is greek. modern greek is just another form of the alive and ever evolving greek language... homeric, attic, koine, katharevousa, modern....

yes the language is alot simpler... but the same can be said with the difference between attic and koine... when i speak modern greek i like to add in achaisms and touches of old greek which just compliment the language... the main thing also for me is that im thinking in greek... yes sentance structure has changed and grammar etc but the guts of what greek is has remained...

btw i dont know how i would have even began learning AG if i didnt know modern... learning even 'basic' modern greek decreases the 'memory' work load greatly on learning and thinking in 'declensions' etc.

The differences between modern and AG also depend on what type of AG... my γιάγιά amazes me by being able to read the entire bible in koine when she stopped school in grd 4... and shes not just bluffing her way through she really knows what shes reading... obviously doing a 'speed course for travel' in MG isnt going to help overly much... but when you get into the guts of the language (which isfar easier to get into that in AG) one would be surprised how much it helps...

...then again maybe i just support it because im greek :P lol

//Iwannhs

(ps my name is a perfect example of a similarity... even tho i usually go by yianni, yiannara or yiannare) lol

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Post by mingshey »

Hi, although I had once said to the contrary, I'm seriously considering a visit to Greece in a few years, with my family, if I can afford it. And I started learning MG again recently. I use the Learn Greek Online site in kypros.org for my study. (This site seems to have maintenance shut-downs from time to time.) A purchased a few textbooks from Star Graphics in Cyprus and the personnel there showed a great delight about a foreigner trying to learn their language and he was very enthusiastic to help me getting the resources.
The greatest hindrance to learning AG is I cannot learn it as a living, spoken language. MG, to the contrary, I can learn as a spoken language; I can listen and repeat. This method is incomparably more effective than any other method in learning a language. And since the two Greek tongues share quite a large body of vocab, learning one can help lerning the other. Presently my having learnt a bit of AG helps me absorbing MG vocabs and sentences. But I believe soon it will get the other way.

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Post by Aristoklhs »

mingshey wrote:The greatest hindrance to learning AG is I cannot learn it as a living, spoken language.
That is the greatest problem, because most of the methods only try to teach translation.

http://www.akwn.net/

The site above prooves that ancient greek can be learned as a living language, but no one seems to bother.
perispomenon wrote: Well, I'm going for it! Hope to be able to utter a few sentences in modern Greek on my next holiday... Who scared me, was my first teacher of modern Greek, who said: "I admire you all for wanting to learn modern Greek. You are very brave and also very naive, because you will n-e-v-e-r learn the language. Greek is too difficult."
Well, there is a sort of criticism about the level of modern greek by a part of the greek population and sentences like "Greek is so difficult that not even the Greeks themselves can speak it properly" are sarcastic. I don't think greek is more difficult than german for instance.

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Post by CanadianGirl »

Spiphany-That is a terrific story! I had a couple of adventures like that too-not that good, I certainly couldn't quote one of the dramatists. Perispomenon-That is also a great story-pretty reassuring that the person was fired, isn't it. I would advise people to study classical Greek seriously (with a teacher) & get yourself some good conversational Greek tapes to practice with in your spare time (driving etc.) That's what I did & i picked up enough of the language to communicate (slowly) with non-English speakers. You might keep in mind that the most beautiful & fascinating parts of the country are inland, away from the tourist centers where "everybody" speaks Greek. It's definitely worth the effort.

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Re: Modern Greek: Would it help?

Post by elakbar »

Arvid wrote:There's a question I've always wondered about, and now that we have some Modern Greek speakers posting to the forum, perhaps they could shed some light on it for me.

There are of course many resources available to learn Modern Greek; I've downloaded the 3-volume course from http://fsi-language-courses.com/ for example, tapes and all. Before really getting into it, though, I was wondering how much of a help (or hindrance) that would be in learning Ancient Greek?

If Modern Greek is to Ancient Greek as Italian is to Latin, let's say, I could see how it would be a considerable help. If I were fluent in Italian, I'm sure learning Latin would be much easier than it is for me as a monoglot English-speaker.

On the other hand, if Modern Greek is to Ancient Greek more like Modern English is to Anglo-Saxon, which I always thought was closer to the truth, then it wouldn't be any help at all (other than building up your brain's language muscles that much more.)

Of course, Modern Greek would be of interest in and of itself, but if anyone could throw any light on how much help it would be in the long, slow process of getting somewhere with Ancient Greek, I would appreciate it!
hi, it will not help you to learn ancient greek if you learn modern greek.
I suggest if you do not know anything about greek ,it is better to start from Modern Greek( the basic, simple phrases etc) so you can get used to greek alphabet. Study alone one or two months and then learn ancient Greek. I know from my swedish woman that try to learn modern greek and its to difficult for het to learn the alphabet and the diphogs.

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Re: Modern Greek: Would it help?

Post by Symmachus »

To put a bit of a twist on the topic, I would like to hear some thoughts on whether Modern Greek might be helpful for someone learning Ancient Greek once that person has a bit of grounding in the language (i.e. has a good grasp of the grammar and has already read some texts - I'm talking about myself, of course). Since, given the right resources, Modern Greek could be far easier to practice in a casual setting than the ancient language, could it have any use as a tool for learning vocabulary?

The notion occurred to me because Duolingo is due to release the beta version of its Greek course this month. Though I tend to be skeptical of the Rosetta Stone-style approach to language, I do find it to be effective when used for languages whose grammar one already basically understands - so, for example, I think it would be more helpful and useful for an Italian to use Duolingo for French than, say, Polish or Welsh, for which she would need a number of additional resources. And a German-speaker could well use it to learn a Scandinavian language whose grammar is similar to but in most respects simpler than that of his own language. Hence my idea and my question, though the parallel is not at all exact - if one already knows Ancient Greek grammar, would Modern Greek be close enough structurally to allow one to dive right in, and if so, would one then be able to apply a good chunk of Modern Greek vocabulary, thus learned in a casual/active setting, to reading Ancient Greek? Or is it just too different?

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Re: Modern Greek: Would it help?

Post by Symmachus »

Now that Duolingo has released its Modern Greek course in beta, I can answer my own question.

So far I am actually finding it fairly useful for vocabulary; I am trying to stay a bit detached from the grammar and am mostly focusing on the individual words and their roots (while looking out for the occasional Italian/Turkish/French loanword). For certain branches of the vocabulary tree, the ancient roots are immediately recognizable and often unchanged; in some cases, the ancient word is hiding behind a spelling that reflects phonetic changes incl. syncopation (e.g. γιατρός = ἰατρός, στο = εἰς τό, φέτος = αὐτ'ἔτος).

The more interactive sort of practice that Duolingo promotes is a good counterbalance to the passive way in which classical languages are (usually) taught, where, following a few introductory courses, from a certain point onward students are mainly asked to translate one-way. In my case, this led to me being able to recognize a lot of vocabulary strictly in the context of the work where I first encountered it, and often not elsewhere.

To read fluently in Ancient Greek, meanwhile, you need the sort of lexical flexibility that allows you to immediately recognize alternate forms and spellings of a given word in various contexts. The fact that Duolingo makes you use what are essentially the same ancient roots over and over in new contexts is, I think (with all due caution), reason enough for it to work as a casual, fun-format learning tool for Ancient Greek. Just make sure that you understand the ancient grammar on its own terms first.

Duolingo has not made Greek available on its mobile app yet - the course is still in very early beta - but the browser version is up and running on the website.

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Re: Modern Greek: Would it help?

Post by marcofurio »

There was a very interesting previous discussion in this forum about Modern Greek some time ago (1) and I’d like to add 3 links where reasons are shown why someone interested in ancient Greece might like to learn Modern Greek. In the first one (2) an excellent list of Greek learning resources (both Ancient and Modern Greek) is shown, with reasons for learning the modern language, an interesting point about "reverse chronological reading" together with the author’s proposal to someone starting from scratch to learn it even before the ancient version!!. The second link (3) is to a very clear and nice essay on the importance of Modern Greek and the reasons for not yet “having a seat at the classicists’ table”. The last link (4) is to a fine group of interviews where top professors are shown talking (in modern Greek) about a single language… Greek!. I have also included the first sentence of three literary pieces together with their Modern Greek version just as a place for reflection on differences and similarities between both.

Apollodorus’ bibliotheca (c 150 BC) (5):
Ancient Greek: Οὐρανὸς πρῶτος τοῦ παντὸς ἐδυνάστευσε κόσμου.
Modern Greek: Ο πρώτος άρχοντας του σύμπαντος ήταν ο Ουρανός.

Arrian’s anabasis of Alexander (c 120 AD) (6):
Ancient Greek: Πτολεμαῖος ὁ Λάγου καὶ Ἀριστόβουλος ὁ Ἀριστοβούλου ὅσα μὲν ταὐτὰ ἄμφω περὶ Ἀλεξάνδρου τοῦ Φιλίππου συνέγραψαν, ταῦτα ἐγώ ὡς πάντῃ ἀληθῇ ἀναγράφω, ὅσα δὲ οὐ ταὐτά, τούτων τὰ πιστότερα ἐμοὶ φαινόμενα καὶ ἅμα ἀξιαφηγητότερα ἐπιλεξάμενος.
Modern Greek: Ο Πτολεμαίος, ο γιος του Λάγου, και ο Αριστόβουλος του Αριστοβούλου, όσα έγραψαν ίδια οι δυο τους για τον Αλέξανδρο, το γιο του Φιλίππου, αυτά εγώ τα γράφω ως εντελώς αληθινά, όσα όμως δε συνφωνούν μεταξύ τους, απ’αυτά (κατάγρφω), αφού επέλεξα, όσα μου φαίνονται περισσότερο αξιόπιστα και ταυτόχρονα περισσότερο άξια εξιστόρησης.

Plato’s Crito (c 360 BC) (7):
Ancient Greek: Τί τηνικάδε ἀφίξαι, ὦ Κρίτων; ἢ οὐ πρῲ ἔτι ἐστίν;
Modern Greek: Γιατί ήρθες τέτοια ώρα, Κρίτωνα; Ή δεν είναι πια πρωί;

(1) http://www.textkit.com/greek-latin-foru ... =2&t=63697
(2) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AelM2zyv5Us
(3) https://eidolon.pub/on-not-knowing-mode ... 302071bf9f
(4) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WBNjNpeoP0Q
(5) http://www.politeianet.gr/books/9789608 ... mos-140316
(6) http://www.politeianet.gr/books/9789607 ... hiki-56257
(7) http://www.politeianet.gr/books/9789608 ... ton-194295

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Re: Modern Greek: Would it help?

Post by Symmachus »

I enjoyed reading this recent article from Eidolon written by a classicist who found that learning Modern Greek contributed to her appreciation of the ancient language.

On Not Knowing (Modern) Greek by Johanna Hanink

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Re: Modern Greek: Would it help?

Post by jeidsath »

I was looking up vacation spots the other day, and and it was very pleasant to find that I could understand most of this:

http://arcadia.ceid.upatras.gr/arkadia/ ... onidio.htm
Symmachus wrote:I enjoyed reading this recent article from Eidolon written by a classicist who found that learning Modern Greek contributed to her appreciation of the ancient language.

On Not Knowing (Modern) Greek by Johanna Hanink
That article is a good read, though not a very serious look at the topic. The question "Why doesn't Modern Greek have a seat at the table?" is not rhetorical, but actually has some decent (and unfortunate) explanations.

Everything else I've read on Eidolon makes me wish that loopy Donna Zuckerberg had spent her infinite Facebook dollars on a website that was actually about Greek and Latin.
“One might get one’s Greek from the very lips of Homer and Plato." "In which case they would certainly plough you for the Little-go. The German scholars have improved Greek so much.”

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Re: Modern Greek: Would it help?

Post by daivid »

jeidsath wrote:
That article is a good read, though not a very serious look at the topic. The question "Why doesn't Modern Greek have a seat at the table?" is not rhetorical, but actually has some decent (and unfortunate) explanations.
.
That's very cryptic. I know very little about modern Greeks I would welcome your thoughts.
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Re: Modern Greek: Would it help?

Post by jeidsath »

daivid wrote:
jeidsath wrote:
That article is a good read, though not a very serious look at the topic. The question "Why doesn't Modern Greek have a seat at the table?" is not rhetorical, but actually has some decent (and unfortunate) explanations.
.
That's very cryptic. I know very little about modern Greeks I would welcome your thoughts.
I'll start by quoting something I disagree with in the article:
On the one hand, the modern language requirements of Classics PhD programs should really start to reflect that interesting and important things have been said and are being said about Greco-Roman antiquity in countless languages other than English, German, French, and Italian (why not accept Turkish or Arabic or Chinese — isn’t, after all, scholarship really just a form of “reception”?).
This was written by someone who doesn't like to think very hard. There are very good reasons that English or German or French or Italian may be much more useful for the classics than Mandarin or Cantonese -- which one does she even mean by "Chinese"? Or has she not thought about it for more than 5 seconds?

It is a fact that interesting and important things are not said every day, not everyone can say them, and "countless languages" will not help you for Plato. Some languages in fact possess a very high concentration of useful material compared to others. No one would recommend to a friend preparing to learn Physics, for example that they learn Turkish instead of English. Nor would you recommend to a friend to learn "Chinese" as a secondary language for classical studies, if they didn't already have English or German, etc. If anything, it's the sort of advice to give an enemy. There are other reasons to learn these languages, but the classics are not one.

Having dismissed the author and her wild claims, we can deal with a much more realistic question: why doesn't modern Greek have the same importance for classicists as English, German, French, or Italian? From a linguistics standpoint, at least, Modern Greek should be a no brainer.

The simple fact is that Modern Greek doesn't have the same level of useful academic output as these other languages, and hasn't historically had it either. Right off the bat, there are 500 million English speakers in the world, 250 million German speakers, 130 million French speakers, and 70 million Italian speakers. Modern Greece has a population of 11 million. That's enough of an explanation right there without actually delving into the differences in quality of the education system and economic and social development, etc.

Still, if you mean to extend your Greek studies at all past the classical era, Modern Greek starts to become a very attractive acquisition.
“One might get one’s Greek from the very lips of Homer and Plato." "In which case they would certainly plough you for the Little-go. The German scholars have improved Greek so much.”

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Re: Modern Greek: Would it help?

Post by Symmachus »

jeidsath wrote: I'll start by quoting something I disagree with in the article:
[...]
Yes, Hanink's logic is lacking there (you could argue for Arabic and Turkish when it comes to reception studies, but there's a lot of French/German/Italian scholarship one should probably have read before getting to that point). However, I think that she has a good point regarding the value of Modern Greek both in terms of opening the door to today's Greek scholarship and in terms of developing stronger intuitive links with the ancient language. And the general usefulness of the language aside, I would hazard that Greece boasts absolute numbers of classicists focused on Ancient Greek at least comparable to those of North American and Western European countries.
jeidsath wrote:Still, if you mean to extend your Greek studies at all past the classical era, Modern Greek starts to become a very attractive acquisition.
Especially since the study of transmission and reception is a key aspect of modern scholarship, and one can hardly speak authoritatively of Byzantium, the nexus of Greek textual transmission, while in ignorance of the work done by today's Greek scholars (though many do work in the US/UK and publish in English).

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Re: Modern Greek: Would it help?

Post by Evangelos96 »

Yes, it would absolutely help. The declensions and the core of the vocabulary, adverbs, and particles is substantially the same as in ancient Greek. The main difference is that modern Greek, as others in the thread have said, is more analytical and periphrastic. So while you might have a translation of an ancient passage into modern Greek which uses none of the same words, it doesn't mean a modern Greek speaker will not understand them, it's just that they belong to a different register, as if someone were speaking Elizabethan or Chaucerian English.

For someone approaching Greek for the first time, I would do it in this order:

First study the Psalms and the New Testament. The language of the Bible is very similar to modern Greek in structure of expression, and the vocabulary is very good (you get a mix of everyday items, as well as more abstract concepts and poetic words).

Next I would look at modern Greek. An interesting source text might be Papadiamantis, a novelist form the early 20th century who wrote in a unique style blending the high, archaic register with colloquial expressions. I would steer away from most modern Greek novels and TV shows, which are full of calques and foreign expressions. You might also enjoy watching some classic films from the 60s, which was the Golden Age of Greek cinema and displays a lively conversational style.

Then I would turn to Homer. The vocabulary is extremely dense and at first you might only make out one out of every ten words, but in the long run it's incredibly enriching and the grammar isn't very hard.

After this, I would look at some historical writings like Herodotus and Dionysius of Halicarnassus, whose style is very clear readable.

Only after you have all this under your belt would I suggest tackling Plato and the dramatists, which are, stylistically and linguistically speaking, the hardest texts in the language. When people say that ancient and modern Greek are totally different languages, it's most often because they have taken some poetically wrought phrase out of Euripides as a standard, and expect that that's what "Greek" should look like, when in fact it's the exception, not the rule.
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Re: Modern Greek: Would it help?

Post by jeidsath »

Evangelos96 wrote: Tue Mar 03, 2020 1:36 am Only after you have all this under your belt would I suggest tackling Plato and the dramatists, which are, stylistically and linguistically speaking, the hardest texts in the language. When people say that ancient and modern Greek are totally different languages, it's most often because they have taken some poetically wrought phrase out of Euripides as a standard, and expect that that's what "Greek" should look like, when in fact it's the exception, not the rule.
Plato's Greek is straightforward Attic, and there is nothing that I'd consider fancy about it. Xenophon is even plainer. Euripides is harder, but quite possible to understand once you have a good command of Attic and Homer.
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Re: Modern Greek: Would it help?

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jeidsath wrote: Tue Mar 03, 2020 8:54 pm Plato's Greek is straightforward Attic, and there is nothing that I'd consider fancy about it.

Ἐνταῦθα τοῦ βίου, ὦ φίλε Σώκρατες, ἔφη ἡ Μαντινικὴ ξένη, εἰπέρ που ἄλλοθι, βιωτὸν ἀνθρώπῳ θεωμένῳ αὐτὸ τὸ καλόν. Ὃ ἐάν ποτε ἴδῃς, οὐ κατὰ χρυσίον τε καὶ ἐσθῆτα καὶ τοὺς καλοὺς παῖδάς τε καὶ νεανίσκους δόξει σοι εἶναι, οὓς νῦν ὁρῶν ἐκπέπληξαι καὶ ἕτοιμος εἶ καὶ σὺ καὶ ἄλλοι πολλοί, ὁρῶντες τὰ παιδικὰ καὶ συνόντες ἀεὶ αὐτοῖς, εἴ πως οἷόν τ᾽ ἦν, μήτ᾽ ἐσθίειν μήτε πίνειν, ἀλλὰ θεᾶσθαι μόνον καὶ συνεῖναι.

-Symposium 211d

The whole passage, which I think is quite representative of Plato's style, is basically 2 long sentences. Βίου is separated from its adjective βιωτὸν by an elliptical clause (εἴ που). The next sentence establishes the protasis (ἐάν ποτε ἴδῃς) followed by a series of nouns coordinated for rhetorical effect (χρυσίον τε καὶ ἐσθῆτα καὶ τοὺς καλοὺς παῖδάς τε καὶ νεανίσκους), then we get a relative clause (oὒς...) followed by another elliptical construction (εἴ πως), which is inverted from its expected position; we end with a parallelism balancing two pairs of infinitives (μήτ᾽ ἐσθίειν μήτε πίνειν, ἀλλὰ θεᾶσθαι μόνον καὶ συνεῖναι), which also establishes the apodosis of the sentence.

This is a carefully constructed, highly artificial language (artificial in the sense of consciously striving to be art). Of course, Plato occasionally has some very colloquial passages like

Kατέβην χθὲς εἰς Πειραιᾶ μετὰ Γλαύκωνος τοῦ Ἀρίστωνος προσευξόμενός τε τῇ θεῷ καὶ ἅμα τὴν ἑορτὴν βουλόμενος θεάσασθαι...

But that doesn't take away from the fact that on the whole he is a very challenging stylist.
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Re: Modern Greek: Would it help?

Post by jeidsath »

Evangelos96 wrote: Wed Mar 04, 2020 3:07 am Βίου is separated from its adjective βιωτὸν...
Are you sure?
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Re: Modern Greek: Would it help?

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Ι was writing quickly and should have phrased that better. Bιωτός is the adjectival form of βίος. The expression βίος βιωτός (life worth living) is a characteristic Socratic phrase. So Plato has ordered the words for a particular rhetorical effect: ἐνταῦθα τοῦ βίου...βιωτόν ἀνθρώπῳ.
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Re: Modern Greek: Would it help?

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Arvid wrote: Mon Jul 16, 2007 7:52 pm If Modern Greek is to Ancient Greek as Italian is to Latin, let's say, I could see how it would be a considerable help. If I were fluent in Italian, I'm sure learning Latin would be much easier than it is for me as a monoglot English-speaker.

On the other hand, if Modern Greek is to Ancient Greek more like Modern English is to Anglo-Saxon, which I always thought was closer to the truth, then it wouldn't be any help at all (other than building up your brain's language muscles that much more.)
The closest equivalent in English would be Middle English: the grammar and syntax is slightly different, there are obsolete words, and some semantic shift, but on the whole it's still English. We also musn't forget that most of the texts that we have in Ancient Greek are polished literary creations, and as such do not exactly reflect how people spoke. So if you're comparing modern spoken Greek with literary Attic, the differences will seem much greater than if you compare it with say, the Septuagint or the Gospel of Matthew. So taking all of these things into account, an ancient text for a modern Greek speaker will look somewhat like this for a modern English speaker:

And yif thou wilt leaden thy life in delices, every whight shall despisen thee and forleten thee as thou that art thrall to thing that is right foule and brutal, that is to sayn servaunt to thy body. Now is it then well yseen how little and how brutal possessioun they coveiten that putten the goodes of the body aboven hire owen resoun. For mayst thou sourmounten these oliphaunts in greatnesse or weight of body. Or mayst thou been strenger than the bole. Mayst thou been swifter than the tiger. Beholde the spaces and the stablenesse and the swifte course of the heavene and stinte sometime to wondren on foule thinges, the whiche heavene certis nis nat rather for these thinges to been wondred upon.

-Chaucer, Boece, ll. 2216ff (with modernized spelling)
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Re: Modern Greek: Would it help?

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Symmachus wrote: Wed Sep 14, 2016 12:15 pm φέτος = (I presume) αὐτ'ἔτος.
Actually φέτος comes from a syncopation of ἐφέτος, a Koine form derived from ἐφ' ἕτος, in which ἕτος (with the rough breathing) is a dialectical variation of ἔτος. Compounds with the smooth breathing form also exist: ἐπέτειος (anniversary) and ἐπετηρίς (annual publication).

A similar process yielded τώρα (now) < τῇ ὥρᾳ (at this time).
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Re: Modern Greek: Would it help?

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Evangelos96 wrote: Wed Mar 04, 2020 4:07 am Ι was writing quickly and should have phrased that better. Bιωτός is the adjectival form of βίος. The expression βίος βιωτός (life worth living) is a characteristic Socratic phrase. So Plato has ordered the words for a particular rhetorical effect: ἐνταῦθα τοῦ βίου...βιωτόν ἀνθρώπῳ.
The phrase from the Apology is the negative, βίος οὐ βιωτός. I don't really like the paraphrase "life not worth living". Maybe "a life that's not living" would be a little closer to what he's saying.

Here, and in Crito 47e (see below), it's a slightly different grammatical expression.
ἆρα βιωτὸν ἡμῖν ἐστιν διεφθαρμένου αὐτοῦ; ἔστι δέ που τοῦτο σῶμα· ἢ οὐχί; Ναί. Ἆρ᾿ οὖν βιωτὸν ἡμῖν ἐστιν μετὰ μοχθηροῦ καὶ διεφθαρμένου σώματος;
You can see this βιωτὸν ἡμῖν is parallel to the βιωτὸν ἀνθρώπῳ above. The neuter case should tell you that it's not modifying an unexpressed βίος.

My overall impression of the Symposium quotation was that it was clearly and naturally expressed, and that there was nothing difficult about understanding it on a first pass. Once you know Attic.

As far as modern Greeks being able to understand ancient Greek like modern English speakers understand Chaucer (a poet who wrote in the English of only 6 centuries ago), you are badly exaggerating. Educated English speakers can read Chaucer well enough after a week or two of reading practice, if that. The vocabulary and grammar are hardly changed. In contrast, Modern Greeks need years of study, traditionally starting in early schooling, to tackle ancient texts -- which is no surprise. Two and half millennia change every mortal language, and Greek is no magical exception to that law.
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Re: Modern Greek: Would it help?

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My point was not that the passage is unclear (it's not) but simply that it's carefully stylized.

Plato could just as well have said, Ἐνταῦθα...βιωτὸν ἀνθρώπῳ but by structuring it the way he does, Ἐνταῦθα τοῦ βίου...βιωτὸν ἀνθρώπῳ, he plays on the word βίος to produce an anadiplosis.

If we were to translate the passage seeking to preserve the rhetorical effect in English, we could say something like:

"In this of all lives, life is truly to be found."

The fact that this sounds "natural" just shows how good Plato is at it. But it is certainly not "natural" in the sense that we should expect that the Athenians at the time of Pericles went around declaiming sentences like this, anymore than we can suppose an average Elizabethan said things like,

"But O, what damned minutes tells he o'er
Who dotes, yet doubts; suspects, yet strongly loves."

(Othello)

As for Chaucer, I disagree. If someone growing up today was only ever exposed to modern English, he would have no idea what "thou" or "wherefore" meant. These words are acquired as part of a specific register. Same with modern Greek. In spoken conversation, no one would normally say (to go back to my previous example) τὴν ἑορτὴν βουλόμενος θεάσασθαι, but I doubt any one would not understand this.

Quantitatively, the changes between Chaucer's English and modern English might not look that great. But that's because English is already inflectionally poor, so the loss counts for more. By contrast, modern Greek is a highly inflected language. So even though modern Greek has done away with a lot more morphological elements, comparatively the ratio is not that much greater than what has happened between Middle and Modern English.

For another example, take this last Sunday's Gospel reading (Matthew 6:6):

Εὰν γὰρ ἀφῆτε τοῖς ἀνθρώποις τὰ παραπτώματα αὐτῶν, ἀφήσει καὶ ὑμῖν ὁ πατὴρ ὑμῶν ὁ οὐράνιος·
ἐὰν δὲ μὴ ἀφῆτε τοῖς ἀνθρώποις τὰ παραπτώματα αὐτῶν, οὐδὲ ὁ πατὴρ ὑμῶν ἀφήσει τὰ παραπτώματα ὑμῶν.
῞Οταν δὲ νηστεύητε, μὴ γίνεσθε ὥσπερ οἱ ὑποκριταὶ σκυθρωποί· ἀφανίζουσι γὰρ τὰ πρόσωπα αὐτῶν ὅπως φανῶσι τοῖς ἀνθρώποις νηστεύοντες· ἀμὴν λέγω ὑμῖν ὅτι ἀπέχουσι τὸν μισθὸν αὐτῶν.
σὺ δὲ νηστεύων ἄλειψαί σου τὴν κεφαλὴν καὶ τὸ πρόσωπόν σου νίψαι,
ὅπως μὴ φανῇς τοῖς ἀνθρώποις νηστεύων, ἀλλὰ τῷ πατρί σου τῷ ἐν τῷ κρυπτῷ, καὶ ὁ πατήρ σου ὁ βλέπων ἐν τῷ κρυπτῷ ἀποδώσει σοι ἐν τῷ φανερῷ.
Μὴ θησαυρίζετε ὑμῖν θησαυροὺς ἐπὶ τῆς γῆς, ὅπου σὴς καὶ βρῶσις ἀφανίζει, καὶ ὅπου κλέπται διορύσσουσι καὶ κλέπτουσι·
θησαυρίζετε δὲ ὑμῖν θησαυροὺς ἐν οὐρανῷ, ὅπου οὔτε σὴς οὔτε βρῶσις ἀφανίζει, καὶ ὅπου κλέπται οὐ διορύσσουσιν οὐδὲ κλέπτουσιν·
ὅπου γάρ ἐστιν ὁ θησαυρὸς ὑμῶν, ἐκεῖ ἔσται καὶ ἡ καρδία ὑμῶν.


There is nothing difficult about this passage, and it's 2,000 years old! Probably the only words that would pose a problem would be σκυθρωποί, σής, and διορύσσουσι. But then again, even in English, there are many words of a certain register that many people don't know. That doesn't mean they don't know how to speak English.

As a personal anecdote, no one ever taught me what a "genitive absolute" is. I learnt it naturally by going to church services and listening to the readings. Eventually when I went to university I learned the technical name for it. But I already knew what it was, no "years of study" required. My great grandmother who never went to school was able to read the Bible in ancient Greek without a problem, and would impress many people with how knowledgeable she was.
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Re: Modern Greek: Would it help?

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Evangelos96 wrote: Wed Mar 04, 2020 4:44 pm My point was not that the passage is unclear (it's not) but simply that it's carefully stylized.

Plato could just as well have said, Ἐνταῦθα...βιωτὸν ἀνθρώπῳ but by structuring it the way he does, Ἐνταῦθα τοῦ βίου...βιωτὸν ἀνθρώπῳ, he plays on the word βίος to produce an anadiplosis.

If we were to translate the passage seeking to preserve the rhetorical effect in English, we could say something like:

"In this of all lives, life is truly to be found."

The fact that this sounds "natural" just shows how good Plato is at it. But it is certainly not "natural" in the sense that we should expect that the Athenians at the time of Pericles went around declaiming sentences like this, anymore than we can suppose an average Elizabethan said things like,

"But O, what damned minutes tells he o'er
Who dotes, yet doubts; suspects, yet strongly loves."

(Othello)
(1) This seems off. The bit from Othello is a piece of chiasmus, not anadiplosis. Anadiplosis can be had by blunt repetition in the right place, so chiasmus is typically a little harder to use effectively in plain speech and writing. Elizabethan speakers' reluctance to produce examples of chiasmus in Othello's register says little about their inclination to produce anadiplosis in ordinary talk, and even less about the naturalness of Plato's anadiplosis.

(2) Another way to show that something's not right with the reasoning you offer is to consider modern popular-ish anadiploses. You'll forgive the political example:

Obama: One voice can change a room, and if one voice can change a room, then it can change a city, and if it can change a city, it can change a state, and if it change a state, it can change a nation, and if it can change a nation, it can change the world. Your voice can change the world.

Yoda: Fear leads to anger. Anger leads to hate. Hate leads to suffering

If, 2,000 years from now, a specialist in what will have become ancient English claims that neither Yoda's nor Obama's construction was natural because at the time they were spoken neither would have been said in ordinary talk, he will have misled himself. It would be unusual for an ordinary person to speak as either Obama or Yoda did, but the anadiploses remain natural because not terribly semantically or syntactically complex, and easy to understand even for middlingly educated contemporary speakers.

A natural sentence may remain unasserted not because it's synactically or semantically unnatural, but because most ordinary speakers wouldn't usually have pragmatic reason to assert it: I really am the Queen of Romania... It's just a mistake to assume that a sentence can't be natural because not ordinarily asserted, which is why it's entirely possible that Plato's sentence was both uncommon and natural (in fact, I suspect it was, and that the claim of plainness is defensible).
Evangelos96 wrote: Wed Mar 04, 2020 4:44 pm As for Chaucer, I disagree. If someone growing up today was only ever exposed to modern English, he would have no idea what "thou" or "wherefore" meant. These words are acquired as part of a specific register. Same with modern Greek. In spoken conversation, no one would normally say (to go back to my previous example) τὴν ἑορτὴν βουλόμενος θεάσασθαι, but I doubt any one would not understand this.
Again, I think this can't be right. How Great Thou Art is easily one of the most popular English hymns ever written: I speak Swahili, and even Swahili-speaking speakers of English as a second language who know very little English will quickly figure out what 'thou' means (it helps that it's the sort of hymn sung in schools). The point, I think, is that words from a formal register may be marooned outside formal registers: most people who've listened to hiphop at some point in the last couple of decades are perfectly familiar with clique, but not all those who know its meaning have acquired the formal register in which it's most at home.

All that said, I tentatively agree with you: I've found listening to the NT in MG pronunciation very helpful for my vocabulary, for seeing shades of meaning I might have missed, and just for sharpening a sense of the working of the language.
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Re: Modern Greek: Would it help?

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Hey! Thanks for the comment. Yes, I'm aware that the Othello quote is not the same rhetorical figure. I just offered it as a rough parallel. I also agree that anadiplosis is not terribly complicated (as your Yoda examples shows lol), and there are a lot more refined techniques out there. That said, I do think that Plato's anadiplosis here sounds somewhat better in Greek than it does in English. In English, you would just have the same word repeating (In this life...life) while in Greek the two words are different in form: βίου is a noun in the genitive, βιωτόν an adjective in the nominative. Plus, they echo the expression βίος βιωτός, so its a bit more subtle.

In any case, the example I picked was a random one, and my point was simply to stress that when we compare Ancient Greek with Modern Greek, we musn't forget that we are comparing two different registers of language. It is said that after Plato died his writing tablet was discovered containing the opening eight words of the Republic arranged in several different ways. We are also told that Isokrates' Panegyrikos took ten years to write because of his continual revisions. Therefore, we should always be aware that the texts we have are careful literary creations, crafted by geniuses no less with a fine eye to aesthetic beauty.

As to your other point. Of course it's not hard to figure out what "thou art" means in English, because its use has permeated all aspects of the culture, from the Bible, to poems, to popular sayings, etc. Yet no one says "thou art" anymore in conversation because it has come to be associated with a certain register of language that is not the colloquial or everyday. And I think that's the best way to think of modern and ancient Greek; not two different languages, but two poles on a wide spectrum.

I am currently reading this fascinating book called "The Development of Greek and the New Testament" by Chrys C. Caragounis. In the second chapter, the author offers the following enlightening statistics:

Of the 6,844 words used in the Homeric epics, 3,227 (=47%) were already obsolete by Classical times. Of the remaining 3,617 words, 1,979 words (=55%) are still commonly used in modern Greek. This means that the lexicon of Greek changed as much as it did in the 400 years from Homer to Plato as it has in the 2,400 years from Plato to today.

Of the 4,900 words used in the New Testament, 2,280 are still in common use, and 2,220 are still easily understood, meaning that 92% of the vocabulary of the New Testament is understandable to a modern Greek without formal education in the classics.

This illustrates what I have been saying, namely that modern Greek is as close to ancient Greek as modern English is to Middle English (despite the respective differences in time elapsed). Modern Greek is simply the maturation of linguistic processes which date back to the Hellenistic Koine, which itself was just a simplified form of Attic. As such, it can offer an invaluable glimpse for prospective Greek learners into how the language was actually used, just as modern English is a sine qua non for understanding Shakespeare.
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Re: Modern Greek: Would it help?

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Evangelos96 wrote: Sat Mar 07, 2020 2:47 am In any case, the example I picked was a random one, and my point was simply to stress that when we compare Ancient Greek with Modern Greek, we musn't forget that we are comparing two different registers of language. It is said that after Plato died his writing tablet was discovered containing the opening eight words of the Republic arranged in several different ways. We are also told that Isokrates' Panegyrikos took ten years to write because of his continual revisions. Therefore, we should always be aware that the texts we have are careful literary creations, crafted by geniuses no less with a fine eye to aesthetic beauty.
Not implausible. Plato OCT gives two versions, both apparently genuine, of Kratylos 438a-ish (pp 269--271 in my copy of the 1995 vol I).
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Re: Modern Greek: Would it help?

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Very cool!
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