 The First written Greek Language: |
The first written Greek was found on baked mud tablets, in the remains of the Knossos palace of Crete, the Greek Island.
| Mycenean Period: |
This syllabic script is known as Linear B: each drawing symbol s a consonant-vowel combination. Linear B dates from the Mycenaean civilization.
| A Phoenician influence? |
In the late 9th and early 8th century BC, the language found was based on the Phoenician syllabary, written from left to right and back again. This form of inscription is closest to the Greek of today.
| The classical Period |
During the Classical period (Hellenic period), Ancient Greece was divided in numerous states and each one had its own dialect. The two more important dialects were the Ionic and the Attic. During this period, Athens established itself as the political, economical and cultural centre of the Greek world, and therefore the Attic idiom started to be used as a common language, the one used by Plato.
| The Attic language |
After the Hellenistic period, the expansion of the Attic dialect led to its rejection by some non-Attic users. This led to a dialect mixing which was the beginning of the koine dialect, or “common” dialect. Since the koine dialect became the most spoken dialect by the common people, during the Macedonian Empire, Philip II of Macedonia adopted this modified Attic language, as the official administrative language, which was spread by his son, Alexander the Great, throughout Asia Minor, Egypt, Syria, Mesopotamia and Persia. The koine is the language used for the Greek New Testament and the basis for the development of Medieval and Modern Greek.
| Revolution period |
During the plot of the Revolution against the Turks, the Greek intellectuals of the 18th century were dreaming about the institutions of the future independent Greek state; a particular interest was put on the language which was, with the Orthodox religion, one of the unifying factors of the new nation. Adamandios Korais (1748-1833) came with a proposition which would later create a big debate in modern Greece.
| The new Greek State's decision |
With the creation of the New Greek State in 1922, the question of the language (as an important part of the nation-building process) had to be resolved. Greece had now mostly an oral culture due to all these centuries of different dominations. The question was the choice of language used in administration and education. One of the solutions, to re-use the Attic language, in which Plato used to write, was very attractive, especially because all the Western Europe was preoccupied with the Ancient Greek Classical culture, and it would have been a great stimulus for the philhellenes. It proved impossible from a practical point of view. So, Korais’s proposition of reforming the spoken language of those times on ancient principals was accepted, and the katharevoussa (meaning “purifying language”) came into existence. The theme became politicized: a distinction rose between the katharevoussa, which became the high-style language associated with official functions such as governmental affairs, education and religion, and the dimotiki language (popular language) used by the people in their everyday life.
| 20th century |
In the 20th century, the language debate took a huge political significance: academics were sacked for using dimotiki, riots were taking place in the streets and a lot of people were claiming that katharevoussa was being used as an instrument of denying access to education to the common man. Nationalist governments like the dictatorship of the colonel Papadopoulos favoured katharevoussa. The struggle between the proponents of dimotiki and katharevoussa represented various strongly opposed social attitudes and political positions.
The battle was only won in 1976, by various actions of the after dictatorship government. Dimotiki was adopted in education and administration and has been kept since then as the formal language of modern Greece. Katharevoussa can still be encountered in legal texts and in the lexicon. Occasional inclusions of a katharevoussa sentence or word in the dimotiki can still be heard sometimes and is considerated as a “good” spoken Modern Greek.
The last thing worth mentioning about Greek language is that most regions of Greece have their local dialects, of more modern origins than the dialects of ancient Greece, never used as writing means. Every region has, of course, its local accent.
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Since language constitutes one of the most important elements of a culture and the best transmitter of it, it is interesting to see, in brief, how the Greeks speak today, how the Ancient Greek language became the modern one known today.
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