Ancient Greek

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Ancient Greek
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The Past the Present

• What is a lingua franca?

• What is an extinct language?

• A lingua franca is a language spoken in countries
  other than the country of origin. This is usually
  achieved through conquest, commerce and conversion

• Extinct language simply means that a language is
  no longer natively spoken, not whether it can be
  understood by speakers of a related language or
  a daughter language.

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Ancient Greek

• The term Ancient, or Archaic, Greece refers to
  the time three centuries before the classical
  age, between 800 B.C. and 500 B.C.a relatively
  sophisticated period in world history. Archaic
  Greece saw advances in art, poetry and
  technology, but most of all it was the age in
  which the polis, or city-state, was invented. The
  polis became the defining feature of Greek
  political life for hundreds of years.

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By whom was it spoken ?

• Places Athens , Sparta , Korinthos , Thebes and
  the islands of Aegean.
• People who wanted to trade with the Greeks had to
  learn alternate methods of communication .
• At its peak under the command of Alexander the
  Great the whole world spoke Ancient Greek .

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How did it become dominant?

• Through the conquests of the great Alexander
  Alexanders father, Philip II, wanted to fight
  the Persians and eliminate them so that they
  wouldnt have any more wars with them like they
  did in the past. After his death, Alexander was
  the heir to the kingdom so he took over this
  conquest as well. But Alexander surpassed his
  fathers vision, he wanted to unite Greece with
  Asia due to his belief that everyone should be
  equal to each other. Some years after the
  conquest, Alexander wished to fully unite all the
  peoples that he had taken over but he couldnt do
  it unless they all spoke the same language. This
  process by which the Koine became the high
  language of the conquered kingdoms became known
  as HELLENIZATION.

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Which languages became alleviated?

• Although there is no actual evidence that any of
  the Asian Languages were thoroughly alleviated,
  they language and the culture of the conquered
  land were highly influenced. They could now
  comprehend philosophy and mathematics and they
  even modelled their Bhuda statues after the Greek
  Kouroi.

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Effects of Hellenization

• The influence that this conquest had is mainly
  positive because Great Alexander managed to unite
  the most part of the then known world without a
  high death toll and they found a common language
  which led to the evolution of literature, trade
  and sciences. Arts like poetry historiography and
  astronomy flowed during these ages due to the
  fact that people didnt feel conquered but they
  had the notion that they were equals which gave
  them the freedom to develop in other
  fields.Worth noting is the fact that Alexander
  gave the people the freedom to believe in
  whichever god they wanted and generally believed
  that all people are free and most of all equals

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Has it affected the global community ?

• Of course, the rise of this language and,
  generally, of the empire has affected the global
  community. Discoveries from back then still
  exist until today and they are considered to be
  the bases of many fields today. In addition
  architecture knowledge like the churches during
  the Byzantine Empire are still used today in the
  building of churches and other buildings. The
  bases of church music were created during the
  Byzantine Empire and they are used nowadays as
  well.

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The disappearance

• In Ancient Greece education was a privilege for a
  handful of people.
• Therefore when the Romans conquered Greece this
  language was lost

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Other Global Effects

• Many people feared that Greeces tradition and
  culture would be lost because the language ceased
  to be spoken. However , this notion turned out to
  be wrong because the Greek culture was carried on
  by the civilization of Byzantium. For example,
  Democracy, as we know it today, was developed in
  Greece. In the year 507 B.C., the Athenian leader
  Cleisthenes introduced a system of political
  reforms that he called demokratia(democracy) , or
  rule by the people. This system was comprised
  of three separate institutions
• the ekklesia, a sovereign governing body that
  wrote laws and dictated foreign policy
• the boule, a council of representatives from the
  ten Athenian tribes and
• the dikasteria(courts) , the popular courts in
  which citizens argued cases before a group of
  lottery-selected jurors.

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Who were the poets songwriters and writers
composing their works in this language?

• -Greek literature extends from the Homer ages and
  ends with the fall of ancient Greek. Homer is the
  known composer of Iliad and Odysseus. The
  importance of these compositions is recognized up
  until today
• -There were 3 great philosophers during those
  ages, Socrates, Plato and Aristotle. Plato was a
  student of Socrates and Aristotle was a student
  of Plato. Socrates inspired Plato to write his
  work with the title philosophic dialogues which
  is know until today. Finally Aristotle was the
  last great philosopher of those ages whose
  thought is know to be greater than those from the
  western peoples and also greater than the people
  of the 17 century

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• - The known writers of this age were the
  historians Xenophon and Thucydides who recorded
  the whole Peloponnesian war. Xenophon took
  control of the composing after Thucydides death
  which prevented him to finish his work himself.
  They were and they are until today known for
  their objectivity and their descriptiveness .
  Their works were so great that many people
  consider them two of the greatest historians in
  history.

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In our days

• Nowadays , very few texts have been rescued that
  were written in ancient Greek(approximately 15)
  . These texts are being used as an educational
  method in order to teach youngsters ancient
  Greek. However , its spoken form has been a bone
  of contention for many generations because no one
  will ever know the exact pronunciation. Thus ,
  Greeks read it in their own way as if they were
  speaking modern Greek and other people read it
  using the method of a well known linguist. He is
  known by the name Erasmus.

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• Although Ancient Greek has been extinct for many
  years its influence is massive in the fields of
  medicine, politics , science and economics .
• Diseases names that stem from Ancient Greek
  syphilis , malaria , leprosy , diabetes etc.

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.

• To illustrate this point , we would like to refer
  to Professor Xenofon Zolotas. In 1957 and 1959,
  the Greek economist Professor Xenofon Zolotas,
  Governor of the bank of Greece and Governor of
  the Funds for Greece, delivered two speeches in
  English using Greek words only.

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• Kyrie,
• I eulogize the archons of the Panethnic
  Numismatic Thesaurus and the Ecumenical Trapeza
  for the orthodoxy of their axioms, methods and
  policies, although there is an episode of
  cacophony of the Trapeza with Hellas.
• With enthusiasm we dialogue and synagonize at the
  synods of our didymous Organizations in which
  polymorphous economic ideas and dogmas are
  analyzed and synthesized.
• Our critical problems such as the numismatic
  plethora generate some agony and melancholy. This
  phenomenon is characteristic of our epoch. But,
  to my thesis, we have the dynamism to program
  therapeutic practices as a prophylaxis from chaos
  and catastrophe.
• In parallel, a panethnic unhypocritical economic
  synergy and harmonization in a democratic climate
  is basic.
• I apologize for my eccentric monologue. I
  emphasize my eucharistia to you Kyrie, to the
  eugenic and generous American Ethnos and to the
  organizers and protagonists of this Amphictyony
  and the gastronomic symposia.''
• Prof. Xenofon Zolotas

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Sources

• www.history.com
• History books of 8th grade and discussions with
  my history teachers.
• Wikipedia.com ( information about Erasmus)