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| After Greece gained independence from the ], the official Greek languages were ] ("popular", a term similar to "vernacular") and ] ("purified"). Dhimotiki was the language of daily use, and the latter was an archaic form (closer to Attic), used for official documents, literature, newscasting and other formal purposes. In 1976 Katharevousa was totally obsoleted and replaced by Dhimotiki. During its long history the Greek language had assimilated some foreign vocabulary and loan words from various languages such as ], ], and ], great part of which, was inevitably cleansed after its long-lasting co-existence with Katharevousa. | After Greece gained independence from the ], the official Greek languages were ] ("popular", a term similar to "vernacular") and ] ("purified"). Dhimotiki was the language of daily use, and the latter was an archaic form (closer to Attic), used for official documents, literature, newscasting and other formal purposes. In 1976 Katharevousa was totally obsoleted and replaced by Dhimotiki. During its long history the Greek language had assimilated some foreign vocabulary and loan words from various languages such as ], ], and ], great part of which, was inevitably cleansed after its long-lasting co-existence with Katharevousa. | ||
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Revision as of 06:26, 1 May 2005
Modern Greek (Κοινή Νεοελληνική) is the present vernacular language of Greece, Cyprus and the Greek Diaspora throughout the world. It is descended from Attic Greek.
Modern Greek (officially called "Demotic") evolved directly from Hellenistic Koine, an ancient Greek dialect which came into existence after the conquests of Alexander the Great and the unification of the known world under the Macedonian Empire. "Koine" had assimilated elements from many different Greek dialects (such as Doric and Aeolic) and from Ancient Macedonian (whose status as a Greek dialect is disputed by linguists) but its nucleus had always been Attic (the dialect of Athens). Koine had been spoken in several different forms in the region of Greece and the Greek speaking world during the entire Hellenistic, Roman and Byzantine periods, until the end of the middle ages when it took the shape of Demotic.
The development from Ancient Greek to Modern Greek has affected phonology, morphology and vocabulary.
The main phonological changes occurred during the Hellenistic period, and included:
- development of the voiceless aspirated stop consonants — theta, phi and chi — to voiceless fricatives
- development of the voiced stop consonants — delta, beta and gamma — to voiced fricatives
- simplification of the system of vowels and diphthongs.
The phonological changes were not reflected in the orthography.
The morphological changes affected both nouns and verbs. Some of the changes to the verbs are parallel to those that affected the Romance languages as they developed from Vulgar Latin — for instance the loss of certain historic tense forms and their replacement by new constructions — but the changes to the nouns have been less far-reaching. Greek has never experienced the wholesale loss of word-endings that has for instance made Spanish, French and Italian separate languages from Latin.
After Greece gained independence from the Ottoman Empire, the official Greek languages were Dhimotiki ("popular", a term similar to "vernacular") and Katharevousa ("purified"). Dhimotiki was the language of daily use, and the latter was an archaic form (closer to Attic), used for official documents, literature, newscasting and other formal purposes. In 1976 Katharevousa was totally obsoleted and replaced by Dhimotiki. During its long history the Greek language had assimilated some foreign vocabulary and loan words from various languages such as Latin, Italian, and Turkish, great part of which, was inevitably cleansed after its long-lasting co-existence with Katharevousa.