Understanding Language: A Guide for Beginning Students of Greek and Latin

2. Studying a Dead Language: Why Bother?

13 2 Studying a Dead Language Why Bother? When you ask why one should study Greek or Latin, you may be thinking that the only reason you are doing so is because you have to. If this is the case, then you should remember that the reason someone is making you study the language is because that someone is convinced that there is some purpose in learning it. Why, then, should one learn a “dead” language like Latin or Greek? When we ask this question, we should immediately recognize that, unlike many other ancient languages, Greek and Latin are not dead in the sense of having vanished from civilization and being accessible only to archaeologists and professional linguists. Both Greek and Latin have been with us continuously since their emergence, and it is worth giving a brief history of the two languages. Greek emerged as a written language about 1200 B.C., and of course it existed as a spoken language prior to that time. To oversimplify somewhat, the three dialects of ancient Greek that are most interesting to contemporary students are Ionic, Attic, and koine. The first of these can be described as the coming-ofage of the Greek language in the ninth and eighth centuries B.C., and this was the dialect in which Greek was first written using an alphabetic script. It is of interest partly because it is the dialect of Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey. Attic Greek is the dialect spoken in Athens during the heyday of the Greek Republic, from about the sixth through fourth centuries B.C. It is the dialect in which 14 Part 1: Getting Started much of the great Greek drama was written, as well as the early Greek philosophical and scientific writings. This is the Greek of Sophocles, Plato, and Aristotle. Koine (“common”) Greek is the name given to the everyday dialect that emerged in the Greek world after the conquests of Alexander the Great in the late fourth century B.C. It became the trade language of the Near East and was the dialect in which the New Testament was written. During the Byzantine period (from the fourth through fifteenth centuries A.D.), many writers sought return to the style of Attic Greek, rather than using the more commonly spoken koine Greek. In fact, even in the modern period, many Greeks attempted to preserve the archaic forms of earlier Greek, and it was not until the late twentieth century that such efforts were largely abandoned and written Greek began to follow the conventions of spoken Greek very closely. Thus, one may delineate Ionic, Attic, koine, Byzantine, and modern forms of Greek, among others. Sometimes students and teachers refer to the various Greek dialects from before the Christian era as “classical Greek” and contrast this with both “koine Greek” and “modern Greek,” but this distinction is artificial. Greek has had a continuous history as both a spoken and a written language. Latin emerged as a written language about 500 B.C., and of course it too existed as a spoken language prior to that time. The classical period of the language is usually regarded as having run from the early first century B.C. to the end of the second century A.D. (within this time period, some scholars speak of an earlier “golden age” and a later “silver age”); and Latin from the second century A.D. to the breakup of the Roman Empire in the fifth century is called “late Latin.” During the period of late Latin, the language was increasingly used by Christian authors; therefore, many scholars distinguish between “classical ” (earlier) and “ecclesiastical” (later) Latin. This distinction is somewhat artificial, but the main difference between classical and ecclesiastical Latin is that the latter has been influenced to some degree by the Hebrew of the Old Testament and the Greek of the New Testament. A significant number of Greek words and a fair number of Hebrew-style expressions came into the Latin language as Christian writers translated the Scriptures. Studying a Dead Language 15 Latin ceased being spoken by ordinary people after about A.D. 700, as it was replaced by French, German, Spanish, Italian, Romanian, and other languages in previously Latin-speaking lands. Nevertheless, Latin has been kept alive as the language of scholarship since that time, and later versions of the scholarly language are called “Medieval Latin,” “Renaissance Latin,” and “neo-Latin.” It...