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The Greek Languageoh, it's soooo difficult...! The Greek language is not something you learn during a holiday or two in Greece and while staying with us at our holistic retreat you might not bother even to learn "thank you" (euxaristo) or "please" (parakalo). Though I do find that many of our guests actually do want to learn a few words - probably because when on holidays in Eleftheres you're so far away from the tourist crowd and few of the locals speak anything but Greek. If you struggle, remember that you're not alone:
The Greek language is very difficult It's great to know a few words and phrases. You'll soon find that people here really appreciate that you have taken the trouble - and give you special treatment because of it. Once I only paid child ticket on the bus because the bus driver was so impressed when I managed to say: Ena isitiro, parakalo - one ticket, please. One of my guests came back from the grocery store the other day with a free bag of cherries because she had managed to say euxaristo when she got back the change after having paid for her groceries. That little word was rewarded with cherries! You know that Greek is the root of thousands of words in English and other languages. But don’t let that fool you into believing that the Greek language is easy for that reason. It doesn’t help you much on a daily basis to know that the Greek word kyriakos, meaning the Lord, is the root of the English word church. It’s not like you just can take the word church and pronounce it with a Greek accent and then you got it right – like you can do with lots of English words to make them sound French, for instance. Besides, the Greeks call church eklesia, εκκλησία, which is a word that has nothing to do with kyriakos, but origins from the word synelevsi, συνέλευση, meaning gathering. Typical Greek! That leads me to one of my favorite examples when it comes to the Greek language and the Greek culture: the word fortuna, φουρτούνα. Obviously, this word has something to do with the English and French word fortune. It has. Both the Greek and the English/French word come from the Latin name of the goddess of luck, Fortuna. Fortuna was a godess for luck and victory in war and might have brought the old Romans and the rest of Europe good luck and fortune. But not the Greeks. To the Greeks she only brought misery. Today the Greek word φουρτούνα means skipwreck and is metaphorically used about misery and bad luck. Again – typical Greek! History of the Greek language Greek is an indo-european language that has been spoken in Greece for at least 4000 years. The oldest written texts are from 1400 B.C. Those are mainly earthenware boards with lists of household items. Normally the history of the Greek language is divided into five main periods: 1. Myceenean (1400 to 1150 B.C)2. Archaic and classic Greek (750 to 350 B.C)3. Later Greek (koine) (300 B.C to 500 A.C)4. Byzantine (500 to 1453)5. New Greek (from 1453) It was especially during the period 500 to 100 B.C that the Greek philosophy, science and culture flourished and made the foundation for spreading the Greek language to big parts of the world. Of course, in the same period also Greece expanded its territories. In the third period the Greek language culminated geographically and was the dominating language in the east Mediterranean area, and spoken as widely as India and Spain. As the Byzantine empire shrank, so did the expansion of the language and was again limited to the central Greek areas. While Latin developed into modern Roman languages such as Italian and Portuguese, spoken by hundreds of millions of people, this never happened to Greek. Greek is spoken by approximately ten million people in Greece, plus several million Greek immigrants to other countries, mainly the US, Canada and Australia. There are also small ethnic Greek minorities in the countries around the Black Sea, as well as in Calabria in south Italy. The modern Greek language As for modern Greek, it doesn't resemble ancient Greek, so even if you had ancient Greek at school you won't get far. Having said that, it gives you a great understanding of the language and I bet it will help you learn and understand modern Greek. For instance the declination of modern Greek verbs are based on how the verbs were declined in ancient Greek. There were made attempts by the Greeks to bring the modern Greek language closer to the pure, classic Greek - something that resulted in a version of modern Greek called katherevousa, καθερέυουσα. At one point it became rather fashionable to speak katherevousa. It supposedly showed that you were an educated person and made you distinct from the lower classer, who spoke dimotiki, δημοτική . You'll still find books and articles in katherevousa, and the children do learn a bit of katherevousa at school, but today dimotiki, the public language, is used everywhere. Return from Greek Language to KAIROS homepage More Facts on Greece The Greek Alphabet
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