Verduria
Greek linguistic conservatism - Zompist Bboard Again
It's the grammar and vocab where it's at (for example, it's near-impossible to guess çinxe is the old preterite of çeñir > ceñir, and for many it's hard to guess what people in the 13th century might've meant by "çeñir espada"). I can see how some of the minor sound changes might be annoying though (for example judgar > juzgar). And the RAE did us no favours when it introduced etymological b/v in the late 18th century (they changed bever to beber, because Latin bibere...).
19th and 20th century dispute in Greece about whether the popular language (Demotic) or a cultivated imitation of Ancient Greek (katharevousa) should be official; settled in favour of the former
Factsheet
Factsheet
Country Greece
Country Greece
Wikipedia
Greek language question - Wikipedia
September 1, 2025 - Kommitas and Neophytos Doukas, who were proponents of a more archaic language, and Voulgaris' students Iosipos Moisiodax (1725–1800) and Dimitrios Katartzis (c. 1730 –1807), who proposed a simpler language, began to voice their opinions. The phanariots were a group of conservative and educated nobles who supported the archaic language and were the most important critics of the language of the people.
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Wikipedia
Greek language - Wikipedia
2 weeks ago - The phonology, morphology, syntax, and vocabulary of the language show both conservative and innovative tendencies across the entire attestation of the language from the ancient to the modern period.
Antigone
Why Compare Greek and Latin? – Antigone
September 29, 2022 - Hinds goes carefully through every one of the five Latin words, showing just how artful Livius’ translation is.[2]For reasons which we can only guess, Livius chose to translate Homer out of the Greek dactylic hexameter and into a native Italian (and to us rather mysterious) metre, the “Saturnian“. Take, for example, the adjective versutum, which I translated clunkily, but with an eye to the Latin, as “versatile”: literally “turned” (compare Greek -tropon, which we have borrowed as the second element in the adjective heliotropic ,“turning toward the sun,” said of plants like t
Wikipedia
Classical language - Wikipedia
6 hours ago - When we realize that an educated Japanese can hardly frame a single literary sentence without the use of Chinese resources, that to this day Siamese and Burmese and Cambodgian bear the unmistakable imprint of the Sanskrit and Pali that came in with Hindu Buddhism centuries ago, or that whether we argue for or against the teaching of Latin and Greek [in schools,] our argument is sure to be studded with words that have come to us from Rome and Athens, we get some indication of what early Chinese culture and Buddhism, and classical Mediterranean civilization have meant in the world's history.
Wikipedia
Transmission of the Greek Classics - Wikipedia
October 4, 2025 - The final decline and collapse of the Byzantine empire in the fifteenth century heightened contact between its scholars and those of the west. Translation into Latin of the full range of Greek classics ensued, including the historians, poets, playwrights and non-Aristotelian philosophers.
Saint Mary's Press
Saint Jerome: The Perils of a Bible Translator | Saint Mary's Press
They quickly accepted his revision of the Gospels since it had a certain official status. After all, the pope commissioned it. Also, his work on the Gospels was conservative. He did not offer a fresh translation but simply revised the Old Latin translations that were already familiar to readers.
Wikipedia
Koine Greek - Wikipedia
2 weeks ago - Koine Greek included styles ranging from conservative literary forms to the spoken vernaculars of the time. As the dominant language of the Byzantine Empire, it developed further into Medieval Greek, which then turned into Modern Greek. Literary Koine was the medium of much post-classical Greek literary and scholarly writing, such as the works of Plutarch and Polybius. Koine is also the language of the Septuagint (the 3rd century BC Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible), the Christian New Testament, and of most early Christian theological writing by the Church Fathers.
BYU Linguistics
The Greek Language Through Time
Now, this separation of dialects lasted well through the Persian invasions and Athenian empire (Aristophanes, the best source for colloquialisms, often makes fun of other dialects; English translators often render his Spartan, for example, in an Appalachian or Scottish dialect), though they were, as English dialects, more or less mutually-intelligible (Socrates, for example, says in his trial that the jury should forgive his speaking in the way he was brought up, just as they would forgive a "foreigner" for speaking a different dialect).
Encyclopedia Britannica
Linguistics - Greek, Roman, Antiquity | Britannica
September 5, 2025 - Yet medieval scholars might reasonably be expected to have bequeathed to modern scholarship the fruits of more than ordinarily refined perceptions of a certain order. These scholars used, wrote in, and studied Latin, a language that, though not their native tongue, was one in which they were very much at home; such scholars in groups must often have represented a highly varied linguistic background.
Cambridge Core
Language and Society in the Greek and Roman Worlds
Mairs, Rachel (2011) ‘Translator, traditor: the interpreter as traitor in classical tradition’. Greece & Rome 58, 64–81. Mairs, Rachel (2012) ‘Interpreting at Vindolanda: commercial and linguistic mediation in the Roman Army’. Britannia 43, 17–28.
Bryn Mawr Classical Review
Standard Languages and Language Standards: Greek, Past and Present – Bryn Mawr Classical Review
The very last paper, by R. Beaton, connects the two main historical periods of Greek under examination in this volume (‘Korais and the Second Sophistic: the Hellenistic novel as paradigm for a modern literary language’). Beaton embarks on a close reading of certain parts of Korais’ preface to the edition of Heliodorus’ Aethiopica (1804) in an attempt to show that Korais’ linguistic ‘middle way’ between archaizers and vernacularists in modern Greek, language and literature alike, was not as ‘conservative’ and ‘rigid’ as usually assumed; what Korais proposed in fact was the use of contemporary Greek in an ’embellished’ form, following the example set by Heliodorus in antiquity, and also found in the literary language of major contemporary European novelists (French, Italian, English, etc.).
OpenEdition
Translations of encyclopedic-type scientific texts
The transmission of knowledge takes place both in time and space. Cultural encounters are a force for cultural change, and translators play a crucial role in this operation. We know the considerable impact that Arabic and then Latin translations of Greek texts had in the Middle Ages, but we cannot reduce these exchanges to one or two channels of transmission: all ancient languages and cultures benefited from the contributions of other literatures (Persian, Arabic, Hebrew, Demotic, Greek, Lati...
De Gruyter Brill
Trends in Classics – Greek and Latin Linguistics
The series Trends in Classics – Greek and Latin Linguistics (TCGLL), part of the larger cluster Trends in Classics , focusses on the linguistic study of the two languages that form the basis of the traditional curriculum of classical studies. This new series aspires to publish innovative ...
Oxford Reference
Ancient linguistics - Oxford Reference
There was some independent thought on language in Roman work, esp. with Varro, but in general the Greeks set the pace and the Romans willingly and explicitly followed them. But Latin linguistics did not chronologically just follow Greek linguistics; from around 150 bc and up to the end of the classical era, c.
Encyclopedia Britannica
Greek language | Definition, Alphabet, Origin, & Facts | Britannica
July 26, 1999 - (Some linguists, however, assume that Greek th continues Indo-European th and that Greek d goes back to an Indo-European glottalized stop.) Greek avoids the general shifts of stop consonants that are displayed, independently, by Armenian and Germanic, as well as the change of palatal stops (k, etc.) into affricates (ts, etc.) or spirants (s, etc.) in Indo-Iranian, Armenian, Baltic, and Slavic. In these respects Ancient Greek is conservative, as are, generally speaking, the western Indo-European languages (Italic and Celtic).
GreekReporter.com
The History of the Greek Language Throughout Time - GreekReporter.com
February 2, 2025 - Indeed, it is considered to be a rather conservative Indo-European language. Its writing system is the Greek alphabet, which has been used for approximately 2,800 years to this day.