Greek: The Language that Bridges the Modern World with the Ancient

The grand empire of Alexander the Great, redrew the world's maps to show a single empire that stretched from Asia minor to northern Africa and the Middle East. Alexander is considered undefeated to the day he died. After his death, his conquests soon scattered to local forces without his control at the helm; but there was one lasting effect that Alexander's conquest had, on the regions he visited; he brought the language of God- Greek, to the peoples of these lands.

Greek, that we are familiar with today, is believed to have been born in the classical era; it has evolved and changed over the centuries, but it retains much influence of its roots. Today, modern Greek is spoken not only in Greece and Cyprus where it is the official language, it is also spoken in regions close by, in Italy, Turkey and Albania.

It is difficult to believe that the Greek language is considered a part of the Indo-European group of languages. Greek, in its earliest and most ancient form, is believed to have first existed in the 14th century BC. The language is dated through stone carvings obtained in Crete and Greece.

There are as many competing views on the origins of the Greek language. Language that is as complex as Greek can undergo change after change over the centuries; the earliest recognizable Greek is found on stone tablets from Crete. Mycenaean Greek is told apart from the regular classical Greek six centuries later, too. Starting in this period is seen Greek in its first written form.

Greek holds such a fascination amongst scholars; there are a few recent ideas as to how the language first originated. One theory proposes that the group of people who spoke Greek in its rudimentary form migrated from other lands around 3200 BC. There is another line of thinking that believes that Greek is the product of Greece itself, come out of a language of Indo-European origin that predated it.

Greek is written down using a script that is not Latin-based. It is today one of the most complex and most thoroughbred languages surviving, boasting of a vocabulary that goes over half a million words. Scholars of Greek are known to note the similarity that the modern language holds to the older Greek-based languages. It is a source of constant amazement how modern language retains its roots with the ancient form of the language, and is the subject of numerous studies. It is considered quite amazing that any average native, educated in the familiar Greek of modern times, is able to read and make out the messages contained in ancient writings with no additional education in the ancient form.

The Hellenic and Byzantine forms of this language are quite obviously close to modern Greek. There was a push brought about by local politics for about 30 years starting from 1934, to exhort the use of pure Greek with no contamination from centuries of free mixing with other languages. After this period though, interest in imposing pure-form language became less politically viable and natural Greek was accepted by the government as the official form of the language. But it is indeed true that Greek as a language has survived surprisingly intact over the centuries, influencing other languages such as the Latin, German and English. Modern knowledge is offered today exclusively in formal Greek terminology .

Specialized medical, astronomical and philosophical language have traditionally been partial to Greek. This could be due to the ambitious desire of the pure-form language supporters, that the contribution of their language to the world be immortalized.

Sources :
http://www.greek-language.com/historyofgreek/
http://www.languagetutoring.co.uk/HistoryofGreek.html