| Attic Greek | ||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Ἀττικὴ γλῶττα | ||||||
| Region | Attica,Macedon, and a number of theAegean Islands | |||||
| Era | c. 500–300 BC; evolved intoKoine | |||||
Early form | ||||||
| Greek alphabet Old Attic alphabet | ||||||
| Language codes | ||||||
| ISO 639-3 | – | |||||
grc-att | ||||||
| Glottolog | atti1240 | |||||
_en.svg) Distribution ofGreek dialects in Greece in theclassical period.[1]
 Distribution ofGreek dialects inMagna Graecia (Southern Italy and Sicily) in the classical period.
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Attic Greek is theGreek dialect of theancient region ofAttica, including thepolis ofAthens. Often calledClassical Greek, it was theprestige dialect of theGreek world for centuries and remains the standard form of the language that is taught to students of Ancient Greek. As the basis of the HellenisticKoine, it is the most similar of theancient dialects to laterGreek. Attic is traditionally classified as a member or sister dialect of theIonic branch.
Greek is the primary member of theHellenic branch of theIndo-European language family. In ancient times, Greek had already come to exist in several dialects, one of which was Attic. The earliestattestations of Greek, dating from the 16th to 11th centuries BC, are written inLinear B, an archaic writing system used by theMycenaean Greeks in writing their language; the distinction between Eastern andWestern Greek is believed to have arisen by Mycenaean times or before.Mycenaean Greek represents an early form of Eastern Greek, the group to which Attic also belongs. Later Greek literature wrote about three main dialects:Aeolic,Doric, andIonic; Attic was part of the Ionic dialect group. "Old Attic" is used in reference to the dialect ofThucydides (460–400 BC) and the dramatists of5th-century Athens whereas "New Attic" is used for the language of later writers following conventionally the accession in 285 BC of Greek-speakingPtolemy II to the throne of theKingdom of Egypt. Ruling fromAlexandria, Ptolemy launched the Alexandrian period, during which the city of Alexandria and its expatriate Greek-medium scholars flourished.[2]
The original range of the spoken Attic dialect includedAttica and a number of theAegean Islands; the closely related Ionic was also spoken along the western and northwestern coasts ofAsia Minor in modernTurkey, inChalcidice,Thrace,Euboea, and in some colonies ofMagna Graecia. During the 4th century BC, Attic was formally adopted as the administrative language in thekingdom of Macedon, before being replaced byKoine Greek.[3][4] Eventually, the texts of literary Attic were widely studied far beyond their homeland: first in the classical civilizations of the Mediterranean, including inAncient Rome and the largerHellenistic world, and later in theMuslim world, Europe, and other parts of the world touched by those civilizations.
The earliestGreek literature, which is attributed toHomer and is dated to the 8th or 7th centuries BC, is written in "Old Ionic" rather than Attic. Athens and its dialect remained relatively obscure until the establishment of itsdemocracy following the reforms ofSolon in the 6th century BC; so began theClassical period, one of great Athenian influence both in Greece and throughout the Mediterranean.
The first extensive works of literature in Attic are the plays of dramatistsAeschylus,Sophocles,Euripides, andAristophanes dating from the 5th century BC. The military exploits of the Athenians led to some universally read and admired history, as found in the works ofThucydides andXenophon. Slightly less known because they are more technical and legal are the orations byAntiphon,Demosthenes,Lysias,Isocrates, and many others. The Attic Greek of philosophersPlato (427–347 BC) and his studentAristotle (384–322 BC) dates to the period of transition between Classical Attic and Koine.
Students who learn Ancient Greek usually begin with the Attic dialect and continue, depending upon their interests, to the later Koine of theNew Testament and other early Christian writings, to the earlierHomeric Greek ofHomer andHesiod, or to the contemporaneousIonic Greek ofHerodotus andHippocrates.
Attic Greek, like other dialects, was originally written in a local variant of the Greek alphabet. According to the classification ofarchaic Greek alphabets, which was introduced byAdolf Kirchhoff,[5] the Old Attic system belongs to the "eastern" or "blue" type, as it uses the lettersΨ andΧ with their classical values (/ps/ and/kʰ/), unlike "western" or "red" alphabets, which usedΧ for/ks/ and expressed/kʰ/ withΨ. In other respects, Old Attic shares many features with the neighbouringEuboean alphabet (which is "western" in Kirchhoff's classification).[6] Like the latter, it used an L-shaped variant oflambda (
) and an S-shaped variant ofsigma (
). It lacked the consonant symbolsxi (Ξ) for/ks/ andpsi (Ψ) for/ps/, expressing these sound combinations withΧΣ andΦΣ, respectively. Moreover, like most other mainland Greek dialects, Attic did not yet useomega (Ω) andeta (Η) for the long vowels/ɔː/ and/ɛː/. Instead, it expressed the vowel phonemes/o,oː,ɔː/ with the letterΟ (which corresponds with classicalΟ,ΟΥ,Ω) and/e,eː,ɛː/ with the letterΕ (which corresponds withΕ,ΕΙ, andΗ in later classical orthography). Moreover, the letterΗ was used asheta, with the consonantal value of/h/ rather than the vocalic value of/ɛː/.
In the 5th century, Athenian writing gradually switched from this local system to the more widely usedIonic alphabet, native to the easternAegean Islands and Asia Minor. By the late 5th century, the concurrent use of elements of the Ionic system with the traditional local alphabet had become common in private writing, and in 403 BC, it was decreed that public writing would switch to the new Ionic orthography, as part of the reform following theThirty Tyrants. This new system, also called the "Eucleidian" alphabet, after the name of thearchonEucleides, who oversaw the decision,[7] was to become the classical Greek alphabet throughout the Greek-speaking world. The classical works of Attic literature were subsequently handed down to posterity in the new Ionic spelling, and it is the classical orthography in which they are read today.
Proto-Greek longā → Attic longē, butā aftere, i, r. ⁓ Ionicē in all positions. ⁓ Doric and Aeolicā in all positions.
However, Proto-Greekā → Atticē afterw (digamma),deleted by the Classical period.[8]
Proto-Greekă → Atticě. ⁓ Doric:ă remains.
Compensatory lengthening of vowel before cluster of sonorant (r,l,n,m,w, sometimesy) ands, after deletion ofs. ⁓ some Aeolic: compensatory lengthening of sonorant.[10]
Proto-Greek and other dialects'/u/ (Englishfood) became Attic/y/ (pronounced as Germanü, Frenchu) and represented byy in Latin transliteration of Greek names.
In thediphthongseu andau, upsilon continued to be pronounced/u/.
Attic contracts more than Ionic does.a +e → longā.
e +e → ē (writtenει:spurious diphthong).
e +o →ō (written ου: spurious diphthong).
Atticē (fromē-grade ofablaut or Proto-Greekā) is sometimes shortened toe:
Attic deletes one of two vowels in a row, calledhyphaeresis (ὑφαίρεσις).
PIE*ky or*chy → Proto-Greekts (palatalization) → Attic and Euboean Ionictt — Cycladean/Anatolian Ionic and Koiness.
Sometimes, Proto-Greek *ty and *tw → Attic and Euboean Ionictt — Cycladean/Anatolian Ionic and Koiness.
Proto-Greek and Dorict beforei ory → Attic–Ionics (palatalization).
Doric, Aeolian, early Attic–Ionicss → Classical Attics.
Proto-Greekw (digamma) was lost in Attic before historical times.
Attic retained Proto-Greekh- (fromdebuccalization of Proto-Indo-European initials- ory-), but some other dialects lost it (psilosis, "stripping", "deaspiration").
Attic–Ionic places ann (movable nu) at the end of some words that would ordinarily end in a vowel, if the next word starts with a vowel, to preventhiatus (two vowels in a row). The movable nu can also be used to turn what would be a short syllable into along syllable for use inmeter.
Attic and Euboean Ionic use rr in words, when Cycladean and Anatolian Ionic use rs:
Attic and Euboean Ionic use tt, while Cycladean and Anatolian Ionic use ss:
Attic Greek grammar followsAncient Greek grammar to a large extent. References to Attic Grammar are usually in reference to peculiarities and exceptions from Ancient Greek Grammar. This section mentions only some of said peculiarities.
In addition to singular and plural numbers, Attic Greek had thedual number. This was used to count exactly two of something and was present as an inflection in nouns, adjectives, pronouns, and verbs (i.e., any categories inflected for number). Attic Greek was the last dialect to retain it from older forms of Greek, and the dual number had died out by the end of the 5th century BC. In addition to this, in Attic Greek, any plural neuter subjects will only ever take singular conjugation verbs.
With regard todeclension, the stem is the part of the declined word to which case endings are suffixed. In the alpha or first declension feminines, the stem ends in longa, which is parallel to the Latin first declension. In Attic–Ionic the stem vowel has changed toē in the singular, except (in Attic only) aftere,i orr. For example, the respective nominative, genitive, dative, and accusative singular forms are γνώμη (gnome), γνώμης (gnomes), γνώμῃ (gnome(i)), γνώμην (gnomen), "opinion"; but θεᾱ́ (thea), θεᾶς (theas), θεᾷ (thea(i)), θεᾱ́ν (thean), "goddess".
The plural is the same in both cases,gnomai andtheai, but other sound changes were more important in its formation. For example, original-as in the nominative plural was replaced by the diphthong-ai, which did not change froma toe. In the fewa-stem masculines, the genitive singular follows the second declension:stratiotēs,stratiotou,stratiotēi, etc.
In the omicron or second declension, mainly masculines (but with some feminines), the stem ends ino ore, which is composed in turn of a root plus thethematic vowel, ano ore inIndo-European ablaut series parallel to similar formations of the verb. It is the equivalent of the Latin second declension. The alternation of Greek-os and Latin-us in the nominative singular is familiar to readers of Greek and Latin.
In Attic Greek, an originalgenitive singular ending*-osyo after losing thes (like in the other dialects) lengthens the stemo to the spurious diphthong-ou (see above under Phonology, Vowels): logos "the word"logou from *logosyo "of the word". The dative plural of Attic–Ionic had-oisi, which appears in early Attic but later simplifies to-ois:anthropois "to or for the men".
Classical Attic may refer either to the varieties of Attic Greek spoken and written in Greekmajuscule[14] in the 5th–4th centuries BC (Classical-era Attic) or to the Hellenistic- and Roman-era[15] standardized Attic Greek, mainly on the language ofAttic orators and written in Greekuncial.
Attic replaces the Ionic-σσ with-ττ:
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