Ancient Greek was anIndo-European language spoken inAncient Greece from about 1500BC to about 300BC. Ancient Greek andLatin are very important languages. Although they are no longer spoken, they influenced almost all modern European languages.
Greek had many differentdialects.[1] Attic Greek was spoken inAthens, the largest city, and the rest of the region ofAttica. It was thought to be the purest form of Greek. Later, in the educatedRoman world, children were taught Greek as asecond language, just as many people now learnEnglish as their second language.Koine Greek was the common language of Greeks. It was Attic Greek mixed with several other dialects.
Homer spoke and wrote in an old dialect that was somewhat different from Attic Greek. TheIliad and theOdyssey are long poems that tell exciting stories aboutwarfare,travel and theGreek gods. In the 5th century BC, some great plays were written byAeschylus,Sophocles andEuripides. The Golden Age of Ancient Greece inspired literature that has been read forcenturies.
Attic Greek was the dialect that was spoken in Athens and the rest of the region ofAttica. It was the dialect that was most similar to later forms of Greek since it was the standard form of the language. It is studied in Ancient Greek courses because it was the most common dialect.
All languages change with time, and Greek has changed a great deal over 2500 years.Modern Greek is often said to have started in 1453 AD;[2] until then,Medieval Greek was spoken.
Unlike Latin, Ancient Greek did not split intomany languages, but it is still considered to be a separate language fromModern Greek. The pronunciation has changed; for instance, beta was pronounced "b" in Ancient Greek, but it is pronounced "v" and is called "vita" in Modern Greek. The spelling has not changed much, which gives the appearance of less change than actually happened. Also, many different vowels and diphthongs merged into "i", the vowel sound in the English word "ski". Thetonal system of Ancient Greek has disappeared, but Modern Greek has only recently changed its spelling to match the change.
Despite those changes, much of the language has remarkably survived intact through the centuries.[3] There is a community nearTrabzon,Turkey, that speaks a dialect that is closer to Ancient Greek than to Standard Modern Greek.[4]
