With a culture of over 3,000 years behind it, when you say Greece, before anything else, you say history. And that is because what Greece meant for the entire world’s civilization and culture cannot be described in just a few words. Thought (in all fields dealing with it, from philosophy to the exact sciences), literature and art in general owe so much to this culture that gave the world so many incredible people. In fact, the Greek alphabet represents a small treasure trove in itself. Now, we are inviting you to find out other interesting things about…
The Greek language and the Greek alphabet
The Greek language is one of the oldest languages in Europe. The first documents written in Greek are over 3700 years old! Ancient Greek civilization was not only a huge empire, but also the most advanced civilization of its time.
In that sense, Ancient Greek was what we now call a “language of international circulation”, in the true sense of the words. It was used on a large scale and it had a huge importance, until the Roman Empire established its supremacy. Whether you wanted to earn a living in trade, diplomacy, or you just wanted to be considered an educated person 2000 years ago, you had to speak Greek fluently.
But not even after the fall of the ancient Greek empire did the Greek language lose any of its importance. It was the language that invented and defined many of the terms used in culture, science and religion.
Ever since its beginnings, Greek was a written language.
The Greek alphabet was derived from the Phoenician one, which was the oldest consonantal alphabet.
The Greek alphabet has the merit of adding letters for vowels into the written alphabet and, as a result, of having laid the foundations of the writings well known and widespread today in Europe.
The roots of this alphabet date back to year 800 B.C. From its very beginnings, the philosophy, science and literary texts were recorded in the Greek alphabet and literally represented the birthplace of European culture.
The letters of the Greek alphabet
The Greek alphabet has 24 letters:
Α α, Β β, Γ γ, Δ δ, Ε ε, Ζ ζ, Η η, Θ θ, Ι ι, Κ κ, Λ λ, Μ μ, Ν ν, Ξ ξ, Ο ο, Π π, Ρ ρ, Σ σ/ς, Τ τ, Υ υ, Φ φ, Χ χ, Ψ ψ, Ω ω
Although the Greeks developed the first complete alphabet, this was not their first writing system. Approximately 6 centuries prior to the Greek alphabet that we know today, the Linear B alphabet was initially developed by the Mycenaean Greeks around year 1450 B.C. Having 87 syllabic signs and over 100 ideographic signs, after almost 3200 years of mystery, the system was finally deciphered at the beginning of the 1950s.
Just like Latin and Cyrillic, Greek did not initially have lowercases. Even though it does not really change the language per se, the addition of lowercases was an incorporation of the late mediaeval period, probably in order to make the language more stylistically compatible with the more modern languages.
Interesting things about the Greek alphabet
The early Greek alphabet was based upon the Phoenicians’ Semitic alphabet. It differs from the linear and hieroglyphic writings preceding it in the fact that each symbol represents a single consonant, unlike a syllable. The Phoenician alphabet is formed of 22 letters with vowel sounds incorporated into symbols. The Greeks modified the Phoenician alphabet by changing some of the symbols, as well as by creating some separate vowels. They also made their alphabet more accurate, from a phonetic point of view.
There are different accounts with respect to how the Greeks ended up using the Phoenician alphabet. Herodotus claims that the Phoenician alphabet was brought by Kadmos in Boiotia, where he founded the city of Thebes. However, the foundation of the city of Thebes precedes the first uses of the Greek alphabet, therefore this explanation is considered fictitious. Another account says that the Greek alphabet was in fact created by Palamedes, but this point of view has been disproved, ever since antiquity, by Hecataeus, a sixth century historian. He claimed that the Phoenician alphabet was brought to Greece by Danaos.
Some historians believe that the Greek alphabet was created for the purpose of writing the Homeric verses of the Iliad and the Odyssey, but this is also just a theory under debate, without final arguments from either side.
Once the Greek alphabet was invented, writing started being used for various purposes. While the Linear B alphabet seems to have been used only for inventories and lists, the Greek alphabet was initially used for predominantly literary purposes. Writing became not only a means of recording events, but also an art form in itself. A well known example of using this new alphabet is the inscription on Nestor’s Cup (the legendary golden cup owned by the mythical hero Nestor and described in the 11th book of the Iliad).
However, the most frequent use of the alphabet was for votive purposes, such as dedicating objects to certain gods. It was only after 100 years of being invented that the Greek alphabet seems to have been used for administrative or governmental purposes. The first example in this sense is the stone inscribed with a law from Dreros, Crete, dating around 650 B.C. This law regulates the mandates of the city’s magistrate. After this period, the Greek government commonly used the alphabet as a means of disseminating knowledge about laws and decrees. It was also used on objects such as coins and milestones (the stones that marked a border), such as those from Agora, in Athens.
One more thing. If you had the chance to look at a text in ancient Greek, you probably noticed certain graphic signs, which represented “accents”. Well, these did not exist from the very beginning, and their addition is thanks to Aristophanes of Byzantium (approximately 257-185 B.C.), a Greek erudite and grammarian, who invented the three diacritics (accent signs): acute, grave and circumflex, in order to mark the tonality or the intensity with which the Greek words were to be pronounced. Today, in modern Greek, out of all of these, the acute accent was the only one that remained.
Like everything pertaining to Greece, the history and the mysteries of the Greek alphabet are fascinating and help form as complete an image as possible with respect to the importance of the Greek culture. If you want to get a closer look at these mysteries, to find out how to read and write the Greek letters correctly, you are welcome to join our classes. Here, we will help you not only to learn to speak Greek, but also to find out a little bit of the history and culture of this wonderful people.
