This is partially wrong. There were many dialects of Greek that became separate enough from "standard" Greek that I would argue became their own language. Pontic Greek is the most notable example. The problem is that there were so many wars and expulsions from the area where these dialects existed that they no longer survived, as they either came to Greece where they assimilated into mainstream Greek or they were killed.
Azov Greek still survives though, although much endangered by expulsions after WWIi. And two Greek dialects in Italy which may not be dialects of modern Greek. Other Greek communities in Ukraine and Georgia speak (or spoke) a Turkic language written with a Greek alphabet.
I don't think so. Calabrian Greek is a result of later migrations from Northern Epirus in the 16th-17th centuries CE. This is why the Greek aspect is entirely comprehensible for modern Greek speakers.
@@gnas1897 Not at all my friend, there are two distinct(once 3) varieties of Greek in Italy. Calabrian Greek(Greko) is much closer to Standard Greek and probably diverged from when the Byzantine empire lost control in Italy(there are features that show this), and it was in constant contact in the following centuries. That doesn't mean that people weren't living there from ancient times(there is evidence for continuous habitation. On the other hand Griko(Salento Greek) which is by far the most spoken variety in Italy(Calabrian is barely surviving) is quite different and not very mutually intelligible, even for speaker of Greek that speak multiple varieties, there is also a lot Doric influence, especially vocabulary wise. The third which is extinct (Sicilian) I don't have information.
@@ΝεκτάριοςΧριστοφήTrue, I'm from Grecìa Salentina (Griko), I only speak it a little, not very well as I am unfortunately not a native speaker, but still talking about it with my family when it happens. A few times I happened to talk to Greeks. However, it is quite possible to understand the Calabrians well, just as it is possible to understand the Greeks, but only with simple dialogues; if the dialogue includes terms typically used in some areas, or complex words it becomes more difficult. The main problem, however, is with the Greeks of Greece, because in our griko there are also Latin influences, and it is often difficult for them to understand certain words. But either way, it's doable.
@@supermavro6072what exactly do you mean with "completely different"? I'm not a Greek native speaker and learned modern Greek as an adult and never studied Hellenic Greek. Yet if you show me a text in Hellenic Greek I'm able to understand roughly what it's talking about. As someone who studied Latin at school and is also fluent in Italian, Hellenic Greek is closer to modern Greek that Latin is to Italian.
@@supermavro6072 My brother in Christ, the endonym for the Greek language is Elliniká - as in the language of the Hellenes. Demotic Greek is just as much a Hellenic language as Mycenaean or Koine Greek. Saying that Greek isn't Hellenic is kinda like saying Deutsche isn't Germanic.
Greek kinda did have a somewhat similar impact on the Slavic/Balkan languages that Latin had on the Gaulish languages. The difference is that latin speaking ppl colonized and Romanized Western Europe to a much greater degree. So there was no Slavic-Greek hybrid like there was with Gallo Romance
@@aviator2117 yeah maybe that wasn't the best word for it. I just mean there was never a version or dialect of Greek spoken by Slavic ppl that would be equivalent to Gallo-Romance
since slavs and magyars, as well as turks, came to the lands of the former Roman Empire during the Middle Ages I don't find weird that them not being either romanized or hellenized. The weird part is the Germans, Celts and Escandinavians being latinized after the fall of Rome although it was more of a Roman Church thing than a Roman Empire. But yeah, greeks created the cyrilic and bulgarian alphabets, or evolved their own into them, influencing the region, but its spread was mostly caused by the influence of the Third Rome (Russia) on their Orthodox brethren and subsequent Soviet expansion.
Koine Greek was pretty much the dominant lingua franca in the Eastern Mediterranean and Black Sea for centuries. I feel like the video underestimates this point a lot. Why there aren't so many diverse dialects/languages is due to the 19th and 20th century wars and conflicts, plus the horrendous population exchange between Turkey and Greece in 1923. The huge influx of refugees basically caused a dialect levelling.
It did and would have to the same extent as Latin did, but it was stopped by the rise of Islam. Most of Egypt and Syria was speaking Greek by the time the Arabs invaded. Had they never conquered the territories of eastern Rome, to this day those countries would probably speak languages that are offshoots of Greek, just like we have with Latin and in fact, the Arabic that we have today.
They would have spoken Egyptian and Syriac, although there would be many Greek influences. The only native language of the area that still is influenced by Greek today is Romani. Now large parts of the so-called Middle East could be something like southern Europe.
Very false. Only the overlords of Levant and Egypt spoke Greek natively, i.e. the Byzantines, and the local elites were also bilingual, as well as the military, highly educated or those involved in administrative affairs. But other than that small group of people, no one spoke Greek. Bilingualism was a trait for some, but still not so common. What a classic case of Eurocentric thinking! 😂
Greek might have eventually been adopted by the masses in the Eastern Roman Empire - sometimes the language of the ruling class spreads downwards (e.g. Arabic). On the other hand, sometimes the ruling class adopts the language of the majority (e.g. the viking conquerors changed to French in Normandy and English in England). It's noticeable that the video did not mention that Greek was the lingua franca of much of the Near/Middle East until it was supplanted by Arabic. Perhaps this is because of the common unwillingness of the Western commentator to draw attention to the fact that Islam was spread by force.
@@markm6764 Yeah, that or ignorance. Much of Syria and Egypt was speaking Greek by the time of the Arab invasions. Had Islam not won, I suspect the east would see Ancient Greek as their version of latin.
@@markm6764 yeah the video completely skipped from ancient greece to modern day greece and like barely touched on Alexander the Great or the Byzantine(Roman) Empire
".. do not forget Greece, Alexander ..It was for her sake that you launched your whole expedition, to add Asia to Greece .." Arrian [Anabasis of Alexander 4.11.7] «.. τῆς Ἑλλάδος μεμνῆσθαί σε ἀξιῶ, ὦ Αλέξανδρε ἧς ἕνεκα ὁ πᾶς στόλος σοι ἐγένετο, προσθεῖναι τὴν Ἀσίαν τῇ Ἑλλάδι ..» Ἀρριανός [Ἀλεξάνδρου Ἀνάβασις 4.11.7]
"People speaking the language we call Greek have lived continually in the Aegean region since at least 1600 BC, and possibly earlier. Greek is, moreover, one of the most conservative and enduring languages in history. Among those still spoken it has probably changed the least in the past three and a half thousand years, by any indicator. This is an astonishing feat of continuity and provides an obvious and fair point of national pride." Anthony Kaldellis, Hellenism in Byzantium. The Transformations of Greek Identity and the Reception of the Classical Tradition, 2007, pp. 26
@@GeorgeRaptis-t3m That's not really accurate pal. Most of the educated elites in what is now modern Spain, or what is now modern north Italy did speak Greek (as a 2nd or 3rd language), but the vast majority of the iliterate populus in those areas (among many others) who were 95% of the overall population had no knowledge of Greek whatsoever.
There was a brief period of Greek speaking expansion and empire under Alexander the Great. However, he died very young with no heir and his generals carved up the burgeoning empire he built diluting the power Greek speaking rulers in his conquered lands had. Had Alexander lived long and passed rule onto his offspring, the Roman Empire might have had competition and there might have been more instances of Greek descended languages in the Alexandrian Empire.
The Greek language absolutely flourished in the post Alexander hellensitic kingdoms and them being disunited played a large part in that. Each of those kingdoms were all competing with each other to be the new center of greek culture and learning and that led to the founding of libraries across the near east that transmitted greek texts for hundreds of years such as the one at Antioch and Alexandria. It stayed the dominant language in the region WELL into the roman empire and even the romans themselves had a preference for being literate in greek over their own language. If Alexander didn't die when he did he would have most likely used Persian as the language of administration of his empire out of convenience
Well he died young cuz of all the battle wounds. And the empire became very big very fast which creates an unstable empire and the iranians and Armenians would probably rebel with the help of the Indians.
Greek was spoken extensively among the competing Hellenistic Empires that existed after the breakup of Alexander's Empire. It tended to be a language of the ruling, learned and trading classes. Even though the Greeks ruled extensive areas, they still tended to settle into Greek speaking colonia and enclaves within the areas they ruled. Speaking Greek as a second language was a necessity for much of the native ruling and trading classes. When Muslims took over as the ruling and trading classes of many areas of the former Byzantine state, Arabic and later Turkish became the necessary prestige and trading languages. Greek held on in many scattered places well into the modern era. Arab and Turkish nationalism largely finished it off in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, except in Greece, the southern Ukraine, and a few other localities.
Wait do people still speak Cappadocian? My family had great grandparents that spoke Turkish and Cappadocian, but as far as I knew Cappadocian had died out
@@StaciaMeconiates yes they do, some varieties, because Cappadocian is not one variety at all, some are very different from each other, some are closer to Standard Greek
"The Greek language is one of only three, among those now spoken and written in the world, that can boast a continuous written tradition stretching back for more than three thousand years. The others are Chinese and Hebrew." Roderick Beaton, "The Greeks: a global history", New York: Basic books 2021, Preface, pp. 13
Greece actually did to colonization. Where do you think the term Magna Graecia comes from? Magna Graecia was the term that Romans used to refer to Greek colonies that littered Southern Italy and Sicily. Marseilles and Elche, Spain were founded as Greek colonies.
Splitting hairs for a second. I'd argue the term ''colonize'' IS the perfect word to describe Greek settlers : they moved, established and populated a colony. Maybe we don't really see them as colonists because of recency bias or modern sensibilities which injects a negative connotation to the word. Come to think of if, ''colonizer'' and the verb ''to colonize'' is getting real close to being a bad word.
the woke ppl working hard to force us to think that word only had in one conclusion and noting else but the true said otherwise, that word can have both the good and bad conclusion. without the british rule in malaysia my ancestor could be starving to death in China, there a reason that the big wave of chinese immigrant in malaysia during the british rule to search for a good life, without the british the malaysia would end up in hand of Siam Kingdom, Indo communist or Japanese Empire which is the worst brutal ruler for the malaysian ppl.
@@supermavro6072 Ah yes, I too like reproducing nazi ideologies (yes, this is literally a view nazis had, and it is dead wrong. From culture to language, ancient Greeks and modern Greeks are quite literally the same people)
You omitting the fact that educated Romans honoured Greek as the languages of older and superior cultures (I recall that in Roms legend Rome itself was founded by the offspring of exiled Trojans(Aeneas)), so Latin even adopted Greek words and letters.
@@supermavro6072 e.g. the letters „Y“ and „Z“ were adopted rather late in the Latin alphabet to allow a correct pronunciation of Greek terms used in 1st century Latin.
The Aeneas bit is not taken as literal history by anyone in the academic community. It's generally taken as a founding myth with no supporting evidence for, and much evidence against. That being said, there was extensive trading and large number of Greek coastal colonies throughout southern Italy in the two hundred years before Rome's early kingdom period in 753. The Latin peoples were extensively influenced by the Greek coastal trading colonies. Greek was spoken extensively in southern Italy, especially those areas that were under the control of the Byzantine Empire well into the middle Medieval period. A few areas spoke local Greek dialects into the modern period.
@@cyberpotato63 just to clarify: my point is that the Aenas myth shows that even at a time when Greece was part of the Roman Empire, Romans wanted to establish a claim to belonging to the Greek world in a wider sense as well.
My Grandparents lived in Calabria in southern Italy and spoke a local dialect called "greco-calabro". Today there may be a fee hundered people left who are able to speak it properly. As a layman, I could not find out if it is a variation of the modern greek language or if it evolved independent from a older form of greek.
Griko started diverging from Greek after the Byzantines lost control of Italy so there would be similarities but it's too distinct to just be a dialect. It's almost always considered a language now too.
Wasn’t Greek spoken all across the eastern Roman empire including Palestine, hence why the New Testament being written in Greek? If it wasn’t for the Arab conquests, there probably would been Greek language off shoots spoken around the eastern Mediterranean.
@@GeorgeRaptis-t3m you are wrong the language that dominated the mediterenean after alexander was the attic ionian dialect attiki dialektos but this language is also refered as koine/κοινη dialektos that means shared/common language
"But the Greek language has a continuous recorded history in the geographical area of present-day Greece for over 3,000 years." Roderick Beaton, "The Greeks: a global history", New York: Basic books 2021, pp. 26
"With the collapse of the empire in the west, its eastern counterpart became, in reality, an entirely new and independent state, at once Greek by language and Roman in name: 'A Greek Roman empire'." Roderick Beaton, "The Greeks: a global history", New York: Basic books 2021, pp. 212
I think this video kinda misses the point. Greek did, in fact, spread outside of present-day Greece. Greek-speaking communities had established themselves in areas outside Greece as early as the Iron Age. Up until the early 20th century, there were numerous Hellenic-speaking communities outside of the Greek state, most notably in the Ottoman Empire. The earlier varieties of Greek did not just evolve into Modern Greek, but also to numerous other varieties, many of which are so distinct, that they could be considered languages in their own right. The most notable examples of this are Pontic, which was spoken across the eastern shores of the Black Sea, mainly in what's nowadays Northeastern Turkey, Cappadocian in Central Anatolia, and Italiot in Southern Italy (Griko and Calabrian). These dialects/languages developed in areas that were very isolated from the Greek mainland, and developed some distinct features, adopted lots of vocabulary from neighbouring languages, and also retained many archaic features that disappeared from Standard Modern Greek. However, after the Population Exchange with Turkey in the 1920s, all Anatolian Greek communities were deported or fled to Greece. They shared the same Greek national identity as the mainlanders, and so their varieties of speech were labeled as "dialects", rather than separate languages. Today, Pontic and Cappadocian are still very much distinct from Standard Greek, but in order to promote ideas of national unity, the Hellenic varieties of speech spoken across the map are considered not separate languages, but rather parts of a very broad Modern Greek dialect continuum. Same thing goes for Griko and Calabrian Greek, even though they didn't really share the same history and are still spoken in Italy. The geographical extent of Greek-speaking areas is not really thought about either, since Pontians and Cappadocian Greeks live in mainland Greece now, rather than their respective ancestral homelands. But yeah, this is not a case of a language being uniquely conservative and confined to a single geographical area, but rather one of ethnic cleansing, population movements and of national identity and politics playing a role in defining what is and isn't considered a language.
This, like I said in another comment I hate how this video basically skips from classical Greece straight to modern Greece with 0 mention of the Byzantine Empire and barely a footnote of Alexander's Empire. This video feels like it was written by someone who got their greek history knowlage from pop-culture and not someone who actually researched it.
I appreciate the video and your content. Greek was the second language of the Roman Empire, but was later centered in Constantinople as part of the Byzantine Empire. As you note, Greek was in widespread use throughout the Middle East and Anatolia. These Greek speakers were wiped out by the Arabic and Turkic invasions. They were, in a few words, murdered, converted, or otherwise suppressed. It is a miracle Greek survived at all. (And, of course, The Modern Sultan, would like to give it another try) Thank God he has not succeeded, YET.
Tbh, when you live in an arid land with almost nothing on it, the only thing left to protect/fight for is your ego/yourself/your survival/your identity. It's why Greek philosophy is what it is and why our culture is still around, despite the ages and conquests
Greek language is the oldest continuously living language based on written attestations and is the foundation language for sciences maths physics medicine etc Half planet has the Greek writing system - Latin Cyrillic were based on Greek alphabet
I would suggest the explanation that the Greek-Macedonian empires that came after Alexander governed more like Persians. Using bureaucracy and local governments to control regions, so places like Egypt had a Greek ruling class but the people never fully adopted it and it was business as usual. That combined with Rome and then the Ottomans being more recent and hands-on style cultural governments that replaced any Greek ruling classes before it could fully take root.
The video has to be reworked because from the start there is a misconception about the Hellenic language varieties. Many Latin languages are quite mutually intelligible, and people can hold conversation between each other. There are varieties of Greek which are quite hard to understand for Greeks even between close varieties, especially if you speak only the Standard language. When you said Tsakonian can be considered a dialect in terms of mutual intellegibility is wrong. Tsakonian had a lot of contact with other varieties of Greek but it's low mutual intelligibility even in written language, even if there is much shared vocabulary the grammar will mess people up. You have to consider this and also the fact that Greek had a lot of common varieties and much contact in a smaller area, this made them not diverge that much but still some diverged a lot. Latin played a similar role that's why Romance languages are very close to each other even though it's a larger area and a mix of different languages in some cases.
Greek did expand and it did branch off. But its speakers were killed off, genocided, slaughtered, deported and this led to the extinction of most hellenic tongues and communities
According to the great Roman philosopher and politician Marcus Tullius Cicero: “If the Gods speak, they will surely use the language of the Greeks.” 🇬🇷
Another major way that Greek language has influenced the rest of European languages (and beyond) is in the fact that during the Renaissance and beyond, Greece was idolized as one of the earliest "bastions of civilization," so people learned it to read "the classics." This meant a lot of the polymaths of the time adapted Greek terminology for the sciences. Words like music, telephone, electro-encephalogram, and more. Also, due to the Orthodox spread into the north, a lot of Greek NAMES lived on- Dmitri, Aleksandr, Nikolaus, Anastasia- many of these names have Anglicized equivalents too.
The Turks didn't kill or exile the Greek speakers of Anatolia. They rather intermingled and assimilated them, as you can see in the Turks' genetics. They share a 60% genetic similarity with the Greeks on average.
I feel it's worth noting that Tsakonian is descended from the Doric dialects of Greece (Spoken most notably in Sparta, But in the Peloponnese and Western Greece as a whole), rather than the Attic and Ionic dialects which Koiné Greek, And thus Modern Greek, Descend from, so it diverged from modern standard Greek millennia ago, Hence the fact some people consider it a different language.
1) Despite of Rome Empire, Greek was used as a kind of lingua franca in the ancient world, every illustrated/educated person must learn and speak Greek besides Latin. 2) from Alexander the Great, Greek was spread as known language as far as the land hi conquered. 3) Greek was adopted as official language of Byzantine Empire, or the Roman Empire located in Constantinople 4) Greek was used as court language in Egypt under Ptolemais dynasty, which includes Cleopatra pharaoh.
Greek spread just as much as Latin did. It was the lingua franca of the entire eastern Mediterranean, in the Balkans, Anatolia, the Levant, Egypt, Southern Italy and beyond. It was just supplanted by Arabic in the Middle East and North Africa and later by Turkish in Anatolia, and the Greek speakers in these areas have nearly completely disappeared at this point due to various persecution’s/ expulsions. You can still find the last remnants of them in some very small communities left in Anatolia (mostly Pontus), Egypt, some other parts of the Middle East, and a few villages in Southern Italy. For most of its history, the majority of Greek speakers did not live in what we now call Greece
I note that some have remarked on the influence Greek had on the Slavonic languages, which I would support. I sometimes wonder if the idea of masculine and feminine versions of surnames was part of that influence as Western European languages, which had been in the Latin orbit, don't have that feature, in general.
It could be Slavonic. In Scandinavia (Germanic, but on territory never conquered by Rome and only influenced by Latin through scholarship and [a bit transiently] through the Roman Catholic Church, 2nd names were gender specific for a while (e.g. Magnusson vs. Magnusdottir), but (except in Iceland?) eventually lost the female form when they became family surnames carried through all generations rather than merely patronyms denoting one's immediate father. What little I understand of Greek comes from botany and has nothing to do with (family) naming, but it seems like naming conventions would be anchored in ancient culture (thus Slavic or Balto-Slavic) or religion (thus Greek in the eastern Slavic areas). Any Catholic-based Slavs (Poles, Czechs, Croats, and Slovaks...) care to weigh in on this?
@@Erewhon2024 Yes, I was aware of that Icelandic exception, which is why I qualified my comment with "in general". If I have decoded your closing remarks correctly you may be right that the fact that Greek and (most) Slavonic languages have masculine and feminine surnames is more coincidence than influence.
The influence of Greek on the languages of western europe is way more than you can imagine, even in latin and english some of the vacabulary is latinized greek( greek written in the latin alphabet). Example word: did you know butter is actually a greek work? Another thing is that most of the modern greek is based on the attic dialect( the dialect spoken in the region of Attica, where Athens is located). Moreover, many greek colonies in the Mediterreanean were eventually wiped off by wars and nationalism even from the ancient time there were ancient greek colonies from Crimea to the straits of Gibraltar(Heraclean Gate). A notable Greek Pytheas from Massalia( Marseille) even travelled to Britain in the 4th century BC. And he is actually the reason why Britain is still called Britain, since he wrote about the people of Britain identifying themselves as Pretani(Πρετανια) , that later was transformed as Britain in Roman times.
@@rogerpenroset.blaine4233 Because he is in an American state where the vowel shift phenomena is UPPERCASE-STRONG, MR. @nameExplain probably doesn't consider it strange or out of the ordinary. Though to my semi-native ear his english is unsweetened-uh
"As members of the Greek race and speakers of the Greek language, the Macedonians shared the ability to initiate ideas and create political forms" N G L Hammond (1992), 'The Miracle that was Macedonia', p 206 "We must also remember that Philip and Alexander were Greeks, descended from Heracles, they wished to be recognized by Greeks as benefactors of the Greeks, even as Heracles had been" N G L Hammond (1989), 'Alexander the Great' p. 257
What do you mean "Greek didn't spread"? Greek was spoken from the Atlantic coast in the west to Bactria (Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan) in the east, and from Crimea in the north to Abu Simbel in Nubia (Sudan) in the south. So in fact Greek spread much farther than Latin.
Exactly, the Greek language did spread into other areas outside of Greece but was eventually displaced by other languages in most of those areas. I chalk this up to Alexander the Great dying so young without an heir and his generals who carved up his conquered territory not being the brilliant military leader that he was. The carving up of Alexander's lands diluted the power of Greek speaking leaders which led to the language being displaced as the primary language later.
It's true, e.g. Punic was still spoken in isolated villages up to the Muslim invasion of northern Africa, Celtic was spoken in central France and Basque in SW France (and had a greater area in Spain) until Middle Ages. People simply preferred to use Latin as it was prestigious and came with job oppottunities and so speaking it allowed social mobility
"Ancient Greece didn't really do the whole colonisation thing". Really man? ... Ever heard of the "Greek Colonisation" or the Hellenistic Period? It could be even argued that the language spread even farther than Latin ever did. At one point Greek was spoken from the coasts of Spain, all the way to the Indus river. And every educated Roman spoke Greek as a second, sometimes main language as well. Also, the Macedonian empire did speak Greek. There is no question about that... There is a debate among historians on how "Greek" the Macedonians themselves were, but the court language in Pella and the language of the Hellenistic Kingdoms was Greek. Where do you think Koiné ("the common") even came from?
Could you do a video on how the Turkic languages developed? It's a belt all over Asia from Turkey to the Uyghurs in China, but as you point out in this video, Anatolia used to speak Greek ... Oh I see you did that already. Going to watch the other video now.
Greek spread but didn't break up like Latin. The reason is that Latin became dead, left a gap, then this gap was replaced but Latin-originated languages. On the contrary, Greek has never ceased to be written and spoken, so no gap left, hence no Greek-originated languages exist. Greek, while simplified in the course of its long history, is still a mother-language changing from within like you described in your video. As for Macedonians, they spoke a form of Doric Greek.
Can anyone here explain why in the map at 9:30 there is a "Romania" label to the *south* of Bulgaria??? I don't know much about geography but I'm pretty sure modern day Romania is north of Bulgaria.
The byzantine greeks(eastern roman empire) called their land romania which means roman land it does not refer to modern day romania also constantinople was commonly refered to as rūm in arabic and persian meaning rome
Well- it did. Pontic, Cappadocian, Cypriot etc all exist. So do Tsakonian, Mani, and Cretan. But all of these have or are been destroyed by genocide and standardization (excl. Cypriot)
Actually, Greek did spread and evolve - how could we leave out the Hellenistic era (Hellenistic = Greek), when the Empire of Alexander the Great - and then notably the Seleucid (Levant region) and Ptolemaic (Egypt) Kingdoms led to the entire eastern half of the Mediterranean becoming predominantly Greek speaking, which continued even under the later Roman Empire, and then into the Byzantine Empire. They spoke Koine Greek, which was an evolution of Greek as it spread over this huge area (uneven terrain notwithstanding). This is why the Jews translated their Torah into the Septuagint (Greek Bible) and the early Christian texts were all in Greek, not Latin, and pretty much every writer during this approx 1,000 year period (including Greek-speaking Roman and Byzantine eras, going from roughly 325 BCE with Alexander's conquests to around 650 CE with Muslim conquests), whether from modern day Egypt, Syria, Turkey or Greece, wrote and spoke in Greek. The Hellenic world was the 'civilized world' of ancient empires, cities, monuments, knowledge, and wealth, and many looked to the newer, Latin western half of the Roman Empire as relatively undeveloped and uneducated, despite the Romans' military prowess. So the short answer is that Greek did spread and evolve, in a very impressive way, and this lasted for quite a long time. We might have ended up with something similar to Latin's evolution but with Greek, over the entire eastern Mediterranean, lasting up to the present. However, the Muslim military conquests of the 7th century, as mentioned here, broadly led to the discontinuance of Greek usage in this area, in favor of Arabic. And then Arabic eventually evolved into various local dialects ('amiya) of today. The Eastern Orthodox Church being Greek-speaking is probably the best ongoing evidence of this time, along with the huge corpus of Greek texts from antiquity by eastern Mediterranean writers. The short answer as why the Greek language's 'spread and evolution' was reversed so dramatically is Islam - not simply Arab conquest and invasion, or later Turkish invasion, because without their new religion, they might have adopted/adapted to the existing Hellenistic culture and Greek language, as happened in other instances of conquest throughout history. However, as Arabic was sacred to the new religion, being the language of the Quran, and Islamic culture was in many ways opposed, as a matter of religious virtue, to many elements of Hellenistic culture, so education radically shifted to focus on Arabic and new Muslim texts. We might consider other factors, but this would be the most obvious and important cause for the rapid elimination of Greek as it had spread and evolved for ~1,000 years over the region up to that point, mostly surviving in the old Christian communities (though many spoke other languages such as Syriac, Coptic, etc) and the Byzantine Empire, which suffered gradual losses, as mentioned in this video. It is worth noting that people in the Eastern Mediterranean did continue to speak older languages during the Hellenistic era, such as Aramaic and Coptic, especially outside of urban and educated populations. Aramaic in particular was an earlier 'lingua franca' of the Persian Empire - which is why many Jews such as Jesus spoke Aramaic as everyday language, not Hebrew (or Greek). Shifting from Aramaic to Arabic would have also perhaps felt comfortable, as they are both Semitic languages. The writings of Hellenistic-era intellectuals was preserved by some Muslim scholars, eventually transferred to European (Latin-speaking) scholars of the late Middle Ages, and led to the rediscovery of empirical science and may be seen as the roots of the Modern era. So one could certainly say that the spread and evolution of the Greek language played a role in the early development of science. In order to understand this story, it's important to know that Greek was not just the language of mountainous 'geographic Greece' and isolated city-states - it had evolved into the lingua franca of the entire eastern Mediterranean, a huge portion of the most civilized and educated part of the world - channelling a vast amount of intellectual energy relative the limited education of the time. There is much of this video that could be revised. For example, the mountainous terrain of Greece has some relevance for the early story of Greek dialects, but is not really relevant after Alexander the Great and the start of the Hellenistic era. We wouldn't want to say that "Greek speakers never really left Greece, and not many non-Greek speakers really came into Greece". And it's difficult to understand the Byzantine Empire and the true significance of the Muslim invasion and their focus upon Arabic without the prior story of 1,000 years of the Greek language's 'spread and evolution'. Greek has an amazing history - please tag or 'like' this comment, or make other revisions or other comments so we get the history right
2:40 I think its simple: Rome was a major, central power with one emperor for a very long time. Greece was for a short time united, with king Alexander. After this time, the Diadochi wars concluded into separate kingdoms, the seleucids, the Ptolemys and later the Antigonide Macedonia. ->separate entities with various language developments.
Greek city states did colonization it's not a bad word to say. Also there was Grico dialect in Magna Grecia, pontic Greek in Pontus, Koptic Greek in Egypt and ethiopia, and koine Greek in GrecoBactrian in afganistan, also Hellinistic koine Greek in Damascus. So all in all there was a widespread of Greek language, better search next time.
Greek did kind of spread....all over the Mediterranean and middle east .it was after all the lingua Franca of those regions for centuries culminating in the Byzantine era .it was the Turkish ottoman rule that thwarted it's expansion, however the ottoman empire could never. Extinguish our language which unlike the Latin languages, modern Greek is directly related to Ancient Greek and is one of the largest longest surviving languages on earth.
Don't apologise for "colonisation". That's actually the original, correct usage. Geopolitical analyst Serge Trifkovic says the Empire got it backwards-- Dominions were colonies and Colonies dominions.
The assertion that Greek language was initially banned during Ottoman occupation and survived thanks to 'secret schools' is hardly based on any evidence. In contrast, Ottoman empire at least during its early stages is considered among the most tolerant European states.
I don't know, dude; I feel like this video is a rare miss from this channel. People who spoke Greek absolutely did colonize other areas, even they didn't have a single nation-state based identity. It absolutely spread pretty damn far--almost to the Indian subcontinent!--even if it didn't stick around into modern times. And it absolutely did evolve, even if it didn't survive in these areas.
@@nikolaospaganopoulos8103 Pretty sure Alexandria on the Indus wasn't an independent city state. In fact, pretty sure the kingdoms of the Diadochi were as centralised as they came back in the third century BC...
Yeah I agree this was a miss by a longshot, this video skipped from ancient Greece straight to modern Greece. It barely mentioned Alexander and the Hellenistic age, and didn't mention the byzantine(roman) empire at all. It also completely leaves out stuff like Pontic Greek and Cappadocian Greek. I'm sorry but this video feels like it has the Greek history knowlage of a toga party
" A question which occurs frequently to classical students and others concerns the relation between ancient and modern Greek. It is the purpose of the present article to indicate in as brief a fashion as possible the lines on which the question might be approached. Perhaps the most amazing thing about Greek is that in the period over which our written records extend-in over three millennia, since the decipherment of Linear B-it has changed so little. Whereas a student of Latin would be ill-equipped to read a modern Italian newspaper, a person with a good working knowledge of classical Greek would not only find an Athenian newspaper intelligible for the most part, but would be amazed at the remarkable likenesses between the ancient and the modern languages. For the vocabulary of a Greek newspaper is probably 99 per cent. of classical origin and modern Greek has retained much of the cumbersome grammar of the ancient language-and ancient Greek has got a cumbersome grammar, when we consider that its verb has over four hundred forms as compared to sixty or so in French and two in Afrikaans. Thus the declension of Ti7,os is precisely the same now (except for the absence of the dual, which was obsolescent in Xenophon's day, and of the dative) as it was in the fifth century B.C. The conjugation of the present of Ivo is identical with that of the classical verb, although the third plural ending -oval occurs mostly dialectically, e.g. in Cypriot, and has been largely replaced by -ow. The main reason for the extreme conservatism of Greek and the almost complete absence of that attrition of inflexional endings which has occurred in most Indo-European languages would seem to be the influence which the learned class has had on the language throughout its history-indeed one might almost say the existence of a learned class. For while western Europe was plunged in the Dark Ages, in Constanti-nople there was a vigorous intellectual life centred in the University, which flourished on and off from its foundation in the fourth century A.D. to the fall of the city to the Turks in 1453. The education of Greeks throughout this thousand years was based almost entirely on the study of the great classical writers, and students were taught to model their own writing on the famous stylists of the fifth and fourth centuries B.c., especially Demosthenes, Plato, and Thucydides (which of course accounts for the survival of their works). It is this learned Greek, consciously Ancient and Modern Greek B. E. Newton Greece & Rome Vol. 7, No. 2 (Oct., 1960), pp. 124-127 (4 pages) Published By: Cambridge University Press
We Greeks are a small nation who miraculously persevered through the ages, thanks to our history and language. The future of our nation looks grim though for the long run. Its unlikely that we will survive in the long future, yet our legacy, like that of Rome will live forever in the human race… Small comfort, but a comfort nevertheless …
Greek language and alphabet are in great percentage influenced by Arab , Jewish and Egyptian words and signs . Why do we see this explanation everywhere ! Because in Europe they already had more simple signs in use and we can estimate Greek as greatly influenced IndoEuropean by other languages beside Hindu/Gupta ones from Eastern route . Take for example the word "anestis" which is of Jewish origin , or actually "anemo" is Jewish but Greek is only "stis "! Roman autorities were democratic and let the Slavi people to be enlightened easily by simple alphabet ( freed of those influences ) , like Latin , simple European is . So nobody liked to use Greek language or alphabet ( alphavita ) anymore ! Taking this in consideration we can notice that Greeks are outdated ! Didn't accept simplification even today ! All World is keeping wrong history that Greece have given alphabet to Europeans !
Did you know the Ancient Greeks wrote in ALL CAPS? Those elegant minuscules (lower case) we associate with maths and science and such weren't developed until some time in the Christian era.
Modern Greek and Late Latin (Proto-Romance) followed a similar anterior evolution until Latin spread in a wider area, deepening each varieties specificities which spread themselves.
Actually the term colonisation and the term colony makes sense. The later term of colonies being regions appears to be a change in terminology. Regarding Ancient Greek, we should be realistic, most likely there weren't dialects that were spoken in different city-states or poleis. Most likely there were different languages. Different colonies had different "mother cities" or metropolises and that meant they spoke different languages. They also learned the languages of the locals. Also, because of its naval trade, Attic Greek pretty much became the language spoke in Greece when it came to inter-city or inter-polis communications although there probably cases when one city communicated with another in their own language. Because of the division and the rivalry between different regions and poleis (city-states) there was no push for conquest and there wouldn't be that much of single Greek language (the colonies spoke the Greek of their originating city or mother city) being pushed everywhere.
I'm part Greek from Crimea / North Black Sea / Azov Sea region. Greeks came here in 6 century B.C., established a bunch of colonies, and throughout centuries Greek language became dominant over the languages of local peoples Tauri and Meoti. In the 12th century, my region was conquered by the Mongol Empire and the Crimean Tatar language became dominant, Greek population split into two groups: romei (those who remained speaking Greek) and urum (those who started using Crimean Tatar language ). In the 18th century my region was conquered by Russian Empire, all Christian Greek population was displaced to remote sparsely populated areas around Azov Sea, preparing for genocide of the Muslim majority population. Nowadays, we Crimean / Azov Greeks almost don't speak Greek, only Russian, despite having Greek last names.
Actually as recently as the early 20th century there were a number of Greek dialects or languages spoken outside of Greece Proper, Particularly in Anatolia, But then hundreds of thousands of them were killed in a genocide, and over a million were later deported to Greece as part of a "Population Exchange" between Greece and Turkey, where the speakers of these then assimilating into the general Greek culture and losing much of the uniqueness of their language (Apparently some of these dialects still survive actually, But they're all considered endangered.). While not widely spoken, There are also actually still dialects of Greek natively spoken in Ukraine and in Southern Italy.
I love that Patrick releases a video to answer my questions just in time! I had recently wondered why Latin changed so much but not much for Greek and if modern greek speaker understand ancient greek!
His answer is partly incorrect though. Ask any native Greek and they’ll tell you there are many other versions of the language out there that aren’t just dialects.
@@sofiekaterina Yeah I know, I should have be more clearer that he didn't answer that last thought I had as it was only one of the topics I just had in my head. I had already searched it up previously and got various results of modern native Greek speakers saying they only understand a few things and that there was many variations that could be considered their own languages.
His answer is extremely incorrect. He says Greek never expanded out of Greece and that this was due to Greece never unifying. He kinda forgot all about the Macedonian Kingdom, the Hellenistic period and the Eastern Roman empire, which were all culturally Greek. Greek expanded all over the Eastern Mediterranean. But it shrank because of Arab and Turkish expansion.
What is more interesting is how greek evolved from ancient to medieval to modern without "changing" as a different language( propably due to the fact that core of the eastern roman empire , Greece and Asia minor ,were ethnic homogeneous greeks so its people didnt have to adapt to change it the way spanish and romanians for example evolved latin to their maternal langusge ). Latin is obviously connected to modern Italian but these two remain different. However ancient greek and modern greek are way closer making it seem like its just a different dialect
As far as I know, Classical Greek is just as incomprehensible for modern Greeks as Classical Latin for a Spanish speaker. Edit: assuming they didn't study some form of Ancient Greek, which is taught in all Greek schools.
@@a2falcone Actually no, ancient Greek isn't incomprehensible to us. Both ancient and modern Greek are taught in Greek schools but I assume you don't know what these lessons include if you believe that what we can understand of ancient Greek we can understand it because of these lessons and not because we are native Greek speakers. In general, ancient Greek is taught in Greek schools the same way that modern Greek is taught. Not as a foreign language.
The Macedonian conquests did make a large influence on the lands it conquered, but it "overlaps" with the territory of the Byzantine Empire, so you may not notice it. It's influence in the region, however, is not to be understated, as while there were languages spoken there (Semitic, btw), they all had HEAVY borrowing from Greek... A (partial) list of Hebrew words originating from Greek are: afyán (anchovi), arnáq (wallet), amilán (starch), astrológ (astrologer), bulmús (binge-eating), basís (base), bardelás (cheetah), dayál (steward), dfus (print), dolfín (dolphin), dalpéq, (counter, front desk), géves (plaster, gypsum), glusqamá (ossuary), ilpás (frying pan), itstrubál (pinecone), itstadyón (stadium), izmél (scalpel), kartís (ticket), karísh (shark), karpás (celery), lavqán (albino), lochsán (diagonal), navát (navigator), nartíq (sheath), otó (same), pundáq (inn), pizmón (song), pinqás (notebook), qvarnít (captain), qalmár (pencil case), qubiyá (dice), sanegór (advocate), sandál (sandal), tigún (frying), tiq (bag), teatrón (theater), traqlín (lounge), tavás (peacock), túna (tuna), uchlusín (population), zug (couple)...
It really didn't or, to be more accurate, the Greek didn't get adopted by the locals. The diadochi of Alexander were more than willing to let the local lords run the old Persian bureaucracy which mean that, unless you were a high ranking nobleman, you really didn't need to lean Greek and it was business as usual. That doesn't mean that Greek didn't spread to those regions, it's just that it went with the Greeks that settled them. Alexandria of Egypt was heavily Greek influenced, at the old Kandahar castle has Greek inscriptions and certain edicts of Ashoka were translated in Greek while some coins were minted in ancient India with Greek on them. I suppose that what I want to say is that the Greek language always came and went with the Greeks.
Literate and illiterate people alike spoke Greek in the eastern Roman Empire, especially after the official division of the empire. It had functioned as a trade language and sometimes administrative language before the split; but afterward, Greek was the official language of state from Constantinople until conquered by the Turks. Greek-speaking enclaves persist til today in Italy and parts of the Middle East, and didn't lose its lingua franca status in the greater region until the Muslim conquests that spread Arabic, which in turn influenced closely related Semitic languages. In the west, goths tended to assimilate linguistically, effecting regional dialects of Latin, but not supplanting it. The eastern empire fell to other empires, while splintering characterized the demise of the west. A few hundred years of history passed between the fall of the two halves, as well. The west only had one language of education and the Roman Catholic Church. The east had three languages of the educated elite amid a sea of many different families of languages interspersed. Another difference is that Romance languages were collectively known as Vulgar Latin for a millennium after the collapse of the Western Roman Empire, only then did the governments and literati claim national languages while clergy and academia pursued conformity with late empire Latin. The "Make Latin Great Again!" movement of the late medieval period.
Greeks also had colonies in the Black Sea and across the middle east. Phrygian was said to be 50% Greek but was eventually absorbed into eastern Rome. So it's very likely there were other hybrids then. Today there is modern Greek, Tsakonian, Pontic, and Cypriot. Greek and the orthodox church were forced to become Italian speaking Catholics post middle ages. Also, modern Greek has a gigantic amount of loanwords including Roman ones
Off course greek spread, reach8ng anatolia, southern Italy, Georgia (Colquida) and Iberic Peninsula, becaming the biggest lingua franca of the ancient world, and it evolved as well, from mycaenean to classic, from classic to koiné, from koiné to modern greek. The Title is wrong.
It did though. I mean there was Phrygian. Today we have Tsakonika, Griko, Pontic Greek(if you consider the latter a separate languages) and multiple dialects, most notable Cypriot Greek, along with Cretan and other dialects.
But Greek *did* spread. It was the language of the Byzantine empire. It was used for legal and administrative purposes in Egypt and in Arabia. "Current estimates place the number of Greek loanwords in Coptic at around 5000 lemmata." What stopped it was the brutally bloody and never-ending Muslim conquests. (Egyptian agriculture didn't recover to Byzantine productivity levels until the 19th century under British rule.) Greek continued to hang on here and there in the Byzantine lands until the forcible exchange of populations between Greece and Turkey. To this day there are parts of Italy where the local language is a dialect of Greek. Even in Arabic, "Kaaba" is probably a Greek loanword, "kubos" = cube. It's estimated that an 80,000 word English dictionary will be about 5% Greek in origin Latin had the great advantage of expanding into an area of pre-literate cultures (Hispania, Gaul, Britannia, &c); Greek had the great disadvantage of the Muslim conquests.
so when muslims protect their land its brutally bloody conquesting but when byzantine empire occupies and destroys all of arab and mediterranean culture its something to be proud of right?
It is due to the conquering of the East Roman empire or Byzantine empire whose peoples spoke Greek and Greek replaced Latin as the official language in the 6th century AD by the Ottoman Turks in 1453. That occupation dealt a devastating blow to Greek civilization.
Hellenic languages were not only spoken in present day greece, but also in great parts of asia minor, all Illyria and wall way up to present day Switzerland. this has been proven by the coins found in cities and the names of ancient cities. in fact Attica was only one of the dialects.
Greek did spread and did evolve but it also contracted back to its ethnic Greek area after Arabic and Slavic raids in the Eastern Roman Empire. In fact Greek had done it repeatedly in the past, even prior to Alexander the Great : 1) In the Bronze Age, much prior to the Trojan War, certain Greek tribes known as the "Bryges" stemming from Macedonia-Thrace(south) invaded and installed in northwestern and central Minor Asia mixing with the locals and producing the Bithynians, the Pamphlagonians and the better known Phrygians. The ensuing languages Bithynian, Pamplagonian and the slightly better known Phrygian were languages derived from Bronze Age Greek but with lots of influence from the pre-existing languages of the locals. Hence, while a language like Phrygian, as it evolved into Classical time a 1000 years later would not be considered Greek, it would still belong to the Greek family of languages. Some idiots make the distinction of Greek and Hellenic but this of course wrong since Greek=Hellenic. "Hellenistic" is rather the term that should apply for "Greek-derived". So Phrygian, Bithynian, Pamphlagonian were Greek-related languages that had evolved out of some Bronze Age Greek dialect from Macedonia spoken at the time. 2) What is described in point 1 could very much be the case for at least a lot of northern Thraecian tribes such as the Oddrysians. For western and southern Thraecian tribes such as the Paeonians, the Edonians, the Bisaltians, the Odomantes etc. we know for sure they were ethnic Greeks and Greek speakers, this is proven even archaeologically (not to mention that for Paeonians we have references of participating in the Olympics, which is an absolute proof). But for Oddrysians and Bessians which were northern Thraecian tribes and which seemed different we just don't have a clue. All we know is that every single time they decided to write something - and they wrote quite a lot - they did in a kind of standard Greek (i.e. Attic based), since by late 5th century Attic Greek was trying to impose itself as the "standard way" of writing Greek. However that insistence could as well reveal the fact that Oddrysians and Bessians whether Greek-related or not may as well has been speaking a Greek-related or a Greek-derived language stemming back to the Bronze Age (as they were speaking it prior to falling to Philip II of Macedonia, i.e. without any Greeks having conquered them yet). 3) Then you had Classical era cases such as the Pamphylians, who were a mix of Dorian settles with locals in south Minor Asia. Their Doric Greek mixing with neighboring Lycian and Pisidian languages produced a unique Greek dialect that could be seen as a Greek-derived language. At any rate, while Greeks still considered Pamphylians as Greeks, the Olympic Judges had esteemed they were "not Greek enough" for Olympic Games were the "Greek blood" law was hyper strict - to be noted, for all you Slavs out there, the Olympic Judges allowed Macedonians even back when they were a poor backwaters kingdom on the brink of collapse. 4) Then we have Classical Greeks who following the Bronze Age collapse they had become extremely tribal. And so did their speech. Back in Bronze Age we have no signs of Greeks speaking "Dorian and Ionian and Aeolian and Arcadian" but rather they spoke other forms of Greek, in dialects sure but not necessarily the ones that evolved out of the isolation of Greek mini-states following the Bronze Age collapse. Hence, one could even want to see Greek dialects such as the Aeolian and the Arcadian as "distinct languages". Especially Aeolian was quite different even in grammar, not just pronunciation with all verbs. Athenians mocked Macedonians for their provincial Dorian dialect, but Macedonians mocked back Athenians for their weird uncanny way of speaking Greek which was distinct to that of all other Greeks. However the overall distance of Greek dialects was immaterial as they were all recognized as ethnic Greeks, hence there was no talk of "separate languages" even if Greeks did struggle with each others' dialects. What happened however since Classical times and increasingly since Hellenistic times was the proliferation of Attic Greek as the "official formatf" for written Greek which lead gradually to the division of language into a written format (Katharevousa) and an oral format Demotiki, which by late Hellenistic times and into the Roman Era was the one we call "Koini". Koini Greek was the merging of all Greek dialects with prominent influence of Attic (by means of writing) and Ionian and Macedonian (by means of speaking), but then its existence did not mean really that Greeks stopped speaking in dialects. The old dialects largely ceased to exist as they merged into Koini but in localities the Koini spoken would be influenced by ancestral dialect, mostly Dorian or Ionian. There were rare cases also of isolated communities, such as the Tsakonians in Peloponese, who passed straight from Dorian Greek into a linguistic evolution ending up in 19th century AD Tsakonian that was little influenced by Koini Greek and was largely a distinct language quite less-intelligible by other Greeks. However as Tsakonians were always ethnic Greeks, their speech was considered a Greek dialect and not another language. And then of course one cannot imagine that all those hellenised populations in central-eastern Minor Asia, in Syria, in Iran, in Afganistan, in NW India would had spoken the same type of Greek as in Greece. Sure Minor Asia, South Italy and even coastal Egypt were close enough to Greece to keep frequent communications and arrival of Greek people but those more distant places not reachable by ship easily, would had evolved into new dialects and even Greek-derived languages especially when it came to mixed people. It is just that we do not have a recorded to hear them and then from them only the educated ones would write and they did so in "standard written Greek" (i.e. mostly in the Attic style). So during early Medieval times, with the loss of Middle Eastern and North African possessions and the loss of ethnic Greek and local Greek-speaking people there being assimilated by the Arabs, and then again with the loss of northern Balkans to the incoming Slavs, those potential areas where Greek-derived languages had sprung were lost. If e.g. the Vikings had taken over all of France and Iberia and if Slavs had overstayed in Romania, then the only "Romance languages" would be Italian, Sicilian and Sardinian and they would be rather seen as dialects of Italian, itself the "Koini of Latin". So this is what happened to Greek. It was spoken by other people and then it was limited to being spoken by ethnic-Greeks only. Said this, still within Greeks Tsakonian, some strong Cypriot and Pontic Greek dialects can apply for being termed "Greek languages" even if the ethnic Greeks speaking them would not accept the idea of speaking "a foreign to Greek Greek-derived" language.
9:35 Ottoman empire as there is empire in its name was not a single nation country and there was a system of "millet" which means every different language and religion were free but they were controlled by their leaders most of the time their religious leaders who are under the sultan's rule and people were regarded as Muslim and non Muslim. Taxation was determined according to which group the taxpayers were classified so Greeks as one of the major non Muslim group of people had strategic roles in the empire and contrary to your video simplifies it they didn't need to hide or protect their language it was not an underground kind of thing to be Greek in ottoman empire
I guess this guy never heard about Alexander the Great 's conquests, or the Seleucid Empire?...There was an enormous Greek speaking Eurasian/North African zone thriving for many many centurie as a result of Alexander's conquests and the Administrations he set up before his death.. The non-European swath of this great Greek-speaking world was absorbed in a "reconquista" by Muslim cultural forces pushing from the East beginning in the 7th century and gradually changed that entire swath of the world map mainly into Arabic-dialect speaking areas and countries today.
The short answer is the Turks genocided the other groups. Frankly this feels so infuriating as a descendant of the pontic genocide, I hope u update this video or something.
The Macedonians created an empire. Even the city states established many colonies, but perhaps because they remained an urban and therefore foreign culture, perhaps the language didn't have staying power as vulgar Latin did, persisting (in many areas though not in Britain) and changing even through and after massive upheaval like the Germanic invasions. Likewise Punic/Phoenician died out once conquered, being merely an urban thalassocrassy, without much penetration into the countryside.
A more accurate and less factually wrong title for this video would have been: "Why today Greek is spoken by so few people?". Because Greek DID spread (over the whole Mediterranean basin and beyond) and DID evolve (in many different dialects). Its regression is only the result of the aggressive language policy of the conquerors of the East Roman Empire, which you covered in the last 30 seconds of the video. You make it seem like the Greeks just didn't bother & didn't care to spread and evolve lol
The video needed more research. Basically the Koine that was spread all over the eastern part of the Mediterranean Sea and as the Greeks founded kingdoms way up to India, its influence reached even there. The Macedonians were speaking a Doric ( Greek ) dialect and that is showed by all the archeological findings. And the Koine was obviously a Greek dialect. There is no doubt about it. When the Romans arrived the Greek language continued to be dominant in the East part. That was the reason that after the division of the Empire it became the official language after a couple of hundred years. The reason it vanished from the majority of the places it was spoken were the invasions of the Arabs the Slavic people and the Turks. Yet, after modern Greece was liberated many dialects survived - in and out of Greece.
It was worth mentioning that at least the Greek writing became very widespread. The Cyrillic alphabet, which, apart from a few additional letters, corresponds to the Greek alphabet, is used by many people. Russian, Ukrainian, Belarusian, Bulgarian, Serbian, Macedonian, Montenegrian, Church Slavonic as well as numerous other languages in Eastern Europe, Siberia, the North Caucasus and Central Asia are written with Cyrillic characters. Some Turkic languages such as Kazakh and Kyrgyz, Tajik, Mongolian, which is related to Persian, and Dungan, a Chinese dialect, are also written in Cyrillic. - Therefore I would say that at least the Greek writing system is very widespread.
There were "post-Greek" languages, but they all got annihilated in the meantime - Egypt, inner Anatolia, the Levant basically had their own diverging Greek dialects, but, unlike the undeveloped parts of Europe that Rome conquered and Latinized, all of these lands were already "set up" sans Anatolia, which was thoroughly Hellenized. Greek was considered like a sort of superfluous prestige language (kind of like Latin in medieval Europe). The Arabs took out the biggest chunk of these Greek languages, thanks to the fact that, unlike the invading barbarian peoples in Rome, they imposed their own culture and language. For the locals, it was basically just "oh well, another Imperial occupier language, and one that's easier for us to learn anyway" and Greek dropped off the face of the Earth quickly in those areas as a result. Things were a bit different in Anatolia though. It seems like the area was somewhat sparsely populated at the time, and far more conductive to a sort of semi-nomadic lifestyle the Greeks didn't practice - as a result, when the Turks invaded, they quickly outnumbered and replaced the population wholesale, apart from the coasts. Greek, however, did remain a major language in the coastal areas that were conductive to the Greek lifestyle all the way to WW1, when Turkey expelled the remaining Greeks from their lands. The Greeks in other parts of Europe got Latinized for the most part, except in the south of Italy, where some remain still.
Any Greek speakers in the house?
ΕΓΩΩΩΩ
οχι κανένας
yes, I am. Ευχαριστω για το βιντεο
Love your videos!💚
I'm studying Ancient Greek
This is partially wrong. There were many dialects of Greek that became separate enough from "standard" Greek that I would argue became their own language. Pontic Greek is the most notable example. The problem is that there were so many wars and expulsions from the area where these dialects existed that they no longer survived, as they either came to Greece where they assimilated into mainstream Greek or they were killed.
That's true, the decline of Mariupol Greek is probably the most recent example of this.
Azov Greek still survives though, although much endangered by expulsions after WWIi. And two Greek dialects in Italy which may not be dialects of modern Greek. Other Greek communities in Ukraine and Georgia speak (or spoke) a Turkic language written with a Greek alphabet.
He mentioned Tsakonian though.
Pontic still comes from koine.
Ancient Greek also had a noticeable influence on the Slavic languages.
There are villages in Southern Italy that still speak Greek, as they have for over a thousand years.
I don't think so. Calabrian Greek is a result of later migrations from Northern Epirus in the 16th-17th centuries CE. This is why the Greek aspect is entirely comprehensible for modern Greek speakers.
So not over a thousand, but more recently. Still very interesting. @@gnas1897
@@gnas1897 Not at all my friend, there are two distinct(once 3) varieties of Greek in Italy. Calabrian Greek(Greko) is much closer to Standard Greek and probably diverged from when the Byzantine empire lost control in Italy(there are features that show this), and it was in constant contact in the following centuries. That doesn't mean that people weren't living there from ancient times(there is evidence for continuous habitation. On the other hand Griko(Salento Greek) which is by far the most spoken variety in Italy(Calabrian is barely surviving) is quite different and not very mutually intelligible, even for speaker of Greek that speak multiple varieties, there is also a lot Doric influence, especially vocabulary wise. The third which is extinct (Sicilian) I don't have information.
@@ΝεκτάριοςΧριστοφήyeah Sicilian has a bunch of ancient Greek
@@ΝεκτάριοςΧριστοφήTrue, I'm from Grecìa Salentina (Griko), I only speak it a little, not very well as I am unfortunately not a native speaker, but still talking about it with my family when it happens.
A few times I happened to talk to Greeks.
However, it is quite possible to understand the Calabrians well, just as it is possible to understand the Greeks, but only with simple dialogues; if the dialogue includes terms typically used in some areas, or complex words it becomes more difficult.
The main problem, however, is with the Greeks of Greece, because in our griko there are also Latin influences, and it is often difficult for them to understand certain words.
But either way, it's doable.
Hellenic languages were widespread in the Eastern Mediterranean, Levant, & in Mesopotamia. It was just largely supplanted by Arabic & Turkish.
Hellenic is completly different from modern greek
@@supermavro6072what exactly do you mean with "completely different"?
I'm not a Greek native speaker and learned modern Greek as an adult and never studied Hellenic Greek. Yet if you show me a text in Hellenic Greek I'm able to understand roughly what it's talking about.
As someone who studied Latin at school and is also fluent in Italian, Hellenic Greek is closer to modern Greek that Latin is to Italian.
No
@@supermavro6072 My brother in Christ, the endonym for the Greek language is Elliniká - as in the language of the Hellenes.
Demotic Greek is just as much a Hellenic language as Mycenaean or Koine Greek. Saying that Greek isn't Hellenic is kinda like saying Deutsche isn't Germanic.
@@supermavro6072
Is it similar to turkalbanian?
Greek kinda did have a somewhat similar impact on the Slavic/Balkan languages that Latin had on the Gaulish languages. The difference is that latin speaking ppl colonized and Romanized Western Europe to a much greater degree. So there was no Slavic-Greek hybrid like there was with Gallo Romance
That's a good point and as a result a number of Slavic languages have alphabets derived from the Greek alphabet: such as the Cyrillic scripts.
Is it really fair to call gallo romance a hybrid? English is more French than Gallo Romance is frankish/gaulish
@@aviator2117 yeah maybe that wasn't the best word for it. I just mean there was never a version or dialect of Greek spoken by Slavic ppl that would be equivalent to Gallo-Romance
since slavs and magyars, as well as turks, came to the lands of the former Roman Empire during the Middle Ages I don't find weird that them not being either romanized or hellenized. The weird part is the Germans, Celts and Escandinavians being latinized after the fall of Rome although it was more of a Roman Church thing than a Roman Empire.
But yeah, greeks created the cyrilic and bulgarian alphabets, or evolved their own into them, influencing the region, but its spread was mostly caused by the influence of the Third Rome (Russia) on their Orthodox brethren and subsequent Soviet expansion.
We modern greek today are partially slavic
Koine Greek was pretty much the dominant lingua franca in the Eastern Mediterranean and Black Sea for centuries. I feel like the video underestimates this point a lot. Why there aren't so many diverse dialects/languages is due to the 19th and 20th century wars and conflicts, plus the horrendous population exchange between Turkey and Greece in 1923. The huge influx of refugees basically caused a dialect levelling.
Yep
It did and would have to the same extent as Latin did, but it was stopped by the rise of Islam. Most of Egypt and Syria was speaking Greek by the time the Arabs invaded. Had they never conquered the territories of eastern Rome, to this day those countries would probably speak languages that are offshoots of Greek, just like we have with Latin and in fact, the Arabic that we have today.
They would have spoken Egyptian and Syriac, although there would be many Greek influences. The only native language of the area that still is influenced by Greek today is Romani. Now large parts of the so-called Middle East could be something like southern Europe.
Very false. Only the overlords of Levant and Egypt spoke Greek natively, i.e. the Byzantines, and the local elites were also bilingual, as well as the military, highly educated or those involved in administrative affairs. But other than that small group of people, no one spoke Greek. Bilingualism was a trait for some, but still not so common.
What a classic case of Eurocentric thinking! 😂
Greek might have eventually been adopted by the masses in the Eastern Roman Empire - sometimes the language of the ruling class spreads downwards (e.g. Arabic). On the other hand, sometimes the ruling class adopts the language of the majority (e.g. the viking conquerors changed to French in Normandy and English in England). It's noticeable that the video did not mention that Greek was the lingua franca of much of the Near/Middle East until it was supplanted by Arabic. Perhaps this is because of the common unwillingness of the Western commentator to draw attention to the fact that Islam was spread by force.
@@markm6764 Yeah, that or ignorance. Much of Syria and Egypt was speaking Greek by the time of the Arab invasions. Had Islam not won, I suspect the east would see Ancient Greek as their version of latin.
@@markm6764 yeah the video completely skipped from ancient greece to modern day greece and like barely touched on Alexander the Great or the Byzantine(Roman) Empire
".. do not forget Greece, Alexander ..It was for her sake that you launched your whole expedition, to add Asia to Greece .."
Arrian [Anabasis of Alexander 4.11.7]
«.. τῆς Ἑλλάδος μεμνῆσθαί σε ἀξιῶ, ὦ Αλέξανδρε ἧς ἕνεκα ὁ πᾶς στόλος σοι ἐγένετο, προσθεῖναι τὴν Ἀσίαν τῇ Ἑλλάδι ..»
Ἀρριανός [Ἀλεξάνδρου Ἀνάβασις 4.11.7]
"People speaking the language we call Greek have lived continually in the Aegean region since at least 1600 BC, and possibly earlier. Greek is, moreover, one of the most conservative and enduring languages in history. Among those still spoken it has probably changed the least in the past three and a half thousand years, by any indicator. This is an astonishing feat of continuity and provides an obvious and fair point of national pride."
Anthony Kaldellis, Hellenism in Byzantium. The Transformations of Greek Identity and the Reception of the Classical Tradition, 2007, pp. 26
The whole mediterranian spoke Greek untel 6 century AD.
@@GeorgeRaptis-t3m That's not really accurate pal. Most of the educated elites in what is now modern Spain, or what is now modern north Italy did speak Greek (as a 2nd or 3rd language), but the vast majority of the iliterate populus in those areas (among many others) who were 95% of the overall population had no knowledge of Greek whatsoever.
There was a brief period of Greek speaking expansion and empire under Alexander the Great. However, he died very young with no heir and his generals carved up the burgeoning empire he built diluting the power Greek speaking rulers in his conquered lands had. Had Alexander lived long and passed rule onto his offspring, the Roman Empire might have had competition and there might have been more instances of Greek descended languages in the Alexandrian Empire.
The Greek language absolutely flourished in the post Alexander hellensitic kingdoms and them being disunited played a large part in that. Each of those kingdoms were all competing with each other to be the new center of greek culture and learning and that led to the founding of libraries across the near east that transmitted greek texts for hundreds of years such as the one at Antioch and Alexandria. It stayed the dominant language in the region WELL into the roman empire and even the romans themselves had a preference for being literate in greek over their own language. If Alexander didn't die when he did he would have most likely used Persian as the language of administration of his empire out of convenience
Alexander the Greek was Illyrian/Macedonian
Well he died young cuz of all the battle wounds. And the empire became very big very fast which creates an unstable empire and the iranians and Armenians would probably rebel with the help of the Indians.
@@supermavro6072 Alexander was greek. Cope and seethe slav.
Greek was spoken extensively among the competing Hellenistic Empires that existed after the breakup of Alexander's Empire. It tended to be a language of the ruling, learned and trading classes. Even though the Greeks ruled extensive areas, they still tended to settle into Greek speaking colonia and enclaves within the areas they ruled. Speaking Greek as a second language was a necessity for much of the native ruling and trading classes. When Muslims took over as the ruling and trading classes of many areas of the former Byzantine state, Arabic and later Turkish became the necessary prestige and trading languages. Greek held on in many scattered places well into the modern era. Arab and Turkish nationalism largely finished it off in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, except in Greece, the southern Ukraine, and a few other localities.
Other Hellenic languages still spoken today are Tsakonian, Pontic, Cappadocian, Griko, Yevanic and according to some debatably Cypriot.
All Turkish dialects
Is Yevanic Romaniote? Greekish Jewish?
@@saguntum-iberian-greekkons7014 Yes, with Koine as the point of divergence.
Wait do people still speak Cappadocian? My family had great grandparents that spoke Turkish and Cappadocian, but as far as I knew Cappadocian had died out
@@StaciaMeconiates yes they do, some varieties, because Cappadocian is not one variety at all, some are very different from each other, some are closer to Standard Greek
I don't know I haven't noticed this until now but Name Explains says "uh" at the end of every other noun, almost like a suffix
"The Greek language is one of only three, among those now spoken and written in the world, that can boast a continuous written tradition stretching back for more than three thousand years. The others are Chinese and Hebrew."
Roderick Beaton, "The Greeks: a global history", New York: Basic books 2021, Preface, pp. 13
Greece actually did to colonization. Where do you think the term Magna Graecia comes from? Magna Graecia was the term that Romans used to refer to Greek colonies that littered Southern Italy and Sicily. Marseilles and Elche, Spain were founded as Greek colonies.
They founded their own cities, but did not establish rule or spread via conquest.
@@fermintenava5911the Greeks conquered a ton. Especially that Alexander fellow
"Magna Gracia" is a Latin word translated to Big Thanks or gratitude , nothing to do with Greece
@@Tolstoy111 Alexander the Great was Macedonian/illyrians. not greeek
@@supermavro6072 He spread Hellenic culture though.
Splitting hairs for a second. I'd argue the term ''colonize'' IS the perfect word to describe Greek settlers : they moved, established and populated a colony. Maybe we don't really see them as colonists because of recency bias or modern sensibilities which injects a negative connotation to the word. Come to think of if, ''colonizer'' and the verb ''to colonize'' is getting real close to being a bad word.
Yeah the word colonize is separating from the meaning of the word settle at this point
The Greeks only colonized the balkan few century ago, ancient hellenes have nothing to do with modern greks
the woke ppl working hard to force us to think that word only had in one conclusion and noting else but the true said otherwise, that word can have both the good and bad conclusion.
without the british rule in malaysia my ancestor could be starving to death in China, there a reason that the big wave of chinese immigrant in malaysia during the british rule to search for a good life, without the british the malaysia would end up in hand of Siam Kingdom, Indo communist or Japanese Empire which is the worst brutal ruler for the malaysian ppl.
@@supermavro6072 Science really proves the opposite actually. www.google.com/search?q=Greeks+have+near+mytical+origin&oq=Greeks+have+near+mytical+origin+&gs_lcrp=EgZjaHJvbWUyBggAEEUYOdIBCTE1ODk1ajBqN6gCALACAA&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8
@@supermavro6072 Ah yes, I too like reproducing nazi ideologies (yes, this is literally a view nazis had, and it is dead wrong. From culture to language, ancient Greeks and modern Greeks are quite literally the same people)
You omitting the fact that educated Romans honoured Greek as the languages of older and superior cultures (I recall that in Roms legend Rome itself was founded by the offspring of exiled Trojans(Aeneas)), so Latin even adopted Greek words and letters.
What are you talking about ?
@@supermavro6072 e.g. the letters „Y“ and „Z“ were adopted rather late in the Latin alphabet to allow a correct pronunciation of Greek terms used in 1st century Latin.
The Aeneas bit is not taken as literal history by anyone in the academic community. It's generally taken as a founding myth with no supporting evidence for, and much evidence against.
That being said, there was extensive trading and large number of Greek coastal colonies throughout southern Italy in the two hundred years before Rome's early kingdom period in 753. The Latin peoples were extensively influenced by the Greek coastal trading colonies.
Greek was spoken extensively in southern Italy, especially those areas that were under the control of the Byzantine Empire well into the middle Medieval period. A few areas spoke local Greek dialects into the modern period.
@@cyberpotato63 just to clarify: my point is that the Aenas myth shows that even at a time when Greece was part of the Roman Empire, Romans wanted to establish a claim to belonging to the Greek world in a wider sense as well.
That's correct, the Father of Latin was considered Livius Andronicus by Romans. He was Greek.
My Grandparents lived in Calabria in southern Italy and spoke a local dialect called "greco-calabro". Today there may be a fee hundered people left who are able to speak it properly. As a layman, I could not find out if it is a variation of the modern greek language or if it evolved independent from a older form of greek.
according to the Wikipedia page about it it's a separate language and very different from greek greek
Griko started diverging from Greek after the Byzantines lost control of Italy so there would be similarities but it's too distinct to just be a dialect. It's almost always considered a language now too.
Wasn’t Greek spoken all across the eastern Roman empire including Palestine, hence why the New Testament being written in Greek? If it wasn’t for the Arab conquests, there probably would been Greek language off shoots spoken around the eastern Mediterranean.
Yeah this video left out a lot
The New Testament was written in Koine Greek.
There is not such a term (koine Greek), the right term is IONIAN GREEK.
@@GeorgeRaptis-t3m you are wrong the language that dominated the mediterenean after alexander was the attic ionian dialect attiki dialektos but this language is also refered as koine/κοινη dialektos that means shared/common language
@@GeorgeRaptis-t3m Street Greek. Are all the streets in Greece called Ionia?
@@AtarahDerek Ι dont understand turkish IQ, get more educated
@@kingtryfon5702 Attic is Ionian, why am I wrong?
"But the Greek language has a continuous recorded history in the geographical area of present-day Greece for over 3,000 years."
Roderick Beaton, "The Greeks: a global history", New York: Basic books 2021, pp. 26
All the Sciences speak GREEK. ALL.
"With the collapse of the empire in the west, its eastern counterpart became, in reality, an entirely new and independent state, at once Greek by language and Roman in name: 'A Greek Roman empire'."
Roderick Beaton, "The Greeks: a global history", New York: Basic books 2021, pp. 212
I think this video kinda misses the point. Greek did, in fact, spread outside of present-day Greece. Greek-speaking communities had established themselves in areas outside Greece as early as the Iron Age. Up until the early 20th century, there were numerous Hellenic-speaking communities outside of the Greek state, most notably in the Ottoman Empire. The earlier varieties of Greek did not just evolve into Modern Greek, but also to numerous other varieties, many of which are so distinct, that they could be considered languages in their own right. The most notable examples of this are Pontic, which was spoken across the eastern shores of the Black Sea, mainly in what's nowadays Northeastern Turkey, Cappadocian in Central Anatolia, and Italiot in Southern Italy (Griko and Calabrian). These dialects/languages developed in areas that were very isolated from the Greek mainland, and developed some distinct features, adopted lots of vocabulary from neighbouring languages, and also retained many archaic features that disappeared from Standard Modern Greek. However, after the Population Exchange with Turkey in the 1920s, all Anatolian Greek communities were deported or fled to Greece. They shared the same Greek national identity as the mainlanders, and so their varieties of speech were labeled as "dialects", rather than separate languages. Today, Pontic and Cappadocian are still very much distinct from Standard Greek, but in order to promote ideas of national unity, the Hellenic varieties of speech spoken across the map are considered not separate languages, but rather parts of a very broad Modern Greek dialect continuum. Same thing goes for Griko and Calabrian Greek, even though they didn't really share the same history and are still spoken in Italy. The geographical extent of Greek-speaking areas is not really thought about either, since Pontians and Cappadocian Greeks live in mainland Greece now, rather than their respective ancestral homelands. But yeah, this is not a case of a language being uniquely conservative and confined to a single geographical area, but rather one of ethnic cleansing, population movements and of national identity and politics playing a role in defining what is and isn't considered a language.
🙌🙌🙌🙌🙌
This, like I said in another comment I hate how this video basically skips from classical Greece straight to modern Greece with 0 mention of the Byzantine Empire and barely a footnote of Alexander's Empire. This video feels like it was written by someone who got their greek history knowlage from pop-culture and not someone who actually researched it.
I appreciate the video and your content. Greek was the second language of the Roman Empire, but was later centered in Constantinople as part of the Byzantine Empire. As you note, Greek was in widespread use throughout the Middle East and Anatolia. These Greek speakers were wiped out by the Arabic and Turkic invasions. They were, in a few words, murdered, converted, or otherwise suppressed. It is a miracle Greek survived at all. (And, of course, The Modern Sultan, would like to give it another try)
Thank God he has not succeeded, YET.
You are very true!
Tbh, when you live in an arid land with almost nothing on it, the only thing left to protect/fight for is your ego/yourself/your survival/your identity. It's why Greek philosophy is what it is and why our culture is still around, despite the ages and conquests
Greek language is the oldest continuously living language based on written attestations and is the foundation language for sciences maths physics medicine etc
Half planet has the Greek writing system - Latin Cyrillic were based on Greek alphabet
I would suggest the explanation that the Greek-Macedonian empires that came after Alexander governed more like Persians. Using bureaucracy and local governments to control regions, so places like Egypt had a Greek ruling class but the people never fully adopted it and it was business as usual. That combined with Rome and then the Ottomans being more recent and hands-on style cultural governments that replaced any Greek ruling classes before it could fully take root.
macedonians were greeks. no need to separate them since you are talking about greeks in general
The video has to be reworked because from the start there is a misconception about the Hellenic language varieties. Many Latin languages are quite mutually intelligible, and people can hold conversation between each other. There are varieties of Greek which are quite hard to understand for Greeks even between close varieties, especially if you speak only the Standard language. When you said Tsakonian can be considered a dialect in terms of mutual intellegibility is wrong. Tsakonian had a lot of contact with other varieties of Greek but it's low mutual intelligibility even in written language, even if there is much shared vocabulary the grammar will mess people up. You have to consider this and also the fact that Greek had a lot of common varieties and much contact in a smaller area, this made them not diverge that much but still some diverged a lot. Latin played a similar role that's why Romance languages are very close to each other even though it's a larger area and a mix of different languages in some cases.
Greek did expand and it did branch off. But its speakers were killed off, genocided, slaughtered, deported and this led to the extinction of most hellenic tongues and communities
According to the great Roman philosopher and politician Marcus Tullius Cicero: “If the Gods speak, they will surely use the language of the Greeks.” 🇬🇷
Another major way that Greek language has influenced the rest of European languages (and beyond) is in the fact that during the Renaissance and beyond, Greece was idolized as one of the earliest "bastions of civilization," so people learned it to read "the classics." This meant a lot of the polymaths of the time adapted Greek terminology for the sciences. Words like music, telephone, electro-encephalogram, and more.
Also, due to the Orthodox spread into the north, a lot of Greek NAMES lived on- Dmitri, Aleksandr, Nikolaus, Anastasia- many of these names have Anglicized equivalents too.
There were hellenic languages in anatolia until the turks killed or exiled all of the speakers.
There still are in some isolated villages in Pontus.
The Turks didn't kill or exile the Greek speakers of Anatolia. They rather intermingled and assimilated them, as you can see in the Turks' genetics. They share a 60% genetic similarity with the Greeks on average.
Let's not forget that greeks killed and assimilated all the native ANATOLIANS and let to their languages extinct
@@gwynbleidd_doethbleidd But it was assimilation by force through the Sharia Law.
@@islammehmeov2334 Dont judge others through your own works and deeds.
7:23 Wait why isn't The Maghreb included on the map of Rome here? Didn't they gain those lands before some of the more eastern ones shown?
I feel it's worth noting that Tsakonian is descended from the Doric dialects of Greece (Spoken most notably in Sparta, But in the Peloponnese and Western Greece as a whole), rather than the Attic and Ionic dialects which Koiné Greek, And thus Modern Greek, Descend from, so it diverged from modern standard Greek millennia ago, Hence the fact some people consider it a different language.
1) Despite of Rome Empire, Greek was used as a kind of lingua franca in the ancient world, every illustrated/educated person must learn and speak Greek besides Latin.
2) from Alexander the Great, Greek was spread as known language as far as the land hi conquered.
3) Greek was adopted as official language of Byzantine Empire, or the Roman Empire located in Constantinople
4) Greek was used as court language in Egypt under Ptolemais dynasty, which includes Cleopatra pharaoh.
Greek spread just as much as Latin did. It was the lingua franca of the entire eastern Mediterranean, in the Balkans, Anatolia, the Levant, Egypt, Southern Italy and beyond. It was just supplanted by Arabic in the Middle East and North Africa and later by Turkish in Anatolia, and the Greek speakers in these areas have nearly completely disappeared at this point due to various persecution’s/ expulsions. You can still find the last remnants of them in some very small communities left in Anatolia (mostly Pontus), Egypt, some other parts of the Middle East, and a few villages in Southern Italy. For most of its history, the majority of Greek speakers did not live in what we now call Greece
I note that some have remarked on the influence Greek had on the Slavonic languages, which I would support. I sometimes wonder if the idea of masculine and feminine versions of surnames was part of that influence as Western European languages, which had been in the Latin orbit, don't have that feature, in general.
It could be Slavonic. In Scandinavia (Germanic, but on territory never conquered by Rome and only influenced by Latin through scholarship and [a bit transiently] through the Roman Catholic Church, 2nd names were gender specific for a while (e.g. Magnusson vs. Magnusdottir), but (except in Iceland?) eventually lost the female form when they became family surnames carried through all generations rather than merely patronyms denoting one's immediate father. What little I understand of Greek comes from botany and has nothing to do with (family) naming, but it seems like naming conventions would be anchored in ancient culture (thus Slavic or Balto-Slavic) or religion (thus Greek in the eastern Slavic areas). Any Catholic-based Slavs (Poles, Czechs, Croats, and Slovaks...) care to weigh in on this?
@@Erewhon2024 Yes, I was aware of that Icelandic exception, which is why I qualified my comment with "in general". If I have decoded your closing remarks correctly you may be right that the fact that Greek and (most) Slavonic languages have masculine and feminine surnames is more coincidence than influence.
great illustrations of Greece!
The influence of Greek on the languages of western europe is way more than you can imagine, even in latin and english some of the vacabulary is latinized greek( greek written in the latin alphabet). Example word: did you know butter is actually a greek work?
Another thing is that most of the modern greek is based on the attic dialect( the dialect spoken in the region of Attica, where Athens is located).
Moreover, many greek colonies in the Mediterreanean were eventually wiped off by wars and nationalism even from the ancient time there were ancient greek colonies from Crimea to the straits of Gibraltar(Heraclean Gate).
A notable Greek Pytheas from Massalia( Marseille) even travelled to Britain in the 4th century BC. And he is actually the reason why Britain is still called Britain, since he wrote about the people of Britain identifying themselves as Pretani(Πρετανια) , that later was transformed as Britain in Roman times.
It did-uh, language-uh, another-uh, today-uh
Yeah, why did he speak like that?
@@rogerpenroset.blaine4233 Because he is in an American state where the vowel shift phenomena is UPPERCASE-STRONG, MR. @nameExplain probably doesn't consider it strange or out of the ordinary. Though to my semi-native ear his english is unsweetened-uh
1:00, was Portuguese too big for its own speech bubble?
"As members of the Greek race and speakers of the Greek language, the Macedonians shared the ability to initiate ideas and create political forms"
N G L Hammond (1992), 'The Miracle that was Macedonia', p 206
"We must also remember that Philip and Alexander were Greeks, descended from Heracles, they wished to be recognized by Greeks as benefactors of the Greeks, even as Heracles had been"
N G L Hammond (1989), 'Alexander the Great' p. 257
What do you mean "Greek didn't spread"? Greek was spoken from the Atlantic coast in the west to Bactria (Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan) in the east, and from Crimea in the north to Abu Simbel in Nubia (Sudan) in the south. So in fact Greek spread much farther than Latin.
Exactly, the Greek language did spread into other areas outside of Greece but was eventually displaced by other languages in most of those areas. I chalk this up to Alexander the Great dying so young without an heir and his generals who carved up his conquered territory not being the brilliant military leader that he was. The carving up of Alexander's lands diluted the power of Greek speaking leaders which led to the language being displaced as the primary language later.
Don't forget the colonies in Afghanistan
Is there a difference between Settler and Colonist and if so that could be a video.
"Rome didn't enforce their language on their conquests"... Naturally this line brings to mind the vandalism scene in Monty Python's Life of Brian.
Well, the original languages still survived, but it was more useful to use Latin.
“People called Romanes they go the house?”
It's true, e.g. Punic was still spoken in isolated villages up to the Muslim invasion of northern Africa, Celtic was spoken in central France and Basque in SW France (and had a greater area in Spain) until Middle Ages. People simply preferred to use Latin as it was prestigious and came with job oppottunities and so speaking it allowed social mobility
"Ancient Greece didn't really do the whole colonisation thing".
Really man? ... Ever heard of the "Greek Colonisation" or the Hellenistic Period?
It could be even argued that the language spread even farther than Latin ever did. At one point Greek was spoken from the coasts of Spain, all the way to the Indus river. And every educated Roman spoke Greek as a second, sometimes main language as well.
Also, the Macedonian empire did speak Greek. There is no question about that...
There is a debate among historians on how "Greek" the Macedonians themselves were, but the court language in Pella and the language of the Hellenistic Kingdoms was Greek. Where do you think Koiné ("the common") even came from?
Could you do a video on how the Turkic languages developed? It's a belt all over Asia from Turkey to the Uyghurs in China, but as you point out in this video, Anatolia used to speak Greek ...
Oh I see you did that already. Going to watch the other video now.
Greek spread but didn't break up like Latin. The reason is that Latin became dead, left a gap, then this gap was replaced but Latin-originated languages. On the contrary, Greek has never ceased to be written and spoken, so no gap left, hence no Greek-originated languages exist. Greek, while simplified in the course of its long history, is still a mother-language changing from within like you described in your video.
As for Macedonians, they spoke a form of Doric Greek.
Can anyone here explain why in the map at 9:30 there is a "Romania" label to the *south* of Bulgaria???
I don't know much about geography but I'm pretty sure modern day Romania is north of Bulgaria.
The byzantine greeks(eastern roman empire) called their land romania which means roman land it does not refer to modern day romania also constantinople was commonly refered to as rūm in arabic and persian meaning rome
Anatolian languages: "At least you're still alive"
Latin language borrowed a lot of Greek words, etc.
TODAY, you speak Greek without knowing it 🙂
Well- it did. Pontic, Cappadocian, Cypriot etc all exist. So do Tsakonian, Mani, and Cretan. But all of these have or are been destroyed by genocide and standardization (excl. Cypriot)
Actually, Greek did spread and evolve - how could we leave out the Hellenistic era (Hellenistic = Greek), when the Empire of Alexander the Great - and then notably the Seleucid (Levant region) and Ptolemaic (Egypt) Kingdoms led to the entire eastern half of the Mediterranean becoming predominantly Greek speaking, which continued even under the later Roman Empire, and then into the Byzantine Empire. They spoke Koine Greek, which was an evolution of Greek as it spread over this huge area (uneven terrain notwithstanding). This is why the Jews translated their Torah into the Septuagint (Greek Bible) and the early Christian texts were all in Greek, not Latin, and pretty much every writer during this approx 1,000 year period (including Greek-speaking Roman and Byzantine eras, going from roughly 325 BCE with Alexander's conquests to around 650 CE with Muslim conquests), whether from modern day Egypt, Syria, Turkey or Greece, wrote and spoke in Greek. The Hellenic world was the 'civilized world' of ancient empires, cities, monuments, knowledge, and wealth, and many looked to the newer, Latin western half of the Roman Empire as relatively undeveloped and uneducated, despite the Romans' military prowess.
So the short answer is that Greek did spread and evolve, in a very impressive way, and this lasted for quite a long time. We might have ended up with something similar to Latin's evolution but with Greek, over the entire eastern Mediterranean, lasting up to the present. However, the Muslim military conquests of the 7th century, as mentioned here, broadly led to the discontinuance of Greek usage in this area, in favor of Arabic. And then Arabic eventually evolved into various local dialects ('amiya) of today. The Eastern Orthodox Church being Greek-speaking is probably the best ongoing evidence of this time, along with the huge corpus of Greek texts from antiquity by eastern Mediterranean writers.
The short answer as why the Greek language's 'spread and evolution' was reversed so dramatically is Islam - not simply Arab conquest and invasion, or later Turkish invasion, because without their new religion, they might have adopted/adapted to the existing Hellenistic culture and Greek language, as happened in other instances of conquest throughout history. However, as Arabic was sacred to the new religion, being the language of the Quran, and Islamic culture was in many ways opposed, as a matter of religious virtue, to many elements of Hellenistic culture, so education radically shifted to focus on Arabic and new Muslim texts. We might consider other factors, but this would be the most obvious and important cause for the rapid elimination of Greek as it had spread and evolved for ~1,000 years over the region up to that point, mostly surviving in the old Christian communities (though many spoke other languages such as Syriac, Coptic, etc) and the Byzantine Empire, which suffered gradual losses, as mentioned in this video.
It is worth noting that people in the Eastern Mediterranean did continue to speak older languages during the Hellenistic era, such as Aramaic and Coptic, especially outside of urban and educated populations. Aramaic in particular was an earlier 'lingua franca' of the Persian Empire - which is why many Jews such as Jesus spoke Aramaic as everyday language, not Hebrew (or Greek). Shifting from Aramaic to Arabic would have also perhaps felt comfortable, as they are both Semitic languages.
The writings of Hellenistic-era intellectuals was preserved by some Muslim scholars, eventually transferred to European (Latin-speaking) scholars of the late Middle Ages, and led to the rediscovery of empirical science and may be seen as the roots of the Modern era. So one could certainly say that the spread and evolution of the Greek language played a role in the early development of science. In order to understand this story, it's important to know that Greek was not just the language of mountainous 'geographic Greece' and isolated city-states - it had evolved into the lingua franca of the entire eastern Mediterranean, a huge portion of the most civilized and educated part of the world - channelling a vast amount of intellectual energy relative the limited education of the time.
There is much of this video that could be revised. For example, the mountainous terrain of Greece has some relevance for the early story of Greek dialects, but is not really relevant after Alexander the Great and the start of the Hellenistic era. We wouldn't want to say that "Greek speakers never really left Greece, and not many non-Greek speakers really came into Greece". And it's difficult to understand the Byzantine Empire and the true significance of the Muslim invasion and their focus upon Arabic without the prior story of 1,000 years of the Greek language's 'spread and evolution'.
Greek has an amazing history - please tag or 'like' this comment, or make other revisions or other comments so we get the history right
2:40 I think its simple:
Rome was a major, central power with one emperor for a very long time.
Greece was for a short time united, with king Alexander.
After this time, the Diadochi wars concluded into separate kingdoms, the seleucids, the Ptolemys and later the Antigonide Macedonia.
->separate entities with various language developments.
Greek city states did colonization it's not a bad word to say.
Also there was Grico dialect in Magna Grecia, pontic Greek in Pontus, Koptic Greek in Egypt and ethiopia, and koine Greek in GrecoBactrian in afganistan, also Hellinistic koine Greek in Damascus.
So all in all there was a widespread of Greek language, better search next time.
I appreciate the Greece drawings
Pretty sure it did, and then they died.
Greek did kind of spread....all over the Mediterranean and middle east .it was after all the lingua Franca of those regions for centuries culminating in the Byzantine era .it was the Turkish ottoman rule that thwarted it's expansion, however the ottoman empire could never. Extinguish our language which unlike the Latin languages, modern Greek is directly related to Ancient Greek and is one of the largest longest surviving languages on earth.
Don't apologise for "colonisation". That's actually the original, correct usage. Geopolitical analyst Serge Trifkovic says the Empire got it backwards-- Dominions were colonies and Colonies dominions.
Happy birthday 🎁🎂🎉🎊🎈
through all these years. I am happy that Greek is still alive and valued by its respective people.
🇬🇷
Slava Greece!
The assertion that Greek language was initially banned during Ottoman occupation and survived thanks to 'secret schools' is hardly based on any evidence. In contrast, Ottoman empire at least during its early stages is considered among the most tolerant European states.
I don't know, dude; I feel like this video is a rare miss from this channel. People who spoke Greek absolutely did colonize other areas, even they didn't have a single nation-state based identity. It absolutely spread pretty damn far--almost to the Indian subcontinent!--even if it didn't stick around into modern times. And it absolutely did evolve, even if it didn't survive in these areas.
The difference is that ancient Greek colonies which were city-states where independent from their city of origin.
@@nikolaospaganopoulos8103 Pretty sure Alexandria on the Indus wasn't an independent city state. In fact, pretty sure the kingdoms of the Diadochi were as centralised as they came back in the third century BC...
Yeah I agree this was a miss by a longshot, this video skipped from ancient Greece straight to modern Greece. It barely mentioned Alexander and the Hellenistic age, and didn't mention the byzantine(roman) empire at all. It also completely leaves out stuff like Pontic Greek and Cappadocian Greek.
I'm sorry but this video feels like it has the Greek history knowlage of a toga party
You ever heard about magna Grecia Pontos
" A question which occurs frequently to classical students and others concerns the relation between ancient and modern Greek. It is the purpose of the present article to indicate in as brief a fashion as possible the lines on which the question might be approached. Perhaps the most amazing thing about Greek is that in the period over which our written records extend-in over three millennia, since the decipherment of Linear B-it has changed so little. Whereas a student of Latin would be ill-equipped to read a modern Italian newspaper, a person with a good working knowledge of classical Greek would not only find an Athenian newspaper intelligible for the most part, but would be amazed at the remarkable likenesses between the ancient and the modern languages. For the vocabulary of a Greek newspaper is probably 99 per cent. of classical origin and modern Greek has retained much of the cumbersome grammar of the ancient language-and ancient Greek has got a cumbersome grammar, when we consider that its verb has over four hundred forms as compared to sixty or so in French and two in Afrikaans. Thus the declension of Ti7,os is precisely the same now (except for the absence of the dual, which was obsolescent in Xenophon's day, and of the dative) as it was in the fifth century B.C. The conjugation of the present of Ivo is identical with that of the classical verb, although the third plural ending -oval occurs mostly dialectically, e.g. in Cypriot, and has been largely replaced by -ow. The main reason for the extreme conservatism of Greek and the almost complete absence of that attrition of inflexional endings which has occurred in most Indo-European languages would seem to be the influence which the learned class has had on the language throughout its history-indeed one might almost say the existence of a learned class. For while western Europe was plunged in the Dark Ages, in Constanti-nople there was a vigorous intellectual life centred in the University, which flourished on and off from its foundation in the fourth century A.D. to the fall of the city to the Turks in 1453. The education of Greeks throughout this thousand years was based almost entirely on the study of the great classical writers, and students were taught to model their own writing on the famous stylists of the fifth and fourth centuries B.c., especially Demosthenes, Plato, and Thucydides (which of course accounts for the survival of their works). It is this learned Greek, consciously
Ancient and Modern Greek
B. E. Newton
Greece & Rome
Vol. 7, No. 2 (Oct., 1960), pp. 124-127 (4 pages)
Published By: Cambridge University Press
We Greeks are a small nation who miraculously persevered through the ages, thanks to our history and language. The future of our nation looks grim though for the long run. Its unlikely that we will survive in the long future, yet our legacy, like that of Rome will live forever in the human race… Small comfort, but a comfort nevertheless …
Greek language and alphabet are in great percentage influenced by Arab , Jewish and Egyptian words and signs .
Why do we see this explanation everywhere !
Because in Europe they already had more simple signs in use and we can estimate Greek as greatly influenced IndoEuropean by other languages beside
Hindu/Gupta ones from Eastern route .
Take for example the word "anestis" which is of Jewish origin , or actually "anemo" is Jewish but
Greek is only "stis "!
Roman autorities were democratic and let the Slavi people to be enlightened easily by simple alphabet ( freed of those influences ) , like Latin , simple European is .
So nobody liked to use Greek language or alphabet ( alphavita ) anymore !
Taking this in consideration we can notice that Greeks are outdated ! Didn't accept simplification even today !
All World is keeping wrong history that Greece have given alphabet to Europeans !
@@voskreglavincevska7080 This is so stupid and moronic that I will never bother to answer ... You are a moron.
Did you know the Ancient Greeks wrote in ALL CAPS? Those elegant minuscules (lower case) we associate with maths and science and such weren't developed until some time in the Christian era.
Modern Greek and Late Latin (Proto-Romance) followed a similar anterior evolution until Latin spread in a wider area, deepening each varieties specificities which spread themselves.
Actually the term colonisation and the term colony makes sense. The later term of colonies being regions appears to be a change in terminology.
Regarding Ancient Greek, we should be realistic, most likely there weren't dialects that were spoken in different city-states or poleis. Most likely there were different languages. Different colonies had different "mother cities" or metropolises and that meant they spoke different languages. They also learned the languages of the locals. Also, because of its naval trade, Attic Greek pretty much became the language spoke in Greece when it came to inter-city or inter-polis communications although there probably cases when one city communicated with another in their own language. Because of the division and the rivalry between different regions and poleis (city-states) there was no push for conquest and there wouldn't be that much of single Greek language (the colonies spoke the Greek of their originating city or mother city) being pushed everywhere.
I'm part Greek from Crimea / North Black Sea / Azov Sea region.
Greeks came here in 6 century B.C., established a bunch of colonies, and throughout centuries Greek language became dominant over the languages of local peoples Tauri and Meoti.
In the 12th century, my region was conquered by the Mongol Empire and the Crimean Tatar language became dominant, Greek population split into two groups: romei (those who remained speaking Greek) and urum (those who started using Crimean Tatar language ).
In the 18th century my region was conquered by Russian Empire, all Christian Greek population was displaced to remote sparsely populated areas around Azov Sea, preparing for genocide of the Muslim majority population.
Nowadays, we Crimean / Azov Greeks almost don't speak Greek, only Russian, despite having Greek last names.
Actually as recently as the early 20th century there were a number of Greek dialects or languages spoken outside of Greece Proper, Particularly in Anatolia, But then hundreds of thousands of them were killed in a genocide, and over a million were later deported to Greece as part of a "Population Exchange" between Greece and Turkey, where the speakers of these then assimilating into the general Greek culture and losing much of the uniqueness of their language (Apparently some of these dialects still survive actually, But they're all considered endangered.).
While not widely spoken, There are also actually still dialects of Greek natively spoken in Ukraine and in Southern Italy.
1:20 "The culture and forts of ancient Greece..."?!
I love that Patrick releases a video to answer my questions just in time! I had recently wondered why Latin changed so much but not much for Greek and if modern greek speaker understand ancient greek!
His answer is partly incorrect though. Ask any native Greek and they’ll tell you there are many other versions of the language out there that aren’t just dialects.
@@sofiekaterina Yeah I know, I should have be more clearer that he didn't answer that last thought I had as it was only one of the topics I just had in my head. I had already searched it up previously and got various results of modern native Greek speakers saying they only understand a few things and that there was many variations that could be considered their own languages.
His answer is extremely incorrect. He says Greek never expanded out of Greece and that this was due to Greece never unifying. He kinda forgot all about the Macedonian Kingdom, the Hellenistic period and the Eastern Roman empire, which were all culturally Greek. Greek expanded all over the Eastern Mediterranean. But it shrank because of Arab and Turkish expansion.
I wonder if you could do other ancient lingua franca, like sanskrit
What is more interesting is how greek evolved from ancient to medieval to modern without "changing" as a different language( propably due to the fact that core of the eastern roman empire , Greece and Asia minor ,were ethnic homogeneous greeks so its people didnt have to adapt to change it the way spanish and romanians for example evolved latin to their maternal langusge ). Latin is obviously connected to modern Italian but these two remain different. However ancient greek and modern greek are way closer making it seem like its just a different dialect
As far as I know, Classical Greek is just as incomprehensible for modern Greeks as Classical Latin for a Spanish speaker.
Edit: assuming they didn't study some form of Ancient Greek, which is taught in all Greek schools.
that's a false myth. Classical Latin and Modern Italian are more or less close enough as Koine Greek and Modern Greek
@@a2falconenah , ancient greek is closer to modern Greek than italian to latin
@@a2falcone Actually no, ancient Greek isn't incomprehensible to us. Both ancient and modern Greek are taught in Greek schools but I assume you don't know what these lessons include if you believe that what we can understand of ancient Greek we can understand it because of these lessons and not because we are native Greek speakers. In general, ancient Greek is taught in Greek schools the same way that modern Greek is taught. Not as a foreign language.
@@didonegiuliano3547Koine Greek is really easy for native Greek speakers. I don't think that that's the case for Italians and classical Latin.
The Macedonian conquests did make a large influence on the lands it conquered, but it "overlaps" with the territory of the Byzantine Empire, so you may not notice it.
It's influence in the region, however, is not to be understated, as while there were languages spoken there (Semitic, btw), they all had HEAVY borrowing from Greek...
A (partial) list of Hebrew words originating from Greek are:
afyán (anchovi), arnáq (wallet), amilán (starch), astrológ (astrologer), bulmús (binge-eating), basís (base), bardelás (cheetah), dayál (steward), dfus (print), dolfín (dolphin), dalpéq, (counter, front desk), géves (plaster, gypsum), glusqamá (ossuary), ilpás (frying pan), itstrubál (pinecone), itstadyón (stadium), izmél (scalpel), kartís (ticket), karísh (shark), karpás (celery), lavqán (albino), lochsán (diagonal), navát (navigator), nartíq (sheath), otó (same), pundáq (inn), pizmón (song), pinqás (notebook), qvarnít (captain), qalmár (pencil case), qubiyá (dice), sanegór (advocate), sandál (sandal), tigún (frying), tiq (bag), teatrón (theater), traqlín (lounge), tavás (peacock), túna (tuna), uchlusín (population), zug (couple)...
2:39 influential…? Baby those are COLONIZERS. Let’s call a thing a thing
Tsakonian is no more a dialect of Greek than English is a dialect of German.
I am very curious about whether & how Greek, or whatever language Alexander brought with him, spread during that empire.
It really didn't or, to be more accurate, the Greek didn't get adopted by the locals. The diadochi of Alexander were more than willing to let the local lords run the old Persian bureaucracy which mean that, unless you were a high ranking nobleman, you really didn't need to lean Greek and it was business as usual. That doesn't mean that Greek didn't spread to those regions, it's just that it went with the Greeks that settled them. Alexandria of Egypt was heavily Greek influenced, at the old Kandahar castle has Greek inscriptions and certain edicts of Ashoka were translated in Greek while some coins were minted in ancient India with Greek on them. I suppose that what I want to say is that the Greek language always came and went with the Greeks.
This is 1 of the craziest qustions ever asked... every1 spoke Greek and all laungues in europe come from it
There are various dialects/varieties of Greekk on the shores of the Black Sea.
Literate and illiterate people alike spoke Greek in the eastern Roman Empire, especially after the official division of the empire. It had functioned as a trade language and sometimes administrative language before the split; but afterward, Greek was the official language of state from Constantinople until conquered by the Turks. Greek-speaking enclaves persist til today in Italy and parts of the Middle East, and didn't lose its lingua franca status in the greater region until the Muslim conquests that spread Arabic, which in turn influenced closely related Semitic languages. In the west, goths tended to assimilate linguistically, effecting regional dialects of Latin, but not supplanting it. The eastern empire fell to other empires, while splintering characterized the demise of the west. A few hundred years of history passed between the fall of the two halves, as well. The west only had one language of education and the Roman Catholic Church. The east had three languages of the educated elite amid a sea of many different families of languages interspersed. Another difference is that Romance languages were collectively known as Vulgar Latin for a millennium after the collapse of the Western Roman Empire, only then did the governments and literati claim national languages while clergy and academia pursued conformity with late empire Latin. The "Make Latin Great Again!" movement of the late medieval period.
Greeks also had colonies in the Black Sea and across the middle east. Phrygian was said to be 50% Greek but was eventually absorbed into eastern Rome. So it's very likely there were other hybrids then. Today there is modern Greek, Tsakonian, Pontic, and Cypriot. Greek and the orthodox church were forced to become Italian speaking Catholics post middle ages. Also, modern Greek has a gigantic amount of loanwords including Roman ones
Off course greek spread, reach8ng anatolia, southern Italy, Georgia (Colquida) and Iberic Peninsula, becaming the biggest lingua franca of the ancient world, and it evolved as well, from mycaenean to classic, from classic to koiné, from koiné to modern greek. The Title is wrong.
It did though. I mean there was Phrygian. Today we have Tsakonika, Griko, Pontic Greek(if you consider the latter a separate languages) and multiple dialects, most notable Cypriot Greek, along with Cretan and other dialects.
It's also worth mentioning that scholars have noted the resemblance between Ancient Greek and Sanskrit.
Both are Indo-European.
But Greek *did* spread. It was the language of the Byzantine empire. It was used for legal and administrative purposes in Egypt and in Arabia. "Current estimates place the number of Greek loanwords in Coptic at around 5000 lemmata." What stopped it was the brutally bloody and never-ending Muslim conquests. (Egyptian agriculture didn't recover to Byzantine productivity levels until the 19th century under British rule.) Greek continued to hang on here and there in the Byzantine lands until the forcible exchange of populations between Greece and Turkey. To this day there are parts of Italy where the local language is a dialect of Greek. Even in Arabic, "Kaaba" is probably a Greek loanword, "kubos" = cube. It's estimated that an 80,000 word English dictionary will be about 5% Greek in origin
Latin had the great advantage of expanding into an area of pre-literate cultures (Hispania, Gaul, Britannia, &c); Greek had the great disadvantage of the Muslim conquests.
so when muslims protect their land its brutally bloody conquesting but when byzantine empire occupies and destroys all of arab and mediterranean culture its something to be proud of right?
Interesting topic. How many languages have survived colonisation by being taught in secret?
It is due to the conquering of the East Roman empire or Byzantine empire whose peoples spoke Greek and Greek replaced Latin as the official language in the 6th century AD by the Ottoman Turks in 1453. That occupation dealt a devastating blow to Greek civilization.
Hellenic languages were not only spoken in present day greece, but also in great parts of asia minor, all Illyria and wall way up to present day Switzerland. this has been proven by the coins found in cities and the names of ancient cities. in fact Attica was only one of the dialects.
Greek did spread and did evolve but it also contracted back to its ethnic Greek area after Arabic and Slavic raids in the Eastern Roman Empire. In fact Greek had done it repeatedly in the past, even prior to Alexander the Great :
1) In the Bronze Age, much prior to the Trojan War, certain Greek tribes known as the "Bryges" stemming from Macedonia-Thrace(south) invaded and installed in northwestern and central Minor Asia mixing with the locals and producing the Bithynians, the Pamphlagonians and the better known Phrygians. The ensuing languages Bithynian, Pamplagonian and the slightly better known Phrygian were languages derived from Bronze Age Greek but with lots of influence from the pre-existing languages of the locals. Hence, while a language like Phrygian, as it evolved into Classical time a 1000 years later would not be considered Greek, it would still belong to the Greek family of languages. Some idiots make the distinction of Greek and Hellenic but this of course wrong since Greek=Hellenic. "Hellenistic" is rather the term that should apply for "Greek-derived". So Phrygian, Bithynian, Pamphlagonian were Greek-related languages that had evolved out of some Bronze Age Greek dialect from Macedonia spoken at the time.
2) What is described in point 1 could very much be the case for at least a lot of northern Thraecian tribes such as the Oddrysians. For western and southern Thraecian tribes such as the Paeonians, the Edonians, the Bisaltians, the Odomantes etc. we know for sure they were ethnic Greeks and Greek speakers, this is proven even archaeologically (not to mention that for Paeonians we have references of participating in the Olympics, which is an absolute proof). But for Oddrysians and Bessians which were northern Thraecian tribes and which seemed different we just don't have a clue. All we know is that every single time they decided to write something - and they wrote quite a lot - they did in a kind of standard Greek (i.e. Attic based), since by late 5th century Attic Greek was trying to impose itself as the "standard way" of writing Greek. However that insistence could as well reveal the fact that Oddrysians and Bessians whether Greek-related or not may as well has been speaking a Greek-related or a Greek-derived language stemming back to the Bronze Age (as they were speaking it prior to falling to Philip II of Macedonia, i.e. without any Greeks having conquered them yet).
3) Then you had Classical era cases such as the Pamphylians, who were a mix of Dorian settles with locals in south Minor Asia. Their Doric Greek mixing with neighboring Lycian and Pisidian languages produced a unique Greek dialect that could be seen as a Greek-derived language. At any rate, while Greeks still considered Pamphylians as Greeks, the Olympic Judges had esteemed they were "not Greek enough" for Olympic Games were the "Greek blood" law was hyper strict - to be noted, for all you Slavs out there, the Olympic Judges allowed Macedonians even back when they were a poor backwaters kingdom on the brink of collapse.
4) Then we have Classical Greeks who following the Bronze Age collapse they had become extremely tribal. And so did their speech. Back in Bronze Age we have no signs of Greeks speaking "Dorian and Ionian and Aeolian and Arcadian" but rather they spoke other forms of Greek, in dialects sure but not necessarily the ones that evolved out of the isolation of Greek mini-states following the Bronze Age collapse. Hence, one could even want to see Greek dialects such as the Aeolian and the Arcadian as "distinct languages". Especially Aeolian was quite different even in grammar, not just pronunciation with all verbs. Athenians mocked Macedonians for their provincial Dorian dialect, but Macedonians mocked back Athenians for their weird uncanny way of speaking Greek which was distinct to that of all other Greeks. However the overall distance of Greek dialects was immaterial as they were all recognized as ethnic Greeks, hence there was no talk of "separate languages" even if Greeks did struggle with each others' dialects.
What happened however since Classical times and increasingly since Hellenistic times was the proliferation of Attic Greek as the "official formatf" for written Greek which lead gradually to the division of language into a written format (Katharevousa) and an oral format Demotiki, which by late Hellenistic times and into the Roman Era was the one we call "Koini". Koini Greek was the merging of all Greek dialects with prominent influence of Attic (by means of writing) and Ionian and Macedonian (by means of speaking), but then its existence did not mean really that Greeks stopped speaking in dialects. The old dialects largely ceased to exist as they merged into Koini but in localities the Koini spoken would be influenced by ancestral dialect, mostly Dorian or Ionian. There were rare cases also of isolated communities, such as the Tsakonians in Peloponese, who passed straight from Dorian Greek into a linguistic evolution ending up in 19th century AD Tsakonian that was little influenced by Koini Greek and was largely a distinct language quite less-intelligible by other Greeks. However as Tsakonians were always ethnic Greeks, their speech was considered a Greek dialect and not another language.
And then of course one cannot imagine that all those hellenised populations in central-eastern Minor Asia, in Syria, in Iran, in Afganistan, in NW India would had spoken the same type of Greek as in Greece. Sure Minor Asia, South Italy and even coastal Egypt were close enough to Greece to keep frequent communications and arrival of Greek people but those more distant places not reachable by ship easily, would had evolved into new dialects and even Greek-derived languages especially when it came to mixed people. It is just that we do not have a recorded to hear them and then from them only the educated ones would write and they did so in "standard written Greek" (i.e. mostly in the Attic style).
So during early Medieval times, with the loss of Middle Eastern and North African possessions and the loss of ethnic Greek and local Greek-speaking people there being assimilated by the Arabs, and then again with the loss of northern Balkans to the incoming Slavs, those potential areas where Greek-derived languages had sprung were lost. If e.g. the Vikings had taken over all of France and Iberia and if Slavs had overstayed in Romania, then the only "Romance languages" would be Italian, Sicilian and Sardinian and they would be rather seen as dialects of Italian, itself the "Koini of Latin".
So this is what happened to Greek. It was spoken by other people and then it was limited to being spoken by ethnic-Greeks only. Said this, still within Greeks Tsakonian, some strong Cypriot and Pontic Greek dialects can apply for being termed "Greek languages" even if the ethnic Greeks speaking them would not accept the idea of speaking "a foreign to Greek Greek-derived" language.
9:35 Ottoman empire as there is empire in its name was not a single nation country and there was a system of "millet" which means every different language and religion were free but they were controlled by their leaders most of the time their religious leaders who are under the sultan's rule and people were regarded as Muslim and non Muslim. Taxation was determined according to which group the taxpayers were classified so Greeks as one of the major non Muslim group of people had strategic roles in the empire and contrary to your video simplifies it they didn't need to hide or protect their language it was not an underground kind of thing to be Greek in ottoman empire
I guess this guy never heard about Alexander the Great 's conquests, or the Seleucid Empire?...There was an enormous Greek speaking Eurasian/North African zone thriving for many many centurie as a result of Alexander's conquests and the Administrations he set up before his death.. The non-European swath of this great Greek-speaking world was absorbed in a "reconquista" by Muslim cultural forces pushing from the East beginning in the 7th century and gradually changed that entire swath of the world map mainly into Arabic-dialect speaking areas and countries today.
The short answer is the Turks genocided the other groups. Frankly this feels so infuriating as a descendant of the pontic genocide, I hope u update this video or something.
Yeah I agree this video feels like it was written by someone who got their knowledge of Greek history from 300 and toga parties
I once heard that the largest Greek-speaking population outside Greece is in Melbourne, Australia.
There still are Greek dialects today. There’s one in Italy
The Macedonians created an empire. Even the city states established many colonies, but perhaps because they remained an urban and therefore foreign culture, perhaps the language didn't have staying power as vulgar Latin did, persisting (in many areas though not in Britain) and changing even through and after massive upheaval like the Germanic invasions. Likewise Punic/Phoenician died out once conquered, being merely an urban thalassocrassy, without much penetration into the countryside.
A more accurate and less factually wrong title for this video would have been: "Why today Greek is spoken by so few people?". Because Greek DID spread (over the whole Mediterranean basin and beyond) and DID evolve (in many different dialects). Its regression is only the result of the aggressive language policy of the conquerors of the East Roman Empire, which you covered in the last 30 seconds of the video. You make it seem like the Greeks just didn't bother & didn't care to spread and evolve lol
The video needed more research. Basically the Koine that was spread all over the eastern part of the Mediterranean Sea and as the Greeks founded kingdoms way up to India, its influence reached even there.
The Macedonians were speaking a Doric ( Greek ) dialect and that is showed by all the archeological findings. And the Koine was obviously a Greek dialect. There is no doubt about it.
When the Romans arrived the Greek language continued to be dominant in the East part. That was the reason that after the division of the Empire it became the official language after a couple of hundred years.
The reason it vanished from the majority of the places it was spoken were the invasions of the Arabs the Slavic people and the Turks.
Yet, after modern Greece was liberated many dialects survived - in and out of Greece.
I love my own comment section ❤😊❤😊
😊😊
@@mingfanzhang4600❤😊❤😊❤😊❤😊❤😊❤😊❤😊❤😊
It was worth mentioning that at least the Greek writing became very widespread. The Cyrillic alphabet, which, apart from a few additional letters, corresponds to the Greek alphabet, is used by many people. Russian, Ukrainian, Belarusian, Bulgarian, Serbian, Macedonian, Montenegrian, Church Slavonic as well as numerous other languages in Eastern Europe, Siberia, the North Caucasus and Central Asia are written with Cyrillic characters. Some Turkic languages such as Kazakh and Kyrgyz, Tajik, Mongolian, which is related to Persian, and Dungan, a Chinese dialect, are also written in Cyrillic. - Therefore I would say that at least the Greek writing system is very widespread.
There were "post-Greek" languages, but they all got annihilated in the meantime - Egypt, inner Anatolia, the Levant basically had their own diverging Greek dialects, but, unlike the undeveloped parts of Europe that Rome conquered and Latinized, all of these lands were already "set up" sans Anatolia, which was thoroughly Hellenized. Greek was considered like a sort of superfluous prestige language (kind of like Latin in medieval Europe).
The Arabs took out the biggest chunk of these Greek languages, thanks to the fact that, unlike the invading barbarian peoples in Rome, they imposed their own culture and language. For the locals, it was basically just "oh well, another Imperial occupier language, and one that's easier for us to learn anyway" and Greek dropped off the face of the Earth quickly in those areas as a result.
Things were a bit different in Anatolia though. It seems like the area was somewhat sparsely populated at the time, and far more conductive to a sort of semi-nomadic lifestyle the Greeks didn't practice - as a result, when the Turks invaded, they quickly outnumbered and replaced the population wholesale, apart from the coasts. Greek, however, did remain a major language in the coastal areas that were conductive to the Greek lifestyle all the way to WW1, when Turkey expelled the remaining Greeks from their lands.
The Greeks in other parts of Europe got Latinized for the most part, except in the south of Italy, where some remain still.