Read and Speak Greek CDROM

GREEK LANGUAGE EVOLUTION and AUTHOR DATA

GREEK LANGUAGE EVOLUTION
A brief history of the evolution of the Greek language is provided below.
1. Greek Alphabet was developed around 725 BCE.   As a historical reference, Homer lived around 850 BCE.
2. Ionic Dialect (1100 BCE - 650 BCE)
... Used by Homer, Herodotus, Heraclitus and others.
... Spoken around the Cyclades islands, Samos and Icaria islands, and Asia Minor with center the cities of Ephesus and Miletus.
3. Doric Dialect (900 BCE - 900 AD)
... Used by Archimedes.
... Spoken by the Spartans and people in Peloponnesus and Sicily.
4. Attic Dialect (700 BCE - 300 BCE)
... Used by Plato, Thucydides, Euripides, Aristophanes, Demosthenes, Aristotle, Isocrates, and others.
... Pronunciation had long and short sounds and breathings that produced a harmonic speech pattern.
... Writing was all capital letters without punctuation marks.
... Spoken in the Attic peninsula by Athenians and others.
5. Koine or Alexandrian or Biblical Greek Dialect (300 BCE - 700 AD)
... After the conquests of Alexander the Great, the Greek language became the international language of the period 300 B.C-300A.D. This language version was based primarily on the Attic dialect and unified all the other dialects. It is called Koine, which in Greek means common, to show that it is the language spoken by all people.
... Transition from Classical Greek to Koine started around 400 BCE.
... Koine is used in important religious works such as the Bible as well as important works and by Plutarch and others.
... Koine changed the pronunciation by flattening the long and short sounds and breathings.
... Koine changed the writing by adding the accents, breathings, e.t.c.
... Koine and Attic have almost identical grammar.  Koine is simpler because it does not use the dual number.
... Innovations enabled the publication of many books during the Koine period.  Almost all surviving Classical Greek texts are written with the Koine character set.
6. Modern Greek Language (200 BCE - today)
... It is based on Koine and has evolved into the language spoken today in Greece.
... The Modern Greek pronunciation is the pronunciation of Koine and is used in many places where Koine, or Classical Greek, text is pronounced. For example, all religious services pronounce Greek text with the Modern Greek pronunciation. Classical Greek is pronounced using either the Modern Greek pronunciation or the Erasmian pronunciation. In particular, schools in the United States use the Erasmian pronunciation.
... The Modern Greek character set is identical to the Koine except that it does not have the breathings, grave accent, circumflex accent, long and short marks and the iota suscript.  Only the acute accent is used in the Modern Greek character set.

AUTHORS
• George N Balanis

George N. Balanis obtained his elementary and high school education at Athens College in Greece. An engineer and computer scientist, he obtained degrees from two California universities. The Ph.D. degree was obtained in Electrical Engineering (thesis on Inverse Scattering Theory) and Applied Mathematics from the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena. The MBA degree was obtained in General Management from the University of California at Los Angeles.
• Toula Balanis

Toula Balanis obtained her elementary and high school education at public schools in Greece at the island of Ikaria and the city of Athens. Her AA degree was obtained from the Pasadena City College in Pasadena, California. She has taught Greek for many years at several language schools in the Los Angeles area.
• Argyris Tsakalias

Argyris Tsakalias obtained his elementary and high school education at public schools in Greece at the islands of Ikaria and Patmos. His MA degree was obtained from the theological school of Chalki in Istanbul, Turkey. He has taught Classical Greek for many years at schools in Greece.