Modern The Modern Greek Ian guage is a direct survival from the Ancient Greek, its surprising conservation of forms and vocabulary being due in part to the isolation of Greece from the currents of European progress, and to the conservative influence exerted by the Orthodox Greek Church upon the higher and literary forms of the language. Such changes in pronunciation, morphology and syntax as characterize the present form of the language may nearly all in their inception be traced back to the time of Christ. The language had ac quired its present form, in all essential char acteristics, as early as the 9th or 10th century A.D. To western scholars who, in reading Ancient Greek, use the Erasmian pronuncia tion, a supposed approximation to the pro nunciation of the 5th century s.c., the spoken language of to-day is unfortunately absolutely unintelligible owing to the following facts: The vowels v, i and v, and the diphthongs El, 04, Viand v are, by what is technically known as iotacism, all pronounced like the i in machine; the diphthong at is pronounced like e (i. e., as the e in met) ; the v of the ancient diphthongs ev and av (this does not apply to ov which equals our oo in boot) is pronounced v before sonants (including vowels) and f before other sounds; eitaYlatav =-- evangelion, and ateveepta = elef theria • the distinction between the ancient long and short vowels has entirely disappeared, an intermediate sound being uttered, which is, however, slightly lengthened under the in fluence of the accent, (e. g., o — unaccented is like the ou in ought and o— accented like the i ow in brawny) ; fi is pronounced as v, and d like th in °this," except where the ancient pronuncia tion has beenpreserved by a preceding or v respectively. Thus dvdpa, man, is still pro flounced but is necessarily spelled, ex cept in the puristic and literary language, avrpa; (so too darepov, a tree) ; b and d in foreign words are represented by isr and VT, (e. g., Lord Byron Aapvi- idraipcm), combinations which are pro nounced mb and rid when they occur in native Greek words, e.g., rarra= panda; before e and i sounds y is pronounced as a palatal voiced spirant, as in the German while elsewhere it has a guttural voiced spirant sound (like the L the ugoo-goo)) of an infant} ; p is slightly trilled or, (and this applies also to A.,#,v,) slightly mouille; the distinction between rough and smooth breathings disappeared more than 2,000 years ago. Ancient accent which was probably a differentiation in pitch, perhaps combined with a stressing of the syllable accented, gradually gave way, in the early centuries of the Christian era to a pure stress accent which is, however, except in northern Greece weaker than that of German and English. In consequence of this change and of the loss of all distinctions of quantity, the circumflex, acute and grave accents are pronounced alike, though the con. ventional written accent is preserved. The syl lable anciently accented still bears the stress, except where this is influenced by the loss of distinction between long and short vowels. To foreigners one of the most puzzling features of Modern Greek is the very marked difference between the spoken and the written languages. Diglossy of vocabulary and diglossy of pronunciation exist in almost every language, but the influence of the learned Greek Corals in the early 19th century, and the desire of the Greeks to resurrect the ancient language at the time when Greece was freed from Turkish domination, resulted in a di glossy of forms and syntax— a diglossy of grammar—from which Greece has suffered ever since. Those who love the spontaneity and naturalness of ancient Greek find much that has been written in the last century frigid and artificial. Fortunately the large number of younger writers who believe that literature must be in the spoken language of the people, is gradually affecting the language of the platform, press and schoolroom. The following changes from the grammar of Ancient Greek are com mon to both the colloquial and the literary lan guages: The ancient optative, rarely used even in New Testament Greek, has now entirely dis appeared, and the present subjunctive is distin guished from the present indicative only when printed, both forms being pronounced alike. The infinitive has been replaced by vti (a short, erred Iva) with the subjunctive (e.g., 00.6, vi inrciya I wish to go); the ancient Iva clauses being rendered by Jul va, In the indicative we find the ancient forms fairly well preserved in the present, imperfect and aorist, but the future is expressed by 04 (shortened from eau igi) with the present subjunctive, for a continued or habitual act, and with the aorist subjunctive to express a simple occurrence of the act. An
cient second aorists and aorists of the liquid form (e.g., larnao) have been preserved almost perfectly, proving the continuity of the modern with the ancient language. The perfect, pluperfect and future perfect tenses as in other analytic languages, are formed by making use of /x6, (have), /x0 ypolfry, elxa ypolv, Oa 1,T6) YPhtit9, I have, had and shall have written. This change, precursors of .which are found in Herodotus, Sophocles, etc., is less obtruded on our notice from the fact that the aorist is often used where English uses perfect tenses. In the nouns the dative case has given way to the accusative with various prepositions to, Jul = for, .p1 (a shortened ;Levi) = with. The ancient ov is now expressed by fliv (from oimItv); the relative pronoun is L broioc, and the interrogative is roioc; °why') is than and °because)) flafi-c; °if)) is, under all circumstances ihv or av and the particle av of the apodosis has disappeared. Shortened forms of aimoi) (rob, rav, rip, etc.), areused as conjunctivepronouns and these as well as /Lob and aoi, and al are used as enclitics when unemphatic; plural forms plc and frac have been formed from and al (eat from al being based on the supposed analogy of (i)pac from Milt). In spite of these changes the general appearance of the literary Greek of to day is startlingly similar to that of ancient Greek. Chaucer's English is farther removed from the speech of to-day than is this literary Greek from the language of Xenophon and Aris totle. In the popular language the morphological changes have been far greater. An extended use of diminutive and other suffixes, and a tendency to cut off initial vowels when unac cented, have produced changes like: fiiv, lion, to Aeovrept; 6/sua, eye, to 6/444rsov, and then to part (where the root air has entirely disap peared; efts, snake, to seat (130510v). The nouns of the third declension have gone over into the first, the masculine having a nomina tive in -ac (cf. Ancient Greek rauiec) yetrovac, a neighbor (anc. yttruv), and a genitive in -a, while the feminines have in the nominative and -as in the genitive, yvvaiea, rim yvvaliar. Nouns like MAK, icarkaraatc have vir tually become rail, PPigai and sarciaraaii, though they are often spelled ir6A1, fichai and earturraat, in order to preserve the ancient root. • Certain phonetic laws, regularly operative, further disguise ancient words: firrwxbc for irrux6c, to3pru for yotlibpi for )4c/typo, eopp# for 'tom*, Pakatu for eoPitrea, Pyaivu for kflaim, itioilaVroc for livapieFirpos, afiepOlif for lideAoc, vbou for vbpOs will serve to illustrate changes, which seem extremely violent, but are easily classified and borne in mind.
The Greeks completely Hellenize foreign words, Turkish touphek, a gun, forming rovOsi, a gun, rov¢exicw, to shoot; roviketa, a shot. A few Italian words, dating back in some cases to Latin times, exist in the language (e.g. nopra, a door; cce4.1a, steps; grin (hospittutn, a house) but such foreign words do not seriously im pair the genuinely Greek character of the language.
Bibliography.— ANCIENT GREEK : Apart from small but extremely- useful grammars by Hadley-Allen, Goodwin (of which a new edition is in preparation), Babbitt and J. Thompson (London 1902), the following more comprehen sive works should be mentioned: Kiihner, 'Griechische Grammatik> (re-edited by Blass and Gerth, 1890-1900); Brugmann, K., ische Grammatik' (3d ed., 1900) ; Meyer, Gus tav, 'Griechische Grammatik' (3d ed., 1896). W. W. Goodwin, B. L. Gildersleeve, with C. W. E. Miller and F. E. Thompson, have in recent years treated of the syntax of classical Greek. From the point of view of comparative philology the Greek language has been most comprehen sively dealt with by Brugmann, K. and Del brfick, B., 'Grundriss der vergleichenden Grammatik der indogermanischen Sprachen' ; Kretschmer, P., 'Einleitung in die Geschichte der Griechischen Sprache' ; Giles, P., 'A Short Manual of Comparative Philology for Classical Students.' Herbert Weir Smyth (Ionic), C. D. Buck, R. Meister, O. Hoffman have gathered together and discussed material dealing with the Greek dialects. Later phases of the lan guage are treated in the following: Thumb, A., 'Die griechische Sprache in Zeitalter des Hel lenismus) (1901); Thackeray, H. St. J., 'A Grammar of the Old Testament in Greek' ; Moulton, J. H., 'A Grammar of New Testament Greek' (3d ed., 1906) ; Jannaris, A. N., 'An Historical Greek Grammar, chiefly of the Attic Dialect, as written and spoken from Classical Antiquity down to the Present Time' (1901).