THE GREEK LANGUAGE, MODERN.—The differ ences between ancient and modern Greek are by no means so great as has commonly been supposed, the modern language being a direct descendant of the `common' dialect (vide supra). The begin nings of most of the changes that have affected modern Greek can be traced back into the Hellen istic period. Some of these changes have been noted above. Others are as follows: —The ancient marks of accent have been retained, hut they no longer represent a difference of pitch; the accent is a stress accent, exactly like that of English (traces of this change can be seen as early as A.D. 400). The rough breathing is still printed, but is no longer pronounced. Etacism has extended its influence until no fewer than six different vowels and diphthongs have the sound of ancient g—name ly,g, ig, og, and vg. The dual number has entire ly disappeared, and the middle voice appears in only a few isolated forms. In the language of the common people, the dative case is practically lost, its place being supplied by the genitive or the accusative with a preposition. Great numbers of nouns have taken the diminutive ending toy, which in the vernacular is reduced to c, and the loss of a syllable at the beginning of words is not infrequent ; so vvpl, cheese =rupt6v,rup61; fa/3i, fish = 6,1ov, through *dinar; udrg,eye ..=gpqAcc. In many nouns, moreover, the accusative is taken as a new nominative; so 6 raripas = warhp.
But it is in the conjugation of the verb that the greatest changes have taken place. Here the optative has entirely disappeared and the infini tive survives only in a mutilated form. The an cient uses of both are supplied by the subjunc tive; ing-Srya Sat va ray taw=iX0ov Inc airrdv fami.u; OiXo, va g/tOw = OeXcv iXeciv. The future, the perfect, and the pluperfect are formed by the aid of aux iliaries; Oh = (0exco rim) X6cu or Oh Xiaw = Xocnu ; gxcu X6crec = XXvsc; eixa X6crec= 1X€X6,eq. The pronouns
have suffered many changes. The awkward 671.oios, or even the adverb rove is used in place of the relative.
The vocabulary also has suffered from the in trusion of loan words from other languages, no tably from Italian and Turkish, although the in fusion has not been so great as to give the lan guage the appearance of a mixed language; cf. grin (Latin hospitium), house; ficciropi ( Ital. vapore), steamer; Sepf3bc (Turkish dervend), pass. Since the establishment of the Greek kingdom (1830), there has been a stronger move ment toward the purification of the modern lan guage and a closer conformity to the ancient Greek idiom. This has resulted in a curious gap between the literary language and the common speech, not unlike that which existed in the later classical times. The new movement, however, has made steady progress, and it is not too much to say that the modern Greek newspaper would be easily intelligible to Plato and Demosthenes.
The best Modern Greek grammars are those of Mitsotakis, Praktische Grammatik der neugrie chischen Sprache (Stuttgart, 1891), and Pernot, Grammaire grecque moderne (Paris, 1897). In English, Vincent and Dickson, A Handbook to Modern Greek (London, 1893), is good for the literary language; and Gardner, A Modern Greek Grammar (London, 1892), for the spoken lan guage. Hatzidakis, Einleitung in die neugrie ehisehe Grammatik (Leipzig, 1892), treats es pecially the relation of the modern language to Hellenistic and Byzantine Greek.
The best dictionaries are those of Kontopulos (3d ed., Athens, 1889), and Kyriakides (Nicosia, Cyprus, 1892). Useful, also, are Sophocles, A Greek Lexicon of the Roman and Byzantine Pe riods (New York, 1887), and Ducange, Glossa riuni ad Scriptores Medial et 'Owe Graccitatis (Leyden, 1688; reprinted Breslau, 1891).