Why Didn't Greek Spread & Evolve?

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SOURCES & FURTHER READING

[djvel]

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.

[gregbard]

There are villages in Southern Italy that still speak Greek, as they have for over a thousand years.

[salamut]

Hellenic languages were widespread in the Eastern Mediterranean, Levant, & in Mesopotamia. It was just largely supplanted by Arabic & Turkish.

[t_ylr]

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

[ahmadkadan]

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.

[vangelisskia]

"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

[martychisnall]

Other Hellenic languages still spoken today are Tsakonian, Pontic, Cappadocian, Griko, Yevanic and according to some debatably Cypriot.

[highevan]

".. 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]

[stephenarbeau]

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

[ubrfrnzy]

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.

[MrFearDubh]

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.

[highevan]

"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

[mariosportsmaster]

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.

[Lenno]

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.

[tommay]

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.

[Andreas_]

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.

[vangelisskia]

"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

[greasher]

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.

[AtarahDerek]

The New Testament was written in Koine Greek.

[manlollollo]

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.