Did They All Speak The Same Language In Ancient Greece?

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[NameExplain]

If you’re watching from Greece, let me know what your closest ancient city state is!

[neutralpeace]

Macedonians were speaking Ancient Greek. Not Bulgarian.

[clasqm]

You missed two Greek dialects spoken in Italy today: Griko and Grecanico (aka Calabrian Greek). Both are pretty endangered, but they still exist. Yevanic, a Jewish Greek dialect, is pretty much extinct by now, but it held on into the 21st century. Then there are Mariupol and Pontic Greek in the Ukraine and beyond, and Himariote in Albania. Whether all of those are dialects or separate languages we'll leave to the Greek-speakers to decide.

[ecurewitz]

Greece could be considered unified and independent under the Byzantine Empire, while technically Roman, they were culturally and linguistically Greek

[cornmono]

3:50 Aeschylus, in his play Agamemnon, has Kasandra say the phrase:
Ἕλλην’ ἐπίσταμαι φάτιν
“I know the Greek language.”
That’s just one way of referring to it.

[justalaborer]

It's a little odd you didn't include the southern Italian peninsula and Sicily as parts of ancient Greece. The ancient Greeks did because they shared a culture and language.

[kirianamavroudi]

I'm from Cyprus, an independent country with a Greek culture and the Greek language as it's official language. We have a separate dialect called Cypriot, which has some common features with the ancient Greek dialects and the cretian dialect. It is a common joke that we understand the Greeks but they don't understand us!

[georgios_]

6:43 this map is flawed, Macedonia also had a Doric Greek dialect

[georgios_]

8:17 no, again. Ionic isn't named after the Ionian islands, in fact Ionic and Ionian are two completely unrelated words in Greek. Ιωνικός=Ionic, Ιόνια Νησιά=Ionian islands. Ιωνία, the region of Ionia, is essentially the central part of the Anatolian Coast, centered around Smyrna and the Panionion League.

[alexanderkelsey]

I think your biggest omission was Byzantine Greek, which was between ancient Koine and modern Demotikí. Also my mom grew up in Greece and had to learn katharevousa in school, but I learned demotiki as a second language in school. There are differences with the accent marks, a few with spelling, and a few with grammar, and she finds it very frustrating to read demotiki because of it. We’re in a weird position where sometimes I actually have to correct my mom’s spelling because she will write using outdated katharevousa rules

[paullatimer]

My favorite definition for a language is: "a dialect with an army to protect it".

[thanassisboulis]

Greek people in 1829 (when modern Greece became a state) did NOT speak Koini. This was the common language almost 2000 years ago. Greek people in the 19th century spoke Demotic (language of the people). This is more or less the form of the language spoken today.

[annazarifopoulou]

Greek here!!!
Its so fun seeing this videos! It reminds me of my high school years when we learnd some ancient greek

[thomas_lale]

I would say when Alexander conquered the greek city states, before heading east was the fist time "Greece" was unified and independent.

[dethan]

I’m actually taking Ancient Greek in uni right now. We’re being taught the attic dialect and our textbook even has parts of ancient attic texts. The dialects are “mostly” the same but they’re are enough differences that you’d have to know them all to be able to read all Ancient Greek texts. At least that’s what I gather from what my professor tells us.

[dimitrichronakis]

All Greeks today, educated or not, speak Ancient Greek ( without realizing it!) since all modern-day derivatives in the language come directly from ancient Greek, e.g. Astyfilax, ypovrixeion, maieftiras, pyrosvestis, thryroros, syntaksiouxos, and so many more!

[AthanasiosJapan]

When some people claim that modern Greeks have no relationship with ancient Greeks, I mention the Tsakonian dialect, a unique Greek dialect, featuring elements of ancient Greek lost in modern Greek or other Greek dialects. Speakers of Tsakonian kept their unique traditional language for more than 2000 years resisting foreigner influences. Simply amazing!

[yiannisroubos]

The ancient Greeks called the language ελληνικά which is the exact same word we use in modern Greek just they pronounced it differently

[georgios_]

Demotic was not a formal language or used in education or recognized in any way. Demotic means "of the people" and Katharevousa "purified". Only certain poets used demotic. In fact some officials and proponents of Katharevousa even called Demotic "Malliari", hairy language. Because they thought it was unclean or impure. But Demotic is essentially the continuation of Koine, with Italian and Turkish influences.

[savvass]

The Church does *not* use Katharevousa, but rather the original Koine Greek, also called "Liturgical Greek" since it is used mainly in religious events, documents books etc.

Great video btw, andwell informed. It was a great pleasure to see Tsakonian included :) :)