Page:Christian Greece and Living Greek.djvu/26

 4 CHRISTIAN GREECE AND LIVING GREEK. has the question been considered. The Greek question has thus become a legitimate one for us, and, judging from the interest with which it has been treated, we may surely predict for it a brilliant future. If we arrive at an understanding of the signifi- cance of the living Greek language, if we famil- iarize ourselves with certain facts concerning this idiom, we shall notice first of all that there exists much less a new Greek than there exists a new German. We shall find that the language which is spoken and written in Greece this very day is exactly two thousand three hundred years old. We shall find that the prevailing assertion that we do not know how the Greek was pro- nounced during the classical period is based upon an error. We shall find that the stones from the seventh century B.C., and from that time through all the centuries until the present one, speak to us and give us the pronunciation of each and every century. We shall have to deal with many errors con- cerning the Greek language and the Greeks themselves, with errors which are as extensive almost as the whole civilized world and as old ; some as old as the dissociation of the. Latin from the Greek Church — that is, more than eight