Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 11.djvu/147

Rh of sound which marks the ordinary course of language : e.g., avv for |ui/, pp for ptr ; the same is probable in the instances where a simple vowel represents an earlier diphthong, as in dei, der^s, e Aace, and TroeiV, and in the tendency to allow ee (?) to sink into ei (ei), e.g., /3a&amp;lt;nAe4s, KeWpov, Avei, efccafoj/, and the duals &amp;lt;r/ceAej, feiryej f r cr/ceATj, &vyrj. It is less easy to account for the change of ijv ( av) to &v.

In the New Attic the Greek language may be said to have reached ts zenith of grace, expressiveness, and symmetry ; and hence this is the proper, place for a few remarks on the qualities which have confessedly made the Greek language quite unrivalled as a means for the expression of human thought. In the first place we may notice its purity and consequent trans parency. The Greeks felt themselves to be sharply marked off from the barbarians around them, and in consequence rarely allowed their language to be contaminated by foreign influences. Latin teems with borrowed words, often ill-adapted to the genius of the language ; Greek has very few, and these almost invariably Hellenized in form. Hence the etymologist feels himself to have a far firmer footing in Greek than on Italian soil. Hence too the or ganic structure of Greek retains its regularity, and the orthography is well established and rarely fluctuating. Then there is the phon etic harmony of the language. Dissonance was everywhere avoided; there is no undue predominance of consonants, as in Latin and still more strikingly in Etruscan. The endings of the words are light, no linal consonant being endured, except the liquids v and p and the spirant s. The brightest of the vowels, a, c, o, are far more common than the harder and thinner i and u, Greek here again contrasting sharply with Latin. The abundance of diphthongs practically lost in the modern pronunciation of Greek gives a rich variety of sound, besides supplying admirable means for the differentiation of mean ings. The careful observation of accent, by the side of and quite dis tinct from the due marking of quantity, lent a varied modulation to the rhythm, which the rapid utterance of the Athenians especially prevented from ever becoming wearisome. The range of different forms at the disposal of poets and the freedom allowed in the order of words permitted the writer to choose the rhythmical effect most conducive to the harmony of his period. With regard again to the expressiveness of the language, the completeness of the verbal inflexion enabled various shades of meaning to be expressed with unrivalled precision and terseness. It is perhaps impossible to estimate with any approach to accuracy the extent of the vocabulary of a language known to us only from a literature which, in some of its most im portant branches, has come down to us in a sadly fragmentary state; but some approximation may be made from the fact that Herodian is said to have determined the accent of 60,000 words. But the free power of word-formation and composition to which this marvellous richness was largely due was no mechanical process. It sprang from the lively fancy of the most poetic of nations, a fancy which shows itself alike in the significant individual names borne by every Greek citizen, which contrast so sharply with the obscure, trivial, and stereotyped hereditary labels of the Romans, arid in the charac teristic and often sportive appellations of plants and animals. Nor can we omit that which was according to Aristotle the despair of the barbarian of old, as it is of the modern schoolboy, the exquisitely exact and delicate use of the particles. Of all the qualities which make Greek really untranslatable, even into German, the only one of modern languages which approaches it in this respect, perhaps the most characteristic is the abundance of these tiny atoms of speech, not one of which can be neglected with impunity, while it is impossible to reproduce them all except at an expenditure of our means of expression which ruins the lightness and grace of the sen tence. The history of the development of the period, that device in which the symmetry of form is inseparably wedded to the artistic balance of thought, a device which is found in no language which has not derived it directly or mediately from Greece, belongs to the region of literature rather than language. But many a construction, for which formal syntax finds it hard to discover a name and a classi fication, can only be understood aright if we look upon it as the utterance of a national life unrivalled in its bold and vivid freshness, delighting in variety, and shaping at its will a language still fluid and plastic.

With regard to the pronunciation of Greek, the best modern scholars are at one in regarding the modern pronunciation, advocated at the revival of learning by Reuchlin, as wholly misleading for an earlier period. On the other hand, the current pronunciation in England is hardly more correct than the conventional pronunci ation of Latin, and even the Continental pronunciation, as estab lished by Erasmus, needs to be modified on many points. The vowels and consonants present no difficulty : o, o, 77, e, I, &quot;i, u, o were undoubtedly pronounced as the corresponding vowels are now in French, German, or Italian ; v and u were the French 4 and &, i.e., very nearly the German lie. The consonants may be pronounced as in English, 7 being however always hard, and being dz, while, as noticed already, the aspirates &amp;lt;/&amp;gt;, 0, x^P-h, t-h, c-h. It is much more difficult to determine the pronunciation of the diphthongs. Undoubtedly they were originally strictly diphthongal, i.e., the two vowels were each pronounced, but ran rapidly one into the other : cf. ircus and the Homeric irais, ols and 6 is. But at an early period the diphthongal pronunciation was lost, and in modern Greek the sound i is given alike to at,, and 01. This cannot be correct for the Attic period ; it probably began to creep in in the time of the Dia- dochi ; ot at this date began to pass into ii, and much later sank into i ; ov had always the force of our oo, and is used even when the syllable is short : e.g., in Boaot. Kovves it was pronounced as u in &quot; put.&quot; It is altogether erroneous to pronounce i in diphthongs as v, as is done in modern Greek ; vi was doubtless pronounced much as wee, but with more stress laid on the first element.

The dialects long continued to exist in the mouths of the common people ; but the influence of extended commercial intercourse, and especially of the commanding position which Athens had gained as the centre of education and the home of science, literature, and philosophy, gave an increasing predominance to one, the Attic dialect. The Ionic was the first to disappear ; there are but few traces of this after the Peloponnesian War ; the Molic and the Doric are found, but always in diminishing extent, as late as the time of the Roman emperors. But Attic lost in purity as it gained in range ; new words and constructions crept in especially from the increasing influence of the East ; until at last the grammarians gave the dis tinctive name of f) nowr) StaAe/cros to the language popularly current. The rise of the Alexandrian school of critics gave a new stimulus to the study of literary Attic ; on the other hand the vulgar speech continued its own course of free combination and assimilation from various quarters. Thus in the Roman times we have three main divisions of Greek : (1) the revived Attic of the schools, the purity of which was jealously guarded by grammarians such as Phrynichus ; (2) the common (KOIVTI) literary language, employed by such writers as Polybius and Plutarch ; and (3) the popular spoken language, which much more freely absorbed foreign elements than the KOIJ/TJ, and which may be described as Hellenistic. This is the basis of the diction of the Septuagint and the New Testament. Of course the dividing lines cannot be sharply drawn. Of the authors belonging to this period some, like Lucian, en deavoured to approach as closely as possible to the standard of pure Attic ; others, like Babrius, came nearer to the popular diction. The peculiarities of this stage of the language consist rather in new words and new inflexions than in extensive syntactical changes. The former are too numerous to Btate here (cf. Winer s Grammar, part ii. pp. 69-128, ed. Moulton) ; of the latter we may notice 1. A negligent use of the moods with particles : e.g., Srav with a past indicative, el with the conjunctive, iva. with the present indicative. 2. A construction of verbs with cases unknown in Attic : e.g., yfvtffBai with accusative, irpoffKvveiv and irpofftpwvelv with dative, &c. 3. The extension of the genitive of the infinitive (rov iroieiv) beyond its original and natural limits. 4. The use of the conjunctive for the optative after past tenses, and the gradual disuse of the latter mood, which has wholly dis appeared in modern Greek. (Ib., p. 38.) Under the Greek empire, the language of literature was -still based upon an artificial and often a lamentably unsuccessful imitation of Attic ; and an interesting parallel might be worked out in detail between the Greek and the Latin writers of this period. But, just as in the Western empire, the popular dialect went on its way, for the most part unrecognized in literature, but constantly exerting its effect upon the written language, and from time to time coming to the surface. The first writer who boldly adopted the popular dialect was Theodorus Ptochoprodromus, a monk of Constantinople who lived under the emperor Manuel Comnenus (1143-1180) ; his language, though with some traces of the more ancient forms, is essentially modern Greek. To the same period belongs Simon Sethos, a chronicler, the first prose writer of the modern language. In the 14th century we have the romance in verse, Bdtlmndros and Chrysantza, a work highly spoken of for imaginative power and free command of the language in its new form. The poems of Gorgilas (cent, xv.), Chortakes and Kornaros (cent, xvii), and Rhegas (cent, xviii. ) suffice to show that the popular language never entirely ceased to be used as an organ of literary utterance. An epoch in the history of modern Greek is marked by the long and fruitful activity of the illustrious scholar and patriot Coraes (1748- 1833). He made it his object to purify the popular dialect, not by an artificial resuscitation of the ancient Attic, but by a strenuous endeavour to preserve and to render current all classical forms not wholly extinct, and to replace foreign and barbarous words by genuine Greek ones, often freshly coined for the purpose. Greece now can number poets, historians, scholars, and orators who bring forth from their native language no feeble echoes of the immortal notes with which its prime was made musical for every age.

