Page:The American Cyclopædia (1879) Volume VIII.djvu/223

 GREECE (LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE) 209 bhors are now striving to supplant it. In fact, the so-called ancient forms never died out, but are nearly all found even in the more cultivated modern Greek of the middle ages. Greek is now, says Geldart, " as really alive as it was in the days of Homer." "Compara- tive philology derives no unimportant light from modern Greek, because it preserves many archaic forms which are postulated by phi- lologers, but not actually to be found in any known dialect." Mullach, in his Orammatilc der griechischen Vulgdrspraehe (Berlin, 1856), divides the existing dialects of modern Greece into six main varieties, besides Tzakonian and Albanian, whose claim to be considered Greek dialects is not admitted by all. They are : 1, the dialect of Anatolia (Asia Minor) ; 2, Chi- otic; 3, Cretan; 4, Cyprian; 5, Peloponne- sian ; 6, of the Ionian islands. The Tzakonian dialect is the language of ancient Cynuria, and of a foreign race, which was probably of Semitic origin. It adopted and adapted the materials of the Greek language gradually, partly during the time that Greek was still ancient Greek, and partly after it had become modern. Al- banian is considered by many authorities the direct descendant of ancient Pelasgic or Grseco- Italic, the parent of both Latin and Greek. The modern Greek dialects of lower Italy are not well known; they are spoken in 12 vil- lages at the southern extremity of modern Calabria. The Greek alphabet was formed from the Phoenician. Ancient writers sup- posed that it was at first composed of 16 let- ters only, obtained from Cadmus, and that the other letters were due to Palamedes and oth- ers. Many authorities consider these person- ages mythical; others, like Lenormant in La ttgende de Cadmus (Paris, 1867), consider them historical. Mommsen believes that an .zEolic- Achgeic alphabet was in use in the Peloponnesus long before the dominion of the Dorians, who introduced their own graphic system ; but his theory is hardly supported by palseographic ma- terial. Curtius's hypothesis is that the Asiatic lonians obtained it from the Phoenicians, and carried it into European Greece about 14 cen- turies B. 0., while Duncker argues that it was brought from Crete to Greece during the 8th century. "Without regard to the period and manner in which the Greeks came into its pos- session, the prevailing opinion is that they adopted at once the whole Phoenician alphabet of 22 letters, and added the sign Y. Some of the letters passed out of use, as the van or digamma and the Tcoppa, and were replaced by others, as the phi and chi, which appear already in the old Attic alphabet. The lonians added the psi and the omega, and employed the aspirate eta to designate the sound of long E. Their alphabet, thus consisting of 24 letters, was officially adopted in Athens in 403 or 401 B. C., and has since continued in general use. The ancients believed that all words beginning with a vowel had some aspi- ration, either soft (Trvevua ipiMv, spiritus lenis) or hard (rrvev/^a 6aav, spiritus asper). The spiritus lenis (') is not rendered in other tongues; the spiritus asper (') is given in Italic and Germanic languages by H. In diphthongs the breathing stands over the second vowel. The two breathings were distinguished only during the flourishing period of Greek, and only in Doric and Attic. After Alexander the Great it seems that the spiritus asper lost its force in the whole language. In modern Greek both breathings are written, but neither is pro- nounced. The signs ~ and ~ over a vowel to denote that it is long or short are used only with the vowels a, <, v, since e, ??, o, w are dis- tinguished by their form. The sign ( ' ) for the spiritus lenis is also used as an apostrophe, and further as a coronis over the junction of two words contracted into one. The Greeks indi- cate also the tone or accent of words. The circumflex accent is placed only on the last syl- lable, or last but one, of a polysyllabic word ; the acute equally on short and on long sylla- bles; and the grave accent may be considered to rest on every syllable not otherwise marked, especially on the final syllable of polysyllabic words, but is written as a substitute for the acute on final syllables of words within a sen- tence and not immediately followed by a pause. Accentuation, however, is not uniform in all Greek dialects. It is supposed by many that Aristopnanes of Byzantium was the inventor of the signs of aspiration and accentuation, and that they were introduced about 200 B. C. for the purpose of teaching the language to foreigners. They do not appear in very old in- scriptions and manuscripts, but there is reason to think that they were used long before his time. The ancients wrote only in uncials and capitals or majuscules. A sort of cursive or business hand made its first appearance in Alexandria about the 2d century B. C. ; but the small characters or minuscules are not found in manuscripts older than the 8th cen- tury A. D. The pronunciation of Greek in the times of Homer, Sophocles, and Xenophon is still a matter of discussion. "While it has gradually become quite uniform in continental Europe, the English allowed the continuance of the English vowel sounds, a practice which had its origin with the grammar schools and crept into the universities. Many prefer the system of pronunciation called etacism, which was introduced by Erasmus in the beginning of the 16th century. Until then it was allow- able to read ancient Greek after the pronun- ciation of modern Greek as spoken by the na- tives who fled to the west of Europe. This pronunciation is called iotacism, or Reuchlin- ism, after Reuchlin, who was its advocate in the time of Erasmus. It consists in pronounc- ing i, rj, v, ei, 01, vi with the same sound, that of the Italian i ; when accented, like the Eng- lish ee in bee; when unaccented, like i in bit. Furthermore, at is pronounced like the Italian e, av like av or of, ev like ev or ef, TJV like it or if; the iota subscript has no effect on the pro-