Classical Greek has been important in the intellectual life of western civilisation, but not to the extent of Latin except for ecclesiastical matters. In years past, Latin was introduced in the first year of secondary school, followed by Greek in the third year. The prominence of Greek for intellectual matters is evident in designations of subjects central to university study, such as philosophy 'love of wisdom', philology 'love of words or more generally study', theology 'study related to God', psychology 'study related to the soul or psyche', and so on.
A difficulty with Classical Greek that may put off learners is the maintenance of an older form of the alphabet than that used for Latin, English, and many other languages. Moreover, accentuation varies in Greek words, and in early Greek was musical.
Furthermore, the sentence structure and number of forms require a great deal of attention. The words of sentences are placed for their emphasis, rather than in accordance with a pattern like that of the English Subject-Verb-Object order; knowledge of the inflections is therefore highly important. Interpretation is also assisted by the use of articles which, like nouns, adjectives, pronouns and verbs, are inflected. It is essential, then, to learn the basic inflections of these parts of speech.
Classical Greek may be challenging to learn but with the help of a professional teacher you can master it and even have fun during your lessons.
Modern Greek is also known as Romaic or Neo-Hellenic. It was after the decline of the Byzantine Empire in 1453 that Modern Greek got popularised. Though it is said so, the traces of modern features in the language could be seen even from the third century. Modern Greek is basically based on Demotic.
Classical Greek was a language that was in vogue during the Archaic, classic and the Hellenistic periods. It can be said that ancient Greek can be traced to the second century BC. Classical Greek was the classical language of the Athenians.
The Classical Greek had a rich vowel system. On the other hand, Modern Greek has only a simple system consisting of five vowels.
In classical Greek, there was a clear length distinction in vowels and consonants. On the other hand, Modern Greek has not conserved this. Ancient Greek had voiced and aspirated voiceless plosives where as the Ancient Greek just has only two sequence of fricatives
In Modern Greek, it has given up the optative mood, dative class, dual number and infinitive that were prevalent in ancient Greek. When compared to Ancient Greek, the modern version has adopted gerund. Unlike the Ancient Greek, the Modern Greek had accepted the future and the conditional tenses. In Modern Greek, the auxiliary verb was also newly introduced.
Both languages are Greek but they slightly differ from each other. If you want to learn Classical Greek you can browse the TutorExtra platform and find the right teacher for you.
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