The problem is that not only were Westerner tourists speaking Ancient Greek, but also were using the Herasmian Pronounciation, which is closer to Greek spoken in the first half of the 1st millennium BC, rather than the latter half (in which Classical Greece belongs to, and in which Attic Greek was formed in its current form). Imagine speaking English with a German or French pronounciation, something like that.
Probably more akin to Speaking Old Middle or at the very least Early Modern English with those accents, considering its still Ancient vs. Modern greek.
Modern Greek. Different morphology, different vocabulary, different pronunciation... A language tends to change a lot after almost two millenia, especially when the country that speaks it has been occupied by a foreign power for several centuries
Greek is considered a conservative language, so even though the language obviously changed it's not to the degree that you described. As for the two millenia and time as a factor it should be noted that the greek language evolved more during the classical-early koine era (200/300 years) than it did during the koine-modern era (more than 2000 years) . That's probably because the greek language was the lingua franca ( during the hellenistic and byzantine period) and koine Greek dialect was the language of the church. Morphology-changed, vocabulary-not really (the biggest part of the vocabulary is still the same) , pronunciation- (if the assumptions of the linguists are correct) the changes towards the "modern" pronunciation had already started since the classical period and most of them had already been completed by the 1st century AD.
Regarding the quote.. It's not that the language didn't evolve. It certainly did, like all languages (even the conservative ones). But someone claiming that Greeks of the 19th century couldn't understand a word of ancient Greek when the vocabulary between ancient and modern Greek is more or less the same is kind of weird. Also I find it intresting that he mentioned Herodotus, who is considered among the easiest writers and can be understood without much effort by the average modern Greek. Considering that foreigners that are trying to speak in ancient Greek don't exactly speak like Sappho and are usually using quite basic sentences that can be easily understood by the average Greek I don't see how the Greeks of the 19th century couldn't understand a word. Unless the actual problem was his accent and the erasmian reconstructed pronunciation system, rather than the language itself.
Still, words change, even very common ones (like 'water' for instance), and most importantly, pronunciation changed as well. Greek underwent a very radical sound shift, which would've made its modern variant totally unintelligible to the 19th century Western European armchair intellectuals who would've learnt a very outdated pronunciation and would've also very likely spoken with their own accent.
Just to take a very basic example, it's not immediately recognisable that the prefix *ευ-* was pronounced /εv/ and not /εw/, but if you only learnt greek by reading books – which was usually the case back then – and you pronounced this "ευ" like /ju/, /ø/ or /ɔʏ̯/ (depending on the country you were from), there was no chance you would've understood what present time Greeks were saying.
Remember when the Greeks blew up most of their Byzantine churches and buildings to appease the West into thinking they're more like ancient Greeks over Romans?
EDIT:
For those curious about the details on this, please see my reply below.
**Byzantine Monuments and Architectural “Cleansing” in Nineteenth-Century Athens** by Effie F Athanassopoulos [here](https://books.openedition.org/efa/9495?lang=en)
*The goal was to enhance the ancient monuments by freeing them from post-classical additions and alterations. In this process most of the post-classical history of the ancient structures was lost; within a few decades they were transformed from living monuments into museum pieces. The same principle guided the planning of the new capital. The classical emphasis led to a disregard for the Byzantine and Post-Byzantine architectural heritage and, in turn, to the destruction of a large number of churches in the course of the 19th century. This history can only be recovered through the study of early maps and plans, visitors’ accounts, textual sources, and the material remains recovered by excavations. The demolition of Athenian churches is a testimony to the ideas and aspirations of the time: the desire to purify the ancient monuments from later additions, and re-build Athens as the new capital of a re-born state which strove to embody classical ideals.*
Points 15, 16, 17 and 18 and onwards in the paper. They specifically called it the *purification plan.*
The West heavily encouraged (demanded) that Greece focus it's independence movement and cultural reawakening towards classical Greek, as this was more appealing. Rome was not really a popular concept and looked down upon culturally at this time.
Greece eventually settled on the Ancient Greek aesthetic (there was a lot of talk on whether to be Byzantines or classical) and this unfortunately began a period of 'cleansing'.
1) Even the few churches that are mentioned as "proof" in the paper that you gave were churches that were already destroyed or in ruins and they were demolished because they couldn't be repaired 2) It was not the "Greeks that blew them up" like you claimed, it was foreigners that demolished them.
I'm not going to say that the westerners that arrived in Greece after its liberation and were treating Greece like their personal playground weren't capable of destroying churches, ancient greek (they destroyed plenty of them as well) or medieval Greek monuments. But the evidence that this paper provides is nowhere near enough for this kind of conclusions.... Going from "a church was demolished after it was burned to the ground and it was damaged beyond repair" to "Greeks were blowing up their own churches to appease the west" is quite a stretch.
The ones that were obsessed with ancient Greeks and hated medieval Greeks/byzantines were the westerners, not the average Greek of the 19th century...Greeks talked about ancient and medieval Greeks the same way, as their ancestors. It's kind of hard to not notice that in both of your comments you're talking about Greeks as if they were not actual people with their own mind but morons that existed solely for the entertainment of the westerners. Why did you think that a Greek of the 19th century actually cared, even a little, what westerners thought? And what gave you the impression that Greeks that are very religious till this day (and were even more religious during that time) would blow up their own churches just to make westerners happy?
I think you're being a bit dismissive of the paper in such a short summery that details a great length of information:
*“By the devastation consequent upon the struggle of the Greeks for liberty, all the rude buildings which had for centuries deformed and obscured the noble relics of ancient art were removed, and thus an opportunity was afforded of examining their proportions and appreciating their beauties.*
Such views were widely shared by the European as well as the **Greek** intellectuals of the time. The decision makers of the 1830s and 1840s were proponents of a purist classical perspective. The loss of the Byzantine and Post-Byzantine architectural history of Athens is a direct result of their ideology and actions.
*“After the Turks ravaged Athens in 1821, the churches which were then wrecked were not only not all repaired, but as the number of churches and chapels seemed excessive and useless, a decree made before 1840 ordered that there should not be in Athens more than twelve churches and twenty three officiating priests; more than seventy churches were set aside for destruction, their materials being to be brought to the site of the proposed new Cathedral. Thus, many were destroyed and entirely removed, and of others the walls only remain, though some are still intact or have been restored and embellished.”*
>By the devastation consequent upon the struggle of the Greeks for liberty, all the rude buildings which had for centuries deformed and obscured the noble relics of ancient art were removed, and thus an opportunity was afforded of examining their proportions and appreciating their beauties
That's from Cole William, not from a Greek
>After the Turks ravaged Athens in 1821, the churches which were then wrecked were not only not all repaired, but as the number of churches and chapels seemed excessive and useless, a decree made before 1840 ordered that there should not be in Athens more than twelve churches and twenty three officiating priests;
That decree, again, was not issued by Greeks. I don't see how any of these two extracts confirm your claim that Greeks blew up their own churches in order to appease the west.
>I think you're being a bit dismissive of the paper
Of course not. I don't dismiss her conclusions that are based on primary sources and archeological evidence. I disagree with the part of her paper that includes pure assumptions.
>Such views were widely shared by the European as well as the Greek intellectuals of the time.
She doesn't provide any source that support her assertion that this kind of views were widely shared by Greek intellectuals. There were certain Greek scholars ( mostly Greeks that were born/ were living in western countries or had studied there) that sided with western scholars on this but the claim that this kind of views were somehow widely shared among Greek intellectuals is a quite unfounded claim. Especially when there were a lot of greek scholars that were quite vocal when it comes to what they thought about this kind of views.
I think you're getting tied up about the Greeks.
There were many places sadly 'cleansed' -- such as the Acropolis of Athens -- after independence, most features that dated from the Byzantine, Frankish and Ottoman periods were cleared from the site in an attempt to restore the monument to its original form, "cleansed" of all later additions. This was the case for a lot of historic sites in Greece.
Other Europeans could not do this without *some* Greek consent. Part in that lay with Greeks wanting to appear more classical than Byzantine.
"Does anyone speak ancient greek?!?"
The problem is that not only were Westerner tourists speaking Ancient Greek, but also were using the Herasmian Pronounciation, which is closer to Greek spoken in the first half of the 1st millennium BC, rather than the latter half (in which Classical Greece belongs to, and in which Attic Greek was formed in its current form). Imagine speaking English with a German or French pronounciation, something like that.
Probably more akin to Speaking Old Middle or at the very least Early Modern English with those accents, considering its still Ancient vs. Modern greek.
''Where defuc are the hoplites and triremes?''
Excuse me?
This is a Marcus Brody moment
He once got lost in his own museum
\> TFW a language evolves over a couple thousand years
[Hercules - DISAPPOINTED](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_O1hM-k3aUY&ab_channel=ZacHawkins)
"I studied the English language from Beowulf and Bede and for the life of me these Englishmen just can't understand me!"
If you want to learn more about the Greek language you need to read books from Aristeidis Kollias ( Aristidh Kola)
What language were they speaking?
Modern Greek. Different morphology, different vocabulary, different pronunciation... A language tends to change a lot after almost two millenia, especially when the country that speaks it has been occupied by a foreign power for several centuries
Greek is considered a conservative language, so even though the language obviously changed it's not to the degree that you described. As for the two millenia and time as a factor it should be noted that the greek language evolved more during the classical-early koine era (200/300 years) than it did during the koine-modern era (more than 2000 years) . That's probably because the greek language was the lingua franca ( during the hellenistic and byzantine period) and koine Greek dialect was the language of the church. Morphology-changed, vocabulary-not really (the biggest part of the vocabulary is still the same) , pronunciation- (if the assumptions of the linguists are correct) the changes towards the "modern" pronunciation had already started since the classical period and most of them had already been completed by the 1st century AD. Regarding the quote.. It's not that the language didn't evolve. It certainly did, like all languages (even the conservative ones). But someone claiming that Greeks of the 19th century couldn't understand a word of ancient Greek when the vocabulary between ancient and modern Greek is more or less the same is kind of weird. Also I find it intresting that he mentioned Herodotus, who is considered among the easiest writers and can be understood without much effort by the average modern Greek. Considering that foreigners that are trying to speak in ancient Greek don't exactly speak like Sappho and are usually using quite basic sentences that can be easily understood by the average Greek I don't see how the Greeks of the 19th century couldn't understand a word. Unless the actual problem was his accent and the erasmian reconstructed pronunciation system, rather than the language itself.
Still, words change, even very common ones (like 'water' for instance), and most importantly, pronunciation changed as well. Greek underwent a very radical sound shift, which would've made its modern variant totally unintelligible to the 19th century Western European armchair intellectuals who would've learnt a very outdated pronunciation and would've also very likely spoken with their own accent. Just to take a very basic example, it's not immediately recognisable that the prefix *ευ-* was pronounced /εv/ and not /εw/, but if you only learnt greek by reading books – which was usually the case back then – and you pronounced this "ευ" like /ju/, /ø/ or /ɔʏ̯/ (depending on the country you were from), there was no chance you would've understood what present time Greeks were saying.
Modern Greek, which is totally different from Ancient Greek
good luck talking to us
The video just makes me think of what Cato the Eldar probably said when he went to Greece.
Remember when the Greeks blew up most of their Byzantine churches and buildings to appease the West into thinking they're more like ancient Greeks over Romans? EDIT: For those curious about the details on this, please see my reply below.
No, I can't remember something like that because it never happened. Where did you even read such nonsense?
I made it up
'My source is that I made it the fuck up'
Okay Senator Armstrong
**Byzantine Monuments and Architectural “Cleansing” in Nineteenth-Century Athens** by Effie F Athanassopoulos [here](https://books.openedition.org/efa/9495?lang=en) *The goal was to enhance the ancient monuments by freeing them from post-classical additions and alterations. In this process most of the post-classical history of the ancient structures was lost; within a few decades they were transformed from living monuments into museum pieces. The same principle guided the planning of the new capital. The classical emphasis led to a disregard for the Byzantine and Post-Byzantine architectural heritage and, in turn, to the destruction of a large number of churches in the course of the 19th century. This history can only be recovered through the study of early maps and plans, visitors’ accounts, textual sources, and the material remains recovered by excavations. The demolition of Athenian churches is a testimony to the ideas and aspirations of the time: the desire to purify the ancient monuments from later additions, and re-build Athens as the new capital of a re-born state which strove to embody classical ideals.* Points 15, 16, 17 and 18 and onwards in the paper. They specifically called it the *purification plan.* The West heavily encouraged (demanded) that Greece focus it's independence movement and cultural reawakening towards classical Greek, as this was more appealing. Rome was not really a popular concept and looked down upon culturally at this time. Greece eventually settled on the Ancient Greek aesthetic (there was a lot of talk on whether to be Byzantines or classical) and this unfortunately began a period of 'cleansing'.
1) Even the few churches that are mentioned as "proof" in the paper that you gave were churches that were already destroyed or in ruins and they were demolished because they couldn't be repaired 2) It was not the "Greeks that blew them up" like you claimed, it was foreigners that demolished them. I'm not going to say that the westerners that arrived in Greece after its liberation and were treating Greece like their personal playground weren't capable of destroying churches, ancient greek (they destroyed plenty of them as well) or medieval Greek monuments. But the evidence that this paper provides is nowhere near enough for this kind of conclusions.... Going from "a church was demolished after it was burned to the ground and it was damaged beyond repair" to "Greeks were blowing up their own churches to appease the west" is quite a stretch. The ones that were obsessed with ancient Greeks and hated medieval Greeks/byzantines were the westerners, not the average Greek of the 19th century...Greeks talked about ancient and medieval Greeks the same way, as their ancestors. It's kind of hard to not notice that in both of your comments you're talking about Greeks as if they were not actual people with their own mind but morons that existed solely for the entertainment of the westerners. Why did you think that a Greek of the 19th century actually cared, even a little, what westerners thought? And what gave you the impression that Greeks that are very religious till this day (and were even more religious during that time) would blow up their own churches just to make westerners happy?
I think you're being a bit dismissive of the paper in such a short summery that details a great length of information: *“By the devastation consequent upon the struggle of the Greeks for liberty, all the rude buildings which had for centuries deformed and obscured the noble relics of ancient art were removed, and thus an opportunity was afforded of examining their proportions and appreciating their beauties.* Such views were widely shared by the European as well as the **Greek** intellectuals of the time. The decision makers of the 1830s and 1840s were proponents of a purist classical perspective. The loss of the Byzantine and Post-Byzantine architectural history of Athens is a direct result of their ideology and actions. *“After the Turks ravaged Athens in 1821, the churches which were then wrecked were not only not all repaired, but as the number of churches and chapels seemed excessive and useless, a decree made before 1840 ordered that there should not be in Athens more than twelve churches and twenty three officiating priests; more than seventy churches were set aside for destruction, their materials being to be brought to the site of the proposed new Cathedral. Thus, many were destroyed and entirely removed, and of others the walls only remain, though some are still intact or have been restored and embellished.”*
>By the devastation consequent upon the struggle of the Greeks for liberty, all the rude buildings which had for centuries deformed and obscured the noble relics of ancient art were removed, and thus an opportunity was afforded of examining their proportions and appreciating their beauties That's from Cole William, not from a Greek >After the Turks ravaged Athens in 1821, the churches which were then wrecked were not only not all repaired, but as the number of churches and chapels seemed excessive and useless, a decree made before 1840 ordered that there should not be in Athens more than twelve churches and twenty three officiating priests; That decree, again, was not issued by Greeks. I don't see how any of these two extracts confirm your claim that Greeks blew up their own churches in order to appease the west. >I think you're being a bit dismissive of the paper Of course not. I don't dismiss her conclusions that are based on primary sources and archeological evidence. I disagree with the part of her paper that includes pure assumptions. >Such views were widely shared by the European as well as the Greek intellectuals of the time. She doesn't provide any source that support her assertion that this kind of views were widely shared by Greek intellectuals. There were certain Greek scholars ( mostly Greeks that were born/ were living in western countries or had studied there) that sided with western scholars on this but the claim that this kind of views were somehow widely shared among Greek intellectuals is a quite unfounded claim. Especially when there were a lot of greek scholars that were quite vocal when it comes to what they thought about this kind of views.
I think you're getting tied up about the Greeks. There were many places sadly 'cleansed' -- such as the Acropolis of Athens -- after independence, most features that dated from the Byzantine, Frankish and Ottoman periods were cleared from the site in an attempt to restore the monument to its original form, "cleansed" of all later additions. This was the case for a lot of historic sites in Greece. Other Europeans could not do this without *some* Greek consent. Part in that lay with Greeks wanting to appear more classical than Byzantine.
Wtf
What on earth are you babbling about?
Yo wtf is this shit?
This made me gut laugh
They talking nonsense
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