Medieval Greek

[Constantinos]

Hello to everybody,

It's my first post in the forum although I've been visiting it for long. My name is Constantinos and I'm from Greece. I live in Thessalonica. I'm posting to express my willingness to contribute in case you believe I can, in helping with Greek translations.

Like it was stated before, Hellenic (or Greek) language hasn't changed so much through the ages. It's true that "Kathareuousa" is still spoken in Greece by members of the Orthodox church and scientists related to language and linguistics. It's a form really close to the medieval Greek for the reason that only the "public-form" of Greek really changed through the last centuries. In fact, even a "good student"-teenager can fully understand texts written in ancient or medieval Greek directly from old-stones, temples, sculptures etc.!!!

Also, the easy part is that in Greek there are no accent problems. Of course, there are territories (like Crete, Cyprus) where you can spot differences, but the mainland's accent is clear and hasn't changed. In other languages, like German or English, people of different origins have developed through ages their ways in speaking it. Austrians have a more "rough" way, for example. In Greek there is no way of doing it. All vowels and consonants are so specific, there is no "a" that can be spoken differently like in "father" or "age".

The only thing to be checked is the "h" letter when Greek words are written in English. For example, "Hoplites" -> Oplites -> Οπλίτες (the ones that are armed with weapon) Oplon -> Όπλον is Weapon. In "kathareuousa" and "modern Greek" we do not pronounce the "h" like a soft form of K (KH). We say Oplites. English do so. The matter is that the English say it like ancients did! In ancient times they did that. In kathareuousa there is mark (tone) to indicate that O should be spoken like Ho (the mark is called daseia if I´m not mistaken) although speakers ignore it and in modern Greek there is no clue for anything like that. Most of young people don't know that English kept alive parts of ancient Greek because of the fact that nobles and teachers used to study medieval Greek in universities or through books. Maybe some other differences between medieval and "kathareuousa" should be found before you continue in Greek translations and acting-thing but I'm sure they are tiny ones.

Should you need anything please inform me. As a student of the university of Thessaloniki I have access to thousands of books related to the medieval Greek language and historic matters.

Thank you for reading this looooong letter...and I apologize for its size!

[Beiss]

"Mainland Greek" lol, I've always though of Greece as a really big archipelago... haha. Thanks for registering, Constantinos. If there are more of you Greeks spying on these forums, please join and help us out!

I'm pretty sure that the more people are helping out, the better the result, as long as you are all doing it all, and not divide work between you, in which case we could get some really incoherent results. Considering the activity in this thread as of the last few weeks, I have great hopes that we might actually get somewhere. Now, if we could all try to focus on the translations that biohaker has already made. What improvements can you think of? Be specific!

[biohaker]

Hello to everybody,

It's my first post in the forum although I've been visiting it for long. My name is Constantinos and I'm from Greece. I live in Thessalonica. I'm posting to express my willingness to contribute in case you believe I can, in helping with Greek translations.

Like it was stated before, Hellenic (or Greek) language hasn't changed so much through the ages. It's true that "Kathareuousa" is still spoken in Greece by members of the Orthodox church and scientists related to language and linguistics. It's a form really close to the medieval Greek for the reason that only the "public-form" of Greek really changed through the last centuries. In fact, even a "good student"-teenager can fully understand texts written in ancient or medieval Greek directly from old-stones, temples, sculptures etc.!!!

Also, the easy part is that in Greek there are no accent problems. Of course, there are territories (like Crete, Cyprus) where you can spot differences, but the mainland's accent is clear and hasn't changed. In other languages, like German or English, people of different origins have developed through ages their ways in speaking it. Austrians have a more "rough" way, for example. In Greek there is no way of doing it. All vowels and consonants are so specific, there is no "a" that can be spoken differently like in "father" or "age".

The only thing to be checked is the "h" letter when Greek words are written in English. For example, "Hoplites" -> Oplites -> Οπλίτες (the ones that are armed with weapon) Oplon -> Όπλον is Weapon. In "kathareuousa" and "modern Greek" we do not pronounce the "h" like a soft form of K (KH). We say Oplites. English do so. The matter is that the English say it like ancients did! In ancient times they did that. In kathareuousa there is mark (tone) to indicate that O should be spoken like Ho (the mark is called daseia if I´m not mistaken) although speakers ignore it and in modern Greek there is no clue for anything like that. Most of young people don't know that English kept alive parts of ancient Greek because of the fact that nobles and teachers used to study medieval Greek in universities or through books. Maybe some other differences between medieval and "kathareuousa" should be found before you continue in Greek translations and acting-thing but I'm sure they are tiny ones.

Should you need anything please inform me. As a student of the university of Thessaloniki I have access to thousands of books related to the medieval Greek language and historic matters.

Thank you for reading this looooong letter...and I apologize for its size!

Constantinos, I agree with all you wrote and liked your text. I study in Salonica too, what do you study? Maybe together we'll make a good team, as we are in the same city. Unfortunately I'm leaving to Athens this weekend, for all the December as i have practice there, through the university. Anyway, if you want to help us improve the translations, contact me.

[Beiss]

Great - this sort of thing really needs cooperation. Good luck!

[paokmam]

Constantinos, I agree with all you wrote and liked your text. I study in Salonica too, what do you study? Maybe together we'll make a good team, as we are in the same city. Unfortunately I'm leaving to Athens this weekend, for all the December as i have practice there, through the university. Anyway, if you want to help us improve the translations, contact me.

Unfortunately I cannot work on the translations due to my research here, but I can suggest biblography, dictionnairies etc. for your effort. Contact me anytime!

[Keravnos]

A clarification needs to be made here.

Medieval greek was splintered in two. Western Medieval greek, which is basically the greek we speak today in what is present day greece, and Eastern Medieval greek, which was spoken in all Mikrasia (Anatolia) and nearby islands.

Last living remnants of that tongue (which sounds quite different than present day Greek) is spoken on Rhodes and Cyprus. (Crete's tongue is different, more venetian and western medieval greek than eastern medieval greek.)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medieval_Greek

here is what wiki has to say, with which I agree completely but it doesn't mention that rift, or it does so but not in so many words.

See Cappadocia and Pontus having different language than the rest, and Cyprus and Rhodes as well.

This is why I wanted a cypriot doing the medieval greek voicemod. Not that someone from greek mainland wouldn't do it justice as well, it is just that present day cypriot greek is MUCH CLOSER to the way the "Byzantines" talked than anything else. Present day Rhodian Greek is the same as cypriot basically, but proximity to mainland Greece has "watered down" that accent, which used to be EXACTLY the same as Cyprus'.

[Beiss]

Ok, well, I don't know that many Rhodesians Rhodians or Cretans. Do you?

[paokmam]

A clarification needs to be made here.

Medieval greek was splintered in two. Western Medieval greek, which is basically the greek we speak today in what is present day greece, and Eastern Medieval greek, which was spoken in all Mikrasia (Anatolia) and nearby islands.

Last living remnants of that tongue (which sounds quite different than present day Greek) is spoken on Rhodes and Cyprus. (Crete's tongue is different, more venetian and western medieval greek than eastern medieval greek.)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medieval_Greek

here is what wiki has to say, with which I agree completely but it doesn't mention that rift, or it does so but not in so many words.

See Cappadocia and Pontus having different language than the rest, and Cyprus and Rhodes as well.

This is why I wanted a cypriot doing the medieval greek voicemod. Not that someone from greek mainland wouldn't do it justice as well, it is just that present day cypriot greek is MUCH CLOSER to the way the "Byzantines" talked than anything else. Present day Rhodian Greek is the same as cypriot basically, but proximity to mainland Greece has "watered down" that accent, which used to be EXACTLY the same as Cyprus'.

I don't know who wrote this article in Wiki, but there is no such thing as two greek languages in Byzantium. the first period (331-869) the people spole Greek and the government officials Latin. When I say Greek I mean koini for the lower classes and athenian attiki for the most educated. There were(as in ancient Greece) different dialects of Greek. In Peloponese people spoke more all less a form of modern day Greek. In Epirus they spoke koini with a lot of Latin words(they are the ancestors of the modern day Greek Vlahoi) , in the Aegean Sea they spoke a dialect closer to ancient Greek Ioniki because all the Greek Isles were societies firm and weren't affected by the changes occuring imediately. But these dialects are Greek language. They could easily communicate with each other ( look at Theofanis, Synechistis Theofanus, Notitiae Episcopatuum, Codex Justinianis, Leon the Wise manuscripts, Constantine Porphyrogenite etc. at PG Migne, BΕΠΕΣ, Sathas Medieval Library, TLG version 5 or higher etc.) without needing a third person to help them. You need to understand that the history of the Greek Language may seem that had more than one ''languages'' formed, but actually the language Orpheas and Omeros, Thucedidis and Xenophon, Diodoros Sikeliotis and Polybios, Stobaios and Basilius the Great, Maximus Confessor and Scylitzes, Sfrantzes and Doukas, Makrygiannis and Kostis Palamas, Seferis and Elytis spoke and wrote is the same! Any man that has read the texts and knows the basics of modern or ancient Greek can understand the meaning if not the hole text. I say that because the last 6 years of life I work daily reading byzantine texts(325-1461), ancient Greek at a smaller scale and of course modern Greek , as my mother tongue. It is unscientifiic speaking of dualism in Medieval Greek. You can speak of a variety of dialects. But those dialects eventually disappeared, as the nationalism was born in late 13th century.
Now, as far as Cyprus is concerned, it is true that they speak an idioma (dialect) of the Greek language that is more close to the ancient pronanciation, but still have nothing to do with what was going on in the Byzantine empire as they were most of the time occupied by foreign forces( Don't forget the co-government of the island by Byzantines and Arabs, the Crusaders etc.) Modern day Greek that are spoken in Cyprus are modern Day Greek with a pronunciation closer to the ancient one, but with the usage of Arab and English words due to the occupation the island has suffered.
As far as Rhodes is concerned... I want to laugh!!! I go every summer at Rhodes cause one of my best friends studies at the Aegean University based there. Their dialect is clear and has nothing to do with the cypriot idioma. they only use some words in common as a result of the islands firm societies mentioned above. The only difference of the peoples way of speaking there are those words, which are ancient.
Now for Cappadokia. In the Byzantine era the Cappadokians spoke and wrote attiki(Basilius the Great, Gregorius of Nyssa, Gregorius the Theologian, Romanos Diogenes were all Cappadocians!). The problem, but also the reason it survived the centuries almost intact, of the Greek language is that it is flexible. So when you see written in the Cappadocian texts νύφε and in Constantinopolitan texts νύψε is exactly the same. Π, Β, Φ change easily with each other in everyday dialogues without being able to say that this is wright and the other is wrong. Νύφε is the same as νύπ-σε(νύψε). This happens with most of the Greek words in ancient Greek, Medieval Greek and modern Greek. The only think that changes is that when they wrote they wrote according to what they thought. If you wanted to write history you used a Thucydidian language(watch ξυνελων instead of συνελων in Thucydides and in Alexia Comnene). But if you wanted to wright philosophy you used Aristotelian language( watch the terms φύσις, υπόστασις, ουσία, πρόσωπον in Aristotle, Basilius the Great, Maximus the Confessor, Barlaam of Calabria and Gregorius Palamas). And so on! In the Greek language(now and then) there is a huge distance between speaking and writing. When we speak in our every day lives we change everything as we please. When we write something formal( for instance university exams, an article etc.) we write in a more strict and ancient way according of course of each persons educational level.
To end this long boring words I want to say that in mainland Greece they never spoke like Cypriots but with a ''heavier'' accent. http://www.academyofathens.gr/ilne/e...2&nt=18&lang=1 for more details.
I want to add that you should critically use what you read on the internet, because many stuff are wrong, or not scientifical!

[Beiss]

I want to add that you should critically use what you read on the internet, because many stuff are wrong, or not scientifical!

That's why I'm not doing the translations myself, and why I want people who know their stuff to have their say before translation begins. Thanks for your info, paokmam. Next time, divide your text up into paragraphs, because that's an awful lot of text to read as a single piece of text... haha

Ok, I guess we're going to have to settle for a compromise of some kind, because obviously, we can't portray all of the accents at once. Remember though, that the game has 3 types of army troops (general, heavy and light), plus navies, all of which can speak their own accent, if there's a good reason to have them to this (general troops are upper class and might speak accordingly, light troops are often lower class, navy troops might concist of people from the islands rather than the mainland, or whatever). Also, we have various characters - spies, diplomats, princesses, merchants, etc. Each have unique samples, so we can allow these to speak with different accents as well.

[Keravnos]

Paokman, I never spoke of two languages. So far as Eastern and Western Med. Greek are concerned, you can call them dialect groups and be done with it. However, you can see for yourself that there was ample difference on how the Greek of the time was spoken in present day Greek state, and in present day Anatolia.

I haven't got my books here with me, it has been a while since reading about the medieval language and its evolution. There is one thing that bothers me, however you may laugh.

Cyprus has been speaking greek from the Mycenaean years. 1200 BCE on. It still does (those speaking greek at least). It wasn't the Arabs, or English or whoever else who "changed" their accent. They did speak their "singing" tongue, before and after them, and that "singing" tongue they have is closer to the language being spoken on the shores of Micrasia from Troas to Alikarnassos than the language we speak of today. As "Byzantio" had found itself cornered in those areas, this is why I suggested for this "tongue" to be considered for the voicemod.

Now, if you don't aknowledge the link between "old rodian" (the dialect the villagers and native Rhodians speak among themselves) and greek cypriot ( everyday people from villages and places they haven't lost the "singing" accent of theirs), then really there is no point discussing this further.

@Paokman, please work with biohaker for the best results. The kathareuousa greek he already has, along with some "Romaike" terminology in army titles, weapons etc. should be perfect for the voicemod.

Thank you guys for the work. Keep going!

[Pivra]

Ok, well, I don't know that many Rhodesians or Cretans. Do you?

Its not Rhodesia anymore its Zimbabwe.....(its a joke, because i dont think that Rhodesian is the correct collective noun for ppl from Rhodes lol)

[Beiss]

Its not Rhodesia anymore its Zimbabwe.....(its a joke, because i dont think that Rhodesian is the correct collective noun for ppl from Rhodes lol)

Ahaha Sorry about that, I hope I didn't offend anyone... hahaha

[paokmam]

Paokman, I never spoke of two languages. So far as Eastern and Western Med. Greek are concerned, you can call them dialect groups and be done with it. However, you can see for yourself that there was ample difference on how the Greek of the time was spoken in present day Greek state, and in present day Anatolia.

I haven't got my books here with me, it has been a while since reading about the medieval language and its evolution. There is one thing that bothers me, however you may laugh.

Cyprus has been speaking greek from the Mycenaean years. 1200 BCE on. It still does (those speaking greek at least). It wasn't the Arabs, or English or whoever else who "changed" their accent. They did speak their "singing" tongue, before and after them, and that "singing" tongue they have is closer to the language being spoken on the shores of Micrasia from Troas to Alikarnassos than the language we speak of today. As "Byzantio" had found itself cornered in those areas, this is why I suggested for this "tongue" to be considered for the voicemod.

Now, if you don't aknowledge the link between "old rodian" (the dialect the villagers and native Rhodians speak among themselves) and greek cypriot ( everyday people from villages and places they haven't lost the "singing" accent of theirs), then really there is no point discussing this further.

@Paokman, please work with biohaker for the best results. The kathareuousa greek he already has, along with some "Romaike" terminology in army titles, weapons etc. should be perfect for the voicemod.

Thank you guys for the work. Keep going!

That's true. But still please write the word 'dialect'. Because when writing the word 'language' misunderstandings occur.
The funny think is that I have a huge library at my disposal here but still I cannot search those linguistic things because of my other running research for my studies.
Yes, people in Cyprus speak in way like ancient Greeks. But the city of Byzantium (Constantinople) was populated by people from all around the empire. So even if the first inhabitants spoke like Cypriots, the mixture that had been created spoke an artificial compination of koini and attiki. But still these are all observations on the texts. We cannot really know because audio recorders didn't exist back then. My proposition is simply that a mainland Greek accent is more possible than a Cypriotic accent. I think that this is more possible. But still I could be wrong. But this is what my experience on the byzantine texts shows me.
I know the connection between the dialect of Rhodes and the dialect of Cyprus. Do you believe that by finding a modern Greek born and raised in Rhodes you will find a serious difference between that and mainland spoken Greek?My vacations there showed me otherwise. Maybe old men in villages still speak like this.
I personally know biohaker and I am trying to help him. The problem is that I am way away from home and I cannot find time to contribute as much as I would due to my research. But still I am at your disposal for anything.
Thank you for this conversations. You help me think things otherwise and go back at the texts for answers. If I find anything I shall inform biohaker and you.

[Beiss]

Keep us updated, paokman.

[Giorgos]

Some good work done in here guys. I hope that the project will move forward. As a Greek, i can't wait!

[Beiss]

I would very much like to see this finished, too. I don't know what's going on though. Is anyone translating anything?

[biohaker]

Hello, I was not home for about 2 months and that's why I didn't worked on anything. After my exams that end on February, I will continue with the rest translations, post them, so anyone can post comments or maybe corrections. Happy new year.

[biohaker]

Paokman, if you want, private msg me and gimme ur msn... Cu!

[Kostandinos]

The language spoken by the Byzantines wasn't katharevousa, it was Attic Greek, which was developed (like someone said earlier) from Macedonian Greek which was spread by Alexander. Attic Greek can still be seen and heard in the Greek Orthodox Church. I'm pretty sure you could find online translators and the like to help you out. Just remember - Attic Greek

[Beiss]

So... what's going on?