The Greek language was not original. It was originally from a different group of people that the Greeks traded with. A lot of people don’t know that much about the Greek language. You might have questions like, what was the Greek alphabet? Who made it and when? What did Greeks write about? Who still uses this ancient language? How did their alphabet influence the actual word “alphabet”? Greece was an ancient civilization that influenced many other languages. Their alphabet is known world wide. But what is the history behind it? ("The Greek Alphabet - Ancient Greece for Kids.", 2013.) What was the Greek alphabet? The ancient Greek language was invented by Socrates and Plato. (The Independent., 2013.) Scientist first discovered this ancient language by finding a tablet they call the Linear B Tablet. Linear B is a writing used in Greece in the 13th century. Scientist found a tablet with Linear B writing that was from the Bronze Age. That means this tablet was from somewhere around 1200 B.C. ("Greek Alphabet.", 2013.) The Greeks traded with a group called the Phoenicians. When they traded, the Phoenicians wrote down what they received to keep track. The Greeks saw this writing useful and decided to start writing. They used the Phoenicians alphabet but changed it in some ways. ("The Greek Alphabet - Ancient Greece for Kids." , 2013.) When the Greek language was spoken they called it Koine. There were many other forms of spoken Greek but Koine was the most common. ("Greek Alphabet." , 2013.) The first two words in the Greek alphabet are Alpha and Beta. Look familiar? It should. If you put Alpha and Beta together, they form the word alphabet. So, the Greeks came up with the word “alphabet”. The Greek language is over 2500 years old bu... ... middle of paper ... ... it is still used today in a lot of countries and is the official language for some. The ancient Greeks wrote things that aren’t that different from what we write today. In school, you wrote poems, stories, essays, and other things for lessons. When you were older you wrote job papers, trading notes, and letters. There’s probably a lot more we can learn about the ancient Greek alphabet. Bibliography BBC News. BBC, n.d. Web. 08 Nov. 2013 BBC News. BBC, n.d. Web. 11 Nov. 2013 "Greek Alphabet." Greek Alphabet. N.p., n.d. Web. 07 Nov. 2013 "The Greek Alphabet - Ancient Greece for Kids." The Greek Alphabet - Ancient Greece for Kids. N.p., n.d. Web. 07 Nov. 2013. "The Greek Alphabet - Ancient Greece for Kids." The Greek Alphabet - Ancient Greece for Kids. N.p., n.d. Web. 07 Nov. 2013. The Independent. Independent Digital News and Media, n.d. Web. 11 Nov. 2013
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Without our past we are nothing. The Greek and Roman civilization were marvelous civilizations of the AD times. If you look around today you can see advancements we made off of concepts we borrowed from the Ancient Greeks and Romans. Today, we owe much of our understanding to them; they were very knowledgeable of many things. The Greeks and Romans although they were very old civilizations have managed to impact our daily lives in the some of the most fantastic ways possible.
civilization. They started the Olympic games. Greeks come up with the idea of an alphabet
82).” According to Walter Ong, the act of communication through writing heightens ones consciousness and begins to change the way in which the writer thinks. This in turn facilitates the development of increasingly sophisticated technological advancements. Early pictographs were typically monotone and very simplistic in nature. However, as the technology evolved, humankind developed multi-hued writing media that improved the visual accuracy of the images created and subsequently improved the complexity of the message delivered. Essentially more visual detail equals a more complex symbology and abstraction. Some major milestones in the evolution of communication technology include the simplification of earlier literal depictions in the late Paleolithic era, the development of the first “alphabets” as quasi-abstract symbols representing the basic sounds of spoken language. These early alphabets were extremely complex and cumbersome until the Phoenicians developed a “totally abstract and alphabetical system of twenty-two simple phonetic signs, replacing the formidable complexity of cuneiform and hieroglyphs (Higgins, 2003).” The inhabitants of Greece and Rome adopted this system of writing which was in effect by 1500 B.C. and later developed what we know as the
Hieroglyphs, a writing system method representing verbal communication, served as the basis for the Egyptian alphabet from which the later Hebrew, Greek, Latin, Arabic, and Cyrillic alphabets came from.
Instead the language was a combination of words and letters. The alphabet was divided into two different categories, phonograms and ideograms. Ideograms represented whole words while phonograms represented the letters to spell out the different sounds of the words.(UkuleleCari) Ideograms either represented an object or something related to the object. For example the hieroglyph for legs could also represent movement, and when they were combined with other hieroglyphs, it could represent concepts like “approach” or “give directions.” (Guisepi, 7) Phonograms represented a sound in a word. (Guisepi,
So yes, writing has improved much from when it was formed by the Sumerians in 3200 B.C. We went from clay, to paper, and have many different sorts of writing that are available to people today to use and to develop; such as cuneiform and hieroglyphics from thousands of years ago. Here in the present day, we even partake in diverse types of writing in literature such as fiction, non-fiction, scientific, etc. to create different feelings for the reader.
The Phoenicians are very historically significant. They created the alphabet and many empires based their lettering system of theirs. Each letter stood for a sound and their were vocals involved. The Chinese and Babylonians had symbols representing actions or objects with pictures or lines. It was a completely different way to record things, but it was much more simple to do. It was passed to the Greeks, Romans, and our alphabet even comes from
In conclusion, Ancient Greek Civilization resulted in a rise of political ideas and a culture that influenced the ancient world and future civilizations. Ancient Greeks influenced the Ancient world and the modern world greatly politically, intellectually, and artistically. The Greeks progressed from living in small settlements into owning a great empire that expanded from the west to the east, and from north to south throughout the world. The unique geography of Greece and the rise of its city-states resulted in great diverse influences to everyone that has ever lived. Greek societies taught us so much, and without them people would most probably be way less intellectual and a lot less creative, and I think that Greeks should be always thanked for the knowledge they gave to humanity. Due to all of this, Greek is the birth of civilization.