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One of the ancient languages of the world that is still known to us today is the Greek language. When the Greeks were at their prime, the Greek language was one of the finest languages spoken in the world. Even today, the language deserves respect. Be it for its complexity or innovativeness, the language is an art.
However, how much do we really know about the Greek language? Do we know as much about this wonderful language as we should? Here is a look at some of the interesting facts.
About the language
Belonging to the Hellenic branch of the Indo-European language family, Greek is spoken by more than 13 million people all across the globe, mainly in Greece and Cyprus. About 30% of the modern day English vocabulary consists of ruminants from the Greek alphabet.
Let’s have a look at certain interesting facts that are associated when we speak about Greek alphabet.
· It started from 1200BC during the Mycenaean and is considered to be the first Europeans who learned and adopted to write with alphabets. All the modern European writing started with the Greek alphabet. From a close study about the Greek letters, it clearly evident that they were adopted from the Phoenician script, most of which was done by the 9th century BC.
· What is strikingly different is the presence of vowels in Greek alphabet which was not there in the Phoenician script. While adopting, the Greeks modified the peripheral letters of the Phoenician script and in vowels while the consonants remained the same.
· Following the Phoenicians, early Greek was written from right to left which gradually changed to boustrophedon and the direction changed from left to right. This change became a standard in Hellenic BC and is followed in modern day writing style of Greek and roman alphabets.
· The Greek letters were used to represent the number system as well. There was two clearly separate systems- alphabet and acrophonic. The alphabetic numerical system has each of the Greek letters a numeric value. For instance, Ï (qoppa), Ï (digamma) and Ï¡ (sampi) were used as numerals for values like 90, 6, and 900.
· Greek alphabets form the basis for Etruscan, (which is by extension Latin), Gothic, Coptic, and Cyrillic scripts, as well as made much influence on the Armenian, Glagolitic, and Georgian scripts. With its long history, it is still used as a living writing system by almost all the Greek communities across the globe.
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