An Introduction to Language
Languages are like people: they are born, grow up, move away from home, mingle with others, have families, and die. They have parents, siblings, and children. The word “language” is a feminine noun in both Greek (γλῶττα) and Latin (lingua). Thus, we discuss languages as having mothers, sisters, daughters, and so forth only.
Like people, languages change over the course of their individual lifetimes. The way you speak now differs from the way you spoke when you were young and will differ from the way you will speak when you are older. The most apparent change we may observe in our own language’s lifetime is slang, but changes occur elsewhere as well. Were you to live 1000 years, your younger you would likely have trouble understanding your older you because language evolves with time, whether speakers like it or not.
When forms of the same language cease to be mutually intelligible, they are said to be different languages. Consider the first three lines of Beowulf, composed ca. 1000 CE:
Hwæt. We Gardena in geardagum,
þeodcyninga, þrym gefrunon,
hu ða æþelingas ellen fremedon.
This old form of English is no longer intelligible to a modern speaker of English. Thus, it — Old English, spoken a millennium ago — is considered a distinct language from the English we speak now, Modern English. So too Ancient Greek evolved over millennia to become the distinct daughter language spoken today, Modern Greek.
This website aims to help you read Ancient Greek from texts written over the course of at least a thousand years. The Ancient Greek of this extensive chronological period did not evolve nearly as much as English has since Beowulf. Even so, it is worth keeping in mind the temporal range of texts we read, not least because it can be a valuable morale booster to recall just how much Ancient Greek you are actually learning especially if you find yourself feeling frustrated or demoralized. All languages are hard to learn, and Ancient Greek is no exception.
So far we have discussed language evolution as if it were the language of a single speaker. Now imagine what would happen if that speaker had a sister who moved away. Since language naturally evolves, the way the two sisters speak the same language will develop independently. Indeed, differences in speech are even noticeable when actual siblings have different circles of friends. When two speakers of the same language speak in such a way that each notices a marked difference in the way the other speaks, we would say that they are now speaking two dialects of that single language.
A dialect is a form of a language that is mutually intelligible by other speakers of the language, but has features that are noticeably different from the others. These dialectical differences typically mark speakers geographically and/or socioeconomically. Thus, speakers of English in 21st-century California, Boston, and London understand each other, but the way they speak identifies them geographically; members of higher and lower socioeconomic classes within each of these cities will be distinguished by dialect as well.
There are formal categories of language in which dialects may differ. Dialects may differ phonetically, that is in the way words are pronounced. For instance, the English typical of England and the Northeast of the United States often does not pronounce the sound /r/. They may differ morphologically, that is in the way words change to indicate their function in a sentence. In Liverpool, the adjective “my” is “me.”
Dialects may also differ lexically, that is in vocabulary. In the United States, a submarine sandwich is variously called a hoagie, a po’boy, a hero, or a grinder, depending on the region. Addressing a woman as “ma’am” is considered polite in southern states, but can be received as condescending in New England. These are examples of dialectical variants. Ancient Greek had a number of significant literary dialects, and we will learn many dialectical variants in our studies. This will allow us to read a wide range of Ancient Greek literature and appreciate the implicit cultural significance of the language our authors choose to use.
Finally, when dialects of the same language evolve such that their speakers can no longer understand each other, new languages are born. These new languages are called sister languages in the same language family. As in the example of siblings who have different circles of friends, language speakers regularly interact with speakers of other languages, and the language they speak often reflects this interaction. Regardless, they belong to the same family.
When languages have words that share a common ancestor (for instance English “wise” and Ancient Greek woida, “I know,” both developed from a parent root, *wid-), those words are called cognates. When a speaker takes an existing word in her language and creates a new word from it, such as “wisdom” from “wise,” that new word is called a derivative of the existing one. When a language adopts a word from another language, such as “hors d’oeuvre” from French or “snob” from Swedish, that word is called a loanword or a borrowing.
reading morphologically 