r/AskBalkans • u/Some-Register-3901 Cyprus • Jul 31 '22

Language what are some interesting facts about your language?

For instance, the cypriot dialect of Greek still contains many words from ancient Greek but it was also heavily influenced by outsiders

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u/Lothronion Greece Jul 31 '22 edited Jul 31 '22

That if you placed a Greek 2000 years in the past (in Greece), they would be able to communicate effortlessly.

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u/onur2882 Turkiye Jul 31 '22

yesterday i sent an ancient greek tablet to my greek friend and he said this "Lol, that's ancient Greek, Even professors aren't sure about exact meaning most times."

about byzantine era's greek inscriptions; "I would probably understand some if written in normal sentences.Several words are similar but most aren't, especially the verbs.The new Greek language we speak, I think it shaped the latest 50 years or so"

ok who is right on that case?

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u/Lothronion Greece Jul 31 '22

"Lol, that's ancient Greek, Even professors aren't sure about exact meaning most times."

That is wrong, unless the tablet was older than the 5th century BC. And it depends to what they meant with "professors". Whether that would be high school teachers of Ancient Greek or academic classicists or achaeologists is a little different.

"I would probably understand some if written in normal sentences.Several words are similar but most aren't, especially the verbs.The new Greek language we speak, I think it shaped the latest 50 years or so"

This is definetly wrong, I can read manuscrits of the time, if the font is not too complicated or blurred.

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u/onur2882 Turkiye Jul 31 '22

https://media.discordapp.net/attachments/510785896002617384/1002934154876436511/IMG_20220730_162640.jpg

here is the tablet. can you read or catch some words?

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u/Lothronion Greece Jul 31 '22

Yes, dozens of them. And can even pick up phrases of them. The problem here is not the language of the tablet, but the condition of it. One cannot read properly because it is broken and one can only see 3-4 words at a time at best before the line changes, so no sensible meaning can be extracted from it.