When I posted a few weeks ago, something very important slipped my mind! Not long before, it was this blog's first birthday, the 15th October. While I completely forgot at the time, bonam diem natalem tibi. I first decided to start this blog following the Pompeii and Herculaneum exhibition in the British Museum, and a year later I'm pleased with the range of topics I've covered on the blog, from Tiberius Gracchus to BBC's Atlantis. Here's to several more years!
 | Onto the main topic of the post. Since I picked up ancient Greek as part of my Classics course, I've come to the realisation that for the most part, Greek is Latin. When you set aside the obvious differences such as the different alphabet and words, the two languages are remarkably similar (although there are a few exceptions, naturally), something which has certainly made my life a good deal easier than it otherwise would have been these past weeks. It rarely feels like I'm learning Greek completely from scratch, quite fortunately! |
Without a doubt, there are a good number of similarities between Greek and Latin grammar. The most striking example is that while all Latin genitive plural forms end in -um, all Greek genitive plurals take the ending -ων (-on), making them both quite easy to distinguish. Both Latin and Greek are also inflected languages, which means that some of the key concepts (like adjective noun agreement, and the idea of prepositions taking cases) have already been introduced through studying Latin previously. Certainly, picking up ancient Greek would be a far greater challenge without the skills introduced in Latin - and I can add that to the list of reasons why it remains a useful subject, as a facilitator for learning other languages.
While I say that Greek and Latin are similar, it would be wrong not to look at some of the differences as well. The most obvious are the different alphabet and words. The alphabet I've actually found quite easy to learn, worryingly so - it's not unusual for me to write in English now, only to find I've replaced some letters in a word with their Greek equivalents. The new words are a trickier prospect. There aren't many words derived from Greek in English (my favourite being kudos), so most of them have to be learnt through repeated use - not a pleasant prospect, as it takes a while sometimes. There are also some grammatical differences between the two languages, notably Greek's lack of an ablative case, and the inclusion of the aorist tense, which is part of the perfect tense in Latin.
Overall, there are a fair number of similarities between Latin and ancient Greek, despite a few key differences. I can certainly say that studying Latin before has helped me in learning Greek, which is very welcome as it can be quite a tricky language to pick up. I'm most surprised at how easy the Greek alphabet has been to learn, it's now second nature for all but a few of the more uncommon letters.
To those who have never studied either Latin or ancient Greek before, I apologise for this post, which is aimed more at linguists than historians (something which will probably change next semester when I start my Roman history module). I'm not sure yet what my next post will be about, but I'm hoping that I can get it out within the next two weeks. Until then, thank you for reading, and feel free to leave a comment.
Christopher
While I say that Greek and Latin are similar, it would be wrong not to look at some of the differences as well. The most obvious are the different alphabet and words. The alphabet I've actually found quite easy to learn, worryingly so - it's not unusual for me to write in English now, only to find I've replaced some letters in a word with their Greek equivalents. The new words are a trickier prospect. There aren't many words derived from Greek in English (my favourite being kudos), so most of them have to be learnt through repeated use - not a pleasant prospect, as it takes a while sometimes. There are also some grammatical differences between the two languages, notably Greek's lack of an ablative case, and the inclusion of the aorist tense, which is part of the perfect tense in Latin.
Overall, there are a fair number of similarities between Latin and ancient Greek, despite a few key differences. I can certainly say that studying Latin before has helped me in learning Greek, which is very welcome as it can be quite a tricky language to pick up. I'm most surprised at how easy the Greek alphabet has been to learn, it's now second nature for all but a few of the more uncommon letters.
To those who have never studied either Latin or ancient Greek before, I apologise for this post, which is aimed more at linguists than historians (something which will probably change next semester when I start my Roman history module). I'm not sure yet what my next post will be about, but I'm hoping that I can get it out within the next two weeks. Until then, thank you for reading, and feel free to leave a comment.
Christopher
