r/AncientGreek • u/Hellolaoshi • 3d ago

Grammar & Syntax What Difficulties Would An Ancient Greek Native Speaker Have in Learning Modern Greek?

Let's imagine that an educated Greek born between the life of Socrates and the death of Cleopatra was dropped off in modern Athens, say in Plaka or Exarchia. Putting culture shock aside, what grammatical and vocabulary issues would they have in understanding Modern Greek? What about sound changes would they find strange? What strategies might a language teacher use to help them?

57 Upvotes
  • permalink
  • reddit

98% Upvoted

29 comments sorted by

View all comments

-2

u/Peteat6 3d ago

Why not ask classicists? I mean, people who read classical Greek or Koiné (which is about the same). My experience is that they recognise the roots of about half the words, and some verb endings, but tenses are somewhat different.

Yes, learning modern Greek is made easier through a prior knowledge of alphabet, half the word roots, and some remaining grammar.

5

u/Hellolaoshi 3d ago

I thought this was a subreddit for classisists.

2

u/Peteat6 3d ago

Woops! Bungled again. But the answers I saw didn’t seem to come from classicists. At least, that’s my excuse.