S2E3 Ammon U - The Greek Tongue

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This is for the few 1000 people in the largest Ancient Greek course ever.
Your numbers are huge!
Ancient Greek has never had such a following
What you're a part of is a gorgeous thing
Good morning!
Welcome back to the gymnasium.
This is a class where you haven't paid to be here
Which means we can speak with Bacchic freedom
Let's learn some Ancient Greek

Assignment

Pontic Greek

You're in classical Greek
Look up Pontic Greek

• Pontic Greek - language spoken along the Black Sea, near Turkey. A sister of Hellenistic Greek. You're studying the language that dominated the planet.

Beowulf - olde English.

• Ancient Greek spans 2000 years. Your English is in its early form after 1000 years... take a look at Beowulf's olde English...

When you have a modern Greek speaker tell you about Ancient Greek, they're not comprehending, it's like reading Shakespeare, or Beowulf... do we understand older English? Hell no... Anglo Saxon bog trotting bar bar bar... weird letters, weird grammar, weird vocab... familiar words were pronounced differently... Lay people slaughter it, and modern Greeks are lay people to the Ancient Greek, just like how modern English speakers (that's us) are to olde English...

With classical Greek, when we hear someone step forward with modern Greek and hack and slash and misunderstand the Ancient Greek...

...they have no eidos. These people have no aidos...

• aidos - shame

We're talking about Greek over a 2000 year period. If we just go 1000BCE to 1000CE; and you're talking about development over that time - we'll give you texts that can be 2000 years apart and you're going to have to read them.

Do you understand what a classical philologist is? Do you understand what you're getting into?

Here's an additional problem. Ancient Greek is musical. There is a melody generated from speaking. English is stress-accented. Greek has pitch. As you spoke mother Greek in antiquity, you pick up not only rhythm but also melody. It's not just pitch accent, it's melody. All of the vowels are doing this. What are the vowels in Greek? They're notes accented tonally in order to create rhythm and melody.

Are we going to be able to go there? No. Our operating systems don't allow it. There's a bridge or a patch we can use though. We can observe them through our bar bar operating system. We have to learn to march. The stress march. This is what we do in English. This Greek is an advanced operating system. See how difficult it is to impress an advanced operating system to impress on our own? So we have to patch ourselves... to make advancement...

Get started

Modern Day Pontic Greek has, like it's mother classical greek, is the infinitive.
English tries to build one itself
Modern Greek just gave up...
Pontic Greek closely resembles ancient greek.

There's a difference between the books you read with definitions in them
If the language is living, you call them dictionaries
If the language is dead, those are lexica

Romega has the Infinitive, a musical invention of ancient greek.
Which has disappeared from all other greek language.

Video [link]

Romega - endangered, 5000 speakers

Letters and drinking blood

UPPERCASE: write on rocks
LOWERCASE: write on scrolls
They didn't put spaces between words.
24 letters, 17 consonants, 7 vowels (musical notes)
To put letters on stone you hire a geometrician.

The greeks didn't start their sentences with capitols.
We do that, so we've added that to their texts.
There were no capitol letters. It's a crutch.
Those capitols take a chunk of your brain and fractures the circuit.

Another circuit:
Sexual love was a person, eros.
Justice is a lady, dike.
Earth, Gaia, she.
Not abstract concepts, as you've been familiar.
You've had your circuit cut.

So cut that circuit, no capitols.

LOWERCASE: These are the letters we'll see on our scrolls. Not books. Scrolls.

Alphabet

First letter is capitalized because our editors centuries later chose to...
Also, Aidos was a person, an individual.

• Αἰδὼς - Aidos - shame is a lady. A recognition of divinity.
• καὶ - and
• Νέμεσις - Nemesis - is the woman who gives you what you deserve, especially when you are ungrateful for what life has given you. She likes to hang around shame. Shows up when you're given something georgous and have no respect for it. When you give yourself to the acquisition of goods, you sell a piece of yourself you can never reacquire. Because your greed stains your soul with the stench of ruin. And ruin is a lady.

Nature's physics.

• τύραννος - tyrant - an absolute ruler. unlimited by law or constitution

When you see a ruler taking a dump on the constitution, you have a classic tyrant.
How do they get their power?
By crapping on the constitution.

If you dont have a history, you're screwed. Is the key.
The renaissance always comes with the rediscovery of classic greek

One of the greek musicians from antiquity defining music:

• Μουσική (mousike) - music
  • Τεχνικά (technika) - technical aspects
    • Ἁρμονικόν (harmonikon) - harmony
    • Ῥυθμικόν (hruthmikon) - rhythm
    • Μετρικόν (metrikon) - meter
  • Χρηστικά (chrestika) - practical application
    • Μελοποιΐα (melopoiia) - melody composition
    • Ῥυθμοποιΐα (hruthmopoiia) - rhythm composition
    • Ποίησις (poiesis) - poetry or creation
  • Ἐξαγγελτικά (exaggeltika) - expression
    • Ὀργανικόν (organikon) - instrumental music
    • Ὀδικόν (oudikon) - vocal music
    • Ὑποκριτικόν (hupokritikon) - dramatic interpretation

When you take rulers of the strings, and you make them rulers of the people, you get Ancient Greek.

Are they talking about music? yes
Are they talking about language? yes

Pronunciation, we dont quite know, real problems. Varied much according from time to place, differed in many respects from the modern language.

A slide of pronunciation over time.
Our current pronunciation of Ancient Greek is only in part even approx. correct to the period of Pericles 429BC.

Its like we got the rhythm correct and we got no melody at all.
We have bog trotting anglosaxon operating system.

• Barbarians - someone who's operating system is not mother greek

There are periods where the langue is being commonized, dumbed down, dogmatic, common. "Koine".
People came along and said "nay", tried to bring it back, filling libraries with Atticized greek.
Struggles within ancient greek, to bring the most expressive, complex, natural language.

Roman heritage?
Sorry, but
Your earliest ancestors couldn't come up with their own language
They needed a very educated Greek Woman teach them how to make an alpha bet (Alpha Beta, right?)
They turned her into a divinity, shrines, worship.
Their musa (Muse). Full of Songs. Carmenta.
Ancient Greek is coming from a woman who sings, is in tune with a stringed instrument.
The singer of the guitar brought you your language, Romans.
Latin is hobgoblin... :)

Text

Testament of Abraham (Black Bible)

Talking about echidna (ἐχίδνας), poisons, different iobolon (ιοβολων) opheon (οφεων).
With every note, you're getting a syllable.
It's straight up music.

• iobolon (ιοβολων) - poison arrows
• ios - poison
• bol - the things you're shooting

For Next Time

Read the introduction again. Dont memorize accents, dont worry.

(Todo: Continue notetaking from 1:03:38 in)
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