Griechischer Sprachkurs online. Hellenistic Greek. Lexicon A quick way to look up any word from the lessions that you need to review Topical Index A list of topics treated in this course with links to their treatments in the grammar Blog Read about what is going on with the application of Linguistics to the study of Greek.
Learning Greek - Lesson 1 - Greek Letters - Page 10. Greek alphabet, pronunciation and language. Greek belongs to the Hellenic branch of the Indo-European language family, and is spoken by about 13 million people mainly in Greece and Cyprus, where it is an official language.
Greek is also recognised as a minority language in parts of Italy, and in Albania, Armenia, Romania and Ukraine. Greek was first written in Mycenae with a script known as Linear B, which was used between about 1500 and 1200 BC. Pronunciation Practice. Greek. The Greeks were the first Europeans to learn to write with an alphabet, and from them alphabetic writing spread to the rest of Europe, eventually leading down to all modern European alphabets.
Incidentally, the Greeks tried writing once before. Between 1500 and 1200 BCE, the Mycenaeans, an early tribe of Greeks, adapted the Minoan syllabary as Linear B to write an early form of Greek. However, the syllabary was not well suited to write Greek, and the exact pronunciation of Mycenaean words remains somewhat obcure. The alphabet, on the other hand, allowed a more precise record of the sounds in the language. From the shape of the letters, it is clear that the Greeks adopted the alphabet the Phoenician script, mostly like during the late 9th century BCE.