Languages from the Cradle - lullabies of Europe

About the Greek Language
The Greek language has the longest history among the European languages. Scriptures in Greek have been discovered that date back to the second millennium B.C. and literature works more than 2500 years old (Hristidis, 2002). All Arts and Sciences were born and developed using it. Written texts in Mathematics, Physics, Astronomy, Law, Medicine, History, Politics, Ethics, Gastronomy, etc. were written in this language thousands of years ago. All ancient literature, tragedies and comedies, Homer’s epic works, the New Testament, the Byzantine and Modern Greek literature, the first encyclopedia were all written in Greek.
Nevertheless, the most important thing to mention is the evolution that the Greeks brought to written expression; in 1000 AD, they were the first to invent a number of written sign-letters each of which represented only one sound. This one-to-one analogue influenced the course of history, as this was actually what we call the first alphabet. At first, Greeks were writing only in capital letters, with no spaces in between words and starting from the right side to the left. However, this was soon to be abandoned (5th century AD) and the from-left-to-right form of writing was adopted. This way of writing was also used by the Romans and finally by the whole world today.
The Greek language is one of the very few in the world with such a homogeneous evolution and has a continuity rare in the linguistic history of mankind as it has being spoken for thousands of years. Today’s Greek language keeps the ancient alphabet and spelling and 75% of its vocabulary is based upon the ancient language.
The modern Cypriot dialect evolved from the “Koini”, the popular form of Greek which emerged in post-classical antiquity. The Cypriot dialect of Greek is spoken by more than half a million people in Cyprus and several hundreds of others abroad. There is diglossia (in the linguistic sense) in Cyprus between the official Greek language and the dialect. There are specific standard settings where speaking standard Greek is demanded or considered polite, such as in school classes, in parliament, in the media, etc. In most other situations the dialect is widely used. Although the official Greek language has been used by most Greek Cypriot writers and poets, the dialect has been traditionally used for folk songs, including lullabies.
The Greek language has influenced the development of many other languages. The English language has got about 50.000 words of Greek origin. Words like these are very often used in both oral and written English: Alphabet, Angel, Bible, Bibliography, Cinema, Cube, Dialogue, Ethnic, Fantasy, Geography, Grammar, History, Idol, Jealous, Kilometer, Lexicon, Machine, Mathematics, Monastery, Myopia, Neurosis, Oyster, Pirate, Politics, Program, Problem, Rhapsody, Sarcastic, Symbol, Symptom, Technology, Therapy, Utopia, Xenophobia, Zoology, Theatre.

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Disclaimer: The project Languages from the cradle has been funded with support from the European Commission. This document reflects the views only of the author, and the Commission cannot be held responsible for any use which may be made of the information contained therein.