# Where does modern Greek vocabulary come from?



## James Bates

I just started learning Modern Greek, and one of the first things I read was that the majority of Ancient Greek vocabulary has been inherited. (The pronunciation has changed, of course, but the spelling seems to be identical.)

This reminded me of Hindi, which is a direct descendant of Sanskrit. Most of Hindi's vocabulary is Sanskritic. However, one must distinguish between words that have been _borrowed_ from Sanskrit (usually to replace a borrowing from Arabic or Persian) and words that have _evolved_ from Sanskrit. The former are identical in spelling with the original Sanskrit words while the latter have almost always been brutally altered and simplified by the tongues of hundreds of millions of speakers over the course of two millennia. One exception may be the Sanskrit word "naama" ("name") which probably survived intact because it could hardly be shortened further. Another exception would be "jeevan" "("life"), which is also quite simple. In some cases, the original Sanskrit word has been borrowed into Hindi even though its evolved form is still in use, e.g. kshetra and varsh, both of whose evolved forms, khet and baras, are in common use.

I was wondering how much of Modern Greek vocabulary had been borrowed from Ancient Greek and how much had evolved. My guess is the situation is similar to Hindi: almost all verbs and most everyday nouns and adjectives are corruptions (or evolved forms, if you will) of Sanskrit words, barely recognizable to someone who hasn't studied their etymology. Vocabulary belonging to a higher register, such as words concerning literature, politics, and science, are wholesale borrowings from Sanskrit and have the spelling preserved intact. In a few cases, borrowings exist alongside the modern forms.

A native speaker would have to tell me to what extent the analogy is correct.


----------



## thessaloniki

James Bates said:


> I just started learning Modern Greek, and one of the first things I read was that the majority of Ancient Greek vocabulary has been inherited. (The pronunciation has changed, of course, but the spelling seems to be identical.)
> 
> This reminded me of Hindi, which is a direct descendant of Sanskrit. Most of Hindi's vocabulary is Sanskritic. However, one must distinguish between words that have been _borrowed_ from Sanskrit (usually to replace a borrowing from Arabic or Persian) and words that have _evolved_ from Sanskrit. The former are identical in spelling with the original Sanskrit words while the latter have almost always been brutally altered and simplified by the tongues of hundreds of millions of speakers over the course of two millennia. One exception may be the Sanskrit word "naama" ("name") which probably survived intact because it could hardly be shortened further. Another exception would be "jeevan" "("life"), which is also quite simple. In some cases, the original Sanskrit word has been borrowed into Hindi even though its evolved form is still in use, e.g. kshetra and varsh, both of whose evolved forms, khet and baras, are in common use.
> 
> I was wondering how much of Modern Greek vocabulary had been borrowed from Ancient Greek and how much had evolved. My guess is the situation is similar to Hindi: almost all verbs and most everyday nouns and adjectives are corruptions (or evolved forms, if you will) of Sanskrit words, barely recognizable to someone who hasn't studied their etymology. Vocabulary belonging to a higher register, such as words concerning literature, politics, and science, are wholesale borrowings from Sanskrit and have the spelling preserved intact. In a few cases, borrowings exist alongside the modern forms.
> 
> A native speaker would have to tell me to what extent the analogy is correct.


Hello James
I am trying to understand what exactly do you mean by "borrowed" when you refer to the same, essentially, language that has evolved - changed "over the course of two millennia" (in the case of Greek, a  bit more than 2500 years). I don't know Hindi or Sanskrit, but it seems to me that when you talk about "borrowed" words, these are words that they kept their original spelling pretty much the same, while others have changed a lot. Or, could it be that in Hindi they were using a borrowed word from Arabic or Persian and, at some point they decided to revive a Sanskrit word that had not been in use, in order to replace and stop using the borrowed word?
Anyway, if I were to speak about borrowed words in Greek, these would be from other languages, and there are many. From Latin, English, French, Italian, Turkish, most of them. Some of them have integrated and follow the greek grammar, like "κεφτές" (meatball) that comes from Turkish and there are others we have kept almost in their original form, like "ασανσέρ" (elevator): "ascenseur" in French. So, a major distinction would be this: whether a given word is pure greek or not. 
Now, when it comes to pure Greek words, although I am not an expert, I would say that the sum of the greek vocabulary has evolved from the Ancient Greek. The spelling in these cases is the same as in Ancient Greek, but, since the grammar has changed, this is particularly true for the theme of the words and not so much for the endings. Let's say, for example, the word "mother": "μήτηρ" in Ancient Greek, "μητέρα" in Modern, or "father": "πατήρ" in A.G., "πατέρας" in modern, and so on. There are also many words that have remained intact as concerns their spelling, but they have a whole different meaning. For example, the word "νόστιμο" has exactly the same spelling since the time  of Homer, but in M.G. it means "tasty", whereas in A.G. it refers to "returning to homeland", as in the homeric phrase "νόστιμον ήμαρ" (the day we will return to homeland). 
Another category is that of words that have been formed in a foreign language, using ancient greek words, and then we (the modern Greeks) took them back, the so called "repatriated loans". So, the French took the Greek words "νόστος" (return to homeland) and "άλγος" (pain) and made the word "nostalgie" which came back to Greek as "νοσταλγία" meaning "longing" (not only to come back home, but longing for anything that I had and lost, as, I think, in any other language that this word is being used). This is another big category of words in modern greek vocabulary.
Well, this is a big discussion and a quite complicated matter, as you see. I hope I did not miss the point.


----------



## amiramir

James,

I am a fairly advanced speaker of both Hindi and Greek, though not native in either, but I hope I can help you out.

I think the two situations are different. Hindi, being a fairly new language, had to very quickly build up a vocabulary for common usage. (Of course, Hindi didn't just pop up from no where, but standard Hindi is a fairly new invention -- 1800s or so. Prior to that the elite would use Persian or Urdu and the common people would use a range of dialects from khadi boli to brij bhasha etc). Therefore, Sanskrit was looked t as the source for the new words. (You will be familiar with the various categories of Sanskrit-origin words tadbhav etc). In sum, I think your description of the Hindi vocabularly situation is quite correct-- the basic words having evolved over centuries/millennia, and learned words taken en masse from Sanskrit.

Greek is in a different situation, as Greek never stopped being a language of use for elites, the literate, scholarship, etc. Therefore their learned words have evolved over time just like their base words. Of course there are foreign borrowings, as in all languages, and constructed words (look up kathareuvousa in wikipedia), but for the most part the body of vocabulary has evolved continuously since ancient times.

I hope that's helpful.


----------



## dcx97

I might add that Hindi is also going through a process of de-Arabisation and de-Persianisation in order to make it as Sanskritic and, hence, Hindu as possible. This is similar to how Greek purists have purged the language of all foreign borrowings, especially those of Turkish origin.


----------



## Αγγελος

The question really has to do with the difference between what are called 'mots populaires' and 'mots savants' in French.
The former survived since ancient times on the mouths of the people. The sky, the ground, the sea never stopped being called ουρανός, γη, θάλασσα in Greek. The basic numerals have always been μία, δύο, τρία... πέντε... δέκα... completely unchanged. Some words underwent grammatical adaptation: thus πατήρ (=father) became πατέρας, after the (unchanged) accusative πατέρα, or were replaced by diminutives, such as παιδί (=child) from ancient παῖς, but are still fundamentally the same.
The latter were revived or created by the learned in modern times, either to express new concepts or to replace words of foreign origin. Thus, the post used to be called πόστα, but a new word ταχυδρομείο, from ancient (and still used) ταχυδρόμος, meaning swift-runner and also messenger, was created in the 19th century to replace it and did in fact replace it completely. Likewise, when the first Greek-language gazette was started in the late 18th century, a new word, εφημερίς (from ἡμέρα = day - astronomers will recognize their "ephemerids") was created to name it and is now the usual word for 'newspaper'. -- Of course, a good many of those words, such as "thermometer" or 'telephone'  were created by foreigners on the basis of Greek roots and were taken over into Greek (as θερμόμετρο and τηλέφωνο respectively).
As, however, those ancient words which survived into modern Greek were not, for the most part, changed considerably, the distinction between 'mots populaires' and 'mots savants' is not as marked  in French, or, I gather from some previous explanations, as in Hindi. The word σπασμός, meaning 'spasm', was probably reintroduced by the learned in modern times -- but it wouldn't have changed in the least if it had survived continuously in popular speech. After all, there is a similarly formed but 100% popular word σκασμός, meaning "shut up!" On the other hand, there are examples where the difference is perceptible. Thus the ancient word κόμβος, meaning 'knot', survived in modern Greek, spelled as κόμπος, but was reintroduced by the learned as κόμβος to mean 'node' (also 'knot' in the nautical sense of 'mile per hour'). Likewise,  κλείς (ancient Greek for 'key') gave κλειδί in the usual sense, but κλείδα in the sense of 'encryption key'.


----------



## sotos

Αγγελος said:


> a new word, εφημερίς (from ἡμέρα = day - astronomers will recognize their "ephemerids") was created to name it and is now the usual word for 'newspaper'. '.



Ephemeris is not a new  invented word. Alexander the Great was issuing ephemerides (Arrianus, I think). 
Any way, I think the important in the Greek language is not the words themselves, but the ability to create new or composite words "in a greek way".  I am not sure if english borrows from Greek because lacks the ability to form new words that sound sensible and not rediculus.


----------



## ireney

Soros you couldn't be more wrong about English. The ease with which it creates new words is, frankly, astounding. And they sound both sensible and not ridiculous within that language.
The main reason English borrows from Greek and Latin in specific is the tradition that dictates that in certain fields the name of, well, things should be of Greek, Latin, or Greco-Roman form.
In general, the English borrows words for new concepts from whichever language because it's a confident language that doesn't get overly concerned about purity and other such nonsense, helped in this ny it's non declined form that allows new words to become part of its vocabulary much easier than, say, Greek.


----------



## Αγγελος

ireney said:


> Soros you couldn't be more wrong about English. The ease with which it creates new words is, frankly, astounding. And they sound both sensible and not ridiculous within that language.


My favorite example in that connection is 'hairy cell leukemia', so named by its American discoverers because of the way certain characteristic cells look. In French it is called 'leucémie tricholeucocytaire'!


----------



## sotos

Αγγελος said:


> My favorite example in that connection is 'hairy cell leukemia', so named by its American discoverers because of the way certain characteristic cells look. In French it is called 'leucémie tricholeucocytaire'!


A good example of how a word can look funny. In german is 
_Haarzellleukämie. _Three Ls in sequence!


----------



## dcx97

Αγγελος said:


> My favorite example in that connection is 'hairy cell leukemia', so named by its American discoverers because of the way certain characteristic cells look. In French it is called 'leucémie tricholeucocytaire'!



But "leucémie tricholeucocytaire" doesn't seem to be a translation of "hairy cell leukemia" because there's no word for "cell" in it.


----------



## Glasguensis

It isn’t necessarily a direct translation, but the « cyt » part comes from the Greek « kutos », which means cell.


----------



## sotos

Αγγελος said:


> My favorite example in that connection is 'hairy cell leukemia', so named by its American discoverers because of the way certain characteristic cells look. In French it is called 'leucémie tricholeucocytaire'!


In this case, the Brits probably avoided  _tricho_- because the _tri-_ followed by _chol-_ could be confused with some chemicals. The same applies to French, of course. Anyway, the medical terminology has already a heavy burden of greco-latin, causing cephalalgias and blepharospams to the medics.


----------



## Αγγελος

Glasguensis said:


> It isn’t necessarily a direct translation, but the « cyt » part comes from the Greek « kutos », which means cell.


The modern biological term for cell is κύτταρο, but the cyt- part is a standard morpheme of international scientific terminology: erythrocyte = red blood cell, leukocyte = white blood cell, astrocyte = star-shaped glial cell (in the brain), cytomegalovirus = enlarged cell virus, etc.


----------



## dcx97

Thanks, Aggelos.


----------

