The Talking Greeks

The Talking Greeks
Author: John Heath
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 402
Release: 2005-05-12
Genre: History
ISBN: 1139443917

When considering the question of what makes us human, the ancient Greeks provided numerous suggestions. This book argues that the defining criterion in the Hellenic world, however, was the most obvious one: speech. It explores how it was the capacity for authoritative speech which was held to separate humans from other animals, gods from humans, men from women, Greeks from non-Greeks, citizens from slaves, and the mundane from the heroic. John Heath illustrates how Homer's epics trace the development of immature young men into adults managing speech in entirely human ways and how in Aeschylus' Oresteia only human speech can disentangle man, beast, and god. Plato's Dialogues are shown to reveal the consequences of Socratically imposed silence. With its examination of the Greek focus on speech, animalization, and status, this book offers new readings of key texts and provides significant insights into the Greek approach to understanding our world.

Ancient Greek Ideas on Speech, Language, and Civilization

Ancient Greek Ideas on Speech, Language, and Civilization
Author: Deborah Levine Gera
Publisher:
Total Pages: 278
Release: 2003
Genre: Civilization
ISBN: 9780199256167

"The source and nature of earliest speech and civilization are puzzles that have intrigued people for many centuries. This book explores Greek ideas on the beginnings of language, and the links between speech and civilization. It is a study of ancient Greek views on the nature of the world's first society and first language, the source of language, the development of civilization and speech, and the relation between people's level of civilization and the kind of language they use." "Discussions of later Western reflections on the origin and development of language and society, particularly during the Enlightenment, feature in the book, along with brief surveys of recent research on glottogenesis, the acquisition of language, and the beginnings of civilization."--BOOK JACKET.

Did Jesus Speak Greek?

Did Jesus Speak Greek?
Author: G. Scott Gleaves
Publisher: Wipf and Stock Publishers
Total Pages: 241
Release: 2015-05-12
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 1498204333

Did Jesus speak Greek? An affirmative answer to the question will no doubt challenge traditional presuppositions. The question relates directly to the historical preservation of Jesus's words and theology. Traditionally, the authenticity of Jesus's teaching has been linked to the recovery of the original Aramaic that presumably underlies the Gospels. The Aramaic Hypothesis infers that the Gospels represent theological expansions, religious propaganda, or blatant distortions of Jesus's teachings. Consequently, uncovering the original Aramaic of Jesus's teachings will separate the historical Jesus from the mythical personality. G. Scott Gleaves, in Did Jesus Speak Greek?, contends that the Aramaic Hypothesis is inadequate as an exclusive criterion of historical Jesus studies and does not aptly take into consideration the multilingual culture of first-century Palestine. Evidence from archaeological, literary, and biblical data demonstrates Greek linguistic dominance in Roman Palestine during the first century CE. Such preponderance of evidence leads not only to the conclusion that Jesus and his disciples spoke Greek but also to the recognition that the Greek New Testament generally and the Gospel of Matthew in particular were original compositions and not translations of underlying Aramaic sources.

Analyzing Greek Talk-in-interaction

Analyzing Greek Talk-in-interaction
Author: Maria Christodoulidou
Publisher:
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2014
Genre: Conversation analysis
ISBN: 9781443861687

Analyzing Greek talk-in-interaction incorporates ten studies which focus on Greek Conversation Analysis (CA). Although still new, research on Greek talk-in-interaction is promising and pointing in many directions. This volumeâ (TM)s contribution is to fill in a bibliographical gap in Greek linguistics and in the field of talk-in-interaction by offering a book dedicated to studies on several aspects of talk-in-interaction, seen from a conversation analytic perspective. The studies included in the current volume have been selected mainly on the basis of their content since the intention is to cover a wide spectrum of topics in Greek talk-in-interaction. The ten chapters are grouped into thematic categories and are presented in the following four sections: (a) grammar and interaction; (b) reporting small stories; (c) analysis of code mixing and switching; (d) mobile and Facebook talk from a conversation analytic perspective. This book will serve as a point of reference for scholars and students interested in Greek talk-in-interaction, and will familiarize readers with CA research on the Greek language and its varieties and encourage further research into Greek CA.

Through the Language Glass

Through the Language Glass
Author: Guy Deutscher
Publisher:
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2010
Genre: Comparative linguistics
ISBN: 9780434016907

Generalisations about language and culture are at best amusing and meaningless, but is there anything sensible left to be said about the relation between language, culture and thought? *Does language reflect the culture of a society? *I

On Not Knowing Greek

On Not Knowing Greek
Author: Virginia Woolf
Publisher: Hesperus Press
Total Pages: 88
Release: 2024-07-15
Genre: Literary Collections
ISBN: 1843913488

Taken from The Common Reader, these essays take the form of a series of reflections on diverse literary topics, brought to life by Woolf' s extensive knowledge, lively wit, and piercing insight. "For it is vain and foolish to talk of knowing Greek, since in our ignorance we should be at the bottom of any class of schoolboys, since we do not know how the words sounded, or where precisely we ought to laugh, or how the actors acted, and between this foreign people and ourselves there is not only difference of race and tongue but a tremendous breach of tradition."

Ancient Greek Lists

Ancient Greek Lists
Author: Athena Kirk
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2023-03-30
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 9781108744959

Ancient Greek Lists brings together catalogic texts from a variety of genres, arguing that the list form was the ancient mode of expressing value through text. Ranging from Homer's Catalogue of Ships through Attic comedy and Hellenistic poetry to temple inventories, the book draws connections among texts seldom juxtaposed, examining the ways in which lists can stand in for objects, create value, act as methods of control, and even approximate the infinite. Athena Kirk analyzes how lists come to stand as a genre in their own right, shedding light on both under-studied and well-known sources to engage scholars and students of Classical literature, ancient history, and ancient languages.

Introducing the Ancient Greeks: From Bronze Age Seafarers to Navigators of the Western Mind

Introducing the Ancient Greeks: From Bronze Age Seafarers to Navigators of the Western Mind
Author: Edith Hall
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
Total Pages: 295
Release: 2014-06-16
Genre: History
ISBN: 0393244121

"Wonderful…a thoughtful discussion of what made [the Greeks] so important, in their own time and in ours." —Natalie Haynes, Independent The ancient Greeks invented democracy, theater, rational science, and philosophy. They built the Parthenon and the Library of Alexandria. Yet this accomplished people never formed a single unified social or political identity. In Introducing the Ancient Greeks, acclaimed classics scholar Edith Hall offers a bold synthesis of the full 2,000 years of Hellenic history to show how the ancient Greeks were the right people, at the right time, to take up the baton of human progress. Hall portrays a uniquely rebellious, inquisitive, individualistic people whose ideas and creations continue to enthrall thinkers centuries after the Greek world was conquered by Rome. These are the Greeks as you’ve never seen them before.

A History of Ancient Greek

A History of Ancient Greek
Author: Anastasios-Phoivos Christidēs
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 43
Release: 2007-01-11
Genre: Foreign Language Study
ISBN: 0521833078

Publisher description

The Ingenious Language

The Ingenious Language
Author: Andrea Marcolongo
Publisher: Europa Editions
Total Pages: 150
Release: 2019-10-01
Genre: Literary Collections
ISBN: 1609455460

An Italian journalist pleads her case for learning ancient Greek in modern times. For word nerds, language loons, and grammar geeks, an impassioned and informative literary leap into the wonders of the Greek language. Here are nine ways Greek can transform your relationship to time and to those around you, nine reflections on the language of Sappho, Plato, and Thucydides, and its relevance to our lives today, nine chapters that will leave readers with a new passion for a very old language, nine epic reasons to love Greek. The Ingenious Language is a love song dedicated to the language of history’s greatest poets, philosophers, adventurers, lovers, adulterers, and generals. Greek, as Marcolongo explains in her buoyant and entertaining prose, is unsurpassed in its beauty and expressivity, but it can also offer us new ways of seeing the world and our place in it. She takes readers on an astonishing journey, at the end of which, while it may still be Greek to you, you’ll have nine reasons to be glad it is. No batteries or prior knowledge of Greek required! Praise for The Ingenious Language “Andrea Marcolongo is today’s Montaigne. She possesses an amazing familiarity with the classics combined with the ease and lightness of those who surf the web.” —André Aciman, New York Times–bestselling author of Find Me “[Marcolongo’s] declaration of love for Ancient Greek does more than celebrate the virtues of its grammar, it shows us modern fools how this language can help us understand ourselves better and live a better life.” —Le Monde (France)