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The Greek language has its earliest roots in the Mycenaean civilization

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kosta_karapinotis

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Some of the earliest examples of where Greek can be traced to is the Mycenaean civilization. Once the Mycenaean civilization collapsed, parts of the Greek language disappeared. It was then replaced by writing inspired by the Phoenicians. After this during the Classical Period of Ancient Greece, the language developed into several dialects, one of which developed into a language that is very similar to the modern Greek that we know today.
 
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kosta_karapinotis said:
Some of the earliest examples of where Greek can be traced to is the Mycenaean civilization. Once the Mycenaean civilization collapsed, parts of the Greek language disappeared. It was then replaced by writing inspired by the Phoenicians. After this during the Classical Period of Ancient Greece, the language developed into several dialects, one of which developed into a language that is very similar to the modern Greek that we know today.
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Tracing a language to its geographical source is practically impossible, since a language is sonoric and, hence, ephimeral, and we may not assume that a language originated where its writing down originated. Anyway, it is good to know where and how its witing originated. Notation, the writing of sounds is a great human invention, which everbody keeps on attributing to the Phoenicians, especially by misinterpreting Herodotus. What he said was a hearsay report: some people said that what we call letters (grammata) were Phoenician -- not that they were invented by them [as others said afterwards]. Sorry, I cannot reproduce here a chapter [in a MS of mine] on the Greek alphabet. Only a few words: The script itself started in Dispilio. The Dispilio Tablet has a syllabary, not an alphabet, but some of its written syllables will be used as alphabetical letters, whether consonants or vowels; the Phoenician alphabet does not have vowels! //I presume that the syllables or words on the Dispilio Tablet were Doric, and that the differentiation of the Greek dialects took place before any Greek was written down. I don't know whether there was a mutation of an Ionic Heta sound into a Doric Alpha, or vice-versa, or a Theta into Z or TS.
www.hellenicaworld.com/Greece/LX/en/DispilioTablet.html
 
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I have always wanted to visit the ruins at Mycenae. This is the Age of Heroes, and when the civilization collapsed Ancient Greece was pushed into a dark age that took a while to rebound. Thank you for sharing this!
 
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