On Wed, 2 Jun 2004 16:32:43 -0700, "Circe" wrote:

Holger Dansk wrote:
On Wed, 2 Jun 2004 13:33:07 -0700, "Circe"
wrote:
Um, are you suggesting that Greek was the first language to have
vowels in it?

I'm not suggesting it but saying that it was.

Nonsense. It is *impossible* to speak without making vowel sounds. Period.
Vowel sounds are a necessary requirement of human speech. And Greek is
hardly the first language invented by humans, let alone the first language
to be represented by writing. Are you suggesting that the Egyptians (as just
one example), who were capable of representing names like Osiris and
Amenhotep in hieroglyphs 2000 years before the Greek alphabet was invented,
did not use vowel sounds in their languages or did not have words? Or that
the Chinese, who have been writing their language down without interruption
since 1200 BC (fully 400 years before Homer and the dissemination of the
Greek alphabet) do not now and did not when they began writing use vowels
when they spoke?

All I can say is that you are *sadly* misinformed.

Greek Alphabets

Apart from using the characters of the Greek alphabets as notations in
my maths and science classes, I don't know how to read Greek. (Sigh.
This is a real tragic.) Nor am I a linguist genius, since English is the
only language I know. English is the only language I can read and write.
(Judging by the number of spelling and grammar errors I had, I haven't
even fully mastered English.)

However, I can give you a brief history on the Greek alphabets.

On the right, I have listed the Greek alphabets, with the last column
being the English equivalent of each Greek character.


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

So what is the "alphabet"?

To avoid going too deep with theory, the alphabets can be defined as a
set of characters that represented the phonemic structure of the word. A
word will have vowels and consonants. (Well that's enough of the
theory!)

The Greeks did not invent the alphabets. (Well, the writing system was
actually named after them. The word "alphabets" was actually derived
from the first two letters of the Greek alphabets – "alpha" and "beta".)

The origin of the alphabets was probably invented between the 17th and
15th century BC, by the Phoenicians, those great sea-going nation in
ancient time. Linguistically, the Phoenician belonged to the Semitic
language, used by the people living in Phoenica (modern Lebanon). (As
oppose to the Greek language being part of the Indo-European family
language.)

What the Greeks invented, was their own set of characters and their
introduction to the vowels in the alphabets full of consonants. The
Phoenician and other Semitic languages didn't have vowels. The Greek
alphabets were invented some time between the 8th and 7th century BC,
after the Dorian Invasion, thus the arrival of the Hellenic people (eg.
Greeks, such as the Dorians, Aeolians and Ionians).

Anyway, the Greek alphabets had greatly influence writing system in
Europe. Because, the Roman or Latin alphabets had borrowed directly and
indirectly the alphabets used by the Greeks. Latin had also borrowed
(more directly) the characters used by the Etruscans, but then the
Etruscans had also borrowed some of the characters from the Greeks as
well.

There was a period in the Republican Rome where the Greek language was
used by the Roman elites and scholars more than their own language:
Latin. The Latin alphabets would later become more widely use than the
Greek, where it had directly influenced the Germanic language, including
English.

Though the Greek alphabets remained unchanged since its invention,
regionally and racially the spoken language had undergone many phonetic
changes over the centuries, so there were many different dialects in
Greek.

http://www.timelessmyths.com/classic...rld.html#Greek

The Greeks made many contributions to the world in addition to putting
vowels in language. Aristotle contributed more to the mind of western
man than anyone who ever lived. John Locke, the great philosopher,
studied Aristotle's philosophy and Thomas Jefferson studied Locke and
Aristotle and their philosophy was used to write our constitution.

To the extent that "Western Civilization" can be said to have an origin,
it is the Ancient Greeks that have claim to it. Whereas the history of
the Roman Empire is a chronology of its generals and emperors, the
history of the Greeks is, with the exception of Alexander and his legacy
in Egypt, one of philosophers, scientists, artists, and thinkers.

http://www.naciente.com/essay46.htm

And while we may never think of Plato or Aristotle as we carry on in our
daily lives, it was their inquiry into knowledge that has served as the
foundation for all subsequent inquiries. Indeed, many have argued with
W. H. Auden that "had Greek civilization never existed we would never
have become fully conscious, which is to say that we would never have
become, for better or worse, fully human."

http://www.historyguide.org/ancient/lecture8b.html

Holger

http://www.mindspring.com/~holger1/holger1.htm