ZBORNIK - Matica srpska

Georgia Xanthakis-Karamanos
THE RECEPTION OF GREEK
IN CONTEMPORARY ENGLISH
Introduction
UDC 811.14'02'362:811.111'362
We all know how important is to preserve our cultural and,
hence, our linguistic diversity in the era of globalization. In other
words, we have to understand and respect the evolution of our language
as the cornerstone of our civilization. In this context, Hellenic
Language offers a unique case: it is not only spoken in Greece,
Cyprus and the Greek Diaspora, but it is widely revived through its
alphabet, vocabulary, and structure in many other languages. Furthermore,
Greek together with Chinese are the oldest languages spoken
today, having a life of approximately 4000 years.
The rapid expansion of Greek in the Near East and Northern
Africa started in the Hellenistic era. After the Roman conquest,
Greek exerted an important influence on Latin and via Latin was
carried forward to other languages through a long interactive and
evolutionary process. The purpose of this article is not to describe
this extremely complicated procedure, but merely to give some
examples on the reception of Greek in English, the most widely-
-spoken European language.
Modern Greek culture reveals the continuity of ancient Greek
language, thought and literature. Linguistic research has proved that
many words survive from Homer and the classical era in contemporary
Greek. My own research on the use of Homeric vocabulary
in Modern Greek has proved that 25% of the contemporary Greek
comes from Homer. And as we proceed in classical and Hellenistic
era the number of such lexical survivals increases impressively.
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