Koine

[Amphipolis]

Isn't that what it says?

English ---- Attic ------ Demotic

It says Attic for the 2nd column and Koine for the 3rd to demonstrate their differences, but in reality 2nd column is both Attic and Koine (they don't differ that much) and third is neither.

[Liberator of Makedonija]

This is wrong (as usual). Second column is actually Attic/koine/katharevousa, third column is Demotic (Modern vernacular Greek).

Isn't that what it says?

English ---- Attic ------ Demotic

[Amphipolis]

http://www.wmc-a.com/koine-language-is-not-solely-greek/

English Catharevoussa (Ancient Attic) Dimotiki (Koine)
Horse Ipos Alogo
Donkey Onos Gaidaros
Hen Ornitha Kota
Goat Ega Gida (Katsika)
Kid (baby goat) Erifi Katsiki
Bread Artos Psomi

This is wrong (as usual). Second column is actually Attic/koine/katharevousa, third column is Demotic (Modern vernacular Greek).

[Liberator of Makedonija]

Recent article on the legacy of the Koine language published by WMC-A

http://www.wmc-a.com/koine-language-is-not-solely-greek/

[Amphipolis]

The Greeks pronounce it key-knee, toned in second syllable, as in the English words key and knee.

[Liberator of Makedonija]

Can someone please clarify how the name of this language is even pronounced? Heard so many different version. IPA would help.

[Stevce]

Interesting, I wonder when winners and the defeated had to learn a foreign language which I presume is Koine.

[Starling]

Well, business in the political sense. I probably would've used administrative if I'd thought of it first but I wanted something shorter than 'the language used for official state documents'.

In terms of common in relation to a specific people vs common in relation to international language, the main international usage was trade and business/administrative documents, while people in specific regions had their own languages or dialects. It probably meant both administrative and international language at the same time, then lost the international part when it got phased out by other languages, hence why it's mostly used in a political sense now. The question is if that was its first meaning or if it gained it as a side-effect of being lingua franca for a while, especially if demotic was already around to refer to the common people's language in the sense of every day usage and didn't gain political connotations. While demotic is part of the word democracy, it's also part of demographic, and even the word democracy is more about the common people than the political system itself, so it may never have had a political connotation unlike koine.

[Amphipolis]

Wait so ... Koinos means ''the language for business''? In some sort of a meaning you know ... ?

Ok so that explains why they changed the name from koine to demotiki then. Since it's no longer the language of business, they switched to common people's language rather than business people's.

I'm sorry. Did I mention or imply business?

One wonders if "common" implies language of the common people or common dialect between different people. According to Wikipedia it is the second.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Koine_Greek

[Starling]

Ok so that explains why they changed the name from koine to demotiki then. Since it's no longer the language of business, they switched to common people's language rather than business people's.

Thanks for the clarification. I already knew about demos' relation to words like democracy but wasn't sure where koine came from. I recall demotic Egyptian, so seems like demotic was the specific language of the people while koine was whatever was used for business dealings. Even today where I live there's a difference between casual french and the more formal french used in writing, since spoken language often disregards grammatical rules or uses slang terms. You may have heard people refer to legal terms as legalese as the need to use very specific and unambiguous terms can be difficult to understand unless you've studied it. It's stuff like this that even setting aside influence from other languages and standardization would develop into different dialects and eventually languages based purely on different usage.

[tchaiku]

Both adjectives are Greek and have similar meaning:

Koinos means common in the broad sense, and is often used (even today) with a political meaning. Thus, being interested in "the commons" means "in politics".

Demoticos comes from the same root as Democracy and is close to demosios that means public. Demoticos means precisely "of the citizens (demotes)", "of the common people" and, even in antiquity, the term demotic was used for vernacular language.



===

Wait so ... Koinos means ''the language for business''? In some sort of a meaning you know ... ?

[Amphipolis]

Not much that I can contribute here but I read that Koiné means 'common'.

So does dimotiki, apparently. If both mean the same thing then one of them either used to mean something else or is a loan word.

Both adjectives are Greek and have similar meaning:

Koinos means common in the broad sense, and is often used (even today) with a political meaning. Thus, being interested in "the commons" means "in politics".

Demoticos comes from the same root as Democracy and is close to demosios that means public. Demoticos means precisely "of the citizens (demotes)", "of the common people" and, even in antiquity, the term demotic was used for vernacular language.



===

[Karposh]

My 11 year old niece, who has recently discovered a new found interest in ancient history, particularly Ancient Macedonian history, alerted me to a passage in one of her school library books about the Egyptian queen, Cleopatra, which she has been passionately reading in her spare time - “My Royal Story, An Egyptian Princess's Diary 57 BC” by Kristiana Gregory.

Flicking through the pages of this book, it is quite evident that Kristiana is a little bit confused as to the national identity of Cleopatra, her family and the nation that she once belonged to. She refers to Cleopatra's ancestor, when outlining her family tree, Ptolemy I Soter, as a Macedonian Greek. What is this mythical creature Kristiana refers to as a Macedonian Greek? And why is this term reserved solely for the Ancient Macedonians by some modern authors and historians? Why do we never hear of any “Athenian Greeks” or “Spartan Greeks”, for example. If the Macedonians were indeed Greeks, then doesn't the term “Macedonian Greek” become redundant?

I think there is a more obvious reason why this term is used so loosely these days by some. It is a clear contradiction in terms that tries to reconcile the irreconcilable that in ancient times the Macedonians were regarded as a separate, non-Greek nation. Back then, there were Macedonians and there were Greeks and this is how the ancient historians knew them and described them in all their writings. There was no such thing as a "Macedonian Greek". Greeks could be Athenians, Spartans, Argives, Thebans or Corinthians but never Macedonians . In all their writings, the ancient historians speak of two very distinct and diametrically opposed ethnic groups, the collective term, Greeks, and the non-related, Macedonians.

This needs to be clearly understood, appreciated and taken into account when I quote the passage of interest from my niece's library book below. The author, Kristiana, describes how, sadly, an unknown number of scrolls and manuscripts were lost in the fire that destroyed the famous library in Alexandria.

"But, we do have the later writings of Plutarch, one of the biographers of antiquity. He was born in Greece about 46 AD and travelled to Rome and Alexandria, possibly hearing first or second-hand from those who had known Cleopatra.
He wrote:

Their acquaintance was with her when a girl, young and ignorant of the world...Her actual beauty, it is said, was not in itself so remarkable that none could be compared with her, or that no one could see her without being struck by it, but the contact of presence, if you lived with her, was irresistible...
It was a pleasure merely to hear the sound of her voice, with which, like an instrument of many strings she could pass from one language to another; so that there were few of the barbarian nations that she answered by an interpreter; to most of them she spoke herself, as to the Ethiopians, Troglodytes, Hebrews, Arabians, Syrians, Medes, Parthians and many others, whose language she had learnt; which was all the more surprising, because most of the kings who were her predecessors scarcely gave themselves the trouble to acquire the Egyptian tongue, and several of them quite abandoned the Macedonian.”

A couple of points of interest that stick out which I'd like to pick up on:
Firstly, and most notably, Plutarch tells us, admittedly in an indirect manner, that Cleopatra, besides speaking a dozen or so other languages, also spoke Macedonian. Although the generations before her were so lazy that they even abandoned their own native Macedonian tongue, this was obviously not the case with Cleopatra.

Secondly, this is further proof that Koine Greek was the adopted, international language of Alexander's empire and not necessarily proof of the ancient Macedonians' supposed Greek roots. Otherwise we would have to assume that Plutarch is lying when he tells us that the Ptolemies spoke Macedonian. Now, what makes this passage especially intriguing is that it leaves no room in which a modern-day Greek can wriggle if he wanted to argue the point. Instinct would tell a Greek that what Plutarch really meant was that the Ptolemies adopted the Egyptian language when he refers to them as having abandoned their Macedonian language, which of course, was dialect of the Greek language anyway. Unfortunately, this argument holds little to no water because, in Plutarch's very same passage, he explains that the Ptolemies couldn't even be bothered to learn the Egyptian tongue. So, if they had abandoned the Macedonian language and couldn't care less about learning Egyptian then how did they communicate if not the English of the day, Koine Greek. This is yet more proof (and up there with the best of them) that the spread of the Greek language and culture during the Hellenistic period was incidental and not the result of a conscious attempt by Macedonians to Hellenise the middle east.

[Starling]

So does dimotiki, apparently. If both mean the same thing then one of them either used to mean something else or is a loan word.

[Liberator of Makedonija]

Not much that I can contribute here but I read that Koiné means 'common'.