THE SECRET CODE and MEANINGS OF THE GREE
THE SECRET CODE and MEANINGS OF THE GREE
THE SECRET CODE and MEANINGS OF THE GREE
LETTERS-WORDS-SYMBOLISM
by
Maya Fourioti
Bio
After reading it you might sit back and reflect about how important was the
contribution of this language to science, the arts, drama, philosophy and to
the shaping of our modern civilization.
With this presentation I also want to honour my tutor at the University of Lyon
II MICHEL CUSIN- he died in 2012- a master of language, a dedicated
semiologist and researcher.
I owe him what I am today, my career and passion for writing and exploring
language.
Michel Cusin showed us a way to be and bear life, fight for life, be conscious
of what we do and say, live for life and deal with loneliness through
consciousness.
For this presentation I have used reference material from my two specialisms
HOMER
Some words from the time of Homer are still used today either in
contracted or compound form.
Τ ΧΡ (θ λσ) WATER Τ λκφσλα (water carrier) , Τ λαΰωΰ έκ
(Aquaduct), φυ Ϊ ω β (Dehydration) and many more.
It is believed that Homer lived around 1.000 BC. Given that the
language in his two master pieces “The τdyssey “ and “The Iliad” was
so elaborate, technical, musical, perfect and unrivalled one might
think:
How many years did it take people from the time they produced
unarticulated sounds to reach the perfection of Homer’s
language?
How long did it take to create words like
«ρο ο ά ος» rose-fingered, ώ ος» white-armed, «ω ύ ορος»
(fading or that dies unexpectedly)?
However, Homer was not the first but the last and most famous epic
poet. Before him there were some illustrious poets before like
(Κλ υφυζκμ-Kreofyllos, Πλσ δεκμ-Prodikos, λε έθκμ-Arktinos,
θ έηαχκμ-Antimachos, Κδθαέγωθ-Kinaethon, Καζζέηαχκμ-Kallimachos)
and the names of their poems are known even today (Φκλωθέμ-
Phoronis, Φωεα μ-Phokais, αθα μ-Danais, δγδκπέμ-Ethiopis,
πέΰκθκδ-Epigonoi, Οδ δπσ δα-Oedipodeia, Θάίαδμ Σβ ί ) although
their work did not survive.1
The Greek language holds an important place in the histories of Europe, the
more loosely defined Western world, and Christianity; the canon of ancient
Greek literature includes works of monumental importance and influence for
the future Western canon such as the epic poems the Iliad and the Odyssey.
Greek was also the language in which many of the foundational texts of
Western philosophy, such as the Platonic dialogues and the works of
Aristotle, were composed; the New Testament of the Christian Bible was
written in Koiné/Common Greek. Together with the Latin texts and traditions
of the Roman world, the study of the Greek texts and society of antiquity
constitutes the discipline of classics.
During classical antiquity, Greek was a widely spoken lingua franca in the
Mediterranean world and beyond and would eventually become the official
parlance of the Byzantine Empire. In its modern form, it is the official language
of Greece and Cyprus and one of the 23 official languages of the European
Union. The language is spoken by at least 11 million people today in Greece,
500.00 in Cyprus, large parts of Albania and the Greek Diaspora of around
5.500.000 people.
There are around 6.000 languages in the world today. The Bible had been
translated into 1577 of them until 1976.There are also thousands of
languages lost – non-spoken, non-written, ancient languages, Chinese, Indian
etc-
All languages have a central core of words which is more resistant to change
and development and which shows their affinity with other languages .These
are family names, numbers 1-1.000, personal and possessive pronouns and
the verb to be
Bible Hebrew is considered to be the most ancient language with the oldest
written documents with Greek coming second, followed by Latin.
Greek is the richest language in the world in terms of vocabulary, the most
flexible in syntax, the most expressive, the most resistant to change, the most
conservative in development and the most glorious (It is the language of the
Bible, it is taught in Secondary Education in all EC member states and in
many, American, African, Asian and Australian countries. It is the language
with the most scientific and technical terms which are part of international
terminology, a language that has absorbed most of the lost languages and
changed others by lending the most of vocabulary).
Latin comprises 45.000 words, Arabic languages around 30.000 words, and
others below 30.000 words.
The Second Edition of the 20-volume Oxford English Dictionary contains full
entries for 171,476 words in current use, and 47,156 obsolete words. To this
may be added around 9,500 derivative words included as subentries. Over
half of these words are nouns, about a quarter adjectives, and about one
seventh are verbs; the rest is made up of exclamations, conjunctions,
prepositions, suffixes, etc.
But only 6.000 words are original English words because·the rest of them
have been borrowed from other languages mainly Greek and Latin.
The most poetic languages are those that in their majority contain two or three
syllable words such as Bible Hebrew, Greek, Latin, Romanic Languages,
Arabic and English.
5.1 Greek and English
The Greek language has contributed to the English vocabulary in five main
ways:
2. Learned borrowings from classical Greek, e.g. 'physics' (< Latin physica <
ύreek φυ δεΪΨν
The English–French word place was borrowed both by Old English and by
French from Latin platea, itself borrowed from Greek πζα έα (ὁ σμ) 'broad
(street)';
But by far the largest Greek contribution to English vocabulary is the huge
number of scientific, medical, and technical neologisms that have been coined
by compounding Greek roots and affixes to produce novel words which never
existed in the Greek language: utopia (1516, κὐ ΥnotΥ + σπκμ ΥplaceΥΨ, zoology
Χ1θθλ, α κθ + ζκΰέαΨ, hydrodynamics Χ1ιγκ, ὕ ωλ + υθαηδεσμΨ, photography
Χ1κγζ, φ μ + ΰλαφδεσμΨ, oocyte Χ1κλη, ᾠσθ + ετ κμΨ, helicobacter Χ1λκλ, ἕζδι
+ ίαε άλδκθΨέ Such terms are coined in all the European languages, and
spread to the others freely—including to Modern Greek. Traditionally, these
coinages were constructed using only Greek morphemes, e.g.
metamathematics, but increasingly, Greek, Latin, and other morphemes are
combined, as in television Χύreek ῆζ + δatin vision), metalinguistic (Greek
η Ϊ + δatin lingua + ύreek -δ άμ + ύreek -δεκμΨ
5.2 Statistics
Since most words of Greek origin are specialized technical and scientific
coinages, the type frequency is considerably higher than the token frequency.
And the type frequency in a large word list will be larger than that in a small
word list. In a typical English dictionary of 80,000 words, which correspond
very roughly to the vocabulary of an educated English speaker, about 5% of
the words are borrowed from Greek.
4
Konstantinidis A. (2006) "The Universal Reach of the Greek Language", ISBN 960-90338-2-2. Athens:
self-published
All words that have been recorded by Mr. Konstantinidis in his research are
words that the English and the Americans recognize in their dictionaries as
words of Greek origin. The research therefore, has not been based on
personal interpretations of etymology. Moreover, a number of dictionaries,
except for the Oxford dictionary, identify many words as being of Latin roots,
disregarding the fact that some Latin roots may actually come from Greek.
E.g., the word "electric" (electricity), is reported as coming from the Latin
"electrum," however, without mentioning that this word, in turn, comes from
the Greek "electron" (amber) or "kechrimpari."
The Oxford Dictionary includes 10,500 Greek words, which constitute 21,6%
of the dictionary.
Ancient Greek words, that were loan words from Persian, such as the word
"agaria" (chore) or Hebrew words, such as "satanas" (satan), have not been
included in the study. It is worth mentioning that according to Merriam-
Webster's dictionary, the English language has borrowed 57 words from
Turkish and 34 words from all Slavic languages. Greek, however, has
contributed 41,614 words.
The Greeks learned many inventions for their Eastern neighbours and the
greatest of them was the art of alphabetic writing. The North Semitic script
was a model for the Greeks. Yet the full history of the birth and the first growth
of the Greek alphabet is still unknown.
The North Semitic Script, the model for Greek alphabetic writng
1. Questions
a. Where in the Greek or Semitic area did the first transmission to
Greek from Semitic take place?
b. When did it take place?
c. By what routes was it then transmitted throughout Greece?
d. When and how did those additions and divergences appear which
distinguish a)The Greek alphabetic system as a whole from the
North Semitic (the creation of the vowel system, the alteration of
some letter forms, the addition of the letters following tau and b) the
local Greek scripts from each other?
e. What are the natural reactions of an illiterate people when
learning a method of writing from another people?
Initially they feel curious or somehow apprehensive of this novelty
and the idea of using an alphabet/signs to transcribe/transliterate
their language.
f. How do an illiterate people A normally achieve literacy?
f. 1 with close contact with a literate civilization B to acquire the
knowledge
f. 2 literate members of B are scattered throughout A (the diffusion
of the Roman alphabet country by country)
f. 3 both A and B
Possibilities
A member of A or B , outstanding in position and personality and
with a thorough knowledge of the B script creates a script for A by
synthesis, basing it upon the B script and adding extra signs
necessary for the A language either borrowing them from other
scripts or by newly invented signs. The underlying motives might be
commercial or religious or both.
It has been long established by scholars that the Greek letters from
alpha to tau derived from the North Semitic alphabet.
In the late 5th century BC the Ionians already called the letters of
their alphabet Phoenician and this was attested by Herodotus as
well. The names of the letters in alphabets, the order, the shape –
despite some local changes and later changes-
The material used for writing was clay, ostrakon (shells), leather,
wood, metal, stone and imported papyrus.
The Greek alphabet must have had its birth either in a part where
the Phoenicians were active or in a part of North Semitic area
where the Greeks were active.
The fact that the Greeks did not fully adopt the Phoenician alphabet
or had difficulty with it (right to left writing was only adopted for the
first line and they mispronounced some sounds) leads us to believe
that their teachers were only practical users of the alphabet
probably for trading purposes.
Therefore the place of birth of the Greek alphabet must have been
a well frequented trade-route or must have had a good connection
with the major trading routes of Greece, such as the island of
Cyprus where both peoples lived.
By excluding several possible birth places, both literary and
archaeological evidence suggest that the most probable places
might have been Crete and Rhodes. If Crete received the alphabet
originally then Rhodes, in close vicinity would have been the first
place to benefit from it. However, recent research tends to support
that the place must have been somewhere near, on the Syrian
coast, where the Greeks had settled for trading purposes and they
learnt the alphabet and carried it to Crete and Rhodes, Euboea and
the rest of Greece.(excavations at Al Mina proved that)
δinear B’ script
j. When was the alphabet introduced?
Linear B writing syllabic script was in use in the Greek mainland in
the late Helladic period III (1425-1100).Scholars believe the
Mycenaean script died with Late Helladic Civilization, the Dorian
invasion and that there was some kind of a Dark Age of illiteracy
before the Phoenician alphabet was introduced.
Researchers and archaeologists place the introduction of the
Phoenician alphabet around the 9th -8th century BC.
The existence of the poems the Iliad and the Odyssey does not
pose a problem because researchers believed they might have
been composed in the late Geometric period in the form we have
them now. The trained memory, of illiterate people, can construct
poems of this length for recitation without the aid of writing.
Besides, the repetitive element in the Homeric poems is
characteristic of oral, not literary composition. However, the quality
of the poems might lead us to believe that the Greeks might have
written them on a leather roll as soon as the alphabet had
established itself in Ionia.
The primary transmission from North Semitic to Greek must have
occurred in the middle of the eight century BC somewhere in
Phoenicia on the Syrian coast.
The secondary transmission throughout Greece was to be carried
by Greeks. The earliest beneficiaries must have been Crete and
Rhodes. As the alphabet was transmitted to various places of the
Greek world there were many different types of writing for the
individual letters. It is believed that much of the spreading must
have been done by professional teachers the γραμμα ι αί.
Writing was an art and had to be taught like an art. In this way,
when transmission lay in the hands of a single person, omissions
and mistakes were more than probable. Also differences in writing
and pronunciation were more than probable, which explains the
variety of local dialects and adaptations of the alphabet. This
secondary transmission of the alphabet occurred in the late 8 th to
mid 7th centuries.
k. Greek modifications
The assigning of vowel values to certain consonantal characters was not the
only change which the Greek adapters of the Phoenician writing system
effected; the value of a number of the Semitic symbols which continued to be
used for representing consonants was likewise altered. These adjustments in
consonantal value were a consequence of the significant variation in the
system of stops and fricatives which we have seen displayed by these two
languages.
Φ,Υ,Φ,Ξ
It was the Minoans who taught the Greeks how to write (the first time), and
quite possibly it was also the Minoans who instructed the Greeks in the
notions of sound classes and the relative sonority of sounds. Whether the
δinear (and syllabic Cypriot) practice of utilizing a hierarchy of sonority (i.e.,
the hierarchy of orthographic strength) for the spelling of consonant clusters
was a Minoan or a Mycenaean innovation is undetermined and will remain so
until Linear A is deciphered.
Beyond this, the Greek incorporation of vowel symbols into a phonemic script
has been hailed as a salient event in the intellectual history of humanity. Yet,
even so, the addition of vowel characters to the Phoenician consonantal script
was probably not, in the final analysis, crucial. Had the Greeks simply
continued the Phoenician tradition of only representing consonants in their
writing system, those achievements of the human intellect and spirit realized
since antiquity through the alphabetic medium would not have been
compromised.
However, the fact remains that it is possible to record human speech, human
thoughts, and human ideas in a sufficiently efficient manner by representing
only consonants. While the presence of vowel symbols in a script in which
each symbol represents a single sound may indeed be an asset to the reader
in the cognitive processing of such writing, the history of Semitic writing amply
demonstrates that their occurrence is not essential.
Just why did the Greeks add vowels to the received Phoenician script? At an
earlier period in their history, the Greeks had shown themselves to be quite
willing to operate with a writing system which systematically underrepresented
the sounds of spoken language.
However, a reader and speaker of the language comes to the written text with
an intimate knowledge of the language recorded in the text. The reader's
knowledge of the language is primary; the mechanism of giving graphic form
to that language is secondary. The reader comes lo the text equipped with
knowledge of the possibilities; it is the requirement of the static text only that it
provides sufficient graphic clues to direct the language-enriched mind of the
reader. We should bear in mind that the Greek adapters did in fact introduce
ambiguity into the new alphabetic system.
D. Εν α χ ην ο λόγο Λόγο "In the beginning was the Word, and the
Word was with God, and the Word was God". (Gospel of John1.1)
Εν α χ ην ο λόγο = λ γω (speak)
According to the Bible the creation of our world was the expression of the
thought of a Super being, God.
To illustrate what one thinks, even God, one needs a means of expression.
Before this stage, people only listened. They listened to the sounds around
them and combined them with pictures-mental pictures.
The Articulated Word takes shape into something audible, a small portion of
creation.
The code helps to decipher the world around us, the cosmos, what can be
seen, felt and what cannot be seen or felt.
When articulated words become written texts they make up a heritage for
study, research bequeathed to the generations to come.
The voiceless part cannot be heard but combined with the voiced part CAN
BE HEARD.
The first syllables were created by adding the letter A and so on.
The Greeks from Prehistory had so much information stored in their minds
which led them to classify this information, organize their thoughts and
produce knowledge by combining the registered mental phthongs.
By adopting the North Semitic alphabet they codified knowledge for the
second time. By improving both written and oral speech they reduced
disorder/entropy.
However the cosmos/ the reality is made up of things one can see,
sense, hear, imagine and what one cannot see or sense. The ineffable
cannot be expressed by language. It is there and makes us speak and write.
But names are not things; we are using them by convention to be able
to communicate. The Greek language is still developing beyond our
conscience and knowledge; it reveals its secrets and deploys its symbols. It
has been there for more than 4.000 years and will be in the future.
The achievement of the Greek language is that it detracted the best
possible percentage from reality to give the key to people to communicate,
progress, and discover the world and their inner selves. It gave them the key
to the arts, philosophy, science, architecture, astronomy, beauty, ideals,
democracy and many more.(170.000 nouns let alone the names).It was the
language of Γζαυευπδμ γάθβ (Athena with glittering eyes),
Athena
The Greek language formulated these three questions through the arts,
philosophy, drama, science and music.