Koine Greek

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Koine Greek

Koine Greek ( , Mod.Gk.

Greek language

Greek is an Indo-European languages native to the southern Balkan peninsula, the language of the Greek people. It forms an independent branch within Indo-European....
, "common Greek", or , Mod.Gk. , "the common dialect") is the popular form of Greek which emerged in post-Classical antiquity

Classical antiquity

Classical antiquity is a broad term for a long period of cultural history centered on the Mediterranean Sea, comprising the interlocking civilizations of Ancient Greece and Ancient Rome....
(c.300 BC – AD 300). Other names are Alexandrian, Hellenistic, Common, or New Testament Greek. Koine was the first common supra-regional dialect in Greece and came to serve as a lingua franca

Lingua franca

A lingua franca is a language systematically used to communicate between persons not sharing a mother tongue, in particular when it is a third language, distinct from both persons' mother tongues....
for the eastern Mediterranean and ancient Near East throughout the Roman

Roman Empire

The Roman Empire was the Roman Republic phase of the Ancient Rome, characterised by an autocracy form of government and large territorial holdings in Europe and around the Mediterranean....
period.

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History

Koine Greek arose as a common dialect within the armies of Alexander the Great

Alexander the Great

Macedon

Macedon or Macedonia was the name of a monarchy centred in the northernmost part of ancient Greece. The homeland of the ancient Macedonians, it was bordered by the kingdom of Epirus to the west and the region of Thrace to the east....
who conquered Greece and colonized the known world, their newly formed common dialect was spoken from Egypt

Egypt

Egypt is a country mainly in North Africa, with the Sinai Peninsula forming a land bridge in Western Asia. Covering an area of about , Egypt borders the Mediterranean Sea to the north, the Gaza Strip and Israel to the northeast, the Red Sea to the east, Sudan to the south and Libya to the west....
to the fringes of India

India

India, officially the Republic of India , is a country in South Asia. It is the List of countries and outlying territories by total area country by geographical area, the List of countries by population country, and the most populous liberal democracy in the world....
. Though elements of Koine Greek took shape during the late Classical Era

Classical Greece

Classical Greece was a culture that was highly advanced and which heavilly influenced the cultures of Ancient Rome and much of the Western World....
, the post-Classical period of Greek dates from the death of Alexander the Great

Alexander the Great

Alexander the Great , also known as Alexander III of Macedon was an ancient Greeks King of Macedon . He was one of the most successful military commanders of all time and is presumed undefeated in battle....
in 323 BC, when cultures under Hellenistic sway in turn began to influence the language. The passage into the next period, known as Medieval Greek

Medieval Greek

Medieval Greek, also known as Byzantine Greek , is a cover term for all forms of the Greek language that were spoken and written during the time of the Byzantine Empire....
, dates from the foundation of Constantinople

Constantinople

Constantinople was the empire capital of the Roman Empire , the Byzantine Empire , the Latin Empire , and the Ottoman Empire . Strategically located between the Golden Horn and the Sea of Marmara at the point where Europe meets Asia, Byzantine Constantinople had been the capital of a Christendom empire, successor to ancient ancient Greece...
by Constantine I

Constantine I

Flavius Valerius Aurelius Constantinus , commonly known in English_language as Constantine I, Constantine the Great, or Saint Constantine , was Roman Emperor from 306, and the undisputed holder of that office from 324 until his death in 337....
in 330. The post-Classical period of Greek thus refers to the creation and evolution of Koine Greek throughout the entire Hellenistic and Roman eras of history until the start of the Middle Ages.

The term Koine

Koine , Greek for "common", is a term which had been previously applied by ancient scholars to several forms of Greek speech. A school of scholars such as Apollonius Dyscolus

Apollonius Dyscolus

Apollonius Dyscolus is considered one of the greatest of the Greek language grammarians. He was born at Alexandria, son of Mnesitheus. The dates for his life are not known....
and Aelius Herodianus

Aelius Herodianus

Aelius Herodianus or Herodian, ca. 180-250, was one of the most celebrated grammarians of Greco-Roman antiquity. He is usually known as Herodian except when there is a danger of confusion with the historian also named Herodian....
maintained the term Koine to refer to the Proto-Greek language

Proto-Greek language

The Proto-Greek language is the assumed last common ancestor of all known varieties of Greek language, including Mycenaean Greek language, the ancient Greek ancient Greek dialects , and ultimately Koine Greek, Medieval Greek and modern Greek....
, while others would use it to refer to any vernacular form of Greek speech which differed from the literary language. When Koine gradually became a language of literature, some people distinguished it in two forms: Hellenic (Greek) as the literary post-classical form, and Koine (common) as the spoken popular form. Others chose to refer to Koine as the Alexandrian dialect or the dialect of Alexandria
Alexandria

Alexandria , with a population of 4.1 million, is the second-largest city in Egypt, and is the country's largest seaport, serving about 80% of Egypt's imports and exports....
, a term often used by modern classicists.

Roots

The linguistic roots of the Common Greek dialect had been unclear since ancient times. During the Hellenistic age, most scholars thought of Koine as the result of the mixture of the four main Ancient Greek

Ancient Greek

Ancient Greek is the historical stage in the development of the Greek language spanning across the Archaic Greece , Classical Greece , and Hellenistic civilization periods of ancient Greece and the classical antiquity....
dialects, "" (the composition of the Four). This view was supported in the early 20th century by Austria

Austria

Austria , officially the Republic of Austria , is a landlocked country in Central Europe. It borders both Germany and the Czech Republic to the north, Slovakia and Hungary to the east, Slovenia and Italy to the south, and Switzerland and Liechtenstein to the west....
n linguist P. Kretschmer in his book "Die Entstehung der Koine" (1901), while the German

Germany

Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a country in Central Europe. It is bordered to the north by the North Sea, Denmark, and the Baltic Sea; to the east by Poland and the Czech Republic; to the south by Austria and Switzerland; and to the west by France, Luxembourg, Belgium, and the Netherlands....
scholar Wilamowitz and the French

France

France , officially the French Republic , is a country whose Metropolitan France is located in Western Europe and that also comprises various Overseas departments and territories of France....
linguist Antoine Meillet

Antoine Meillet

Antoine Meillet , was one of the most important French linguists of the early 20th century. Meillet began his studies at the University of Paris, where he was influenced by Michel Br?al, Ferdinand de Saussure, and the members of the Ann?e Sociologique....
, based on the intense Attic

Attic Greek

Attic Greek is the prestige dialect of Ancient Greek that was spoken in Attica, which includes Athens. Of the ancient dialects, it is the most similar to later Greek, and is the standard form of the language studied in courses of "Ancient Greek"....
elements of Koine — such as instead of — considered Koine to be a simplified form of Ionic

Ionic Greek

Ionic Greek was a sub-dialect of the Attic-Ionic dialectal group of Ancient Greek .Ionic dialect appears to have spread originally from the Greek mainland across the Aegean at the time of the Dorian invasions, around the 11th Century B.C....
. The final answer which is academically accepted today was given by the Greek

Greece

Greece , officially the Hellenic Republic , is a country in southeastern Europe, situated on the southern end of the Balkans. It has borders with Albania, Bulgaria and the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia to the north, and Turkey to the east....
linguist G. N. Hatzidakis, who proved that, despite the "composition of the Four", the "stable nucleus" of Koine Greek is Attic. In other words, Koine Greek can be regarded as Attic with the admixture of elements especially from Ionic, but also from other dialects. The degree of importance of the non-Attic linguistic elements on Koine can vary depending on the region of the Hellenistic World. In that respect, the varieties of Koine spoken in the Ionia

Ionia

Ionia is an ancient region of central coastal Anatolia in present-day Turkey, the region nearest Izmir, which was historically Smyrna. It consisted of the northernmost territories of the Ionian League of Hellenes settlements....
n colonies of Asia Minor and Cyprus

Cyprus

Ionic Greek

Ionic Greek was a sub-dialect of the Attic-Ionic dialectal group of Ancient Greek .Ionic dialect appears to have spread originally from the Greek mainland across the Aegean at the time of the Dorian invasions, around the 11th Century B.C....
characteristics than others. The literary Koine of the Hellenistic age resembles Attic in such a degree that it is often mentioned as Common Attic.

Sources of Koine

The first scholars who studied Koine, both in Alexandrian and contemporary times, were classicists whose prototype had been the literary Attic

Attic Greek

Attic Greek is the prestige dialect of Ancient Greek that was spoken in Attica, which includes Athens. Of the ancient dialects, it is the most similar to later Greek, and is the standard form of the language studied in courses of "Ancient Greek"....
language of the Classical period, and would frown upon any other kind of Hellenic

Ancient Greek

Ancient Greek is the historical stage in the development of the Greek language spanning across the Archaic Greece , Classical Greece , and Hellenistic civilization periods of ancient Greece and the classical antiquity....
speech. Koine Greek was therefore considered a decayed form of Greek which was not worthy of attention. The reconsideration on the historical and linguistic importance of Koine Greek began only in the early nineteenth century, where renowned scholars conducted series of studies on the evolution of Koine throughout the entire Hellenistic and Roman period which it covered. The sources used on the studies of Koine have been numerous and of unequal reliability. The most significant ones are the inscriptions of the post-Classical periods and the papyri

Papyrus

Papyrus is a thick paper material produced from the pith of the papyrus plant, Cyperus papyrus, a wetland Cyperaceae that was once abundant in the Nile Delta of Egypt....
, for being two kinds of texts which have authentic content and can be studied directly. Other significant sources are the Septuagint

Septuagint

The Septuagint , or simply "LXX", is the Koine Greek version of the Hebrew Bible, translated in stages between the 3rd century BC and 1st century BC in Alexandria....
, the Greek translation of the Old Testament

Old Testament

In Western Christianity, the Old Testament refers to the books that form the first of the two-part Christianity Bible Biblical canon. These works correspond to the Hebrew Bible , with some variations and additions....
, and the New Testament

New Testament

The New Testament is the name given to the second major division of the Christianity Bible, the first such division being the much longer Old Testament....
. The teaching of the Testaments was aimed at the most common people, and for that reason they use the most popular language of the era. Information can also be derived from some Atticist

Atticism

Atticism in Greece) was a rhetoric movement that began in the first quarter of the first century BC; it may also refer to the wordings and phrasings typical of this movement, in contrast with spoken Ancient Greek language, which continued to evolve in directions guided by the common usages of Hellenistic Greece Greek....
scholars of the Hellenistic and Roman periods, who, in order to fight the evolution of the language, published works which compared the supposedly "correct" Attic

Attic Greek

Attic Greek is the prestige dialect of Ancient Greek that was spoken in Attica, which includes Athens. Of the ancient dialects, it is the most similar to later Greek, and is the standard form of the language studied in courses of "Ancient Greek"....
against the "wrong" Koine by citing examples. For example, Phrynichus Arabius

Phrynichus Arabius

Phrynichus Arabius or Phrynichus of Bithynia was a Greek grammarian who flourished in second century Bithynia, writing works on Atticism....
during the second century AD wrote:

.

- "Basilissa (Queen) none of the Ancients said, but Basileia or Basilis".

- "Dioria (deadline) is badly illiteral, instead use Prothesmia".

- "Do not say Pantote (always), but Hekastote and Dia pantos".

Other sources can be based on random findings such as inscriptions on vases written by popular painters, mistakes made by Atticists

Atticism

Attic Greek

Attic Greek is the prestige dialect of Ancient Greek that was spoken in Attica, which includes Athens. Of the ancient dialects, it is the most similar to later Greek, and is the standard form of the language studied in courses of "Ancient Greek"....
, or even some surviving Greco-Latin glossaries of the Roman period, e.g:

" — Bono die, venisti?" (Good day, you came?).

" — Si vis, veni mecum." (If you want, come with us (The Latin actually says with me, not us) ).

" — Ubi?" (Where?).

" — Ad amicum nostrum Lucium." (To our friend Lucius).

" — Quid enim habet?" (Indeed, what does he have?—What is it with him?).

" — Aegrotat." (He's sick).

Finally, a very important source of information on the ancient Koine is the modern Greek

Modern Greek

Modern Greek refers the varieties of Greek spoken in the modern era. The beginning of the "modern" period of the language is often symbolically assigned to the fall of the Byzantine Empire in 1453, even though that date marks no clear linguistic boundary and many characteristic modern features of the language had been present centuries earli...
language with all its dialects and its own Koine form, which have preserved some of the ancient language's oral linguistic details which the written tradition has lost. For example the Pontic

Pontic language

Pontic Greek is a form of the Greek language originally spoken in the Pontus area on the southern shores of the Black Sea, and today mainly in Greece....
and Cappadocian

Cappadocian Greek language

Cappadocian, also known as Cappadocian Greek or Asia Minor Greek, is a Varieties of Modern Greek of the Greek language, formerly spoken in Cappadocia ....
dialects preserved the ancient pronunciation of etc), while the Tsakonic preserved the long a instead of ? ( etc) and the other local characteristics of Laconic

Doric Greek

Doric or Dorian was a ancient Greek dialects of ancient Greek Greek language. Its variants were spoken in the southern and eastern Peloponnese, Crete, Rhodes, some islands in the southern Aegean Sea, some cities on the coasts of Asia Minor, Southern Italy, Sicily, Epirus and Macedon....
. Dialects from the Southern part of the Greek-speaking regions (Dodecanese

Dodecanese

The Dodecanese are a group of 12 larger plus 150 smaller Greece list of islands of Greece in the Aegean Sea, off the southwest coast of Turkey, southward of the island of Samos and northeastward of the island of Crete....
, Cyprus

Cyprus

Cyprus , officially the Republic of Cyprus , is an island country situated in the eastern Mediterranean Sea, east of Greece, west of Lebanon, Syria, and Israel, south of Turkey and north of Egypt....
etc), preserve the pronunciation of the double similar consonants , while others pronounce in many words ? as ?? or preserve ancient double forms ( etc). Linguistic phenomena like the above imply that those characteristics survived within Koine, which in turn had countless variations in the Greek-speaking world.

Evolution from ancient Greek

The study of all sources from the six centuries which are symbolically covered by Koine reveals linguistic changes from ancient Greek

Ancient Greek

Phonology

Phonology is the systematic use of sound to encode meaning in any spoken human language, or the field of linguistics studying this use. Just as a language has syntax and vocabulary, it also has a phonology in the sense of a sound system....
, morphology, syntax, vocabulary and other elements of the spoken language. Most new forms start off as rare and gradually become more frequent until they are established. From the linguistic changes which took place in Koine, Greek gained such a resemblance to its medieval

Medieval Greek

Medieval Greek, also known as Byzantine Greek , is a cover term for all forms of the Greek language that were spoken and written during the time of the Byzantine Empire....
and modern

Modern Greek

Modern Greek refers the varieties of Greek spoken in the modern era. The beginning of the "modern" period of the language is often symbolically assigned to the fall of the Byzantine Empire in 1453, even though that date marks no clear linguistic boundary and many characteristic modern features of the language had been present centuries earli...
successors that almost all characteristics of modern Greek can be traced in the surviving texts of Koine. As most of the changes between modern and ancient Greek were introduced via Koine, Koine is largely intelligible to speakers of the modern language.

Phonology

During the period generally designated as "Koine" Greek, a great deal of phonological change occurred: at the start of the period, the pronunciation was virtually identical to classical ancient Greek, whereas in the end it had much more in common with modern Greek.

The three most significant changes during this period were the loss of vowel length distinction, the substitution of the pitch accent system with a stress accent system, and the monophthongization of several diphthongs.

Evolution in phonology is summarised below:

The ancient distinction between long and short vowels was gradually lost, and from the 2nd century BC all vowels were isochronic.

Since the 2nd century BC, the means of accenting words changed from pitch
Pitch accent

Pitch accent is a linguistics term of convenience for a variety of restricted tone systems that use variations in Pitch to give prominence to a syllable or Mora_ within a word....
to stress, meaning that the accented syllable is not pronounced in a musical tone but louder and/or stronger.

The aspirate breathing (aspiration
Aspiration (phonetics)

In phonetics, aspiration is the strong burst of Earth's atmosphere that accompanies either the release or, in the case of preaspiration, the closure of some obstruents....
), which was already lost in the Ionic
Ionic Greek

Ionic Greek was a sub-dialect of the Attic-Ionic dialectal group of Ancient Greek .Ionic dialect appears to have spread originally from the Greek mainland across the Aegean at the time of the Dorian invasions, around the 11th Century B.C....
varieties of Asia Minor and the Aeolic
Aeolic Greek

Aeolic or Aeolian Greek is a Linguistics term used to describe a set of rather Archaic period in Greece Greek language sub-dialects, spoken mainly in Boeotia , in Lesbos Island and in other Greek colonies....
of Lesbos
Lesbos Island

Lesbos is a Greece List of islands of Greece located in the northeastern Aegean Sea. It has an area of 1632 Square kilometre with 320 kilometres of coastline, making it the third largest Greek island and the largest of the numerous Greek islands scattered in the Aegean....
, stopped being pronounced and written in popular texts.

Long diphthongs, which in older times were written with a subscript of after a long vowel, stopped being pronounced and written in popular texts.

The diphthongs a?, e?, and ?? became single vowels. In this manner 'a?', which had already been converted by the Boeotians into a long e since the 4th century BC and written ? (e.g. ), became in Koine, too, first a long e and then short. The diphthong 'e?' had already merged with ? in the 5th century BC in regions such as Argos
Argos

Argos is a city in Greece in the Peloponnese near Nafplion, which was its historic harbour, named for Nauplius ....
or in the 4th c. BC in Corinth
Corinth

Corinth, or Korinth Corinth is now the capital of the Prefectures of Greece of Corinthia. The city is surrounded by the coastal townlets of Lechaio, Isthmia, Kechries, and the inland townlets of Examilia and the archaeological site....
(e.g. ), and it acquired this pronunciation also in Koine. The diphthong '??' acquired the pronunciation of the modern French
French language

French is a Romance language spoken around the world by around 80 million people as first language, by 190 million as second language, and by about another 200 million people as an acquired tongue, with significant speakers in 54 countries....
'U' , which lasted until the 10th century AD. The diphthong '??' came to be pronounced , and subsequently became treated as two consecutive vowels (as if '??'). The diphthong '??' had already acquired the pronunciation of Latin
Latin

Latin is an Italic language, historically spoken in Latium and Ancient Rome. Through the Military history of the Roman Empire, Latin spread throughout the Mediterranean and a large part of Europe....
'U' since the 6th century BC and preserved it in modern times.

The diphthongs a? and e? came to be pronounced [av] and [ev] (via [aß], [eß]), but are partly assimilated
Assimilation (linguistics)

Assimilation is a common phonological process by which the phonetics of a speech segment becomes more like that of another segment in a word . A common example of assimilation would be "don't be silly" where the and in "don't" become and , where said naturally in many accents and discourse styles ....
to [af], [ef] before the voiceless consonants ?, ?, ?, p, s, t, f, ?, and ?.

Simple vowels have preserved their ancient pronunciations, except ? which is pronounced as ?, and ?, which retained the pronunciation [] of modern French
French language

French is a Romance language spoken around the world by around 80 million people as first language, by 190 million as second language, and by about another 200 million people as an acquired tongue, with significant speakers in 54 countries....
'U' only until the 10th c. AD, and was later also pronounced as ?. With those changes in phonology there were common spelling mistakes between ? and ??, while the sound of ? was multiplied (iotacism
Iotacism

Iotacism is the process by which a number of vowels and diphthongs in Ancient Greek converged their pronunciation to sound like iota in Modern Greek....
).

The consonants also preserved their ancient pronunciations to a great extent, except ß, ?, d, f, ?, ? and ?. ?, G, ? (Beta, Gamma, Delta), which were originally pronounced as b, g, d, acquired the sound of v, gh, and dh ([v] (via ß), in IPA
International Phonetic Alphabet

The International Phonetic Alphabet "The acronym 'IPA' strictly refers [...] to the 'International Phonetic Association'. But it is now such a common practice to use the acronym also to refer to the alphabet itself that resistance seems pedantic....
), which they still have today, except when preceded by a nasal consonant (µ, ?); in that case, they retain their ancient sounds (e.g. ). The latter three (F, T, ?), which were initially pronounced as aspirates ( and respectively), developed into the fricatives (via ), , and . Finally the letter ?, which is still categorised as a double consonant with ? and ?, because it was initially pronounced as sd (sd), later acquired the sound of Z as it appears in Modern English
Modern English

Modern English is the form of the English language spoken since the Great Vowel Shift, completed in roughly 1550.Despite some differences in vocabulary, texts from the early 17th century, such as the works of William Shakespeare and the King James Bible, are considered to be in Modern English, or more specifically, are referred to as using...
and Greek
Modern Greek

Modern Greek refers the varieties of Greek spoken in the modern era. The beginning of the "modern" period of the language is often symbolically assigned to the fall of the Byzantine Empire in 1453, even though that date marks no clear linguistic boundary and many characteristic modern features of the language had been present centuries earli...
.

Biblical Koine

"Biblical Koine" refers to the varieties of Koine Greek used in the Christian Bible and related texts. Its main sources are:

the Septuagint
Septuagint

The Septuagint , or simply "LXX", is the Koine Greek version of the Hebrew Bible, translated in stages between the 3rd century BC and 1st century BC in Alexandria....
, a 3rd century B.C. Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible
Hebrew Bible

The term Hebrew Bible is a generic reference to those books of the Bible originally written mostly in Biblical Hebrew with some Biblical Aramaic....
, which added the Biblical apocrypha
Biblical apocrypha

The biblical apocrypha are Books of the Bible published in an edition of the Bible whose Biblical canon the publisher either rejects or doubts....
. Most of the texts are translations, but there are some portions and texts composed in Greek
Greek language

Greek is an Indo-European languages native to the southern Balkan peninsula, the language of the Greek people. It forms an independent branch within Indo-European....
. Sirach
Ben Sira

Sirach, by Ben Sira, also known as The Wisdom of Jesus son of Sirach, The Wisdom of Ben Sira, or Ecclesiasticus, is a work from the second century BC, originally written in Hebrew language....
, for instance, has been found in Hebrew;

the New Testament
New Testament

The New Testament is the name given to the second major division of the Christianity Bible, the first such division being the much longer Old Testament....
, compiled originally in Greek (although some books may have had a Hebrew-Aramaic substrate and contain some Semitic influence on the language).

There has been some debate to what degree Biblical Greek represents the mainstream of contemporary spoken Koine and to what extent it contains specifically Semitic

Semitic languages

File:Amarna Akkadian letter.pngThe Semitic languages are a group of related languages whose living representatives are spoken by more than 467 million people across much of the Middle East, North Africa and the Horn of Africa....
substratum

Substratum

In linguistics, a stratum or strate refers to a language that influences, or is influenced by another through language contact. A substratum is a language which is influenced by another, while a superstratum is the language that exerts the influence....
features (cf. Aramaic primacy

Aramaic primacy

Aramaic primacy is the view that the Christian New Testament and/or its sources were originally written in the Aramaic language. Aramaic Primacy is asserted over and against Greek Primacy ....
). These could have been induced either through the practice of translating closely from Hebrew

Biblical Hebrew language

Biblical Hebrew, also called Classical Hebrew, is an archaic form of the Hebrew languages in which the Hebrew Bible and various Israelites inscriptions were written....
or Aramaic

Aramaic language

Aramaic is a Semitic languages with a 3,000-year history. It has been the language of administration of empires and the language of divine worship....
originals, or through the influence of the regional non-standard Greek spoken by the originally Aramaic-speaking Jews. Some of the features discussed in this context are the Septuagint's normative absence of the particles µe? and de, and the use of e?e?et? to denote "it came to pass." Some features of Biblical Greek which are thought to have originally been non-standard elements eventually found their way into the main of the Greek language.

The term Patristic Greek is sometimes used for the Greek written by the Church Fathers

Church Fathers

The Church Fathers, Early Church Fathers, or Fathers of the Church are the early and influential theology and writers in the Christian Church, particularly those of the first five centuries of Christian history....
, the early Christian theologians in late antiquity. Christian writers in the earliest time tended to use a simple register of Koiné, relatively close to the spoken language of their time, following the model of the Bible. After the 4th century, when Christianity became the official state religion of the Roman Empire, more learned registers of Koiné influenced by Atticism came also to be used.

New Testament Greek

The Koine Greek in the table represents the New Testament Koine Greek, deriving to some degree from the dialect spoken in Judaea and Galilaea during the 1st century and similar to the dialect spoken in Alexandria, Egypt. Note the realizations of certain phonemes differ from the more standard Attic dialect of Koine. Note the soft fricative "bh", the hard aspirated "th", the preservation of a distinction between the four front vowels "i", "ê", "e", and "y" (which is still rounded), and other features.

letter	Greek	English	IPA International Phonetic Alphabet The International Phonetic Alphabet "The acronym 'IPA' strictly refers [...] to the 'International Phonetic Association'. But it is now such a common practice to use the acronym also to refer to the alphabet itself that resistance seems pedantic....
Alpha	a	a
Beta	ß (-ß-)	b (-bh-)
Gamma	?	gh
Delta	d	d
Epsilon	e	e
Zeta	?	zz
Eta	?	ê
Theta	?	th
Iota	?	i
Kappa	?	k
Lambda	?	l
Mu	µ	m
Nu	?	n
Xi	?	ks
Omicron	?	o
Pi	p	p
Rho	?	r
Sigma	s (-s-/-ss-)	s (-s-/-ss-)
Tau	t	t
Upsilon	?	y
Phi	f	ph
Chi	?	kh
Psi	?	ps
Omega	?	ô
.	a?	ai
.	e?	ei
.	??	oi
.	a?	au
.	e?	eu
.	??	êu
.	??	ou

Sample Koine Texts

The following excerpts illustrate the phonological development within the period of Koine. The phonetic transcriptions are tentative, and are intended to illustrate two different stages in the reconstructed development, an early conservative variety still relatively close to Classical Attic, and a somewhat later, more progressive variety approaching Modern Greek in some respects.

Sample 1

The following excerpt, from a decree of the Roman Senate to the town of Thisbae in Boeotia

Boeotia

Boeotia, Beotia, or B?otia , formerly Cadmeis, was a region of ancient Greece, north of the eastern part of the Gulf of Corinth. It was bounded on the south by Megaris and the Kithairon mountain range that forms a natural barrier with Attica, on the north by Opuntian Locris and the Euripus Strait at the Gulf of Euboea, and on the...
in 170 BC, is rendered in a reconstructed pronunciation representing a hypothetical conservative variety of mainland Greek Koiné in the early Hellenistic era. The transcription shows partial, but not yet completed raising of ? and e? to /i/, retention of pitch accent, fricativization of ? to /j/ but no fricativisation of the other stops as yet, and retention of word-initial /h/.

"Concerning those matters about which the citizens of Thisbae made representations. Concerning their own affairs: the following decision was taken concerning the proposal that those who remained true to our friendship should be given the facilities to conduct their own affairs; that our governor Quintus Maenius should delegate five members of the senate who seemed to him suitable in the light of their public actions and individual good faith."

Sample 2

The following excerpt, the beginning of the Gospel of St John, is rendered in a reconstructed pronunciation representing a progressive popular variety of Koiné in the early Christian era, with vowels approaching those of Modern Greek.

"In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. The same was in the beginning with God. All things were made by him; and without him was not anything made that was made. In him was life, and the life was the light of men. And the light shone in darkness; and the darkness comprehended it not."

External links

self studies in basic New Testament Greek and Hebrew (requires a Java plugin
Java (programming language)

Java is a programming language originally developed by James Gosling at Sun Microsystems and released in 1995 as a core component of Sun Microsystems' Java ....
)
Dictionaries, manuscripts of the Greek New Testament, and tools for applying linguistics to the study of Hellenistic Greek.
and
Three graduated courses designed to help students learn to read the Greek New Testament

DO NOT ADD "wa:rifondadje d'ene langue" here!!!!

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