On 14/04/2007 21:22, Yohanan bin-Dawidh wrote:
Dear Harold,Yohanan, do you actually know any Koine Greek? Can you read it? Do you know what proportion of Semitic, or Latin, words are found in typical texts? Do you really have any evidence to suggest that it is a mixed language of the time you claim? It was indeed a mixture of Greek dialects, but not of Greek and Semitic, except for a rather small number of Semitic loan words. Yes, the intellectual snobs who still tried to speak Attic, rather like some people today who claim to speak Shakespearean English but don't, looked down on the common people who spoke a less literary dialect.
Note that this cited text from Wikipedia refers to Koine Greek as
Alexandrian, Hellenistic, Common or New Testament, and states that it is the
Greek dialect that arose within the Meditteranean, i.e. mainly Semitic
lands, where Semitic language was spoken, and thus a dialect of
Greek/Semitic language arose. This reminds of the perversions of Yiddish and
Ladino that my people speak, which are dialects of Hebrew mixed with other
languages. It is likewise reported that Koine while taking from Semitic
languages also carries Latin variants within. Basically, it is trash talk,
as testified to by those who spokeAttic Greek.
Archive powered by MHonArc 2.6.24.