The Classical Languages and Their Actual Contribution - The Case of German and Greek

Introduction

Our initial interest focused on how the two languages that share no common borders have many words in common, often with the same semantic meaning. The answer is to be found in the Greco-Roman period, led by Julius Caesar¹, who constituted the main foundation of this cultural dominance over other nations (around 58 BC) that enabled linguistic contact between the two languages in this study².

As a result of economic, social, and cultural imposition, the linguistic impact of Greco-Roman culture on the peoples of other tribes that they conquered was formed. Many inscriptions in Greek throughout the region of Galatia prove how widespread the recognition of Greek in these areas was, either as an indicator of its presence or as an indicator of the fact that Greek was once considered a "lingua franca "that should definitely be spoken by the upper classes³, with Greek certainly conveyed to the conquered territories through a third language, namely Emperor Caesar’s Latin. This effect explains how words like Apotheke (pharmacy) from gr. φαρμακείο, chirurg (surgeon) from gr. χειρουργός, catharsis (catharsis) - from gr. κάθαρση, and kathode (discount) from gr. κάθοδος are found in its dictionary.

Another period of contact between the barbarian tribes of central Europe and North and South (call barbarian tribes, because at that time the people that were not Roman were considered Barbarian) was The Migration Period (Vӧlkerwanderung) circa 450 A.D. who managed to reach as far as the North Africa and reformatted the boundaries of the peoples of the time affecting even their former invaders, still deeply in administrative shape, but however gradually moving over to the administrative and terminology terms that they found in their passage through the Roman civilization which prevailed for centuries in these areas. As a result, numerous prisoners and Roman monks that were assimilated into new society forms continued to convey automatically cultural elements of the Greco-Roman civilization also affecting Christianity of the barbarian tribes, but also by transmitting to them words, as they possessed the power of knowledge in multiple areas and they were maritime traders, slaves, poets, scholars, philosophers, etc. where for the words and the terms used by them there were not equates to the German language and naturally the consequence was that these words would simply adjust their pronunciation. Horace (65-8 BC) said: Graecia capta ferum victorem cepit et artis intulit agresti Latio.

The Gothic language, initially part of the wider family of the German language from which it then diverged, reflects in its dimension, although written in the IV century AD, a number of Greek vocabulary words transmitted into the German language. It involves a more or less restricted lexicon, because it is mainly church vocabulary, but it contains many paradigms worth mentioning, such as: (Old German) Pfarre – (ahd) Pfarre, paroecia -paroikia –παροικία⁴, etc.

The Renaissance of the 15th and 16th centuries led the German-speaking countries to educate their children in gymnasiums in Ancient Greek because the translation of the Holy Scriptures by Martin Luther (Martin Luther) brought about the need to understand the meaning of these texts in their original language. Through their translation into German, the Holy Scriptures introduced a variety of concepts, names, and phrases that gradually became part of the German language and were now mastered even by ordinary people who had had no previous contact with classical education or, even more so, with Hellenic civilization. Thus, under the influence of the operation of high schools and the courses that took place in them, the classical Greek language was introduced into the German dictionary up to the 19th century.

This allows us to find words such as: akropolis, agora, ethos, amfibrachus, autochtoon, autochtonous, palindrome, diaspora, hybris, kosmos, pathos, schisma, cosmos, heureka, epos, delta, pi grek (in geometry), alfa en omega (used metaphorically as an expression), etc. In the field of medicine, German borrowed more words from Greek. Some of them are: diafragma, epidermis, epilepsie, herpes, astma, lepra, dosis, bronchiën, hymen, acne, aorta, clitoris, larynx, meniscus, eczeem, dermatitis, cirrose, oedeem, trauma, colostomy, therapeut, angiogram, leukocyt, and many names of specializations, such as pediatre, chirurg, psychiatrist, gynecolog, oncolog, etc. Pharmaceuticals also contributed paradigms such as glucose, glycerine, kerosine, pepsine etc.

In the sports field, Greek led to the promotion of various sports words established in ancient Greece⁵. These include words such as marathon, pentathlon, triathlon, decathlon etc.

From the field of the arts we have words such as estetic, fotograaf, amfitheatre, bibliotheek, drama, komedie, museum, mysterie, myth, proza, retorica, diploma, etc.

In the field of religion we have words such as clerus, kyrie-eleison, apocalyps, apostel, engel, evangelie, orthodoks, patriarch, priester, synagoge etc.

In the field of space science, ancient Greek scholars established this sector's terminology with words that dominate to this day, such as: astrolog, astronomie, ellips, horizon, komeet, planet etc.

The same happened with the German Martin Kraus (1607) and his works in German, Turcograecia and Germanograecia, where one can find numerous Greek words.

The development of science and its branches created the need for terminological vocabulary with neologistic lexemes from Greek; as is well known, medicine, philosophy, theology, pharmaceuticals, biology, flora and fauna, linguistics, the arts, and many other fields retained their terms from Greco-Roman civilization for their naming needs⁶.

These were the main motives for the entry of Greek words into German, where, despite the continuous efforts of German linguists to purify their language from the 18th century onward, they continued to be present, as seen in classical expressions in texts translated into German and in the personal names with which even today many Germans are baptized, e.g., Angela, Dionysius, Agatha, Stephan, Dorothea, Sophia, Andreas, Lydia, Melanie, Peter, Theodor, Helena, Sebastian, Nikolaos, Irene⁷, Hektor, etc. Toponyms such as Kristianopel, Palaiocome, and Neanderthal began appearing in German cities because of the admiration that the German King Ludwig I had for Greece and Greek civilization; beyond the fact that some buildings in Bavaria were built in the style of ancient Greece, in 1825 his son, Prince Otto, was sent as the first king of free Greece.

Browsing the German dictionary: "Duden, Deutsches Universal Wörterbuch." we note that technical⁸ terms are commonly found either adapted to the rules of German or completely left just as in borrowing language:: topos - from gr. τόπος, the word idiot gr. Old ιδιώτης del idiot, in German the word Krise comes from the Greek κρίση, the word organ emerges as orgel from Greek όργανο, der Dialekt from gr. διάλεκτος. Today in the German language, we face many of the Greek prefixes used in the technique words in German. Prefixes as aero, neo, hyper, pneuma, tele, syn, kosmo, bio, astro, auto, anti, agro, elektro, homo, demo etc., which have found thier way into German through her contact with Latin as we explained above.

Not a few are compounds with suffixes from Greek, such as:

• gram at the word hologram from gr. ολόγραμμα⁹
• logie from gr. λογία.
• skop from gr. σκόπιον
• thik from gr.θήκη
• pathie from gr. πάθεια.
• id from gr. είδης.

Leaving aside borrowings from the 15th and 16th centuries, we see that even today German tourists' contacts with Greeks have enabled the entry of certain words in the modern period, mainly culinary terms such as ouzo, souvlaki, retsina, tzatziki, moussaka, gyros, etc.

From the Linguistics and rhetoric we come across words as:

Epithet, idiotic, litotes, prolegomena, lexicon, but we also have words such as: etymologicon, hexameter, zeugma, oxymoron, polysyndeton.

Also interesting are some of the expressions found in the linguistic studies of Emmanouil Geogudakis that he mentions in one of his articles: Das A und O, Unter der Ägide, Trojanisches Pferd, Danaidenfass, Gelegenheit beim Schopf packen, Kassandrarufen, Pyrrhussieg, Sisyphusarbeit, Zankapfel. All these expressions exist today and will remain in use in the German language in the future, as all these centuries have failed to change anything about them.

Conclusions

The classical languages served as an inexhaustible treasure for today's terminology of many Western languages; in this setting, they made an indisputable contribution to the German language. Numerous examples from different fields of life, more than knowledge, openly testify to this phenomenon.

The contribution of classical languages in the field of lexicology does not, even today, represent a linguistic problem of clearing the language of terms from classical sources, because these words have been completely assimilated, so that users of Western languages, where classical languages mainly find their place, do not feel them to be foreign. This distinction can be made only by someone who is fluent in Ancient and Modern Greek, and also in Latin. Most users perceive these words in the context of a functional individual and collective bilingualism, and they cannot distinguish them from the vocabulary of their native language.

References