Will Modern Greek Help You Learn Ancient Greek?

By Jenny Teichmann

My students sometimes ask me whether they should learn Modern Greek in order to get better at Ancient Greek. After all, Modern Greek seems to have a lot going for it: There are many more resources for Modern than for Ancient Greek (podcasts, videos, a Duolingo course,…), and you can even visit the country and talk to real people while tanning on the beach. Now, while I am all for visiting Greece and its lovely beaches, I don’t think this will bring you far in your Ancient Greek journey. Let me explain.

Do modern Greeks understand Ancient Greek?

Modern Greeks arguably know Modern Greek very well. So does that help them understand Ancient Greek? There is a viral YouTube video in which the interviewer poses exactly this question to random Greeks on the street: What is your relationship with Ancient Greek? How well do you understand it?

And guess what? Every single one of the interviewees says that they have learned Ancient Greek at school but by now know almost nothing. One person for example states:

είναι σαν άγνωστη γλώσσα
“It is like an unknown language”

There are of course Greeks who know Ancient Greek very well—but they are, in my experience, philologists and enthusiasts who have studied really hard to get to that level. The average Greek, in contrast, derives little help from the modern language when it comes to understanding the ancient one.

Practical Issues: Differences between Modern and Ancient Greek

So why is Modern Greek of little help for learning Ancient Greek? I think there are three main issues:

• Pronunciation
• Core vocabulary
• Grammar

Pronunciation

Modern Greek has quite a different pronunciation compared to Ancient Greek (at least if you use the Erasmian or reconstructed pronunciation). Some main features are:

• ει, οι, υ, υι, η are pronounced as /i/ (like in English: “ee”),
• αι is pronounced as /e/,
• αυ and ευ are pronounced as /af/ and /ef/ (or softer /av/ and /ev/, depending on context),
• no “h” sound.

To get an idea, you can listen to a sample here (of an Ancient Greek text read with Modern Greek pronunciation):

So, while some Modern Greek words might still look similar to Ancient Greek, this can be deceptive: Greek just has a very conservative spelling that does not always reflect the current pronunciation of a word. (This, by the way, also means that Greek schoolchildren spend a lot of time learning orthography. If you, on the other hand, have learned Ancient Greek before starting Modern Greek, orthography will be a piece of cake for you. Every Greek schoolchild will envy you for that.)

Core vocabulary

In any language, the words that are used the most tend to undergo the most dramatic changes over time. For this reason, many basic words are actually different in Modern and Ancient Greek:

Of course, there are also words that stayed the same. For example:

The problem is: There is no general rule that tells you which words have remained the same and which have changed from Ancient to Modern Greek. You just have to learn each word on its own, on a case by case basis.

Grammar

Greek grammar, too, has evolved quite a bit over the last 2500 years or so. For example, in Modern Greek you have:

• no dative,
• no infinitive,
• no optative,
• often completely different verb formation.

Let’s take just one example, the verb “to be”:

Looks confusing, right? Now, given that grammatical forms (especially the many verb forms) are often the biggest headache for students of Ancient Greek, Modern Greek will, again, be of little help to you.

Should you avoid Modern Greek altogether?

Now, of course I don’t say that learning Modern Greek is a bad idea per se. Rather, it all depends on your goals:

• If you are interested only in Ancient Greek and reading Ancient Greek texts, stick to Ancient Greek. No need to bother with Modern Greek.
• If you are interested in Modern and Ancient Greek and you really want to learn both, you should first choose one language and learn it thoroughly, then add the other. Trying to learn both from scratch at the same time is bound to make you confused.

I personally had studied Ancient Greek for about six years already before I started learning Modern Greek. Knowing the ancient language well made it much easier for me to learn the modern one, though, to be honest, I still mix them up at times (which always results in puzzled looks when I try to use an Ancient Greek word in a Modern Greek conversation).

Summary

Learning Modern Greek won’t make you better at Ancient Greek. On the contrary, it might make you confused at times. In the end, Ancient and Modern Greek are like mother and daughter: You can see a lot of family resemblance, but don’t just lump them together—they are two distinct individuals who you should get to know each in their own right.