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The main objective is to offer in Ancient Greek a summary of the latest world news.
The growing interest for Latin language and its use worldwide is something
known by everybody: congresses that are celebrated in Latin, cultural
meetings, publications on several areas, news services (from Helsinki,
Bremen and Warsaw), youths that communicate with each other through
internet, etc., all of this in the language of Cicero. Would anything
similar in Ancient Greek be possible?
It is possible that a lot of people who at the beginning feel the
desire of studying the language of Pericles give up because of the fear
that an original Greek text from an original author inspires, maybe
too sudden a collision, and because of the sensation that, out from
these texts, it is not going to be useful for anything else. If we remember
that for several centuries Greek was the “lingua franca” around
all of the eastern Mediterranean (and in the western Mediterranean it
was the “lingua docta”), maybe the claim that it be used,
within its possibilities, as a present cultivated way of communication,
as Latin is, is not too far. If the great figures of Latin literature
themselves used to consider Greek as a language worthy of being learned
and used, why not do it?
On the other hand, a lot of times Greek lies in a situation of small
creativity (and, automatically, of small use): people translate from
Greek, but not into Greek. Fortunately, in many universities, especially
in the Anglosaxon world, students practise Greek composition at different
levels of difficulty, according to the course, and English manuals that
instruct into Greek (and Latin) composition are well known worldwide;
all of this is of the greatest help in the learning of the language.
Also well known are the compositions written in Oxford and Cambridge
by for instance J. G. Barrington-Ward, J. D. Denniston, M. Platnauer,
etc. Those compositions are in my opinion the highest level of Greek
composition ever reached. Disfortunately, we have the disadvantage of
the typographical question when we wish to transmit texts through a
computer; please refer to the page of "How I will operate it"
for some comments on this respect.
To offer world news in this language would maybe help many students
to lose fear of coping with it and make them be more interested in its
study. On the other side, for those more advanced in the language, this
“news service” may offer to them the novelty and the attraction
of seeing Thucydides’s and Plato’s language itself used for
present matters, it could be a new and refreshing experience that eliminates
the sensation that Greek is a “closed world” (which does not
mean that it is not interesting, do not misunderstand me) and makes
hellenists cope with the study of classical texts with a more "alive
language" concept of Greek.
Which kind of Greek language will you find here?
AKWN will go on being published in plain Attic dialect, avoiding unnecessary
complications. As in the first period, in case some strange or difficult
construction or word is used, a note will help.
In the case that modern vocabulary has to be used (airplane, tank,
computer, etc.), words will be taken from modern Greek and they will
be adapted into Attic language. You will find a list of the most used
ones in the page "Modern vocabulary" by clicking on the corresponding
button.
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