4000 BC? I don't buy it: if you look at how little Greek changed over the last 3500 years and compared to how different it is to other languages this doesn't sit right
Quick question for you - did the Proto-Indo-European culture spread out further than, or lesser than, the Greek culture?
Because that difference in expansion, distance, and interaction with other cultures might explain the differences you're incredulous about.
Given Punjabi and Irish Gaelic are both descended from PIE, as is _Greek_ I'm going to say that 4K is plenty. The fact that Greek didn't change so much after Mycenean Greek was first attested in 2K BC doesn't say as much about PIE as it does about the Greeks deciding they liked where they were.
Also, _how_ different is Greek to other languages? Given it's a PIE language also.
Greek has several things in favor of it being conservative: 1. It’s been a written language for longer than most other languages 2. It’s been the language of empires 3. It’s been a liturgical language
With that said, I find Modern Greek speakers tend to overstate the similarities between Modern and Ancient Greek. The spelling is conservative but pronunciation is very different and conjugation/declension patterns have been significantly simplified.
Still there’s a lot more intelligibility than between English and Old English for example, which is a good example of how much can change in about 1000 years. Similar with French or Romanian and Latin.
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4000 BC? I don't buy it: if you look at how little Greek changed over the last 3500 years and compared to how different it is to other languages this doesn't sit right
Quick question for you - did the Proto-Indo-European culture spread out further than, or lesser than, the Greek culture?
Because that difference in expansion, distance, and interaction with other cultures might explain the differences you're incredulous about.
Given Punjabi and Irish Gaelic are both descended from PIE, as is _Greek_ I'm going to say that 4K is plenty. The fact that Greek didn't change so much after Mycenean Greek was first attested in 2K BC doesn't say as much about PIE as it does about the Greeks deciding they liked where they were.
Also, _how_ different is Greek to other languages? Given it's a PIE language also.
Greek has several things in favor of it being conservative: 1. It’s been a written language for longer than most other languages 2. It’s been the language of empires 3. It’s been a liturgical language With that said, I find Modern Greek speakers tend to overstate the similarities between Modern and Ancient Greek. The spelling is conservative but pronunciation is very different and conjugation/declension patterns have been significantly simplified.
Still there’s a lot more intelligibility than between English and Old English for example, which is a good example of how much can change in about 1000 years. Similar with French or Romanian and Latin.
Massive controversy in historical linguistics, singularity2001 on hacker News doesn't buy the age of proto-Indo-European