Koine

The koine language (in ancient Greek: ἡ κοινὴ ɣλῶσσα [hē koinḕ glṓssa], 'common language', or, more frequently, ἡ κοινὴ διάλεκτος [hē koinē dialektos], 'common speech'; in Neo-Greek: Ελληνιστική Κοινή or Ελληνική Κοινή; in Latin: Lingua Graeca antiqua communis or Dialectus) communis It was a variety of the Greek language used in the Hellenistic world, that is, in the period following the conquests of Alexander the Great. This language has also sometimes been called Hellenistic Greek.

History

With the conquests of Alexander III of Macedon, and the consequent loss of influence of Athens, the decline of the Attic dialect began (around the III century BC). When it mixed with the native languages of the different peoples conquered by the son of Philip II, it lost its purity, giving rise to a new common language (κοινή in Greek) for all Hellenic or Hellenized territories. In other words, koiné is an evolution of the Attic, enriched with contributions from the different languages that were spoken in the vast territory of the Alexandrian empire.

This language forms an important territorial union, since it could be used in such disparate places ranging from Rome to Egypt, and even some enclaves in India, coexisting with autochthonous languages such as Aramaic in Syria, Coptic in Egypt or with Latin, the latter the language of the military and civil servants in the West.

In the koine, the Attic constitutes the base element, with certain influences from other elements such as the Ionic in the form and construction of the phrase.

Different types are distinguished, among them the Egyptian koine, known thanks to the papyri of the Bible of the Seventy, and the literary koine, in writers such as Polybius. It is also the language of the New Testament, with an important contribution of lexical loans from the Semitic languages –Aramaic and Hebrew–, mainly.

Their works were written in Common or Koine Greek by Strabo, Diodorus, Dionysus of Halicarnassus and Plutarch, Greek prose writers from the time of Alexander the Great and later (4th century BC).

Linguistic description

The main differences between classical Greek and Hellenistic Greek or κοινή are basically pronunciation rather than grammatical, although it is true that the transition from classical Greek has meant a «morphological simplification», reflected in the elimination of the number of different inflectional forms of each word: for example, in classical Greek, a regular verb, with all its voices, tenses, and modes, had around a hundred forms, while in modern Greek these forms are only twenty.

Phonology

Several of the classical Greek vowels and diphthongs are confused in Hellenistic Greek, that is, they stop being pronounced distinctively and have to merge their sound. So, for example, i, ei, ē, oi, u, all of which are pronounced differently in classical Greek (such as [i, eɪ, ɛː, oɪ, y]) they go on to sound [i] in Hellenistic Greek, as shown by the frequent spelling confusions in the texts of less educated people.

Phonetics

In addition to the aforementioned phonological changes, there is an evolution of the voiced stop consonants [b], [d], [g] to [β], [ð] and [ɣ] respectively and of the aspirated stops [pʰ ], [tʰ], [kʰ] to [f], [θ] and [x] respectively. The latter will also remain in the pronunciation of modern Greek.

These changes are merely articulatory and therefore only affect the phonetics of the language.

Morphology

Despite certain reductions in the number of different forms in the verb conjugation, the declension system of nouns and adjectives undergoes few variations: the main ones are the analogical regularization of some subtypes of the three main declensions.

Biblical Greek

The language of the New Testament is essentially Koine Greek, however it is usually considered as an independent variety due to the significant influence of Aramaic and Hebrew, the mother tongues of its writers^{[citation required]}, in syntax and lexicon; as well as by the incorporation of Christian neologisms. To properly understand this influence, it must be taken into account that the vehicular language of the eastern part of the Roman Empire was Greek and, therefore, this was the language chosen by the Christian Jews for their preaching to both pagans and Jews. of the diaspora in Greece, Egypt and other eastern territories of the Empire. Another major influence on the writing of the New Testament is the Septuagint Bible (of the Seventy), the Greek translation of the Old Testament from the third century BC. C., both for its importance in the Greek used and for its presence through appointments.

Hellenistic Greek of the New Testament is a popular form of common speech, the main variations of which are Semitic and Latin influences. Characteristics of the Biblical koine are the predominance of coordination over subordination; It was a continuous script, without separation between words, there was no difference between uppercase or lowercase letters, nor were punctuation marks used. Other characteristics were the repetition of particles such as καί, δέ, ίδού giving the style simplicity, ease and sometimes monotony and the use of locutions, idioms and figures of speech in the Semitic way. New words are introduced into the lexicon such as: ἀββα (father), πάσχα (Easter) and some Greek words take on a new meaning: δόξα (glory), δύναμις (miracle), αμαρτία (sin).