I don't consider
this a serious question, so instead of responding to the correspondent's
arguments, I am sending you a summary of the terms used in LC cataloging for
different forms of Greek. It is a slight modification of a summary sent November
7, 2008, in response to a message from Joan Spanne about a request to create a
code in Part 3 for medieval Greek (http://www.sil.org/iso639-3/chg_detail.asp?id=2006-084).
*****
The term
"Classical Greek" is not used in the Library of Congress Subject
Headings (LCSH). It does appear in an appendix to the Anglo-American
Cataloging Rules, 2nd edition (AACR2), but I have recommended that
"Ancient Greek" be substituted for it in the descriptive cataloging
rules that will replace AACR2. Strictly speaking, "Classical Greek"
refers only to the language of Athens in the fifth and fourth centuries B.C.
The current ALA-LC
romanization tables for Greek were developed by me. One covers ancient and
medieval Greek (before 1454); the other covers modern Greek (after 1453). The
division is based on the date of the fall of Constantinople and the end of the
Byzantine Empire, May 29, 1453. Previously, a single table covered both forms
of the language, but the same date was used as the dividing point.
In notes and
uniform titles, we normally just use "Greek" instead of the MARC code
list forms "Attic Greek," "Greek, Ancient," and
"Greek, Modern." But if the item we have is a translation from one
form of the language into another (generally into modern Greek) or contains
text in two different forms (one of which generally is modern Greek), we use
the following terms:
Ancient
Greek [before 300 B.C.]
Hellenistic
Greek [300 B.C.-A.D. 600]
Biblical
Greek [for the Septuagint and the New Testament; obviously, Biblical Greek is a
subset of Hellenistic Greek]
Medieval
Greek [600-1453]
Modern Greek
[1453-present]
Why is 300
B.C. used as the beginning date for Hellenistic Greek? After the death of
Alexander in 323 B.C., several of his generals divided his empire among them
and proceeded to make war against each other. Meanwhile, Greek culture spread
throughout that part of the world, and the Greek language became the lingua
franca.
Why is A.D.
600 used as the beginning date for medieval Greek? Not long thereafter, the
emperor Heraclius (reigned 610-641) replaced Latin with Greek as the official
language of the Eastern Roman (Byzantine) Empire, giving the empire a
definitely Greek character. The Western Roman Empire had fallen in 476.
Aside from
headings for dialects (Aeolic Greek dialect, Attic Greek dialect, Doric Greek
dialect, Ionic Greek dialect), LCSH uses:
Greek
language
Greek
language, Hellenistic (300 B.C.-600 A.D.) [cross-reference from Greek language
(Koine)]
Greek
language, Biblical [for works on the language of the Septuagint and the New
Testament]
Greek
language, Medieval and late [ca. 600-1821; note that the year of Greek
independence from the Ottoman Empire is used as the end of the date range;
cross-reference from Greek language, Byzantine]
Greek
language, Modern [no scope note specifying dates]
*****
Lucas Graves
([log in to unmask])
Cooperative
Cataloging Program Specialist
Data
Integrity Section
Policy and
Standards Division
Library of
Congress
Washington,
DC 20540
(Nothing in
this message is to be taken as a statement of official LC policy, etc.)
From: ISO 639 Joint Advisory Committee
[mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Håvard Hjulstad
Sent: Thursday, August 12, 2010 5:59 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: SV: Very broad "ancient Greek"
There are other cases that are parallel, e.g. Sanskrit, which
has considerable variation over time. And the issue is by no means
straight-forward. I see two possible ways to go: (1) grc is
re-classified as a macrolanguage, and individual “sub-languages” are given
separate identifiers; (2) grc is retained as an individual language, and
“sub-languages” are encoded in 639-6.
One thing is clear: There exists no objective definition of
“individual language” that states clearly which way we need to go, including
how large variation is “permitted” within an individual language. When it comes
to variation over time, we in addition have the problem that the notion of
mutual intelligibility is even less clear than for modern languages.
Håvard
--------------------
Håvard Hjulstad
(prosjektleder / Project Manager)
Standard Norge / Standards Norway
--------------------
Fra:
ISO 639 Joint Advisory Committee [mailto:[log in to unmask]] På vegne
av Guenther, Rebecca
Sendt: 11. august 2010 21:26
Til: [log in to unmask]
Emne: FW: Very broad "ancient Greek"
Any comments on this request?
Rebecca
From: Henri de Solages
[mailto:[log in to unmask]]
Sent: Friday, August 06, 2010 6:08 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Very broad "ancient Greek"
Hello.
I'm very surprised that ancient Greek is considered as one language, covering 2
millennia, having been an international language during several centuries,
having undergone serious phonetic modifications (to such a point that I doubt a
late ancient Greek would have understood at all an audio record in early
ancient Greek), and having lost not only at least one tense (the anterior
future) but even a grammatical number (the dual).
If you really want to regard it as one language, then we need another standard
to codify things like "Homeric Greek", "Egyptian Greek",
"Cappadocian Greek", "Byzantine Greek" etc..
Yours sincerely.