The ancient Hellenic language until 300 B.C. was a mosaic of dialects. Attica, Ionian, Northwestern, Aeolians e.t.c. and of course their subgroups.
The first dialect began to distinguish from 5 B.C. and had reached in her climax in the Hellenestic period. Attica or Koine dominated the production of literature for the entire Byzantine era from the establishment of Constantinople in 330 until 1453 when the city was defeated by the Turks.
The development of actual daily speech during this period is extraordinarily difficult to reconstruct since the vernacular speech was deemed unfit for literary production.
After the 18th cent the difference between ancient and modern (katharevousa and demotike) are only in the grammar(not to much). Words and syntaxis are the same.
Katharevousa is a form of the Greek language, created during the early 19th century by Adamantios Korais (1748-1833). A graduate of the university of Montpellier in 1788, Korais spent most of his life as an expatriate in Paris. Being a classical scholar, he was repelled by the Byzantine influence in Greek society and was a fierce critic of the ignorance of the clergy and their subservience to the Ottoman Empire. He realized that education was a precursor to Greek liberation.
The "purified" Greek was to be the midpoint between Ancient Greek and Modern Greek. Katharevousa actually contained archaicised forms of modern words, purged of "non-Greek" vocabulary from other European languages and Turkish and a (simplified) archaic grammar.
Dhimotiki, is the daily language. Dhimotiki was made the official language in 1976 and by the end of the 20th century Katharevousa had become obsolete. However, the ancient Greek grammar and syntactical rules that Katharevousa had adopted and many words from Katharevousa have influenced and entered Dhimotiki during the two centuries of its existence, so that the project has left a very noticeable trace in the modern Greek language, especially the written form
Cambringe University will be publish a book that mention a lot for the ancient and has also some data for the diffrences between them. I have the Greek edition and is very intresting and very informative work.
http://www.cambridge.org/uk/catalogue/catalogue.asp?isbn=0521833078#contributors - http://www.cambridge.org/uk/catalogue/catalogue.asp?isbn=052 1833078#contributors
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