Origins of Modern Languages
Latin and Greek derivatives
“The most terrifying words in the English language are: I’m from the government and I’m here to help.” — Ronald Reagan
I will leave oriental languages out of this discussion.
I will concentrate on Latin and Greek-derived languages.
Latin-derived languages consist of the Germanic languages and those languages used by the Roman Catholic Church. The Germanic countries consist of Spain, Germany, France, and England. The Germanic countries all have their associated languages derived from Latin.
The Ukrainian language is derived from Greek origin. The reason for so many Ukrainians of Greek origin is due to migration from Crimea, dating back to the 18th century, due to intermarriage between Greeks and Ukrainians.
The Russian language itself is not based on Greek but its alphabet is. The Cyrillic alphabet, closely based on the Greek alphabet, though it contains about a dozen additional letters, were created to represent sounds found in Russian but not Greek.
Are the Greek and Russian language similar?
They are very distantly related as both are Indo-European languages but on totally different branches. Also, Greek is considered “Centum” while Russian is “Satem.”
Cyrillic derived from the Greek uncial script, augmented by letters from the older Glagolitic alphabet, including some ligatures. The script was named in honor of Saint Cyril, one of the two Byzantine brothers, Saints Cyril and Methodius, who created the Glagolitic alphabet earlier on.
The Roman Empire separated into two empires. The Byzantine in the east and the Roman stayed in the west. They separated languages and churches as well. The languages derived from Greek and the Orthodox church went east, while the Roman church and the Latin-derived languages went west.
The Russian Alphabet followed the Cyrillic alphabet. The common symbol used in math “pi” — п — sounds like “p” by comparison. The Greek letter “rho” — p — sounds like the American “r.” The word to the far left below is the word president, spelled out in the Russian Cyrillic alphabet. The first two letters pi and rho translate to “pr” where the Cyrillic e sounds like the English e. The Russian letter that looks like 3 is pronounced: “ze.” The sideways-looking N is pronounced like the English “i.” The letter д is the Greek letter “delta” — pronounced “de.” The last three letters are pronounced as they are in English.
президент president