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  1. #1

    Question for native Greek speakers regarding the Greek in Assassin's Creed Odyssey

    Is the Greek language spoken by non playable characters in the environment:

    -Modern Greek (1500 - today)
    -Medieval Greek (500 AD - 1500 AD)
    -Koine Greek (300 BC - 300 AD)

    Or actual Ancient Greek? (Prior to 300 BC)

    In other words: Is it easily understandable to a modern Greek speaker or not very easily?
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  2. #2
    Olympus2018's Avatar Senior Member
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    Originally Posted by Achilleus- Go to original post
    Is the Greek language spoken by non playable characters in the environment:

    -Modern Greek (1500 - today)
    -Medieval Greek (500 AD - 1500 AD)
    -Koine Greek (300 BC - 300 AD)

    Or actual Ancient Greek? (Prior to 300 BC)

    In other words: Is it easily understandable to a modern Greek speaker or not very easily?
    Personally, I can understand even SOME archaic Greek (2000-1000 BC), which was written down in Linear B script back in 1500-1200 BC. To answer your question, Koine Greek, also known as Common Greek, which is around 2000 years old, is understood to some extent by modern Greeks. Those with a little training can understand most of Koine Greek and a lot of ancient Greek too...

    In Origins, NPC youths used to say Lexon mi paides, which means tell me, children. It was fun and reminded me of ancient Greek courses in school. In Origins, you hear only Hellenistic / Koine Greek. I am not sure about Odyssey yet but it must be Koine and Ancient Greek (500 BC - 200 AD) judging from some video clips that I watched so far... I can understand some of it but not all.

    Bottom line: Greek has not changed too much through the ages. It's definitely the oldest living language with written documents since 1500 BC. Chinese comes second.
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  3. #3
    I’m not a native Greek speaker, but I used to be decently familiar with Ancient Greek — or at least the Attic dialect.

    From what I can tell, they’re using Ancient Greek for the NPCs but pronouncing it like modern Greek. It’s actually very hard for me to tell though because modern Greek pronunciation is alien to me and I often can’t tell what they’re saying.

    (Related to the previous response, Sanskrit is older than Greek if we’re counting changes and evolution as we must with Greek. Or if we’re counting only continuous use of a dialect, Sanskrit is definitely older.)
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    Olympus2018's Avatar Senior Member
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    Originally Posted by AdmiralJello Go to original post
    I’m not a native Greek speaker, but I used to be decently familiar with Ancient Greek — or at least the Attic dialect.

    From what I can tell, they’re using Ancient Greek for the NPCs but pronouncing it like modern Greek. It’s actually very hard for me to tell though because modern Greek pronunciation is alien to me and I often can’t tell what they’re saying.

    (Related to the previous response, Sanskrit is older than Greek if we’re counting changes and evolution as we must with Greek. Or if we’re counting only continuous use of a dialect, Sanskrit is definitely older.)
    Sanskrit was not written down in India before the invention of Brahmi script which was emerged only around 300 BC. There is no archaeological evidence of Sanskrit back in 1500 BC, unlike Greek which was ATTESTED 3500 years ago. So you are wrong. The only languages that were definitely written down before Greek, including Egyptian and Sumerian, died out a long time ago. Not to mention the Greek alphabet which is the oldest surviving alphabet still in use...
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  5. #5
    I'm still hoping for an actual Greek person to comment in this thread on the intelligebility of the NPC's.

    Koine Greek (Byzantine Greek) would be far too anachronistic for 431 BC. It formed after the heterogeneity of Alexander's conquest in the third century BC.

    The Greek spoken in 431 BC should be Classical Greek (5th and 4h centuries BC) in Attic, Ionic and Doric dialects.

    Classical Greek followed Archaic / Homeric Greek (9th - 6th centuries BC) which followed Mycenaean Greek (16th - 12th centuries BC).

    A Classical Greek Athenian speaker in the 4th century BC would have great difficulty understanding Mycenaean (12th century BC).

    A modern Greek will recognise 50% of the words of Classical Greek but the overall meaning of a text will not be understandable without assistance and instruction. The text is grammatically, syntactically, phonetically and lexically too different.

    Would love for an actual native Greek person to comment on the NPC speech in Odyssey.
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  6. #6
    Olympus2018's Avatar Senior Member
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    Originally Posted by Achilleus- Go to original post
    I'm still hoping for an actual Greek person to comment in this thread on the intelligebility of the NPC's.

    Koine Greek (Byzantine Greek) would be far too anachronistic for 431 BC. It formed after the heterogeneity of Alexander's conquest in the third century BC.

    The Greek spoken in 431 BC should be Classical Greek (5th and 4h centuries BC) in Attic, Ionic and Doric dialects.

    Classical Greek followed Archaic / Homeric Greek (9th - 6th centuries BC) which followed Mycenaean Greek (16th - 12th centuries BC).

    A Classical Greek Athenian speaker in the 4th century BC would have great difficulty understanding Mycenaean (12th century BC).

    A modern Greek will recognise 50% of the words of Classical Greek but the overall meaning of a text will not be understandable without assistance and instruction. The text is grammatically, syntactically, phonetically and lexically too different.

    Would love for an actual native Greek person to comment on the NPC speech in Odyssey.
    As a native real Greek I can tell you that I can understand phrases and sentences far older than Odyssey's period. More than 25 centuries ago. Ancient Greek is not a foreign language, only an earlier form of modern Greek. Grammar and syntax are not dramatically different and the vocabulary is almost identical.
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  7. #7
    As a modern Greek, and someone who does speak what is referred to as ‘modern greek’, I have noticed there are both things that the characters say that I can understand and things that I can’t. A lot of the time the phrases are clear in Greek... although not pronounced correctly (I would imagine Ubisoft would have had Greek speaking persons to consult, so why this is I am not sure), other times there are phrases that are not exactly clear but the meaning of which can be worked out easily enough, and other phrases are just not clear... I suspect those are the phrases in Ancient Greek?
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  8. #8
    I have to agree with Nattieb77. As a native Greek speaker myself, some things I can understand perfectly and others are more difficult. Sometimes I don't understand a phrase immediately, but I definitely recognize the words so it's easy to work out the phrase's meaning. Also often people yell single words like "stratioti" which means "soldier" or "ela" which means "come/come here", those are simple enough to understand even if the accent is a little strange.

    The famous "malaka" is sometimes used in contexts that a real Greek probably wouldn't use it, but other times it's spot on and really funny!

    I have most difficulty with the songs of the sailor crew, but then again I confess I've always been more of a math person in school and never really great at ancient greek, so other Greeks may understand a little more than me
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  9. #9
    I wanted to get the opinions of actual Greek speakers. Because if the NPC speech is flawless to understand it must not be Classical Greek.

    I'll give you an example. I'm a native Turkish speaker. And the NPC "Ottoman" spoken in Assassin's Creed Revelations in 15th century Constantinople was actually perfect modern i.e. post 1990's Turkish.

    Whereas the actual Ottoman language spoken in the 15th century would be more akin to 90% Medieval Arabic with 10% Turkic loan words from East Asia (Mongolia). Words of modern Turkish lexicon would form about 1% of the vocabulary. Whereas in the game the NPC' spoke perfect 100% modern, i.e. post 1990 Turkish. With a Western, i.e. Istanbul dialect.

    Classical Greek is a much more well studied ancient language that medieval Ottoman. It would be a shame to not have done due diligence in recreating it,

    And only real Greek people can tell us how well Ubisoft succeeded.
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  10. #10
    The native Greeks that have posted already aren't... doing it for you?
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