Are the modern Greeks of today related to the ancient Greeks?

That’s usually how progeny works.

Migration may be more relevant than progeny after a couple of thousand years.

Few modern Americans are related to the Americans of 600 years ago. I would guess not even 200 years.

Yes, but there is a well-recorded instance of population replacement in that case.

Greece is one of the most consistently-populated areas in the last several thousand years. I would feel comfortable assuming that more populations have left the area that is modern Greece than have entered it.

I admit I’m not as knowledgeable in modern eastern Europe as I am in Classical studies, but if my peripheral knowledge relevant to Biblical studies and Medieval Europe count for anything, there isn’t much there to claim anything close to an American-level of emigration to Greece after the Roman empire.

According to this site the first recorded positive migration (that is, more moving in than leaving) to Greece was in the mid 1970s. I had a teacher who was a Greek immigrant, who recalled that Greeks were not considered “white” when he moved to America as a child in the late 1950s.

I think there’s a good argument to be made for a population fairly consistent with that of Classical Greece.

Very well put!

First let me say I’m not posing as an expert here. I’m Googling up info, and offering ideas for conversation.

@Seek I didn’t claim American-levels of immigration, I was just showing an example. And your link is about Greece “after the formation of the modern Greek state in the early 1830s”, so not relevant.

Greece was part of the Ottoman empire, ruled from Turkey. That would guarantee some movement of people. How much, I don’t know.

Wikipedia says the Visigoths and the Slavs invaded Greece.

Maybe language would be a good indicator, like the French influence on English after 1066. How close is modern spoken Greek to classical?

Modern Greek is simplified, and pronunciation is clearly different, and vocabulary obviously far different (Homer never had to describe the difference between Apple and Android).

Otherwise, it’s very similar.

Source for below here

I actually don’t think that a decent understanding of Modern Greek is possible without Ancient Greek. MG isn’t a stand-alone language, it rests too heavily on AG for it to be learned well separately. There are tons of examples I can give you. I’m not 100% sure, but I don’t think the same applies for Romance Languages and Latin.

Major changes are the genitive’s absorption of the dative, the loss of the infinitive and the change of the nominative of most 3rd declension masc. and fem. nouns (they are still declined differently from first and second declension nouns though – neuter 3rd declension nouns remain unchanged for some reason).

“I actually don’t think that a decent understanding of Modern Greek is possible without Ancient Greek”

In your link, the following post calls that claim “moronic crap” and I agree. It implies Greeks on the street are bewildered if they don’t have training in classical language.

I think a real measure would be how much of modern Greek language is composed of post-classical imports.

Can we find that?

@Seek I didn’t address the part after “Major changes…”. That is above my understanding.

Linguistics is beyond my area of study. I was literally Googling for information on the difference between Classical and modern Greek. I cannot speak with any confidence on that matter.

If you have any evidence of large-scale population shift in Greece since the fall of Rome, I’ll happily look at it. I like to learn new things.

Children nowadays are tyrants. They contradict their parents, gobble their food and tyrannise their teachers.
-Socrates

Here is a nice classical Greek diatribe on Those Damned Kids.

There is a brilliant TV show airing right now about the Greeks. I suggest you watch it. Its funny this question came up because I just watched the first two episodes of the this and thought it was brilliant. My earlier response was a reaction written on the bus. I’ve been working like crazy this last week and now I have a week off. Yea!

http://www.pbs.org/program/greeks/ (if you in the US)

http://www.tvbuzer.com/tv-shows/The-Greeks (if you are outside the US, but make sure you have ABP installed.)