主题：【资料】汴都赋 -- 人间树

All greek junior high and high school students take 6 years of ancient greek classes at school and at the last grades Antigoni, the Heliad and the Odyssey are some of the "text-books" used at class. So most greeks have an understanding of ancient greek and it's usually quite easy for an educated person to understand a phrase in an older form of greek.

Of course, since greek is an evolving language, nobody SPEAKS ancient greek. It's a written language so even philology graduates won't speak the ancient greek language but they will be able to read it. I stress this because a lot of non-greek people actually say that they speak ancient greek, which to a greek sounds completely weird! The ancient greek language (at least in a greek's point of view) exists only as a written language and nobody is supposed to start a conversation in ancient greek or Koine unless they're quoting an old text. Of course there is some people who use Katharevousa or archaic language in some contexts (the current archbishop of Athens and a lot of clergymen for example tend to use a lot of archaic forms in their speech inside the church, of course the use modern Greek in everyday life and interviews).

Anywayz, although the language is the same and almost all of the modern words are derived from ancient Greek, the older the text is the more difficult it would be for a common greek to understand it. For example an average greek will easily understand the Bible (written in Koine) without trouble, but will need time or even have to ask somebody else in order to "decode" a text written in the 5th century Attican language.

Thus, even my grandma who's a primary school graduate will easily understand Koine and read the Bible in prototype.

A lot of ancient greek, Koine and Katharevousa phrases are also commonly used in modern speech.

So, to sum up, I would say that modern day greeks won't have much trouble to read something in Koine and Byzantine Greek since it's very close grammatically and lexilogically to the modern language. When ancient (mostly Attican) language comes into consideration then most of greeks won't get it immediately but will have to think a little or even ask someone's help in order to understand a phrase. Nevertheless a greek would probably get the meaning out of a carved script (for example on ancient statues, pottery or columns in a museum) but won't usually try to do it since carved text doesn't have spaces and it will take quite a lot of time to separate the words and then find the meaning...