主题：【资料】汴都赋 -- 人间树
你不能一会儿说，“英语的本源是德语，又经过诺曼入侵，发生极大的变化，同拉丁语没有多少亲源关系”，于是英国人看拉丁文不能和中国人看文言比，于是就不比了；一会儿又说，“从16世纪开始，用拉丁语写文学，历史作品的英国人几乎没有了”，于是专要拿16世纪英国人看英语跟中国人看文言比。合着英国人看不懂也有理，看得懂也有理？讨论的关键不是啥啥啥算不算汉语（秦始皇讲汉语吗？），关键在于当代人能不能更好地了解他的文化传承。我们也没有专门比较，阅读的是某某世纪到某某世纪的著作的困难程度。否则的话，中文的困难程度也就这四个世纪大点，20世纪以后又没问题了，那16世纪以前的又怎么算？
Historical unity and continuing identity between the various stages of the Greek language is often emphasised. Although Greek has undergone morphological and phonological changes comparable to those seen in other languages, there has been no time in its history since classical antiquity where its cultural, literary, and orthographic tradition was interrupted to such an extent that one can easily speak of a new language emerging. Greek speakers today still tend to regard literary works of ancient Greek as part of their own rather than a foreign language.[10] It is also often estimated that the historical changes have been relatively slight compared with some other languages. According to one estimation, "Homeric Greek is probably closer to demotic than twelfth-century Middle English is to modern spoken English."[11] Ancient Greek texts, especially from Biblical Koine onwards, are thus relatively easy to understand for educated modern speakers. The perception of historical unity is also strengthened by the fact that Greek has not split up into a group of separate national daughter languages, as happened with Latin.
从这里看，现代希腊人读古希腊语的难度，不会比中国人读文言文的难度大。
南北朝的孔雀东南飞和木兰辞，比Beowulf还早，现代人也基本看得懂。
两个relatively。
还有这句很可疑：Greek speakers today still tend to regard literary works of ancient Greek as part of their own rather than a foreign language.所谓的tend to，比中国人的信心小，比如对我你刚才说“除非你认为这些不算汉语”，觉得理所当然，对希腊人不过是个tend to。
Chaucer belongs to Middle English period. If Homer is easier to Greeks than Chaucer to the English, ancient Greek is easier for Greeks than Classical Chinese to us.
不能说中古英语就乔叟了，人家特别说了，十二世纪的中古英语。十二世纪离十一世纪的古英语才一百年，离乔叟却有两百多年。
另外，按照你抠水浒传版本的精神，现存的荷马史诗的最早版本是什么时候的啊？
古希腊文纯粹是书写用的， 希腊人只写和看，能读但不说。 中学教育就是以能看懂荷马的奥德赛作考核标准。 由此来看希腊人也只是为了历史传承而学古希腊文。要比的话， 和现在的湖北，湖南人也读不了楚文版的离骚，但看唐诗宋词，捉摸出石碑上的古文没有大问题差不多。
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...
按照这个说法的话，在阅读古代经典方面，希腊语同汉语一样，比英语法语这些语言还是有优势得多。
文化传承上和更老的希腊语没法比，所以没有多少盎格鲁智慧书，撒克逊史记流传下来（贝奥武夫和亚瑟王传这种口头史还算不上)。 东罗马也是拉丁文和希腊文通用。其实语言只是文化的载体。通过批评和修改语言来追求原来文化上没有的东西和climb wood to find fish一样。 换了载体，原意都在那里，味道却不在了。