Tuesday, 9 December 2008  Πας μη Έλλην Βάρβαρος*  *'Pas mi Ellin
varvaros' = 'Every non-Greek is a barbarian'. This is to be
understood as uncivilised, inarticulate and unreasoning.
Charmed, I'm sure.  I mentioned earlier the Greek love of
bigging up the Greek language at the expense of other tongues.
This is the sort of thing you get used to reading and hearing if
you live in Greece for any length of time:  ‘Greek is the basis
of ALL the world’s languages.’ You mean like Chinese, Japanese,
Lardil, Kivunjo…?  ‘It is the oldest language in the world.’
Sorry, no. You can only say when a language is first attested in
written form, and this is not the same as saying it's the
oldest. Sumerian and Egyptian developed writing systems first,
both appearing about 3200 BC and predating written Greek by some
fifteen hundred years. Looking for the 'oldest language' is a
waste of time anyway. This is linguist Larry Trask in an
interview in The Guardian, June 26th, 2003: "There are no
dividing lines. The speakers in every g