Greek Language Research Paper

Words: 738
Pages: 3

Greek language is the base/root language for english and this is shown in many obvious ways. The greek language produced was the worlds first fully phonemic alphabet which had consonant and vowel sounds. This type of language was the Hellenic Language. The structure of hellenic was the first complete, yet, flexible in the world. Singular, dual, and plural nouns came from hellenic and continue in the English language (as well as many other languages). Another thing that hellenic brought to languages was the masculine, feminine, and neuter forms of words and their inflections. Compound nouns were also formed in the hellenic language which helped form the most complex ideas. Adjectives were added to the language and mutated nouns to new meanings. …show more content…
The names of medicines, medical diseases, and other psychological problems tended to be derived from other greek characters. For example, narcissism, priapism, hermaphrodite, and fury are all based on old greek characters. Narcissism comes from Narcissus, the son of Liriope and the river god Cephisus, who was prophesied to live a long life only if he didn’t see his own reflection. This was because he was so gorgeous he would fall in love with himself. When he saw himself, he became exactly that. This is why those who are determined to be narcissistic are self-absorbed, arrogant, selfish people, which some of the masses know nothing about. The character and word Atlas is an example of how greek mythology affected medicine. The atlas vertebrae is the top most vertebrae that holds up the head. The reason for this is that Atlas was defeated by a young Zeus who in turn condemned Atlas to hold the heavens and the celestial globe upon his back for all of eternity. He is often depicted as holding the earth on his shoulders. The head represents the globe and the atlas vertebrae represents, well, atlas. Having even a brief knowledge of greek mythological characters would greatly improve a persons ability to understand what doctors are talking about. It would also help the doctors themselves become knowledgeable in their field of