A News Website in Ancient Greek

Dr Juan Coderch was born in the city of Barcelona in Spain, where he lived the first 40 years of his life before moving to the UK. He graduated from the University of Barcelona with a degree in Classics and went on to study for a Master’s degree at the University of Sheffield in 1986. During 2003-2007 he taught Greek and Latin at the University of Oxford and at the moment he holds the position of Senior Language Tutor in Greek and Latin at the University of St. Andrews in the UK.

Over the last few years, Dr Juan Coderch has developed a news website, Acropolis World News, which is mostly written in ancient Greek, and more specifically in the Attic dialect. Even though this is a language that no one currently speaks, many scholars appear to be interested in reading and writing in the ancient Greek language.

The website’s aim is to offer readers a summary of the latest world news in ancient Greek: “It is possible that a lot of people who at the beginning feel the desire of studying the language of Pericles give up because of the fear that an original Greek text from a classical author inspires, maybe too sudden a collision, and because of the sensation that, outside of these texts, it is not going to be useful for anything else. If we remember that for several centuries Greek was the “lingua franca” around all eastern Mediterranean (and in the western Mediterranean it was the “lingua docta”), maybe the claim that it can be used, within its possibilities, as a present cultivated way of communication (as Latin) is not too far,” wrote Dr Coderch on the website.

Furthermore, he hopes that his website will help many students who are studying ancient Greek to “lose fear of coping with it,” while they will also be more interested in learning the language and continuing their studies. Meanwhile, the site also offers a “refreshing experience” to people who are more advanced in their study of ancient Greek, given that they will be able to read current news in the language that was used by great figures of ancient history, such as Plato or Thucydides.

The professor aims to make ancient Greek more accessible for people who are in the process of studying the language by incorporating it in texts that people are more familiar with.

You can find his website here.