{"id":26904,"date":"2016-09-30T16:46:22","date_gmt":"2016-09-30T23:46:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/cjnotebook.com\/?p=26904"},"modified":"2016-09-30T16:46:22","modified_gmt":"2016-09-30T23:46:22","slug":"who-were-the-barbarians-the-word-is-used-to-mean-uncivilized-people-but-thats-not-the-original-meaning","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cjnotebook.com\/?p=26904","title":{"rendered":"Who Were the Barbarians? The Word is Used to Mean Uncivilized People But That’s Not the Original Meaning"},"content":{"rendered":"

Barbarians \u2014 a word that today often refers to uncivilized people or evil people and their evil deeds \u2014 originated in ancient Greece, and it initially merely referred to people who did not speak Greek, according to Live Science.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Today, the meaning of the word is far removed from its original Greek roots. A poignant example comes from a 2012 speech given by President Barack Obama in New York City<\/span><\/span>.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cWhen a little boy is kidnapped, turned into a child soldier, forced to kill or be killed \u2014 that\u2019s slavery. When a little girl is sold by her impoverished family \u2014 girls my daughters\u2019 age \u2014 runs away from home, or is lured by the false promises of a better life, and then imprisoned in a brothel and tortured if she resists \u2014 that\u2019s slavery. It is barbaric<\/em> [writer\u2019s emphasis], and it is evil, and it has no place in a civilized world,\u201d he said.<\/span><\/p>\n

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When Obama used the term<\/span><\/span> \u201cbarbaric,\u201d he was not referring to non-Greek-speaking people but rather to acts of evil in general. Indeed, the meaning of the word barbarian <\/em>has changed dramatically over time and, in fact, the word did not always have a negative meaning for everyone.<\/span><\/p>\n

Greek origins<\/span><\/h2>\n

\u201cThe earliest attestation of the word barbarian in Greek literature is in Homer\u2019s descriptions of the Carians as \u2018barbarophonoi\u2019\u2026\u201d writes Konstantinos Vlassopoulos, a professor of Greek history at the University<\/span><\/span> of Nottingham, in his book \u201cGreeks and the Barbarians\u201d (Cambridge University Press, 2013).<\/span><\/p>\n

By \u201cthe archaic period [2,700 years ago] there is no doubt that one of the major meanings of the word was linguistic: the Barbarians were those who did not speak Greek<\/span><\/span>.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

He notes that the ancient Greeks themselves used this word in a confusing and contradictory fashion. One problem they had is that there was no agreement among the ancient Greeks as to who spoke Greek and who didn\u2019t, at least up until around the time of Alexander the Great<\/a>. There \u201cexisted a variety of local and regional dialects, which were mutually comprehensible to a larger or smaller degree,\u201d writes Vlassopoulos.<\/span><\/p>\n

So the original meaning of the word \u201cbarbarian\u201d did not refer to acts of evil but rather to those who were not Greek or did not speak Greek. Also who didn\u2019t speak Greek was a matter of debate among the ancient Greeks themselves.<\/span><\/p>\n

Who is a barbarian?<\/span><\/h2>\n

Among modern-day scholars, and among the general public, the definition of barbarian gets even more confusing.<\/span><\/p>\n