Page:Christian Greece and Living Greek.djvu/271

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GREEK AS INTERNATIONAL LANGUAGE. 249 language, finds that, thanks to the college pro- nunciation, he must pass among the Greeks in their beautiful country like a deaf and dumb person, neither understanding nor understood. The time has passed long since when a crea- tive activity in Attic philology and archaeology was, almost exclusively, evinced in the dust of domestic libraries with fac-simile and picture book. The number of archaeologists, especially since Schliemann, who try to enlarge the knowl- edge of old Greece in the new Greece, is steadily increasing. Tuere are inducements enough, even without the idea of making Greek an inter- national language, to employ the pronunciation of the now living Greeks. No probability exists that the ancient Greeks spoke like the college professors ; certain it is, however, that their pro- nunciation was similar to that of the Greeks of to-day. The study of the classics, especially the Greek, has been greatly favored in this country during the past decade by the establishment of an American school at Athens. This school was founded in October, 1892, by the American Archaeological Institute, and is supported by yearly contributions from eighteen universities in the United States. One result of the estab-