Editing Attic Greek (section)

==Origin and range==

[[Greek language|Greek]] is the primary member of the [[Hellenic languages|Hellenic branch]] of the [[Indo-European languages|Indo-European]] language family. In ancient times, Greek had already come to exist in several dialects, one of which was Attic. The earliest [[Attested language|attestations]] of Greek, dating from the 16th to 11th centuries BC, are written in [[Linear B]], an archaic writing system used by the [[Mycenaean Greece|Mycenaean Greeks]] in writing their language; the distinction between [[East Attica|Eastern]] and [[Western Greece|Western Greek]] is believed to have arisen by Mycenaean times or before. [[Mycenaean Greek]] represents an early form of Eastern Greek, the group to which Attic also belongs. Later Greek literature wrote about three main dialects: [[Aeolic Greek|Aeolic]], [[Doric Greek|Doric]], and [[Ionic Greek|Ionic]]; Attic was part of the Ionic dialect group. "[[Old Attic]]" is used in reference to the dialect of [[Thucydides]] (460–400&nbsp;BC) and the dramatists of [[5th century BC|5th-century]] Athens whereas "[[New Attic]]" is used for the language of later writers following conventionally the accession in 285&nbsp;BC of Greek-speaking [[Ptolemy II]] to the throne of the [[Ptolemaic Kingdom|Kingdom of Egypt]]. Ruling from [[Alexandria]], Ptolemy launched the Alexandrian period, during which the city of Alexandria and its expatriate Greek-medium scholars flourished.<ref>From Goodwin and Gulick's classic text "Greek Grammar" (1930)</ref>

The original range of the spoken Attic dialect included [[Attica]] and a number of the [[Aegean Islands]]; the closely related Ionic was also spoken along the western and northwestern coasts of [[Asia Minor]] in modern [[Turkey]], in [[Chalkidiki|Chalcidice]], [[Thrace]], [[Euboea]], and in some colonies of [[Magna Graecia]]. Eventually, the texts of literary Attic were widely studied far beyond their homeland: first in the classical civilizations of the Mediterranean, including in [[Ancient Rome]] and the larger [[Hellenistic civilization|Hellenistic world]], and later in the [[Muslim world]], Europe, and other parts of the world touched by those civilizations.