David Komnenos ( Greek : Δαβίδ Κομνηνός , Georgian : დავით კომნენოსი ) (c. 1184 – 1212) was one of the founders of the Empire of Trebizond and its joint ruler together with his brother Alexios until his death. At least two lead seals and an inscription found on a tower in Heraclea Pontica attest that he was the first of his family to use the style Megas Komnenos . Ηe was the son of Manuel Komnenos and grandson of the Emperor Andronikos I .
70-479: Amasra (from Greek Amastris Ἄμαστρις, gen . Ἀμάστριδος) is a small Black Sea port town in the Bartın Province , Turkey . It is the seat of Amasra District . Its population is 6,098 (2021). The town today is much appreciated for its beaches and natural setting, which has made tourism the most important activity for its inhabitants. Amasra has two islands: the bigger one is called Büyük ada ('Great Island'),
140-718: A Georgian army, led by David Komnenos , becoming a possession of the Empire of Trebizond in 1204, then at some point in the next ten years being captured by the Seljuk Turks , until finally in 1261, in her bid to monopolize the Black Sea trade, the town came under the control of the Republic of Genoa . Genoese domination ended when the Ottoman Sultan Mehmed II conquered the whole Anatolian shores of
210-577: A Linear B clay tablet found in Messenia that dates to between 1450 and 1350 BC, making Greek the world's oldest recorded living language . Among the Indo-European languages, its date of earliest written attestation is matched only by the now-extinct Anatolian languages . The Greek language is conventionally divided into the following periods: In the modern era, the Greek language entered
280-553: A Latin Catholic titular bishopric and had the following incumbents of the episcopal (lowest) rank : In 1929 it was promoted to titular archbishopric . It is vacant as such since decades, having had the following incumbents of the archiepiscopal (intermediary) rank : With its architectural heritage, Amasra is a member of the Norwich -based European Association of Historic Towns and Regions. Archaeological Museum: there
350-577: A basis for coinages: anthropology , photography , telephony , isomer , biomechanics , cinematography , etc. Together with Latin words , they form the foundation of international scientific and technical vocabulary ; for example, all words ending in -logy ('discourse'). There are many English words of Greek origin . Greek is an independent branch of the Indo-European language family. The ancient language most closely related to it may be ancient Macedonian , which, by most accounts,
420-587: A coin of the time of Trajan, Amastris has the title Metropolis . It continued to be a town of some note to the seventh century of our era. From Amasra got its name an important place of Constantinople, the Amastrianum . Arrian writes that the Amastris was a Greek city, which had a port for ships. He also adds that it was 90 stadia from the river Parthenius and 60 stadia from the Erythini The city
490-508: A faster, more convenient cursive writing style with the use of ink and quill . The Greek alphabet consists of 24 letters, each with an uppercase ( majuscule ) and lowercase ( minuscule ) form. The letter sigma has an additional lowercase form (ς) used in the final position of a word: In addition to the letters, the Greek alphabet features a number of diacritical signs : three different accent marks ( acute , grave , and circumflex ), originally denoting different shapes of pitch accent on
560-590: A lesser extent, in the Western Mediterranean in and around colonies such as Massalia , Monoikos , and Mainake . It was also used as the official language of government and religion in the Christian Nubian kingdoms , for most of their history. Greek, in its modern form, is the official language of Greece, where it is spoken by almost the entire population. It is also the official language of Cyprus (nominally alongside Turkish ) and
630-400: A limited but productive system of compounding and a rich inflectional system. Although its morphological categories have been fairly stable over time, morphological changes are present throughout, particularly in the nominal and verbal systems. The major change in the nominal morphology since the classical stage was the disuse of the dative case (its functions being largely taken over by
700-459: A mixed syllable structure, permitting complex syllabic onsets but very restricted codas. It has only oral vowels and a fairly stable set of consonantal contrasts . The main phonological changes occurred during the Hellenistic and Roman period (see Koine Greek phonology for details): In all its stages, the morphology of Greek shows an extensive set of productive derivational affixes ,
770-504: A narrow peninsula, a tunnel under the castle leads to a fresh water pool. It was originally built as a Byzantine church in the 9th century AD. The church narthex section consists of three parts. After the Ottoman Sultan Mehmed II conquered Amasra in 1460, it was converted to a mosque. It is open to prayers. There is also a chapel on the same street but it is closed to prayers since 1930. Bird's Rock Road Monument
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#1732783415518840-474: A peace with Theodore. Had Laskaris captured him, it would probably have been recorded in the histories. Earlier scholars, beginning with Jakob Philipp Fallmerayer , had placed the death of David during the siege of Sinope in 1214. It seems likely that David might have fled to the Latin emperor. As mentioned above, Michael Panaretos never mentions David, so he provides no help answering that question. More recently
910-541: A rank it held until, due to the diminution in the number of Christians in the area, it was suppressed. From the 14th century to the second half of the 15th, the town was also the seat of a bishopric of the Latin Church . No longer a residential bishopric, Amastris (Curiate Italian Amastri ) is today listed by the Catholic Church as a titular see. The diocese was nominally restored in the 19th century as
980-460: A state of diglossia : the coexistence of vernacular and archaizing written forms of the language. What came to be known as the Greek language question was a polarization between two competing varieties of Modern Greek: Dimotiki , the vernacular form of Modern Greek proper, and Katharevousa , meaning 'purified', a compromise between Dimotiki and Ancient Greek developed in the early 19th century that
1050-610: Is a fine medium-sized archaeological museum by the sea with remains from both land and underwater. Of particular interest is a statue of the snake god Glykon, a fraudulent creation of a local entrepreneur during Roman imperial times. Amasra Castle was built during the Roman period. The walls of the castle were built by the Byzantines. The front walls and gates were built by the Genoese in the 14th and 15th centuries. Though located on
1120-507: Is not well-documented; the primary historian for the Empire of Trebizond, Michael Panaretos , fails to mention him even once. Because he was the brother of Alexios, we can deduce the names of some of his relatives: Their father was Manuel Komnenos, and their grandfather Byzantine Emperor Andronikos I . Their relative Tamar was queen of Georgia ; exactly how David and Tamar were related is not clear. According to Michael Panaretos, Queen Tamar
1190-836: Is sometimes called aljamiado , as when Romance languages are written in the Arabic alphabet. Article 1 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in Greek: Transcription of the example text into Latin alphabet : Article 1 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in English: Proto-Greek Mycenaean Ancient Koine Medieval Modern David Komnenos David's life
1260-763: Is still used internationally for the writing of Ancient Greek . In Greek, the question mark is written as the English semicolon, while the functions of the colon and semicolon are performed by a raised point (•), known as the ano teleia ( άνω τελεία ). In Greek the comma also functions as a silent letter in a handful of Greek words, principally distinguishing ό,τι ( ó,ti , 'whatever') from ότι ( óti , 'that'). Ancient Greek texts often used scriptio continua ('continuous writing'), which means that ancient authors and scribes would write word after word with no spaces or punctuation between words to differentiate or mark boundaries. Boustrophedon , or bi-directional text,
1330-632: Is to modern spoken English ". Greek is spoken today by at least 13 million people, principally in Greece and Cyprus along with a sizable Greek-speaking minority in Albania near the Greek-Albanian border. A significant percentage of Albania's population has knowledge of the Greek language due in part to the Albanian wave of immigration to Greece in the 1980s and '90s and the Greek community in
1400-493: The Iliad , and Tium , were combined by Amastris, after her separation from Lysimachus, to form the new community of Amastris, placed on a small river of the same name and occupying a peninsula. According to Strabo , Tium soon detached itself from the community, but the rest kept together, and Sesamus was the acropolis of Amastris. From this it appears that Amastris was really a confederation or union of three places, and that Sesamus
1470-562: The British Overseas Territory of Akrotiri and Dhekelia (alongside English ). Because of the membership of Greece and Cyprus in the European Union, Greek is one of the organization's 24 official languages . Greek is recognized as a minority language in Albania, and used co-officially in some of its municipalities, in the districts of Gjirokastër and Sarandë . It is also an official minority language in
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#17327834155181540-657: The European canon . Greek is also the language in which many of the foundational texts in science and philosophy were originally composed. The New Testament of the Christian Bible was also originally written in Greek. Together with the Latin texts and traditions of the Roman world , the Greek texts and Greek societies of antiquity constitute the objects of study of the discipline of Classics . During antiquity , Greek
1610-516: The Indo-Iranian languages (see Graeco-Aryan ), but little definitive evidence has been found. In addition, Albanian has also been considered somewhat related to Greek and Armenian, and it has been proposed that they all form a higher-order subgroup along with other extinct languages of the ancient Balkans; this higher-order subgroup is usually termed Palaeo-Balkan , and Greek has a central position in it. Linear B , attested as early as
1680-503: The Pontic kingdom until its capture by Lucius Lucullus in 70 BC in the second Mithridatic War . The younger Pliny , when he was governor of Bithynia and Pontus , describes Amastris, in a letter to Trajan , as a handsome city, with a very long open place ( platea ), on one side of which extended what was called a river, but in fact was a filthy, pestilent, open drain. Pliny obtained the emperor's permission to cover over this sewer. On
1750-662: The Roman province of Paphlagonia . In the late 8th century its bishop obtained from the Byzantine Emperor its elevation to the rank of autocephalous archeparchy . It is listed as such in the Notitia Episcopatuum attributed to Basil the Armenian (c. 840) and in that of Leo VI the Wise (early 10th century). In the middle of the 10th century it obtained the rank of Metropolitan see without suffragans,
1820-780: The United Kingdom , and throughout the European Union , especially in Germany . Historically, significant Greek-speaking communities and regions were found throughout the Eastern Mediterranean , in what are today Southern Italy , Turkey , Cyprus , Syria , Lebanon , Israel , Palestine , Egypt , and Libya ; in the area of the Black Sea , in what are today Turkey, Bulgaria , Romania , Ukraine , Russia , Georgia , Armenia , and Azerbaijan ; and, to
1890-468: The genitive ). The verbal system has lost the infinitive , the synthetically -formed future, and perfect tenses and the optative mood . Many have been replaced by periphrastic ( analytical ) forms. Pronouns show distinctions in person (1st, 2nd, and 3rd), number (singular, dual , and plural in the ancient language; singular and plural alone in later stages), and gender (masculine, feminine, and neuter), and decline for case (from six cases in
1960-417: The syntax of Greek have remained constant: verbs agree with their subject only, the use of the surviving cases is largely intact (nominative for subjects and predicates, accusative for objects of most verbs and many prepositions, genitive for possessors), articles precede nouns, adpositions are largely prepositional, relative clauses follow the noun they modify and relative pronouns are clause-initial. However,
2030-566: The 20th century on), especially from French and English, are typically not inflected; other modern borrowings are derived from Albanian , South Slavic ( Macedonian / Bulgarian ) and Eastern Romance languages ( Aromanian and Megleno-Romanian ). Greek words have been widely borrowed into other languages, including English. Example words include: mathematics , physics , astronomy , democracy , philosophy , athletics , theatre, rhetoric , baptism , evangelist , etc. Moreover, Greek words and word elements continue to be productive as
2100-408: The Black Sea. The ancient Greek writer Myronianus ( Ancient Greek : Μυρωνιανὸς ), was from the Amastris. The bishopric of Amastris was established early: according to Eusebius , its congregation received a letter from the second-century bishop, Dionysius, Bishop of Corinth , wherein he names their bishop, one Palmas. The see was initially a suffragan of the metropolitan of Gangra , capital of
2170-540: The Franks, incautiously advancing into the hilly country, were suddenly surprised by Andronikos Gidos, a general of Laskaris, in the Rough Passes of Nicomedia, and scarcely a man of them was left. In 1208 Laskaris renewed his offensive against David Komnenos at Sangarios River and invested Heraclea Pontica. David responded by sending a messenger to the Latin emperor Henry of Flanders , who begged for help and warned
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2240-544: The Greek alphabet since approximately the 9th century BC. It was created by modifying the Phoenician alphabet , with the innovation of adopting certain letters to represent the vowels. The variant of the alphabet in use today is essentially the late Ionic variant, introduced for writing classical Attic in 403 BC. In classical Greek, as in classical Latin, only upper-case letters existed. The lower-case Greek letters were developed much later by medieval scribes to permit
2310-549: The Greek language was the Cypriot syllabary (also a descendant of Linear A via the intermediate Cypro-Minoan syllabary ), which is closely related to Linear B but uses somewhat different syllabic conventions to represent phoneme sequences. The Cypriot syllabary is attested in Cyprus from the 11th century BC until its gradual abandonment in the late Classical period, in favor of the standard Greek alphabet. Greek has been written in
2380-593: The Indo-European language family. It is native to Greece , Cyprus , Italy (in Calabria and Salento ), southern Albania , and other regions of the Balkans , Caucasus , the Black Sea coast, Asia Minor , and the Eastern Mediterranean . It has the longest documented history of any Indo-European language, spanning at least 3,400 years of written records. Its writing system is the Greek alphabet , which has been used for approximately 2,800 years; previously, Greek
2450-664: The Latin Emperor to include him as his subject in his treaties and correspondence with Laskaris, and to treat his land as Latin territory. In the words of William Miller, "It was his interest to prefer a nominal Latin suzerainty to annexation by the Nicaean emperor." Once his position was thus secured, he crossed the Sangarios River with a body of about 300 Frankish auxiliaries, ravaged the villages subject to Laskaris, and took hostages from Plousias . David withdrew, but
2520-404: The acute during the late 20th century, and it has only been retained in typography . After the writing reform of 1982, most diacritics are no longer used. Since then, Greek has been written mostly in the simplified monotonic orthography (or monotonic system), which employs only the acute accent and the diaeresis. The traditional system, now called the polytonic orthography (or polytonic system),
2590-479: The arrival of Proto-Greeks, some documented in Mycenaean texts ; they include a large number of Greek toponyms . The form and meaning of many words have changed. Loanwords (words of foreign origin) have entered the language, mainly from Latin, Venetian , and Turkish . During the older periods of Greek, loanwords into Greek acquired Greek inflections, thus leaving only a foreign root word. Modern borrowings (from
2660-437: The coast from Sinope to the shores of the Sangarios River ; the cities of Amastris , Tios and Heraclea Pontica all welcomed him. At this point David encountered another rival for control of the stricken Byzantine Empire: Theodore Laskaris . Laskaris had neutralized rivals along his southern marches— Sabas Asidenos , Manuel Maurozomes , and Theodore Mangaphas , while frustrating the attempts of Henry of Flanders to expand
2730-796: The country. Prior to the Greco-Turkish War and the resulting population exchange in 1923 a very large population of Greek-speakers also existed in Turkey , though very few remain today. A small Greek-speaking community is also found in Bulgaria near the Greek-Bulgarian border. Greek is also spoken worldwide by the sizable Greek diaspora which has notable communities in the United States , Australia , Canada , South Africa , Chile , Brazil , Argentina , Russia , Ukraine ,
2800-441: The dative led to a rise of prepositional indirect objects (and the use of the genitive to directly mark these as well). Ancient Greek tended to be verb-final, but neutral word order in the modern language is VSO or SVO. Modern Greek inherits most of its vocabulary from Ancient Greek, which in turn is an Indo-European language, but also includes a number of borrowings from the languages of the populations that inhabited Greece before
2870-528: The earliest forms attested to four in the modern language). Nouns, articles, and adjectives show all the distinctions except for a person. Both attributive and predicative adjectives agree with the noun. The inflectional categories of the Greek verb have likewise remained largely the same over the course of the language's history but with significant changes in the number of distinctions within each category and their morphological expression. Greek verbs have synthetic inflectional forms for: Many aspects of
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2940-412: The extent that one can speak of a new language emerging. Greek speakers today still tend to regard literary works of ancient Greek as part of their own rather than a foreign language. It is also often stated that the historical changes have been relatively slight compared with some other languages. According to one estimation, " Homeric Greek is probably closer to Demotic than 12-century Middle English
3010-449: The language show both conservative and innovative tendencies across the entire attestation of the language from the ancient to the modern period. The division into conventional periods is, as with all such periodizations, relatively arbitrary, especially because, in all periods, Ancient Greek has enjoyed high prestige, and the literate borrowed heavily from it. Across its history, the syllabic structure of Greek has varied little: Greek shows
3080-467: The late 15th century BC, was the first script used to write Greek. It is basically a syllabary , which was finally deciphered by Michael Ventris and John Chadwick in the 1950s (its precursor, Linear A , has not been deciphered and most likely encodes a non-Greek language). The language of the Linear B texts, Mycenaean Greek , is the earliest known form of Greek. Another similar system used to write
3150-452: The many other countries of the Greek diaspora . Greek roots have been widely used for centuries and continue to be widely used to coin new words in other languages; Greek and Latin are the predominant sources of international scientific vocabulary . Greek has been spoken in the Balkan peninsula since around the 3rd millennium BC, or possibly earlier. The earliest written evidence is
3220-569: The monarch that if Henry did not help him, David would suffer a serious defeat. Leaving his marshal in Adrianople to finish rebuilding the city, Henry then crossed the Sea of Marmara and occupied Nicomedia, threatening Laskaris' rear, which forced the latter to lift his siege and return to his own territory. Theodore's withdraw was costly, for he lost about 1000 men in crossing the Sangarios, which
3290-465: The morphological changes also have their counterparts in the syntax, and there are also significant differences between the syntax of the ancient and that of the modern form of the language . Ancient Greek made great use of participial constructions and of constructions involving the infinitive, and the modern variety lacks the infinitive entirely (employing a raft of new periphrastic constructions instead) and uses participles more restrictively. The loss of
3360-580: The nature of their relationship, after the death of Emperor Andronikos and their father Manuel, Queen Tamar provided a refuge for the boys at the Georgian court, where presumably they were raised and educated. In April 1204, while Constantinople was occupied with the on-going conflict with the Fourth Crusade , David and Alexios occupied the city of Trebizond and raised the banner of revolt. Immediately that city, Oinaion and Sinope declared for
3430-486: The newly founded Latin Empire into Anatolia. David dispatched his young general Synadenos with some soldiers to occupy the city of Nicomedia , which had been evacuated by the Latin Empire but Laskaris considered part of his domain, the Empire of Nicaea . Theodore Laskaris strategically circled around Synadenos, leading his men through a difficult pass, and fell upon his enemy's flank with complete surprise. Laskaris
3500-494: The panegyric of Niketas Choniates , there was no resistance to Theodore's incursions, and Theodore eventually captured Heraclea Pontica and Amastris. Here we lose sight of David; what exactly happened to David over the next few years is unknown. Vassiliev commented that the lack of reference to David Komnenos in the Treaty of Nymphaeum was evidence that his former suzerain had no further use for him and abandoned him in order to gain
3570-643: The regions of Apulia and Calabria in Italy. In the framework of the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages , Greek is protected and promoted officially as a regional and minority language in Armenia, Hungary , Romania, and Ukraine. It is recognized as a minority language and protected in Turkey by the 1923 Treaty of Lausanne . The phonology , morphology , syntax , and vocabulary of
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#17327834155183640-534: The smaller one Tavşan adası ('Rabbit Island'). It was annexed by the Ottoman Empire after the Siege of Amasra . Situated in the ancient region of Paphlagonia , the original city seems to have been called Sesamus (Greek: Σήσαμος), and it is mentioned by Homer in conjunction with Cytorus . Stephanus says that it was originally called Cromna ( Ancient Greek : Κρῶμνα ); but in another place, where he repeats
3710-416: The statement, he adds, as it is said; but some say that Cromna is a small place in the territory of Amastris, which is the true account. The place derived its name Amastris from Amastris , the niece of the last Persian king Darius III , who was the wife of Dionysius , tyrant of Heraclea , and after his death the wife of Lysimachus . Four small Ionian colonies, Sesamus, Cytorus, Cromna, also mentioned in
3780-437: The stressed vowel; the so-called breathing marks ( rough and smooth breathing ), originally used to signal presence or absence of word-initial /h/; and the diaeresis , used to mark the full syllabic value of a vowel that would otherwise be read as part of a diphthong. These marks were introduced during the course of the Hellenistic period. Actual usage of the grave in handwriting saw a rapid decline in favor of uniform usage of
3850-464: The truth of his fate was rediscovered: a marginal note written at Mount Athos records David died as a monk of Vatopedi monastery on 13 December 1212. But this evidence raises more questions than it answers, such as how did he become to reside there. Shukurov looks for the answer in Panaretos' silence, which he believes was intentional and therefore significant: David somehow disgraced himself and
3920-608: The two brothers. While Alexios settled down in Trebizond to establish the empire -- earning himself the sneer of being "a proverbial Hylas , called after and not seen" -- David, aided by Georgian troops and local mercenaries, made himself master of Pontus and Paphlagonia , including Kastamonou , said to be the ancestral castle of the Komnenoi . While Alexios collected the allegiance of the fortresses of Tripolis , Kerasus , Mesochaldaion and Jasonis, David advanced westward along
3990-526: Was Alexios' paternal relative (προς πατρός θεὶα); Cyril Toumanoff argued that their grandfather Andronikos had, while in Georgia, married an unnamed sister of king George III. More recently Michel Kuršanskis has argued against Toumanoff's theory, producing evidence that Alexios' mother and/or grandmother were daughters of the houses of Palaiologos or Doukas , yet failing to offer an explanation why Panaretos describes Tamar as Alexios' paternal aunt. Whatever
4060-574: Was a distinct dialect of Greek itself. Aside from the Macedonian question, current consensus regards Phrygian as the closest relative of Greek, since they share a number of phonological, morphological and lexical isoglosses , with some being exclusive between them. Scholars have proposed a Graeco-Phrygian subgroup out of which Greek and Phrygian originated. Among living languages, some Indo-Europeanists suggest that Greek may be most closely related to Armenian (see Graeco-Armenian ) or
4130-505: Was also used in Ancient Greek. Greek has occasionally been written in the Latin script , especially in areas under Venetian rule or by Greek Catholics . The term Frankolevantinika / Φραγκολεβαντίνικα applies when the Latin script is used to write Greek in the cultural ambit of Catholicism (because Frankos / Φράγκος is an older Greek term for West-European dating to when most of (Roman Catholic Christian) West Europe
4200-556: Was by far the most widely spoken lingua franca in the Mediterranean world . It eventually became the official language of the Byzantine Empire and developed into Medieval Greek . In its modern form , Greek is the official language of Greece and Cyprus and one of the 24 official languages of the European Union . It is spoken by at least 13.5 million people today in Greece, Cyprus, Italy, Albania, Turkey , and
4270-480: Was created between AD 41-54 by the order of Bithynia et Pontus Governor Gaius Julius Aquila. It was a resting place and monument. At the time when Claudius was the Roman Emperor, Aquila was the commander of the building army in the eastern provinces. It is located a little outside Amasra, and is easily accessed by steps leading from the roadside. In 2009, a coal-fired power station of 2640 MWe (or 1200 MWe)
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#17327834155184340-659: Was in flood. Henry's army might have seized more land in Bithynia, had not an abominably cold winter swept in preventing his troops from advancing any further. Despite this setback, Theodore did not abandon his attempts on Paphlagonia. Following the Seljuk defeat at Antioch on the Meander , he concluded a treaty with the new Seljuk Sultan, Kaykaus I , and together they encroached on the Trapezuntine territory. According to
4410-660: Was not abandoned in the Byzantine Era, when the acropolis was transformed into a fortress and the still surviving church was built. It was sacked by the Rus during the First Russo-Byzantine War in the 830s. Speros Vryonis states that in the 9th century a "combination of local industry, trade, and the produce of its soil made Amastris one of the more prosperous towns on the Black Sea." In the 13th century Amastris exchanged hands several times, first, seized by
4480-471: Was prevented from following up this victory and force David's western frontier to recede further eastwards by the timely action of the Latins under Thierri de Loos of seizing Nicomedia. But a Bulgarian invasion of Thrace forced the Latins to withdraw. For their assistance, David rewarded the Latin Empire with shiploads of grain and hams. Then, considering how Laskaris had encouraged Sultan Kay Khusrau I to besiege Trebizond in 1205 or 1206, David petitioned
4550-467: Was proposed by a subsidiary of Hattat Holding , but after concerns were raised about the effect on air quality, marine ecology, and ash it was not built. They now propose just a coal mine. Greek language Greek ( Modern Greek : Ελληνικά , romanized : Elliniká , [eliniˈka] ; Ancient Greek : Ἑλληνική , romanized : Hellēnikḗ ) is an Indo-European language, constituting an independent Hellenic branch within
4620-430: Was recorded in writing systems such as Linear B and the Cypriot syllabary . The alphabet arose from the Phoenician script and was in turn the basis of the Latin , Cyrillic , Coptic , Gothic , and many other writing systems. The Greek language holds a very important place in the history of the Western world. Beginning with the epics of Homer , ancient Greek literature includes many works of lasting importance in
4690-432: Was the name of the city on the peninsula. This may explain the fact that Mela mentions Sesamus and Cromna as cities of Paphlagonia, while omitting Amastris. The territory of Amastris produced a great quantity of boxwood , which grew on the nearby Mount Cytorus . Its tyrant Eumenes presented the city of Amastris to Ariobarzanes of Pontus in c. 265–260 BC rather than submit it to domination by Heraclea, and it remained in
4760-453: Was under the control of the Frankish Empire ). Frankochiotika / Φραγκοχιώτικα (meaning 'Catholic Chiot') alludes to the significant presence of Catholic missionaries based on the island of Chios . Additionally, the term Greeklish is often used when the Greek language is written in a Latin script in online communications. The Latin script is nowadays used by the Greek-speaking communities of Southern Italy . The Yevanic dialect
4830-637: Was used for literary and official purposes in the newly formed Greek state. In 1976, Dimotiki was declared the official language of Greece, after having incorporated features of Katharevousa and thus giving birth to Standard Modern Greek , used today for all official purposes and in education . The historical unity and continuing identity between the various stages of the Greek language are often emphasized. Although Greek has undergone morphological and phonological changes comparable to those seen in other languages, never since classical antiquity has its cultural, literary, and orthographic tradition been interrupted to
4900-450: Was written by Romaniote and Constantinopolitan Karaite Jews using the Hebrew Alphabet . In a tradition, that in modern time, has come to be known as Greek Aljamiado , some Greek Muslims from Crete wrote their Cretan Greek in the Arabic alphabet . The same happened among Epirote Muslims in Ioannina . This also happened among Arabic-speaking Byzantine rite Christians in the Levant ( Lebanon , Palestine, and Syria ). This usage
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