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61-471: The monastery is situated in the west of Mountain at a height of 990 m near the municipality of Elassona . The exact date of the foundation is not known. Records, however, prove that the monastery was inhabited since at least 1386. It is a stauropegic monastery, subordinated directly to the Patriarch of Constantinople (Istanbul). The monastery's heyday began in the early 17th century, with its climax in

122-577: 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,

183-558: 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 , 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

244-560: 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

305-540: 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 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

366-708: A municipality in the Larissa regional unit in Greece . During antiquity Elassona was called Oloosson (Ὀλοοσσών) and was a town of the Perrhaebi tribe. It is situated at the foot of Mount Olympus . Elassona is bypassed by the GR-3 ( Larissa - Kozani - Florina ). Due to its location on the passes leading from the Thessalian plain to Macedonia , the site of Elassona was always of some strategic importance. Elassona

427-419: Is a pentagon, the church ( katholikon ) is the central building. The monks' cells and other rooms like the refectory are laid out around the church. The wooden entrance door is covered with iron and is very stable. To the inside of the monastery, the rooms of the second storey are supported by columns. Architecturally this way colonnades are formed, surrounding the church. Benches invite the visitor to rest. From

488-804: 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 , the United Kingdom , and throughout the European Union , especially in Germany . Historically, significant Greek-speaking communities and regions were found throughout

549-773: Is an Indo-European language, constituting an independent Hellenic branch within 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

610-479: Is an Indo-European language, but also includes a number of borrowings from the languages of the populations that inhabited Greece before 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

671-807: Is an ancient stone arch bridge. The other part is near the Kefalovrysi Lake. Melissotrypa Cave near Kefalovryso is one of just a handful of caves identified worldwide whose ecosystems support life based on chemosynthesis , rather than photosynthesis . Elassona is linked with the old GR-3 and is bypassed to the east. Elassona is located 70 km southwest of Katerini , 38 km NNW of Larissa (old: about 50 km), 22 km NW of Tyrnavos (old: 30 km), east of Deskati and Grevena and 78 km ESE of Kozani . Greek language Greek ( Modern Greek : Ελληνικά , romanized :  Elliniká , [eliniˈka] ; Ancient Greek : Ἑλληνική , romanized :  Hellēnikḗ )

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732-434: Is made of marble with inlays. The door to the altar room was adorned with gilded wood carvings and icons. The carvings of the iconostasis are pure craftsmanship. Some of the icons are more recent because the old originals were stolen. On quite a few square meters many exhibits are shown. Precious robes, the oldest icons of the monastery from the year 1633 and books, which were partly bound here. Old silver vessels used during

793-519: 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 the language show both conservative and innovative tendencies across the entire attestation of the language from the ancient to

854-526: Is spoken by at least 13.5 million people today in Greece, Cyprus, Italy, Albania, Turkey , and 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

915-763: 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,

976-650: Is the Greek alphabet , which has been used for approximately 2,800 years; previously, Greek 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

1037-460: The Balkan Wars . The municipality Elassona was formed at the 2011 local government reform by the merger of the following 9 former municipalities, that became municipal units: The municipal unit of Elassona is divided into the following communities: Until March 15, 2006, Tsaritsani was part of the municipality (now municipal unit) of Elassona and functioned as a municipal district. Under

1098-495: 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 a lesser extent, in the Western Mediterranean in and around colonies such as Massalia , Monoikos , and Mainake . It

1159-516: 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

1220-466: The armatole captain of Elassona. However, in less than a year they asked for amnesty under the same captain and stated that the reaya of some other localities are about to follow suit and were granted amnesty. The Ottomans declared in February 1822 that if the rebellious reaya beg for pardon, their appeal were to be accepted, so long as they meet the specified conditions. In the 1881–1893 census of

1281-492: 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 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

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1342-470: The 3rd millennium BC, or possibly earlier. The earliest written evidence is 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

1403-486: 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

1464-425: 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 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

1525-540: The Greek language remained alive, but also educated the population. A library and a study room were set up, the bookbinding workshop was practiced by experienced monks from the 17th to the 19th century. Many of the manuscripts and books of that period were saved and are located in the Monastery of Panagia Olympiotissa . Some examples are exhibited in the museum. During the Greek War of Independence against Ottoman rule

1586-495: 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

1647-629: 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 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

1708-685: 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 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

1769-526: The Ottoman Empire , the kaza of Elassona had a total population of 26,855; consisting of 24,631 Greek Orthodox , 2,188 Muslims, 15 Jews , one Armenian , and 20 foreign citizens. Unlike the rest of Thessaly, which was annexed by Greece in 1881, Elassona remained part of the Ottoman Empire until 1912, when it joined Greece (along with Crete, Macedonia and Epirus) following its victory in

1830-404: 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),

1891-418: The altar room, accessible only to the priests. The small windows lay the paintings, the carvings, the icons in a half-dark. All the walls are painted with biblical motifs or motifs of saints. The ceiling is made of wood and is shaped into different patterns, painted in different colors. Several chandeliers with wax candles hang from the ceiling. They are decorated with porcelain bowls and ostrich eggs. The floor

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1952-402: The ancient language; singular and plural alone in later stages), and gender (masculine, feminine, and neuter), and decline for case (from six cases in 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

2013-528: The chapel of Saint Charalambos is located on the site of the monastery. The chapel of All Saints, the chapel of the Theotokos and the chapel dedicated to John the Baptist are outside the grounds. The church is 23 meters long, seven meters wide and the external walls are one meter thick. It is a simple, straight building, covered with natural stones and bricks. It consists of the narthex, the church room and

2074-421: The colonnades are the entrances to the museum and the small shop of the monks, as well as to the areas not accessible to the visitor of the monastery. A small, very old well on the south side, donates holy water. In the south-west you can find the semantron and the bell-tower of the monastery. By hitting the semantron with a hammer, the monks are called to prayer. Four chapels belong to the property, of which

2135-404: The early 19th century that 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

2196-618: The epics of Homer , ancient Greek literature includes many works of lasting importance in 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

2257-452: The following periods: In the modern era, the Greek language entered 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

2318-553: The higher elevations. The rivers Elassonitis (or Elassonitikos ) and Titarisio flow through Elassona and they both flow into the Pineios River , Thessaly's longest river. The river divides the town into two parts, the older city built on the Olympiotissa hill and is also Varosi or Varossi (Βαρόσι), and the new city on the right bank of the river. These two parts of the city are connected by four bridges, one of which

2379-439: The infinitive entirely (employing a raft of new periphrastic constructions instead) and uses participles more restrictively. The loss of 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

2440-467: The initiative of the Metropolitan of Elassona , Basileios, the reconstruction began. In 2000, the first monks once again moved into the monastery. A tower overlooks the high exterior walls, which are interrupted only by small, barred windows on the upper floors. In the northern part, four powerful retaining walls reinforce the statics of the outer wall, which is about one meter thick. The ground plan

2501-467: 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

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2562-491: The law 3448/15-3-2006, Tsaritsani got separated from the municipality and declared a commune. The loss of its population and land leaves the remaining municipality with an adjusted 2001 census population of 12,056 and a land area of 291.097 km². The province of Elassona ( Greek : Επαρχία Ελασσόνας ) was one of the provinces of the Larissa Prefecture. It had the same territory as the present municipality. It

2623-405: The liturgy, precious embroidery and documents, which are witnesses of the monastery's history, are exhibited. 40°00′51″N 22°18′59″E  /  40.014056°N 22.316394°E  / 40.014056; 22.316394 Elassona Elassona ( Greek : Ελασσόνα , romanized :  Ellassóna ; Katharevousa : Greek : Ἐλασσών , romanized :  Elasson ) is a town and

2684-640: 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 the regions of Apulia and Calabria in Italy. In the framework of the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages , Greek

2745-441: 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 a mixed syllable structure, permitting complex syllabic onsets but very restricted codas. It has only oral vowels and

2806-514: The monastery supported the Greek fighters. Because of its location, far from the Turkish administration in Elassona, the monks could act relatively freely. They hid fighters and ammunition, cared for clothes and provisions. From the middle of the 19th century the slow decline began, and in the second decade of the 20th century the last monks left the monastery. For about 80 years it was closed. On

2867-399: The noun they modify and relative pronouns are clause-initial. However, 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

2928-536: The objects of study of the discipline of Classics . During antiquity , Greek 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

2989-706: The older periods of Greek, loanwords into Greek acquired Greek inflections, thus leaving only a foreign root word. Modern borrowings (from 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

3050-655: The rule of the Epirote ruler John II Orsini ( r.  1323–1335 ). Under Andronikos III Palaiologos ( r.  1328–1341 ), privileges were granted to the Olympiotissa monastery, and the town became the seat of an archbishopric , a status it retained into the Ottoman period . The Ottoman tax registry of 1521 counted 311 Christian and 35 Muslim households in Elassona. In the Ottoman tahrir defter of 1544,

3111-590: The second half of the 18th century. The church was renovated in 1633. The oldest, very well-preserved icons come from this period. The cells of the monks were completed around 1739. The monastery became self-sufficient and had the financial resources to engage in external affairs. The most difficult years were these of the Ottoman reign. The monastery was one of the liturgical schools of Orthodox Christianity as well as schools in Thessaloniki, Constantinople or Venice. Particularly educated monks not only ensured that

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3172-437: 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

3233-487: The town included Selanik Yörüks , who had military obligations that required them to give five soldiers ( eşküncü ) and 20 assistants ( yamaks ) per household ( ocak ). During the Ottoman period devshirme was practiced in the area and janissaries were recruited from Elassona ( Alasonya in Ottoman Turkish) as shown in an Ottoman register of 1603–1604. Some Christians of Elassona also rebelled in 1821 under

3294-612: The turn of the 14th century, the Panagia Olympiotissa Monastery was founded on the hilltop citadel. In 1304, Guy II de la Roche , Duke of Athens , passed through during a campaign against the Despotate of Epirus . Following the death of Stephen Gabrielopoulos in 1333, Elassona was one of the Thessalian towns (along with Stagoi , Trikala , Damasis , and Fanari ) that for a short while fell under

3355-574: 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

3416-432: Was abolished in 2006. The municipality Elassona has an area of 1565.2 km , the municipal unit Elassona has an area of 291.097 km (excluding Tsaritsani), and the community Elassona has an area of 102.515 km . Its geography includes farmlands in the valley areas, the mountains to the west and east and forests in the west and east as well as grasslands, ledges are to be founded in some areas and barren area in

3477-568: 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 the British Overseas Territory of Akrotiri and Dhekelia (alongside English ). Because of

3538-557: 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

3599-658: Was known as Oloosson ( Ὀλοοσσών ) in antiquity. In the Iliad it was mentioned in Homer's Catalogue of Ships , providing armed contingents that supported the Greek side in the Trojan War. In the early Byzantine period it was known as Lossonos , and was one of the sites refortified under Justinian I ( r.  527–565 ). the modern name first appears in the writings of the 12th-century scholar and archbishop Eustathius of Thessalonica , who considered it "barbaric". At

3660-580: 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

3721-673: 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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