55-790: The Basilika ( Greek : τὰ βασιλικά , romanized : ta basiliká , "the imperial [laws]") was a collection of laws completed c. 892 AD in Constantinople by order of the Byzantine emperor Leo VI the Wise during the Macedonian dynasty . This was a continuation of the efforts of his father, Basil I , to simplify and adapt the Emperor Justinian I 's Corpus Juris Civilis code of law issued between 529 and 534 which had become outdated. The term comes from
110-577: 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,
165-558: 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
220-560: 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
275-540: 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
330-693: A letter from the Byzantine emperor, and wrote a critical letter accusing the "Greeks" for turning their backs on the city of Rome, the Roman people, and the Roman language (i.e., Latin), and thus were unworthy of being Roman emperors. Although the Arab Umayyad and Abbasid caliphates were powerful geopolitical competitors, and indeed had conquered large areas of Byzantine territory, the Arabs did not challenge Byzantium's Roman identity, but instead claimed to be
385-547: A profound impact on the scholarship of the Byzantine Empire because they preserved many legal documents. Within the sixty books of law, in addition to the preservation of Justinian's Codex , new legal customs were also included which had evolved in the centuries. It also included works of law initiated by Basil I, including the Prochiron (a handbook of civil laws and customs which excluded those no longer in use) and
440-804: 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
495-479: 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
550-466: 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 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 ,
605-519: 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
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#1732764684045660-876: 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 Epanagoge The Epanagoge ( Greek : Ἐπαναγωγή , "return to
715-763: 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,
770-681: The Epanagoge (an expanded Prochiron which included an introduction and summary) as well as numerous decrees of the Iconoclast Emperors. However, the Code still followed the tradition of the Corpus Juris , beginning with ecclesiastical law , sources of law, procedure, private law , administrative law , and criminal law . It greatly differed however in its use of commentaries ( scholia ), which were pieces of juristic works from
825-674: 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 was recorded in writing systems such as Linear B and the Cypriot syllabary . The alphabet arose from
880-767: The Basilika and similar legal reform projects helped retain and reinvigorate the Romanitas , or Roman-ness, of the Byzantine Empire. In the same time period, the Carolingian Empire and the Papacy in the west and the First Bulgarian Empire in the Balkans grew in power, and challenged the secular and religious leadership of the Byzantine Empire. Louis II was bemused by the error in Latin within
935-624: 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 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
990-627: 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 was by far the most widely spoken lingua franca in the Mediterranean world . It eventually became the official language of
1045-495: 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
1100-590: The Epanagoge ) twenty years later, but served as the basis for several private law books, such as the Epanagoge Aucta or the Syntagma Canonum . Through its translation into Slavonic , the Epanagoge found its way into Russian canon law, including the 13th-century Kormchaya Kniga . Its provisions on the patriarch's and church's position vis-a-vis the temporal ruler played a great role in
1155-516: 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
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#17327646840451210-657: 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 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
1265-492: 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
1320-588: The 9th century the use of Latin was obsolete, which in turn made the Corpus Juris Civilis code hard to use for Greek speakers, even in the capital of Constantinople . Furthermore, many of the laws within the Corpus Juris Civilis no longer pertained to most people, and new laws rose up to take their place. This necessitated an overhaul of the Byzantine legal system. Justinian's Codex had effectively ended juristic developments for
1375-500: The Greek adjective Basilika meaning "Imperial (laws or enactments)" and not from the Emperor Basil's name; both sharing a common etymology from the term Basileus . Many changes had taken place within the Byzantine Empire in between Justinian and Leo VI 's reign, chiefly the change in language from Latin to Greek. During Justinian's era, Latin was still in common use and Court documents were written in it. However, by
1430-486: 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
1485-495: 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
1540-629: 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
1595-685: 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
1650-583: The West as the continuation of Roman Law , the Basilika' s influence was limited to the Eastern Empire. This included having a lasting impact on Greece's modern law code. Following the Greek War of Independence against Turkey in 1821, the Basilika was adopted until the introduction of the present Civil Code of Greece. This long continuation of Roman influenced Byzantine law presents a stark contrast to
1705-404: 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),
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1760-402: 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
1815-463: The ensuing centuries). Additionally, Justinian's Codex had officially stripped the legislative branch of its authority, making it hard for judges to know which law codes they should follow. With a code of law in Greek, lawyers were able to use it in their cases, making its practicality invaluable. This was a stark contrast to the Corpus Juris , which proved to be too complex and comprehensive to be used practicably even within its own time. In addition,
1870-469: The heirs of Antiquity . The Basilika also presents itself as a connection back to earlier times before the period of Iconoclasm , lending the Macedonian dynasty a sense of religious legitimacy. This began with Basil I and his desire to distance himself from the Iconoclasts, and to connect himself and his sons with their Great Predecessor, Justinian I. The sixty books of the Basilika have had
1925-439: 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
1980-467: 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
2035-580: The legal system of the West. 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 the Indo-European language family. It is native to Greece , Cyprus , Italy (in Calabria and Salento ), southern Albania , and other regions of
2090-576: 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
2145-441: 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
2200-425: The next couple of centuries. Moreover, the Byzantine legal system operated as a codified system, wherein the sentence given by a judge needed to be grounded in a passage of law previously issued by a legislator. This made it impossible for a judge to set precedents. There was vast confusion amongst judges as to which legal documents they should refer to ( Justinian's Codex or other books of law which had been written in
2255-399: 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
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2310-706: 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
2365-669: The point"), more properly the Eisagoge ( Greek : Εἰσαγωγή [τοῦ νόμου] , "Introduction [to the law]"), is a Byzantine law book promulgated in 886. Begun under Basil I the Macedonian (r. 867–886), it was only completed under his son and successor, Leo VI the Wise (r. 886–912). As its name suggests, it was meant to be an introduction to the legislation of the Basilika , published later during Leo's reign. The work, organized in 40 volumes, covers almost all spheres of law, and
2420-574: The position and powers of the Byzantine emperor and the patriarch; notably, the powers of the patriarch appear broader than in Justinian's legislation, both with regards to the emperor and towards the other patriarchates of the Pentarchy . The Epanagoge was withdrawn from official use soon after its publication, being replaced by the Prochiron (which was earlier considered an antecessor of
2475-541: 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 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
2530-501: The sixth and seventh centuries as well as the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. Previously, Justinian I had outlawed commentary on his set of laws, making the scholia on the Basilika unique. The actual format of the books themselves vary greatly. Some are represented in one manuscript, which may or may not contain scholia or full parts of other juristic works which have been mentioned. Likewise, some books have been lost entirely. Unlike Justinian's Codex which continued to have an impact in
2585-437: 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
2640-447: 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 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
2695-529: 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 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
2750-515: 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
2805-568: 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
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#17327646840452860-505: 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
2915-457: Was explicitly meant to replace the earlier Ecloga , dating to the iconoclast Isaurian dynasty . Nevertheless, it draws some inspiration from the Ecloga ; the main source, however, is the Corpus Juris Civilis of Justinian I (r. 527–565), albeit often heavily altered. Patriarch Photius of Constantinople worked on its compilation, and wrote the preface and the two sections dealing with
2970-580: 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
3025-673: 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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