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77-513: The town was originally settled by the Dacians and was known under the ancient name of Aiadava or Aeadaba . Thracians inhabited the area until their assimilation into contemporary ethnic groups in the area. After the Romans conquered Moesia in 75 BC, the new castrum (imperial domain with estates) and municipium was known initially as Ulpianorum and then Remesiana ( Moesi ) and stood along

154-577: 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

231-577: 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,

308-432: A common language. Linguists such as Polomé and Katičić expressed reservations about both theories. The Dacians are generally considered to have been Thracian speakers, representing a cultural continuity from earlier Iron Age communities loosely termed Getic, Since in one interpretation, Dacian is a variety of Thracian, for the reasons of convenience, the generic term ‘Daco-Thracian" is used, with "Dacian" reserved for

385-508: 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

462-590: 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

539-400: 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

616-459: 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 ,

693-524: A mixture of indigenous peoples and Indo-Europeans from the time of Proto-Indo-European expansion in the Early Bronze Age (3,300–3,000 BC) when the latter, around 1500 BC, conquered the indigenous peoples. The indigenous people were Danubian farmers, and the invading people of the 3rd millennium BC were Kurgan warrior-herders from the Ukrainian and Russian steppes. Indo-Europeanization

770-459: A regional power in and around the city of Sarmizegetusa . Sarmizegetusa was their political and spiritual capital. The ruined city lies high in the mountains of central Romania. 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

847-460: 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

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924-454: Is accessible from the nearby city of Niš by the Niš Express buses that run from Niš to Pirot , Babušnica , Dimitrovgrad , and Sofia . Bela Palanka has a warm-summer mediterranean climate ( Köppen climate classification : Csb ), that's very close to a humid subtropical climate ( Köppen climate classification : Cfa ). Aside from the town of Bela Palanka, the municipality consists of

1001-453: Is difficult. In the 19th century, Tomaschek (1883) proposed the form "Dak", meaning those who understand and can speak , by considering "Dak" as a derivation of the root da ("k" being a suffix); cf. Sanskrit dasa , Bactrian daonha . Tomaschek also proposed the form "Davus", meaning "members of the clan/countryman" cf. Bactrian daqyu , danhu "canton". Since the 19th century, many scholars have proposed an etymological link between

1078-415: Is found under various forms within ancient sources. Greeks used the forms Δάκοι " Dakoi " ( Strabo , Dio Cassius , and Dioscorides ) and Δάοι "Daoi" (singular Daos). The form Δάοι "Daoi" was frequently used according to Stephan of Byzantium . Latins used the forms Davus , Dacus , and a derived form Dacisci (Vopiscus and inscriptions). There are similarities between the ethnonyms of

1155-703: Is somewhere in the vicinity of the river Duria, the present-day Váh (Waag). Dacians lived on both sides of the Danube. According to Strabo , Moesians also lived on both sides of the Danube. According to Agrippa , Dacia was limited by the Baltic Ocean in the North and by the Vistula in the West. The names of the people and settlements confirm Dacia's borders as described by Agrippa. Dacian people also lived south of

1232-763: 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,

1309-435: Is supported by Romanian historian Ioan I. Russu (1967). Mircea Eliade attempted, in his book From Zalmoxis to Genghis Khan , to give a mythological foundation to an alleged special relation between Dacians and the wolves: Evidence of proto-Thracians or proto-Dacians in the prehistoric period depends on the remains of material culture . It is generally proposed that a proto-Dacian or proto-Thracian people developed from

1386-506: Is that of Moesian (or Mysian) for the language of an intermediate area immediately to the south of Danube in Serbia, Bulgaria and Romanian Dobruja: this and the dialects north of the Danube have been grouped together as Daco-Moesian. The language of the indigenous population has left hardly any trace in the anthroponymy of Moesia, but the toponymy indicates that the Moesii on the south bank of

1463-632: 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

1540-562: 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

1617-657: 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

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1694-516: 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

1771-473: The Long Turkish War , largely due to persistent attacks on travelers by hajduks . This structure deteriorated after a few decades and was replaced by a larger and more durable caravanserai made of stone, commissioned by the local governor, Musa Pasha. This han differed from others in the region because of its large size and because it had separate large rooms for harems of dignitaries. The interior of

1848-523: The Pannonians and therefore first became known to the Romans. According to Strabo's Geographica , the original name of the Dacians was Δάοι " Daoi ". The name Daoi (one of the ancient Geto-Dacian tribes) was certainly adopted by foreign observers to designate all the inhabitants of the countries north of Danube that had not yet been conquered by Greece or Rome. The ethnographic name Daci

1925-780: 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

2002-563: The Via Militaris between Naissus and Serdica . Emperor Justinian had following strongholds in the district of Remesiana: Brittura Subaras Lamponiana Stronges Dalmatas Primiana Phrerraria Topera Tomes Cuas Tzertzenutzas Stens Aeadaba Destreba Pretzouries Cumudeba Deurias Lutzolo Rhepordenes Spelonca Scumbro Briparo Tulcoburgo Longiana Lupophantana Dardapara Burdomina Grinciapana Graecus Drasimarca The patron saint of Romania , Nicetas of Remesiana ,

2079-696: The endonym of the Dacians and wolves. However, according to Romanian historian and archaeologist Alexandru Vulpe , the Dacian etymology explained by daos ("wolf") has little plausibility, as the transformation of daos into dakos is phonetically improbable and the Draco standard was not unique to Dacians. He thus dismisses it as folk etymology . Another etymology, linked to the Proto-Indo-European language roots *dhe- meaning "to set, place" and dheua → dava ("settlement") and dhe-k → daci

2156-468: 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

2233-417: 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,

2310-566: 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

2387-702: The 8th to 7th centuries BC, the migration of the Scythians from the east into the Pontic Steppe pushed westwards and away from the steppes the related Scythic Agathyrsi people who had previously dwelt on the Pontic Steppe around the Lake Maeotis . Following this, the Agathyrsi settled in the territories of present-day Moldova , Transylvania and possibly Oltenia , where they mingled with

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2464-561: The Boii south across the Danube and out of their territory, at which point the Boii abandoned any further plans for invasion. Some Hungarian historians consider the Dacians and Getae the same as the Scythian tribes of the Dahae , Massagetae , also the exonym Daxia one with Dacia. North of the Danube, Dacians occupied a larger territory than Ptolemaic Dacia, stretching between Bohemia in

2541-472: The Dacians and those of Dahae (Greek Δάσαι Δάοι, Δάαι, Δαι, Δάσαι Dáoi , Dáai , Dai , Dasai ; Latin Dahae , Daci ), an Indo-European people located east of the Caspian Sea , until the 1st millennium BC. Scholars have suggested that there were links between the two peoples since ancient times. The historian David Gordon White has, moreover, stated that the "Dacians ... appear to be related to

2618-483: The Dahae". (Likewise White and other scholars also believe that the names Dacii and Dahae may also have a shared etymology – see the section following for further details.) By the end of the first century AD, all the inhabitants of the lands which now form Romania were known to the Romans as Daci, with the exception of some Celtic and Germanic tribes who infiltrated from the west, and Sarmatian and related people from

2695-866: The Danube, north of the Haemus Mountains, and the Triballi in the valley of the Morava, shared a number of characteristic linguistic features with the Dacii south of the Carpathians and the Getae in the Wallachian plain, which sets them apart from the Thracians though their languages are undoubtedly related. Dacian culture is mostly followed through Roman sources. Ample evidence suggests that they were

2772-483: The Danube. Pontic Steppe Caucasus East Asia Eastern Europe Northern Europe Pontic Steppe Northern/Eastern Steppe Europe South Asia Steppe Europe Caucasus India Indo-Aryans Iranians East Asia Europe East Asia Europe Indo-Aryan Iranian Indo-Aryan Iranian Others European The Dacians and Getae were always considered as Thracians by

2849-544: 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

2926-549: 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

3003-593: 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

3080-404: 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),

3157-556: The ancient Indo-European inhabitants of the cultural region of Dacia , located in the area near the Carpathian Mountains and west of the Black Sea . They are often considered a subgroup of the Thracians . This area includes mainly the present-day countries of Romania and Moldova , as well as parts of Ukraine , Eastern Serbia , Northern Bulgaria , Slovakia , Hungary and Southern Poland . The Dacians and

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3234-477: The ancients (Dio Cassius, Trogus Pompeius, Appian , Strabo and Pliny the Elder), and were both said to speak the same Thracian language . The linguistic affiliation of Dacian is uncertain, since the ancient Indo-European language in question became extinct and left very limited traces, usually in the form of place names, plant names and personal names. Thraco-Dacian (or Thracian and Daco-Mysian) seems to belong to

3311-479: 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

3388-796: 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 ,

3465-441: 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

3542-528: 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

3619-452: The east. The name Daci , or "Dacians" is a collective ethnonym . Dio Cassius reported that the Dacians themselves used that name, and the Romans so called them, while the Greeks called them Getae. Opinions on the origins of the name Daci are divided. Some scholars consider it to originate in the Indo-European * dha-k -, with the stem * dhe - 'to put, to place', while others think that

3696-531: The eastern (satem) group of Indo-European languages. There are two contradictory theories: some scholars (such as Tomaschek 1883; Russu 1967; Solta 1980; Crossland 1982; Vraciu 1980) consider Dacian to be a Thracian language or a dialect thereof. This view is supported by R. G. Solta, who says that Thracian and Dacian are very closely related languages. Other scholars (such as Georgiev 1965, Duridanov 1976) consider that Thracian and Dacian are two different and specific Indo-European languages which cannot be reduced to

3773-412: 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

3850-450: The following villages: According to the 2011 census results, the municipality has 12,126 inhabitants. The ethnic composition of the municipality: The following table gives a preview of total number of registered people employed in legal entities per their core activity (as of 2018): Dacians The Dacians ( / ˈ d eɪ ʃ ən z / ; Latin : Daci [ˈdaːkiː] ; ‹See Tfd› Greek : Δάκοι, Δάοι, Δάκαι ) were

3927-542: The han was painted by an artist brought from Buda . To honor its patron, the name of the settlement was then changed to Musa-paša Palanka, from which the town's current name was derived. From 1929 to 1941, Bela Palanka was part of the Morava Banovina of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia . Bela Palanka is a small town in the southeast of the country and is surrounded by countryside and mountains such as Golaš . The town

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4004-582: The indigenous population of Thracian origins. When the Agathyrsi were later completely assimilated by the Geto-Thracian populations;, their fortified settlements became the centres of the Getic groups who would later transform into the Dacian culture; an important part of the Dacian people descended from the Agathyrsi. When the La Tène Celts arrived in the 4th century BC, the Dacians were under

4081-568: The influence of the Scythians. Alexander the Great attacked the Getae in 335 BC on the lower Danube, but by 300 BC they had formed a state founded on a military democracy, and began a period of conquest. More Celts arrived during the 3rd century BC, and in the 1st century BC the people of Boii tried to conquer some of the Dacian territory on the eastern side of the Teiss river. The Dacians drove

4158-541: The language or dialect that was spoken north of Danube, in present-day Romania and eastern Hungary, and "Thracian" for the variety spoken south of the Danube. There is no doubt that the Thracian language was related to the Dacian language which was spoken in what is today Romania, before some of that area was occupied by the Romans. Also, both Thracian and Dacian have one of the main satem characteristic changes of Indo-European language, *k and *g to *s and *z. With regard to

4235-449: 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

4312-467: 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

4389-687: The late Roman map Tabula Peutingeriana . It was Herodotus who first used the ethnonym Getae in his Histories . In Greek and Latin, in the writings of Julius Caesar , Strabo , and Pliny the Elder , the people became known as 'the Dacians'. Getae and Dacians were interchangeable terms, or used with some confusion by the Greeks. Latin poets often used the name Getae . Vergil called them Getae four times, and Daci once, Lucian Getae three times and Daci twice, Horace named them Getae twice and Daci five times, while Juvenal one time Getae and two times Daci . In AD 113, Hadrian used

4466-574: The later "Dacia." In the 1st century AD, Strabo suggested that its stem formed a name previously borne by slaves: Greek Daos, Latin Davus (-k- is a known suffix in Indo-European ethnic names). In the 18th century, Grimm proposed the Gothic dags or "day" that would give the meaning of "light, brilliant". Yet dags belongs to the Sanskrit word-root dah- , and a derivation from Dah to Δάσαι "Daci"

4543-452: 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

4620-465: 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

4697-545: The name Daci originates in * daca 'knife, dagger' or in a word similar to dáos, meaning 'wolf' in the related language of the Phrygians . One hypothesis is that the name Getae originates in Indo-European * guet- 'to utter, to talk'. Another hypothesis is that Getae and Daci are the Iranian names of two Iranian-speaking Scythian groups that had been assimilated into the larger Thracian-speaking population of

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4774-435: The poetic term Getae for the Dacians. Modern historians prefer to use the name Geto-Dacians . Strabo describes the Getae and Dacians as distinct but cognate tribes. This distinction refers to the regions they occupied. Strabo and Pliny the Elder also state that Getae and Dacians spoke the same language. By contrast, the name of Dacians , whatever the origin of the name, was used by the more western tribes who adjoined

4851-643: 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

4928-649: The related Getae spoke the Dacian language , which has a debated relationship with the neighbouring Thracian language and may be a subgroup of it. Dacians were somewhat culturally influenced by the neighbouring Scythians and by the Celtic invaders of the 4th century BC . The Dacians were known as Geta (plural Getae ) in Ancient Greek writings, and as Dacus (plural Daci ) or Getae in Roman documents, but also as Dagae and Gaete as depicted on

5005-437: 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

5082-437: The term "Getic" (Getae), even though attempts have been made to distinguish between Dacian and Getic, there seems no compelling reason to disregard the view of the Greek geographer Strabo that the Daci and the Getae, Thracian tribes dwelling north of the Danube (the Daci in the west of the area and the Getae further east), were one and the same people and spoke the same language. Another variety that has sometimes been recognized

5159-416: The town, left abandoned by its inhabitants, was briefly occupied by the pilgrims led by Peter the Hermit, Walter of Breteuil and Rainald of Breis. During the centuries of Ottoman control , Bela Palanka was the site of a major caravanserai (or han ) along the Tsarigrad Road . Ottoman authorities ordered the first such caravanserai be built in the settlement (then named Izvor ) from wood in 1598-99, during

5236-400: The west and the Dnieper cataracts in the east, and up to the Pripyat , Vistula , and Oder rivers in the north and northwest. In 53 BC, Julius Caesar stated that the Dacian territory was on the eastern border of the Hercynian forest . According to Strabo's Geographica , written around AD 20, the Getes (Geto-Dacians) bordered the Suevi who lived in the Hercynian Forest , which

5313-416: Was a 4th-century bishop at Remesiana. Peter the Hermit was defeated by the Byzantines in the north and regrouped at an evacuated Bela Palanka, gathering the harvest before heading to Constantinople . Excavations include well-preserved castrum dating to 4th century and a hoard of 260 coins minted during the rule of Constantine I , Theodosius I , Tiberius Claudius Nero . During the 1096 People's Crusade

5390-515: 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

5467-442: 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

5544-556: 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

5621-731: Was complete by the beginning of the Bronze Age. The people of that time are best described as proto-Thracians, which later developed in the Iron Age into Danubian-Carpathian Geto-Dacians as well as Thracians of the eastern Balkan Peninsula. Between 15th–12th century BC, the Dacian-Getae culture was influenced by the Bronze Age Tumulus-Urnfield warriors who were on their way through the Balkans to Anatolia. In

5698-485: 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

5775-580: 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

5852-637: 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

5929-673: 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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