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103-681: Coup successful The Goudi coup ( Greek : κίνημα στο Γουδί , romanized :  kinima sto Goudi ) was a military coup d'état that took place in Greece on the night of 28 August [ O.S. 15 August] 1909, starting at the barracks in Goudi , a neighborhood on the eastern outskirts of Athens . The coup was a pivotal event in modern Greek history, as it led to the arrival of Eleftherios Venizelos in Greece and his eventual appointment as prime minister . At one stroke, this put an end to

206-577: 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

309-555: A blockade of Crete and key ports in Greece, the International Squadron brought organized fighting on Crete to an end by the end of March 1897, although the insurrection continued. Soldiers from the armies of five of the powers (Germany declined to send any) arrived to occupy key Cretan cities in late March and April 1897. Thereafter, the Admirals Council focused on a negotiated settlement that would bring

412-498: A pronunciamento containing their demands (the previous day, Rallis had declined to receive a deputation seeking to hand over the manifesto). Part of it was purely internal in nature: for instance, the soldiers challenged the promotion system, with its limited prospects for advancement. Another part was political and demanded profound reforms in the country: in its political functioning, as well as social, economic and military. The troops called for naval and land rearmament, and asked that

515-569: A 40-year monopoly on note issuance. The Cretan State also established a paramilitary force, the Cretan Gendarmerie , modeled on the Italian Carabinieri , to maintain public order. The Cretan Gendarmerie incorporated the four small gendarmerie units the four remaining occupying powers had created before the arrival of Prince George. On 13 December 1898, Prince George of Greece and Denmark arrived as high commissioner for

618-577: 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,

721-510: A bitter political struggle with the Prince's faction, leading to a political and administrative deadlock on the island. Eventually, in March 1905, Venizelos and his supporters gathered in the village of Therisos , in the hills near Chania, constituted a "Revolutionary Assembly", demanded political reforms and declared the "political union of Crete with Greece as a single free constitutional state" in

824-411: A clampdown and the arrest of all league members. On the same night, the league set in motion its bloodless coup. The league members were gathered in the Goudi barracks: several hundred junior officers, non-commissioned officers, simple soldiers, gendarmes and civilians threatened to march on Athens if their demands were not met. The armed forces, in particular the young officers, sent Rallis' government

927-573: A commission directed by Stephanos Dragoumis , led to the frequently expressed opinion that after this date, Greece had an entirely new fundamental law, the Greek Constitution of 1911 . This revision reformed the status of property by allowing for expropriation in the national interest, opening up the possibility of land reform ; 300,000 arpents (100,000 ha) were distributed to 4,000 farm families in Thessaly . Agricultural education

1030-414: A dozen of the league's members for insubordination on 12 August. The arrest of league officers precipitated events: either the league would act now, or it would be dissolved by a government. The league searched for support among the senior officers, and Colonel Nikolaos Zorbas was chosen as its figurehead. On 14 August, Pangalos liberated two of the arrested officers, thereby provoking Rallis into ordering

1133-508: 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

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1236-620: A form of lobbying by putting pressure on those in power. It had already scored a success with the July 1909 resignation of Theotokis, its bête noire and a symbol of the parliamentary clientelism it hated. But his successor, Dimitrios Rallis, immediately alienated the league by paying tribute to Constantine's major role in the war of 1897, by recalling all officers present in Macedonia, by demanding Great Power intervention in Crete and by arresting over

1339-612: A lack of necessary reforms and disillusionment with the established political system. Emulating the Young Turks , several junior army officers founded a secret society, the Military League. With Colonel Nikolaos Zorbas as their figurehead, on the night of 15 August, the Military League, having gathered together its troops in the Goudi barracks, issued a pronunciamiento to the government, demanding an immediate turnaround for

1442-590: 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

1545-400: 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

1648-671: A manifesto delivered to the consuls of the Great Powers . The Cretan Gendarmerie remained loyal to the Prince, but numerous deputies joined the revolt, and despite the Powers' declaration of martial law on 18 July, their military forces did not move against the rebels. On 15 August, the Cretan Assembly voted for the proposals of Venizelos, and the Great Powers brokered an agreement, whereby Prince George would resign and

1751-459: 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 ,

1854-642: A new constitution created. In the 1906 elections the pro-Prince parties took 38,127 votes while pro-Venizelos parties took 33,279 votes, but in September 1906 Prince George was replaced by former Greek prime minister Alexandros Zaimis and left the island. In addition, Greek officers came to replace the Italians in the organization of the Gendarmerie, and the withdrawal of the foreign troops began, leaving Crete de facto under Greek control. A Constitution

1957-526: A relative majority with 146 of 362 seats. He thus returned to Athens amid rapturous public acclaim; the Dragoumis government resigned and Venizelos became prime minister in October 1910. He surrounded himself with collaborators bent on reform policies and began to apply the programme of the Goudi revolutionaries, strongly backed by public opinion. The Austrian ambassador observed on 28 October 1910: "Venizelos

2060-460: 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

2163-431: A three-year tenure. On 27 April 1899, an Executive Committee was created, in which a young, Athens-trained lawyer from Chania , Eleftherios Venizelos , participated as minister of justice. By 1900, Venizelos and Prince George had developed differences over domestic policies, as well as the issue of Enosis , the union with Greece. Venizelos resigned in early 1901, and for the next three years, he and his supporters waged

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2266-507: A variety of reasons: a desire for reforms that was prevalent in wide parts of society was combined with frustration at the slow rate of promotions and the absence of meritocracy, especially among graduates of the military academy . Other officers from the army, the navy and the gendarmerie joined up later, and by June 1909, had spread out over the Greek military. At that time the Military League's demands were limited to an increased military budget, its reorganisation and modernisation, as well as

2369-488: Is a sort of popular tribune and almost the dictator of Greece. The enthusiasm of the people, who acclaim him everywhere, is striking". He decided to call immediate new elections in order to strengthen his majority: the assembly elected in August continued to be dominated by the old politicians. These took place on 11 December [ O.S. 28 November] 1910. Venizelos was careful to present himself as an adversary of

2472-683: 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

2575-865: 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 Cretan State The island of Crete, an Ottoman possession since

2678-763: 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,

2781-579: 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

2884-488: The Balkan Wars and World War I. The King supported them, seeing in his prime minister the best hope of stemming the anti-monarchism that had surfaced in 1897 and gained renewed momentum in the 1908–1909 crisis. To the people who wanted the assembly elected in 1910 to be a constituent assembly, Venizelos replied that he considered it more of a "revisionary assembly". The 50 constitutional amendments of 1911, prepared by

2987-562: 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

3090-657: 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

3193-519: The Hamidian massacres of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire ; Cretan Christians, then under Ottoman domination, demanded self-government on their island under the protection of the great powers. Massacres of Christians by Muslims led Greece to intervene, first by accepting the departure of volunteers from its shores, then by more and more directly sending part of its fleet, followed by troops at

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3296-667: The Hellenic Parliament in August and November 1910 , Venizelos became prime minister and proceeded with the reforms demanded by the coup's instigators. The Congress of Berlin in 1878 and the 1881 Convention of Constantinople had been successes for Greek diplomacy. There, the country had won Thessaly and part of Epirus . In order to continue achieving the Megali Idea , Greece then turned to Macedonia and Crete , but met with severe setbacks. From 1895, following

3399-516: 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

3502-765: The Julian calendar then in use on Crete, which was 12 days behind the modern Gregorian calendar during the 19th century), a Cretan Muslim mob massacred hundreds of Cretan Greeks and murdered the British vice-consul , his family, and 14 British soldiers and sailors, in the city of Candia (modern Heraklion). As a result, the International Squadron and the occupying forces ashore expelled all Ottoman forces from Crete in November 1898. The autonomous Cretan State, under Ottoman suzerainty, garrisoned by an international military force, and with its high commissioner provided by Greece,

3605-678: The Pact of Halepa established the island as an autonomous state under Ottoman suzerainty, until the Ottomans reneged on that agreement in 1889. The collapse of the Pact heightened tensions in the island, leading to another rebellion in 1895, which greatly expanded in 1896–1897 to cover most of the island. Six Great Powers ( Austria-Hungary , France , the German Empire , the Kingdom of Italy ,

3708-585: The Piraeus , demanded the imposition of a revenue tax, protectionism , the granting of tenure to bureaucrats (so they would no longer depend on politicians for their jobs), better working conditions and the condemnation of usury. King George I, unwilling to follow in the footsteps of his predecessor Otto , who had been forced from the throne under similar circumstances in 1862, pushed Prime Minister Rallis to resign and replaced him with Kyriakoulis Mavromichalis . The negotiations dragged on, and Colonel Zorbas lacked

3811-625: The Russian Empire , and the United Kingdom ) sent warships to Crete in February 1897, and their naval forces combined to form an " International Squadron " charged with intervening to bring fighting on Crete to a halt. In Greece, nationalist secret societies and a fervently irredentist public opinion forced the Greek government to send military forces to the island. Although the International Squadron quickly halted their activities,

3914-685: The Theriso revolt against High Commissioner George of Greece , who had been appointed by the European powers, and demanded enosis . In 1906, the Prince resigned, and a new commissioner, the former Greek prime minister Alexandros Zaimis , was installed. The Young Turk Revolution pushed the Cretans to unilaterally proclaim definitive enosis , taking advantage of the absence of the new high commissioner. Anti-Greek demonstrations took place in Turkey, where

4017-589: 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

4120-716: The fait accompli by the act of lowering their flags from the Souda fortress on 14 February 1913, and by the Treaty of London in May 1913, Sultan Mehmed V relinquished his formal rights to the island. On 1 December, the formal ceremony of union took place: the Greek flag was raised at the Firka Fortress in Chania , with Eleftherios Venizelos and King Constantine I in attendance. The Muslim minority of Crete initially remained on

4223-468: 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

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4326-417: 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,

4429-553: The "old" parties (which boycotted the elections), but also as free from influence by the Military League that had sought him out after the Goudi coup. Thus he did not hesitate to take as an aide-de-camp Ioannis Metaxas , a bête noire of the league whom it had removed. Venizelos' Liberal Party won the elections with an overwhelming majority of 300 out of 362 deputies. The reforms of the Venizelos government were numerous, and allowed Greece to modernise and thus be better prepared for

4532-706: The 1890s. At that point the government of Charilaos Trikoupis recognised that the country was bankrupt by deciding to lower the public debt to 30% of its value, which angered the creditors, particularly the European powers. At the same time, export of the Zante currant entered a crisis. A new phenomenon then began: emigration of the working population. The number of emigrants (especially to the United States) went from 1,108 in 1890 to 39,135 in 1910 (of 2.8 million inhabitants); significantly, remittances from America and Egypt fell amid economic slowdown in 1908. Economic growth

4635-566: 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

4738-559: The Great Powers' decisions. Indignation toward the government's weaknesses and timorous attitude mounted, among the populace as well as in the army, above all among the young officers who had fought in Macedonia. The idea of imitating the Young Turk officers began to spread. Greece had been in economic crisis for decades. Public debt (owed above all to the Great Powers) dating back to the war of independence reached new heights in

4841-544: 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

4944-549: 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

5047-541: The Greek state's main income sources (state monopolies and port customs tariffs) to the repayment of Greece's public loans. Crete, however, became an autonomous state under international supervision, while remaining under the sultan's suzerainty. Macedonia was a region disputed between Greece, the Ottoman Empire and Bulgaria (created at the Congress of Berlin). On 2 August [ O.S. 20 July] 1903,

5150-688: The Ottoman Army to stop its advance. In the Treaty of Constantinople the Ottoman Government promised to implement the provisions of the Halepa Pact. In February 1897, the Great Powers decided to restore order by governing the island temporarily through an "Admirals Council" consisting of admirals from the six powers making up the International Squadron. Through naval bombardments of Cretan insurgent forces, by placing sailors and marines ashore to occupy key cities, and by establishing

5253-512: The Ottoman army and gendarmerie. Reprisals took many forms, including pillage, arson and assassination. Deeply concerned, the Western powers decided to intervene. The eventual plan was for an administrative reorganisation of the region that would allow for an ethnic-based partition. Thus, each of the ethnic groups concerned sought to strengthen its position so as to gain a maximum of territory when

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5356-404: 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),

5459-479: 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

5562-416: The beginning of 1897 just when Cretans themselves declared enosis (union with Greece). The intervention of the European powers (France, Great Britain, Italy, Russia, Austria-Hungary and Germany) forced Greece to back down. The opposition criticised the feebleness and indecisiveness of the government, which declared war on the Ottomans at the beginning of April. Fighting lasted a month, which gave its name to

5665-425: The bourgeoisie. Although it saw the necessity of modernising the country, the middle classes feared the drift towards a military dictatorship, considered deleterious to the normal progress of affairs. Some of the officers went to Crete, which they knew well, either from having participated in the earlier events or in the formation of its civil guard during the period of autonomy . There, they had also been able to see

5768-430: The conflict (the Thirty Days' War ); the Greek defeat was thorough. Although Greece lost only small amounts territory on its northern border, it was forced to pay huge war reparations of 4 million Ottoman pounds to the victor. Coming on the heels of the public insolvency declared in 1893, it meant that Greece had to accept an international financial control commission (Διεθνής Οικονομικός Έλεγχος), which in effect diverted

5871-474: The country and its armed forces. King George I gave in and replaced Prime Minister Dimitrios Rallis with Kyriakoulis Mavromichalis , without, however, satisfying the insurgents, who resorted to a large public demonstration the following month. When a stalemate was reached, the coup leaders appealed to a new and providential figure, the Cretan Eleftherios Venizelos , who respected democratic norms in calling for new elections. After his allies' twin victories in

5974-495: 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 ,

6077-441: 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

6180-457: The defeat of 1897, be relieved of their posts and expelled from the army. Finally, the league called for a lowering of tax burdens. The prime minister opened pro forma negotiations with the revolutionaries who, in order to speed them up, resorted to the people of Athens. A large popular demonstration, organised and supervised by the soldiers, took place in the streets of Athens on 14 September 1909. The demonstrators, who had come from Athens and

6283-421: The defunct Military League, who for a time thought of recreating it; indeed of carrying out another coup. 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

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6386-425: The dismissal of the princes from the army. Although the Theotokis government had increased supplies of arms and munitions, he had also reinstated Crown Prince Constantine , who had led the army in the 1897 war, as chief inspector of the army. Also, despite demands, he had authorised only a few officers to pursue further studies in France and Germany. The Military League, now numbering about 1,300, began by engaging in

6489-528: 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

6592-426: The end of the Cretan War (1645–1669) , was inhabited by a mostly Greek-speaking population, whose majority was Christian. During and after the Greek War of Independence , the Christians of the island rebelled several times against external Ottoman rule, pursuing union with Greece. These were brutally subdued, but secured some concessions from the Ottoman government under the pressure of European public opinion. In 1878,

6695-412: 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

6798-419: The feast day of the prophet Elijah (Bulg. Ilinden ), the Ilinden–Preobrazhenie Uprising , sponsored by the Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organization , began. The uprising failed, and Turkish reprisals were severe, with 2,000 killed and villages and homes razed. Following these events, many Greeks became concerned with the level of Bulgarian activity in Macedonia. The Ethniki Etairia (National Society)

6901-480: The insurrection to an end without bringing Ottoman governance of Crete to an end, but this proved impossible. They then decided that Crete would become an autonomous state under the suzerainty of the Ottoman Empire. Germany strongly opposed this idea and withdrew from Crete and the International Squadron in November 1897 and Austria-Hungary followed in March 1898, but the remaining four powers carried on with their plans. On 6 September 1898 (25 August 1898 according to

7004-449: 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

7107-414: 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

7210-495: The league announced its dissolution. Venizelos went back to Crete. Using his Cretan citizenship as a pretext (the island had declared union with Greece but Greece had yet to recognise this), Venizelos did not take part in the elections, held in August 1910. His allies nominated him for a seat in Atticoboeotia but he stayed away from the electoral campaign. He was on a diplomatic tour of Western Europe when he learned that he had been elected and that deputies allied to him had obtained

7313-400: 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

7416-517: The mid-1900s, this middle class could not understand why the country was prosperous while the state's finances were in such poor shape. Politicians, also dissatisfied with government policy, reacted as well. In 1906, a group of young radicals nicknamed the " Japanese Group " (Ομάς Ιαπώνων), in reference to the dynamism of the Meiji period , formed around the titular leadership of Stephanos Dragoumis , with Dimitrios Gounaris its moving spirit. It criticised

7519-465: 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

7622-506: The navy and war ministers belong to the military. The insurgents did not call for the king's abdication or the abolition of the monarchy, remaining loyal subjects. Neither did they announce a military dictatorship or even wish to change the government. They respected the institutions of parliamentary government. However, the officers did demand that the royal princes, chiefly the Crown Prince Constantine, on whom they blamed

7725-432: The office of Prime Minister of Greece. However, Venizelos did not wish to appear as the soldiers' man, either in Greece or abroad. Neither did he wish to clash head-on with King George I and the "old" political parties. He thus advised them to proceed with legislative elections and entrust implementation of the reform programme to the new assembly. He went to Athens on 28 December [ O.S. 15 December] 1909 and

7828-403: The old political system , and ushered in a new period. Henceforth and for several decades, Greek political life was dominated by two opposing forces : liberal, republican Venizelism and conservative, monarchist anti-Venizelism. The coup itself was the result of simmering tensions in Greek society, which reeled under the effects of the disastrous Greco-Turkish War of 1897 , financial troubles,

7931-506: The old oligarchy that was ruining the country and demanded radical reforms. The group of " Sociologists " (Κοινωνιολόγοι), especially influenced by Marxism , also called for modernisation of the state apparatus and the economy. The Military League (Στρατιωτικός Σύνδεσμος) was formed in October 1908 out of two groups: one of army NCOs (with members including future generals Nikolaos Plastiras and Georgios Kondylis ) and one of junior officers around Theodoros Pangalos . They were motivated by

8034-485: The old system endured: only Finance Minister Athanasios Eftaxias had reformist ideas. With the revolution running out of steam, the league began to crumble. It was not a real political movement: its ideology and programme lacked coherence; its leaders were popular but unskilled. They were above all soldiers ill at ease outside their barracks. The league had known how to link its corporatist demands to public discontent by using populist and nationalist slogans, but it unsettled

8137-503: The political skills to keep up with the seasoned veterans on the government side. Mavromichalis, in securing passage of a large number of mildly reformist bills, implemented part of the programme demanded by the Military League, this time under threat of an actual military takeover. Thus, the general staff was reorganised and those close to Constantine (such as Ioannis Metaxas ) were removed while budget cuts were made in order to finance army modernisation. But his government clearly showed that

8240-530: The political talents of the man who had been Prime Minister of Crete since 9 May 1909: Eleftherios Venizelos . When Prince George of Greece was High Commissioner of Crete, he had found himself in opposition to Venizelos. This gave the latter an anti-dynastic aura that attracted the Goudi insurgents; he was also seen as free from association with the mainland oligarchy's chaos, corruption and incompetence. Starting in October 1909 they had sent him an emissary to sound out his intentions, also suggesting to him that he take

8343-634: The potential partition came. The successes and sacrifices of young officers such as Melas restored the image of part of the army. In turn, the meddling of the European powers in internal Ottoman affairs contributed to the outbreak of the Young Turk Revolution of July 1908, which put an end to the Greek-Bulgarian clashes in Macedonia. Greece at the time was still embroiled in the Cretan question. In 1905, Eleftherios Venizelos had led

8446-478: The presence of Greek forces on Crete provoked a war with the Ottoman Empire . Although most of Crete came under the control of Cretan insurgent and Greek forces, the unprepared Greek Army was crushed by the Ottomans , who occupied Thessaly . The war was ended by the intervention of the Great Powers (the United Kingdom, France, Italy and Russia), who forced the Greek contingent to withdraw from Crete and

8549-511: The press launched a similar campaign. The European powers displayed hostility toward Greece, while Georgios Theotokis ' government was subjected to increasing criticism. His replacement with Rallis had little effect. The new prime minister hastened to show signs of goodwill toward the Turkish ambassador and the Western powers. Wishing to avoid a new Greco-Turkish war, he criticised the "Cretan revolutionaries" and declared his willingness to abide by

8652-590: 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

8755-570: The resignation of the Mavromichalis government, to be replaced with a transitional government that would organise legislative elections. Leadership of the transitional government was given to Stephanos Dragoumis , considered an "independent". Nikolaos Zorbas was made minister of land forces. In exchange, Venizelos managed to convince the Military League to dissolve itself so as not to hinder the political process. In March 1910, an initially reluctant sovereign called new elections; three days later,

8858-437: 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

8961-574: 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

9064-557: 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

9167-556: 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

9270-517: Was curbed. The tax on sugar was cut by 50% and a progressive income tax introduced. Taken together, the reforms helped neutralise the development of strong socialist and agrarian movements seen elsewhere in the Balkans in that period. The army and navy were reorganised with help from France, which sent a military mission led by General Eydoux (Germany had reformed the Turkish Army). The navy

9373-409: Was encouraged, as well as farming cooperatives, a ministry of agriculture was created and an agronomist named in each region. Bureaucrats were given greater security of tenure and hiring for civil service posts began to be done by public examination. Judges were protected by a superior magistracy council. Social legislation ameliorated the condition of the working class: child labour was abolished, as

9476-524: Was founded when Prince George of Greece and Denmark arrived to take office as the first high commissioner ( Greek : Ὕπατος Ἁρμοστής , Hýpatos Harmostēs ), effectively detaching Crete from the Ottoman Empire, on 21 December 1898 (9 December according to the Julian calendar). The Admirals Council was dissolved on 26 December 1898. The National Bank of Greece established a bank, the Bank of Crete , which had

9579-566: Was greeted in Piraeus harbour by eager officers. In January, a Crown Council gathered together the main leaders of the political movements, under the aegis of the King and of Venizelos. The latter played the role of mediator between the forces present: the King, the government, the parliament, the troops and the people. The solutions proposed by the Cretan prime minister were adopted: the convocation of an assembly tasked with constitutional revision; and

9682-433: Was nighttime labour by women, and a minimum wage introduced for both; Sunday was made an obligatory day of rest; primary education was made free and compulsory; and a social insurance system was created. The right of labour unions to function was recognised. Stabilisation of the drachma once again allowed for foreign borrowing. The state budget showed a surplus in 1911 and 1912 after many years of deficit, and tax evasion

9785-591: Was not recognized internationally, including by Greece, where Eleftherios Venizelos was elected prime minister in 1910. In May 1912, the Cretan deputies travelled to Athens and tried to enter the Greek Parliament , but were forcibly prevented from doing so by the police. Upon the outbreak of the First Balkan War , Greece finally recognized the union and sent Stephanos Dragoumis as the island's governor-general . The Great Powers tacitly recognized

9888-477: Was promulgated in February 1907, but in 1908, taking advantage of domestic turmoil in Turkey as well as the timing of Zaimis' vacation away from the island, the Cretan deputies declared unilateral union with Greece. The flag of the Cretan State was replaced by the Greek flag, all public servants took an oath to King George I of Greece, and the Greek constitution and laws were enacted on the island. This act

9991-430: 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

10094-407: Was reorganised by a British mission that Admiral Tufnell headed. However, Venizelos, anxious to show that he was no military puppet, excluded soldiers from political life, released officers arrested for attempting to thwart the Goudi coup, and restored to Crown Prince Constantine (given the new post of inspector-general of the army), along with his brothers, their army posts. This angered the members of

10197-452: Was set up, which sent armed bands of Greeks ( makedonomakhoi ), tacitly aided by the government in Athens, which provided financial support through its consular agents such as Ion Dragoumis and training from military advisers such as Pavlos Melas . This began what is known in Greece as the " Macedonian Struggle ", where Greeks clashed with Bulgarian komitadjis , while both sides clashed with

10300-455: Was too slow for the workers and farmers who left to seek work elsewhere. Until that time, only highlanders and landless island dwellers had left. However, this economic growth did lead to the creation, as elsewhere in Europe in the same period, of a middle class born out of industrial development, of growth in the number of bureaucrats (linked to political clientelism) and to an urban explosion. In

10403-580: 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

10506-637: 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

10609-673: 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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