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65-523: Evangelos or Evangelis Zappas (23 August 1800 – 19 June 1865; Greek : Ευάγγελος or Ευαγγέλης Ζάππας ; Romanian : Evanghelie Zappa ) was a Greek patriot, philanthropist and businessman who spent most of his life in Romania . He is recognized today as one of the founders of the modern Olympic Games , which were held in 1859, 1870, 1875, and 1888 and preceded the Olympic Games that came under

130-577: 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,

195-558: 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

260-560: 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

325-540: 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

390-654: A large amount of money was deposited in the National Bank of Greece to provide scholarships for Greek agricultural students in order to conduct postgraduate studies in Western Europe. During the anti-Greek Istanbul Pogrom in 1955, the facilities of the Zappeion female college in the Turkish capital were vandalized by the fanatical mob and a statue of him was broken into pieces. In addition to donations to

455-804: 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

520-479: 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

585-466: 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 ,

650-519: 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

715-848: 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 Alexandros Rizos Rangavis He

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780-763: 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,

845-674: 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

910-624: 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

975-627: 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

1040-495: 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

1105-516: 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

1170-657: 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

1235-492: 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

1300-506: The 1850s, Zappas was considered one of the wealthiest entrepreneurs in Eastern Europe. At the time of his death in 1865, his total wealth was estimated at six million gold drachmas . The idea of reviving the ancient Olympic Games had been raised from time to time during the early and mid 19th century, inspired to a certain degree by romanticism and patriotism. In 1833, the romantic poet Panagiotis Soutsos , in his work Dialogue of

1365-644: The 1859 Athens Olympic Games into the programme of future Wenlock Olympian Games. Baron Pierre de Coubertin from Paris, France, was, in part, inspired by Dr. Brookes, and went on to found the International Olympic Committee in 1894. Professor David C. Young, of the University of Florida (Gainesville), noted: Had it not been for Zappas, the Athens Games of 1896 surely would not have taken place. Zappas's actions, his will and

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1430-635: The Dead , proposed the revival of the Games in the newly formed Greek state , as part of the revival of ancient Greek tradition. In 1852, archaeologist Ernst Curtius stated during a lecture that the Olympic events would be revived. Zappas was notably inspired by Panagiotis Soutsos and resolved to revive this ancient tradition through his own efforts and resources. In early 1856, he sent a letter through diplomatic channels to King Otto of Greece , offering to fund

1495-486: 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

1560-542: The Greek government had forced upon the concept of the Games. This building, located near the city's National Garden , was entirely funded by Zappas's legacy and was named Zappeion after him. The Zappeion officially opened on 20 October 1888. Dr. William Penny Brookes , from the United Kingdom, further developed his Olympian Class sports events held in Much Wenlock in the 1850s, by adopting some events from

1625-482: The Greek government with the necessary financial resources to establish an Olympic Trust Fund. On 15 November 1859, the first Olympic Games was held in a city square in central Athens . These athletic contests were the first Olympic Games of modern times with the provenance of ancient Greek roots and the intention of using an, as yet unready, ancient Greek stadium. That stadium, the Panathenaic Stadium ,

1690-495: 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

1755-706: The Greek plenipotentiaries at the Congress of Berlin in 1878. He was the chief representative of a school of literary men, known as the First Athenian School , whose object was to restore as far as possible the ancient classical language. He was also a founding member of the Archaeological Society of Athens . Of his various works, Hellenic Antiquities (1842–1855, of great value for epigraphical purposes), Archaeologia (1865–1866), an illustrated Archaeological Lexicon (1888–1891), and

1820-817: The Greek state, Zappas was also a financier of the Romanian Academy where he has a statue there today. Zappas was an ardent Greek nationalist influenced by the writings of Panagiotis Soutsos , a 19th-century Greek poet. Among academic projects funded by him were a new synthesis on the history of the Romanians and a Romanian dictionary. He also funded a newspaper and books in the Albanian language in Romania. In this context, Zappas adopted multiple identities related to his birthplace (Albania), ethnic origin (Greek), and his adopted country (Romania). Evangelis Zappas

1885-629: 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

1950-629: 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

2015-548: The Ottoman-occupied world, and notably their birthplace, Epirus . Greek schools were founded and expanded in several Greek-populated villages and towns, such as Labovo, Lekli, Nivani, Dhroviani, Filiates , Delvina , Përmet . In Constantinople , education facilities were also founded that included nurseries, primary and secondary schools, which were collectively known as the Zappeion Institute. Moreover,

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2080-404: 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),

2145-402: 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

2210-615: The auspices of the International Olympic Committee . These Games , known at the time simply as Olympics (Greek: Ολύμπια ), came before the founding of the International Olympic Committee itself. The legacy of Zappas, as well as the legacy of his cousin Konstantinos , was also used to fund the Olympic Games of 1896. During his youth, Zappas joined the Greek War of Independence (1821–1832), achieving

2275-596: The bones of the philanthropist Evangelis Zappas". 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

2340-568: The first History of Modern Greek Literature (1877) are of the most interest to scholars. He wrote also the following dramatic pieces: The Wedding of Koutroulis (comedy), Dukas (tragedy), The Thirty Tyrants , The Eve (of the Greek revolution); the romances, The Prince of Morea , Leila , and The Notary of Argostoli ; and translated portions of Dante , Schiller , Lessing , Goethe and Shakespeare . After his recall he lived in Athens , where he died on 28 June 1892. He had married Caroline,

2405-488: The independence struggle, such as Dimitrios Panourgias , Kitsos Tzavelas , and Michail Spyromilios . He participated in several major conflicts, such as the siege of Souli , the first siege of Missolonghi and the Battle of Peta . In his later correspondence with a Greek official, he claimed that he was wounded five times during the war. In 1831, Zappas emigrated to Wallachia and made a fortune in land and agriculture. In

2470-439: 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

2535-467: 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

2600-478: The local ruler Ali Pasha . Zappas became a member of the Greek patriotic organization Filiki Eteria and joined his compatriots when the Greek War of Independence broke out in 1821. During this period, Zappas reached the rank of Major in the revolutionary army and became a personal friend of the Souliot captain, Markos Botsaris . After Botsaris's death in 1823, Zappas served under various military commanders of

2665-576: 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

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2730-441: 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

2795-399: 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

2860-706: 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

2925-541: 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

2990-632: The previous tradition of Zappas Olympic Games had made [Crown Prince] Constantine [of Greece] an advocate of Olympic Games before the formation of the IOC in 1894. Through his philanthropic activity, Zappas contributed to the national awakening of the Greeks, Romanians and Albanians. Apart from his efforts to revive the Olympics, Evangelos Zappas made several philanthropic donations towards the foundation of schools, libraries and other similar institutions all over

3055-486: The rank of Major and fighting in several significant battles. Following Greek independence, he moved to Wallachia where he had a successful career as a businessman, becoming one of the richest men of that time in Eastern Europe. Aside from being the only major sponsor of the Olympic revival at that time, Zappas's philanthropy also included contributions toward the foundation of several Greek institutions and schools as well as sports and exhibition facilities. Evangelis Zappas

3120-533: The revival of the Olympic Games, and to provide cash prizes to the victors. However, this initiative was not without opposition. There was wide belief among some Greek politicians that athletic games were a throwback to ancient times, unsuited to the modern era. Alexandros Rizos Rangavis , the Greek foreign minister and head of the conservative anti-athletics lobby in Athens, suggested an industrial and agricultural exposition instead of an athletics event. For months there

3185-542: The school's courtyard in Labovo where he was born, and his skull was enshrined beneath his memorial statue outside the Zappeion in Athens, Greece. A ceremony for the interment was held at 10am on 20 October 1888 at the Zappeion. Baron Pierre de Coubertin made a similar gesture by having his heart buried at Olympia . In the virtually unpopulated Labovo, there is an old, yet legible, tombstone that states in Albanian: "Here lie

3250-437: 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

3315-447: 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

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3380-529: 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

3445-574: 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

3510-568: 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

3575-557: 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

3640-519: Was born in Constantinople to a Greek Phanariot family. He was educated at Odessa and the military school at Munich . Having served as an officer of artillery in the Bavarian army , he returned to Greece, where he held several high educational and administrative appointments. He subsequently became ambassador to Washington, D.C. (1867), Paris (1868), and Berlin (1874–1886), and was one of

3705-500: Was first used for a modern Olympic Games in 1870 and for the first time since the ancient Panathenaic and Olympic Games. The athletes competed in a variety of disciplines, similar to that of the ancient Olympic Games: running, discus , javelin throwing , wrestling , jumping , and pole climbing . Zappas left a fortune for the funding of future Olympiads to be held at the Panathenaic stadium. He died in 1865. His immense fortune

3770-594: Was necessary to refurbish the Panathenaic stadium a second time, replacing wood for marble, in readiness for the Athens 1896 Olympic Games. After a period of litigation over Zappas's bequests, his cousin Konstantinos Zappas continued and expanded his endowment of the Games and maintained efforts for the continuation of the Olympic concept . In 1870, the new stadium, with a spectator capacity of 30,000,

3835-399: Was no official answer from the Greek state. In July 1856, an article in the Greek press by Panagiotis Soutsos made Zappas's proposal widely known to the public and triggered a series of events. King Otto agreed to the organization of athletics competitions at four-year intervals, with Zappa's full sponsorship, to coincide with industrial and agricultural expositions. As a result, Zappas provided

3900-491: Was often described as a solitary and eccentric personality, who had no children. On the other hand, he was a man of vision, determination and a patriot, who was well aware of the magnitude of his acts. His cousin, Konstantinos Zappas , was the executor of his will and he continued Evangelis Zappas' philanthropic works through his legacy. Zappas's wish was to be initially buried in Romania , where he lived most of his life. But after four years his bones were exhumed and reinterred at

3965-468: Was one of three children born to Vasileios Zappas and Sotira Meksi, of Greek or Aromanian ancestry, on 23 August 1800 in the village of Labovo located near Tepelenë (modern Gjirokastër County , Albania) when the region was still under Ottoman rule. Zappas did not receive any education during his childhood. He left his village at the age of 13 and enrolled as a mercenary in the Ottoman militia of

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4030-453: Was ready to host the second Zappas Olympics. The Zappas Olympics of 1870, apart from being the first modern international Olympic Games to be hosted in a stadium, were better attended and hosted more events and athletes, and were much better organized in general. Additionally, the first modern Olympic building was built to support the contests (and hosted the fencing events of 1896), as well as an industrial exhibition that anti-athletic members of

4095-580: 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

4160-528: Was used for the construction of permanent sporting facilities in Athens, as well as for the continuation of the Olympiad. He also instructed on the building of the Zappeion exhibition and conference center, which is named in his honour and that of his cousin Konstantinos Zappas . After Zappas's death, and wholly due to the Greek government ignoring Zappas's instructions to refurbish the stadium in marble, it

4225-450: Was written by Romaniote and Constantinopolitan Karaite Jews using the Hebrew Alphabet . In a tradition, that in modern time, has come to be known as Greek Aljamiado , some Greek Muslims from Crete wrote their Cretan Greek in the Arabic alphabet . The same happened among Epirote Muslims in Ioannina . This also happened among Arabic-speaking Byzantine rite Christians in the Levant ( Lebanon , Palestine, and Syria ). This usage

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