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77-503: Mount Ithome is 25 kilometres (16 miles) north of Kalamata on the Gulf of Messenia, 60 kilometres (37 miles) east of Pylos , seat of Bronze Age Messenia, and 20 kilometres (12 miles) north of Messini , modern namesake of ancient Messene , nestled under the cliffs of Mount Ithome. From the top the whole valley of the Pamisos river can be viewed eastward to Mount Taygetus and southward to

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,

308-528: A certain Sgouromalles. In 1298, the town formed the dowry of Princess Matilda of Hainaut upon her marriage to Guy II de la Roche . Matilda retained Kalamata as her fief until 1322, when she was dispossessed and the territory reverted to the princely domain. In 1358, Prince Robert gifted the châtellenie of Kalamata (comprising also Port-de-Jonc and Mani ) to his wife, Marie de Bourbon , who kept it until her death in 1377. The town remained one of

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

462-517: A hot-summer Mediterranean climate ( Köppen : Csa ) with mild, wet winters and hot, dry summers. Kalamata receives plenty of precipitation during the winter, while summers are hot and generally dry with plenty of sunshine. The highest maximum temperature ever recorded in Kalamata is 45.0 °C or 113.0 °F on 24 June 2007 and the lowest minimum ever recorded is −5 °C or 23 °F on 14 February 2004. A reading of 45.1 °C (113.2 °F)

539-590: 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

616-400: 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

693-459: 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 ,

770-578: A modern provincial capital and has returned to growth in recent years. Today, Kalamata has the second largest population and mercantile activity in Peloponnese. It makes important exports, particularly of local products such as raisins, olives and olive oil. It is also the seat of the Metropolitan Bishop of Messenia . The current Metropolitan Bishop is Chrysostomus III of Kalamata , since 15 March 2007. Maria Callas Alumni Association of

847-399: A noted library containing ancient manuscripts. Ithomaea ( Ancient Greek : ἰθώμαια ), was an annual festival celebrated at Ithome, in honour of Zeus Ithomatas and originally a musical contest was held. The classical town of Ithome was on the lower west flank of Mount Ithome, which forms a bowl in the side of the mountain. The location was selected as the site for the city of Messene (not

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924-460: 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

1001-450: Is a corruption of the older name Καλάμαι , Kalámai , ' reeds '. The municipality Kalamata was formed as part of the 2011 local government reform by the merger of the following four former municipalities, each of which subsequently became municipal units: The municipality has an area of 440 km (170 sq mi), the area of the municipal unit is 253 km (98 sq mi). The municipal unit of Kalamata

1078-438: Is a subdivision of the municipality of Messene . Mavromati is built around the key feature of the city, one which made its large size possible, a large surface spring flowing out of the mountain through a hole in the rocks. A klepsydra, or "spring catchment," has been maintained as a village watering place. That is it is ancient is shown by the ancient system of channels constructed from it to the ancient urban area below. Mavromati

1155-601: Is at 419 metres (1,375 feet), thus Messene was essentially at 119 metres (390 feet) and Mount Ithome loomed at 681 metres (2,234 feet) over it. As the most defensible point in the surrounding territory, Ithome was the center of Messenian resistance to Sparta during the Messenian Wars in the 7th and 6th centuries BC. Ithome was also the center of the Helot revolt in 465 BC after an earthquake in Sparta, which became known as

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,

1309-490: Is subdivided into the following communities (population according to the 2021 census, settlements within the community listed): Municipal Unit: Local communities: The province of Kalamata ( Greek : Επαρχία Καλαμών ) was one of the provinces of the Messenia Prefecture. Its territory corresponded with that of the current municipalities Kalamata and West Mani . It was abolished in 2006. Kalamata occupies

1386-632: 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

1463-562: 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

1540-657: 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

1617-674: The Hellenic Railways Organisation (OSE). There is a station and a small freight yard in the city, as well as a rolling stock maintenance depot to the north. There used to be a mainline train service to Kyparissia, Pyrgos and Patras, and a suburban service to Messini and the General Hospital. However, in December 2010, all train services from Kalamata, along with those in the rest of the Peloponnese south of Corinth, were discontinued on economic grounds, and

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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

1771-725: The Nedon River at the head of the Messenian Gulf . The 2021 census recorded 72,906 inhabitants for the wider Kalamata Municipality, of which 66,135 resided in the municipal unit of Kalamata, and 58,816 in the city proper. Kalamata is renowned as the land of the Kalamatianos dance, Kalamata olives and Kalamata olive oil. The modern name Kalamáta likely comes from Παναγία η Καλαμάτα , Panagía i Kalamáta , 'Virgin Mary with beautiful eyes'; another hypothesis

1848-544: The Third Messenian War . [REDACTED] Media related to Ithome at Wikimedia Commons Kalamata Kalamata ( Greek : Καλαμάτα [kalaˈmata] ) is the second most populous city of the Peloponnese peninsula in southern Greece after Patras , and the largest city of the homonymous administrative region . As the capital and chief port of the Messenia regional unit, it lies along

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

2002-622: The Ypapanti (27 January through 9 February) is of national importance for the Greek Orthodox Church and, locally, the occasion for a holiday (2 February), when the litany of what is believed to be a miraculous icon, first introduced in 1889, takes place. In late January 2010, the city hosted the Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew to celebrate the 150th anniversary of the cathedral. He was offered

2079-468: 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

2156-417: 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,

2233-674: The " Kingdom of the Morea " ( Italian : Regno di Morea ). During the Venetian occupation the city was developed and thrived economically. However, the Ottomans reoccupied Kalamata in the war of 1715 and controlled it until the Greek War of Independence . Kalamata was the first city to be liberated as the Greeks rose in the Greek War of Independence . On 23 March 1821, it was taken over by

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

2387-466: The Greek revolutionary forces under the command of generals Theodoros Kolokotronis , Petros Mavromichalis and Papaflessas . However, in 1825, the invading Ottoman officer Ibrahim Pasha destroyed the city. In independent Greece, Kalamata was rebuilt and became one of the most important ports in the Mediterranean Sea . It is not surprising that the second-oldest Chamber of Commerce in

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2464-544: 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

2541-549: 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

2618-591: The Gulf of Messenia. The site is highly defensible and yet off the main road; in this case, the Kalamata-Pylos road. Like most ancient names the etymology of Ithome is not certain. It is also the name of a town in Thessaly , although Reece notes evidence that the one in Thessaly was originally called Thome . The pre-independence name Vurcano has had many variants: Vourkano , Voulkanos , Vulcano , Voucano , Boulcano , Dorkano , Voulkani , etc. One of

2695-593: 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

2772-498: The Mediterranean, after that of Marseille , exists in Kalamata. In 1934, a large strike of harbor workers occurred in Kalamata. The strike was violently suppressed by the government, resulting in the death of five workers and two other residents of the town. During World War II on 29 April 1941, a battle was fought near the port between the invading German forces and the 2nd New Zealand Division , for which Jack Hinton

2849-731: The Municipal Gallery, the Archaeological Museum of Messenia and the Folk Art Museum. Kalamata's cathedral of the Ypapanti (Presentation of the Lord to the Temple) nestles beneath the 14th-century Frankish castle. The foundation stone was laid on 25 January 1860, and the building was consecrated on 19 August 1873. It suffered great damage during the 1986 earthquake, but was subsequently restored. The Festival of

2926-759: The Music School of Kalamata / "Maria Callas Museum" There are numerous historical and cultural sights in Kalamata, such as the Villehardouin castle, the Ypapanti Byzantine church, the Kalograion monastery with its silk-weaving workshop where the Kalamata scarves are made, and the municipal railway park. The Church of the Holy Apostles is where Mavromichalis declared the revolt against Ottoman rule in 1821. Art collections are housed at

3003-404: 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),

3080-479: 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

3157-796: 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 ,

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3234-441: 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

3311-528: 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

3388-573: The earliest records of a place called Bulcano is The Domains and Fiefs of the Principality of Achaia , composed for Marie of Bourbon, 1364. The Grand Seneschal of the Kingdom of Naples, Niccolo Acciajuoli , is said to possess Lo Castello de Bulcano (Messene) as a fief. The monastery on top, which dates to no later than the reign of the Byzantine emperor, Andronikos II Paleologus, 1282–1328,

3465-513: The entire lower town as well in the name of the Byzantine emperor, Andronikos II Palaiologos . Constable John Chauderon in vain tried to secure their surrender, and was sent to Constantinople, where Andronikos agreed to hand the town over, but then immediately ordered his governor in Mystras not to do so. In the event, the town was recovered by the Franks through the intercession of a local Greek,

3542-412: 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

3619-657: The fertile Messenian plain, the town experienced a period of prosperity in the 11th–12th centuries, as attested by the five surviving churches built in this period, including the Church of the Holy Apostles, as well as the comments of the Arab geographer al-Idrisi , who calls it a "large and populous" town. Following the Fourth Crusade , Kalamata was conquered by Frankish feudal lords William of Champlitte and Geoffrey of Villehardouin in 1205, when its Byzantine fortress

3696-476: The golden key of the city. The region around Kalamata has provided two Ecumenical patriarchs in the past. Kalamata's Chamber of Commerce is the second-oldest in the Mediterranean after Marseille . Kalamata is well known for its black Kalamata olives . Karelia Tobacco Company has been in operation in Kalamata since 1888. According to the meteorological station in the nearby airport , Kalamata has

3773-476: The hands of his widow, Anna Komnene Doukaina , but when she remarried to Nicholas II of Saint Omer , King Charles of Anjou was loath to see this important castle in the hands of a vassal, and in 1282 Anna exchanged it with lands elsewhere in Messenia. In 1292 or 1293, two local Melingoi Slavic captains managed to capture the castle of Kalamata by a ruse and, aided by 600 of their fellow villagers, took over

3850-444: The higher national divisions in Greek football. It also hosts one of the oldest Greek club, the club Messiniakos FC founded in 1888. Kalamata is twinned with: 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

3927-449: 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

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4004-580: The largest in the Morea—a 1391 document places it, with 300 hearths, on par with Glarentza —but it nevertheless declined in importance throughout the 14th and 15th centuries in favour of other nearby sites like Androusa . Kalamata remained in Frankish hands until near the end of the Principality of Achaea, coming under the control of the Byzantine Despotate of the Morea only in 1428. Kalamata

4081-467: 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

4158-452: 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

4235-465: 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

4312-400: The mountain on the north, an approximately rectangular circuit. The mountain itself protects the east side. These defenses were probably restored, rather than constructed anew, by Epaminondas. Within the lower part of this wide circuit are the ruins of the ancient city. About 300 metres (980 feet) up the slope is the modern village of Mavromati, occupying a small portion of the ancient city. It

4389-643: 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

4466-477: The same as the modern city of Messini ) when it was rebuilt by Epaminondas in 369 BC. Excavations there in recent decades have uncovered evidence of a settlement going back to the Stone Age. The location of Messene is marked by massive city walls that include the east side of the ridge, where they protect the ancient zig-zagging road to the summit, the top of the ridge, a wide area around the bowl and end against

4543-501: The site of an ancient city, the identity of which has been disputed. The name clearly refers to ancient Calamae , but it has been established in the 20th century that the actual site is that of ancient Pharae , a city already mentioned by Homer . It was long believed that the area that the city presently occupies was covered by the sea during ancient times, but the proto-Greek and Archaic-period remains (Temple of Poseidon) that were unearthed at Akovitika region prove otherwise. Pharae

4620-437: 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

4697-420: The summer months, charter and scheduled flights fly direct to Kalamata International Airport from some European cities. A scheduled service by Aegean Airlines once a day linking Kalamata and Athens International Airport commenced in 2010. Kalamata also has four urban bus lines that cross the city and its suburbs. Local specialities: Kalamata hosts a lot of notable sport clubs with earlier presence in

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4774-533: The town. The town and its castle were plundered and destroyed, and alle able-bodied men were carried off to serve as rowers in the Venetian galleys. Morosini returned in 1685, at the start of the Morean War : on 14 September 1685 the Venetians defeated an Ottoman army before Kalamata, and again plundered and destroyed the town's castle, as it was judged obsolete. Kalamata was then ruled by Venice as part of

4851-462: The train station is now closed. A previously disused extension line to the port is now a Railway Park , with old steam engines on display, and a café in the old station building. There is a bus link, operated by the KTEL company, to Tripoli , Corinth , and Athens , with frequent services. Ferries are available to places such as the Greek islands of Kythira and Crete in the summer months. Also in

4928-515: 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

5005-442: 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

5082-407: Was apparently in so bad a state that it could not be defended against them. Thus, the town became part of the Principality of Achaea , and after Champlitte granted its possession to Geoffrey of Villehardouin, the town was the center of the Villehardouins' patrimony in the Principality. Prince William II of Villehardouin was born and died there. After William II's death in 1278, Kalamata remained in

5159-428: 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

5236-459: Was later awarded the Victoria Cross . Kalamata was liberated on 9 September 1944, after a battle between ELAS and the local Nazi collaborators . Kalamata was again in the news on 13 September 1986, when it was hit by an earthquake that measured 6.2 on the surface wave magnitude scale. It was described as "moderately strong" but caused heavy damage throughout the city, killed 20 people and injured 330 others. Kalamata has developed into

5313-399: Was occupied by the Ottomans in 1481. In 1659, during the long war between Ottomans and Venetians over Crete , the Venetian commander Francesco Morosini , captured Kalamata in an effort to divert Ottoman attention from the Siege of Candia , and raise a wider revolt with the Maniots and Arvanites of the Morea. The Venetian fleet took Kalamata without effort, as the Ottomans abandoned

5390-447: Was probably known as Vurkano even then. The Archaeological Museum of Messenia dates the name Vourkano to the 10th century. Mavromati is segmented mavr-oma-ti, "place of the black eye" from mavros, "dark," and omma, "eye," or ommation, "small eye," a common name for springs. The Homeric village of Ithome was probably on the summit, which is flat. In the Bronze Age, a temple dedicated to Zeus Ithomatas (Zeus of Ithome) existed there. It

5467-411: Was rather unimportant in antiquity, and the site continued in obscurity until middle Byzantine times. Kalamata is first mentioned in the 10th-century Life of St. Nikon the Metanoeite with its modern name. Medieval Kalamata was not a port, as the local coast offered no shelter to ships from the weather, but lay further inland, at the foot of the western outliers of Mount Taygetos . As the capital of

5544-485: 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

5621-528: Was reported in the city station which is operated by the National Observatory of Athens on 23 July 2023. Kalamata is accessed by GR-7 / E55 / E65 in the west, and GR-82 runs through Kalamata and into the Taygetus . The motorway to Kalamata from Tripoli is complete. Kalamata is served by a metre gauge railway line of the former Piraeus, Athens and Peloponnese Railways , now owned by

5698-527: Was torn down and rebuilt as a Christian church and monastery no later than the early 14th century from the same stone. In the 17th century this monastery of Panagia Voulkanou, or Moni Voulkanou, was closed, except for a caretaker, to become known as the Old Monastery. The new monastery was constructed on the lower east slope of Eva. It was a staging point in the Greek War of Independence and also houses

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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