Cypriot National Guard
56-467: Operation Niki ( Greek : Επιχείρηση Νίκη ), named after the goddess Nike , was a clandestine airlift operation during the Turkish invasion of Cyprus that was carried out on 21–22 July 1974, with the aim of transporting a battalion of Greek commandos from Souda , Crete to Nicosia , Cyprus . Upon their arrival, the aircraft were engaged in friendly fire , which resulted in the loss of 33 men and
112-577: 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,
168-558: 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
224-560: 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
280-540: 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
336-658: A policy of non-alignment . After a military coup in April 1967, a right-wing military junta seized power in Athens . The Greek juntists suspected Makarios for not being truly in favor of unification and prepared five plans to overthrow him between 1971 and 1974. Eventually, on 15 July 1974, a military coup d'état orchestrated by the Cypriot National Guard and the junta of Athens succeeded in deposing Makarios and replacing him with nationalist Nikos Sampson . On
392-804: 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
448-773: 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 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
504-479: 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
560-519: 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
616-934: 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 354 %CE%9C%CE%BF%CE%AF%CF%81%CE%B1 %CE%A4%CE%B1%CE%BA%CF%84%CE%B9%CE%BA%CF%8E%CE%BD %CE%9C%CE%B5%CF%84%CE%B1%CF%86%CE%BF%CF%81%CF%8E%CE%BD From Misplaced Pages,
SECTION 10
#1732798548315672-526: 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 the predominant sources of international scientific vocabulary . Greek has been spoken in the Balkan peninsula since around
728-763: 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,
784-650: 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 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
840-495: 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
896-516: 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
952-462: The article wizard to submit a draft for review, or request a new article . Search for " 354 Μοίρα Τακτικών Μεταφορών " in existing articles. Look for pages within Misplaced Pages that link to this title . Other reasons this message may be displayed: If a page was recently created here, it may not be visible yet because of a delay in updating the database; wait a few minutes or try
1008-492: 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
1064-470: 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 is matched only by the now-extinct Anatolian languages . The Greek language is conventionally divided into
1120-486: 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
1176-425: 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
SECTION 20
#17327985483151232-495: 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
1288-629: 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
1344-685: The Greek-Albanian border. A significant percentage of Albania's population has knowledge of the Greek language due in part to the Albanian wave of immigration to Greece in the 1980s and '90s and the Greek community in the country. Prior to the Greco-Turkish War and the resulting population exchange in 1923 a very large population of Greek-speakers also existed in Turkey , though very few remain today. A small Greek-speaking community
1400-404: 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),
1456-497: The aircraft were engaged by Cypriot National Guard anti-aircraft gunners of the 195 MEA/AP battalion, who were uninformed about their arrival and mistook them for a Turkish airborne assault. As a result, the 4th Noratlas ( Niki-4 ) received heavy fire and was shot down two miles short of the runway with the loss of four crew and 27 commandos. Two more commandos were killed and 10 wounded on-board Niki-6 , which landed with both engines severely damaged. One more Noratlas aircraft ( Niki-3 )
1512-402: 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
1568-481: The destruction of three aircraft. Since the 1950s, Greece had established a foreign policy favoring the union of Cyprus with Greece. In 1960, the Republic of Cyprus was established with Greek Cypriots and Turkish Cypriots being its two founding communities. Archbishop Makarios was elected as its first President . Makarios came to believe that unification of the island with Greece was not possible and pursued
1624-404: 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 the various stages of
1680-799: The entire transport fleet of the Hellenic Air Force at the time. The unit chosen was the A' Raider Squadron , reinforced with men from the amphibious-capable C' Raider Squadron. Thus, in the late afternoon of July 21, a fleet of 20 Noratlas and 10 C-47 aircraft were relocated to Souda airport, base of the 115th Combat Wing [ el ] . According to orders, the transport aircraft would secretly take off at night with five minutes separation and fly without fighter escort. To avoid detection, they would fly at altitudes below 200 ft in full radio silence with minimum lights and no visual contact between them. They would land in Nicosia, unload
1736-618: 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 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
Operation Niki - Misplaced Pages Continue
1792-549: The events in Cyprus. The remains of Niki-4 and the bodies of most of the men it carried were hastily buried on a hill, which is now a military cemetery and war memorial known as Makedonitissa Tomb . In summer 2015, excavations started at Makedonitissa with the aim to recover any human remains. After 14 months, DNA identification of those on board was completed and the remains of 16 Greek soldiers were handed over to their relatives in early October, 2016, 42 years after their death. Operation Niki has been characterized as suicidal. It
1848-527: The exception of the order to Lt Cdr E. Handrinos to turn back his vessel (L-172 Lesvos ) and disembark the ELDYK troops he had picked up the previous day, Operation Niki marked the only materialized Greek attempt to reinforce the defense of Cyprus during the invasion. No military investigation was ever ordered regarding the circumstances of the loss of Niki-4 and neither was anyone ever held responsible. The Greek junta collapsed on 23 July 1974, mainly because of
1904-452: 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 , the vernacular form of Modern Greek proper, and Katharevousa , meaning 'purified', a compromise between Dimotiki and Ancient Greek developed in
1960-441: The force and take off immediately for the return to Greece under the cover of darkness. Each aircraft would carry four airmen (two pilots, a flight engineer and a navigator ) and approximately 30 commandos with their weapons and ammunition. It was estimated that the 750 km flight to Cyprus would last around three hours. As a result, the latest time at which an aircraft could take off, fly to Cyprus, unload and depart before dawn
2016-933: The 💕 Look for 354 Μοίρα Τακτικών Μεταφορών on one of Misplaced Pages's sister projects : [REDACTED] Wiktionary (dictionary) [REDACTED] Wikibooks (textbooks) [REDACTED] Wikiquote (quotations) [REDACTED] Wikisource (library) [REDACTED] Wikiversity (learning resources) [REDACTED] Commons (media) [REDACTED] Wikivoyage (travel guide) [REDACTED] Wikinews (news source) [REDACTED] Wikidata (linked database) [REDACTED] Wikispecies (species directory) Misplaced Pages does not have an article with this exact name. Please search for 354 Μοίρα Τακτικών Μεταφορών in Misplaced Pages to check for alternative titles or spellings. You need to log in or create an account and be autoconfirmed to create new articles. Alternatively, you can use
2072-439: 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
2128-467: 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
2184-640: 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
2240-441: 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
2296-399: 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
Operation Niki - Misplaced Pages Continue
2352-536: 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 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
2408-706: 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
2464-587: The order of their departure, receiving codes Niki-1 to Niki-15 . The remaining five Noratlases and all the C-47 did not take off. The Cypriot National Guard lacked an air force, hence Turkey had full air superiority over the island. Turkish Air Force had bombed Nicosia airport and only one third of the runway was usable. Of the 15 Noratlases that took off, 13 made it to Cyprus and the remaining two landed on Crete and Rhodes due to mechanical problems. Upon arrival at Nicosia International Airport at around 02:00 AM,
2520-515: The pretext of a peacekeeping operation, Turkey took military action code-named Operation Atilla and invaded Cyprus on 20 July 1974. The Greek leadership in Athens was largely taken by surprise. The political situation deteriorated rapidly due to the Turkish invasion and the junta was soon at the verge of total collapse. Despite an initial order for implementation, the existing military plans for
2576-417: The reinforcement of the defenses in Cyprus were cancelled. In a climate of confusion and indecision, it was eventually decided to send one commando battalion by air. An initial plan to airlift a battalion based in northern Greece from Thessaloniki airport using requisitioned Boeing 720 aircraft of Olympic Airways was cancelled. Later, it was decided to airlift another unit from Souda airport , using almost
2632-437: 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
2688-433: Was 24:00. The first plane departed Souda at around 22:35 and the departure plan was followed by the first five aircraft. Afterwards, several delays resulted in only 13 Noratlas aircraft of the 354th Tactical Transport Squadron [ el ] managing to take off before the midnight time limit and 2 after the midnight limit against orders but not all managing to land due to time constraints. These planes were numbered in
2744-574: 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
2800-568: 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
2856-557: 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
SECTION 50
#17327985483152912-666: Was badly damaged and could not take off again. Another aircraft ( Niki-12 ) did not have sufficient fuel for the return flight. These aircraft were destroyed on the ground by the co-pilot and the engineer of Niki 12, following orders of the Hellenic Air Force Headquarters. The rationale for doing so was that Greece was not officially at war with Turkey, thus any evidence of Greek involvement in the operations in Cyprus should be erased. The remaining nine aircraft managed to return safely to Greece after unloading their troops. The transported Greek commando unit, which
2968-517: Was given the Greek Cypriot designation 35th Raider Squadron (35 MK), fought during the Battle of Nicosia Airport being crucial in its defense and successfully defended the airport. They also fought during the second Turkish invasion of August 1974 and contributed decisively to preventing Nicosia from falling into Turkish hands. Ironically, the unit had no casualties in the battlefield. With
3024-598: Was ill-prepared and used unreliable, ageing aircraft and aircraft crews and commandos were unfamiliar with the terrain at their destination. Ground forces at Nicosia had not been notified in time about their arrival. The operation had no tactical justification but merely a symbolic and morale-boosting character. The rationale of an airlift instead of an airdrop operation has also been criticized. Greek language Greek ( Modern Greek : Ελληνικά , romanized : Elliniká , [eliniˈka] ; Ancient Greek : Ἑλληνική , romanized : Hellēnikḗ )
3080-580: 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
3136-673: 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
#314685