Autocephaly recognized by some autocephalous Churches de jure :
68-409: Autocephaly and canonicity recognized by Constantinople and 3 other autocephalous Churches: Spiritual independence recognized by Georgian Orthodox Church: Semi-Autonomous: An Akathist or Acathist Hymn ( Greek : Ἀκάθιστος Ὕμνος , "unseated hymn") is a type of hymn usually recited by Eastern Orthodox and Byzantine Catholic Christians, dedicated to a saint , holy event , or one of
136-577: 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
204-577: 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,
272-525: A collection of Marian hymns within the Georgian Chantbook of Jerusalem that he contends are of primarily pre-Chalcedonian authorship. Following Renoux he argues that the hymns, which are colourful and invocatory, contain theology closest to mid-5th century homilists, bearing witness to a highly developed cult of Mary at an earlier period than previous generations of scholars had appreciated. Reynolds summarises prevailing opinion as being in favour of
340-585: A date for the Akathist "somewhere between the Councils of Epheus and Chalcedon." Similarly, Arentzen observes that most scholars now favour an early provenance. Since the 14th century the Akathist moved from the menaion to the moveable cycle of the triodion , and the custom established that the whole hymn was sung in four sections throughout Lent. As such it became part of the service of the Salutations to
408-508: 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
476-685: A fire occurred at this monastery, and the monks were chanting the Akathist Hymn in front of this icon. Though the fire caused great destruction around it the icon itself remained untouched by the flames. The feast day of the Icon of the Theotokos "Akathist-Hilandar" is celebrated on January 12 (for those churches which follow the Julian Calendar January 12 falls on January 25 of the modern Gregorian Calendar ). A similar icon
544-590: 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
612-400: 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
680-546: A meeting of a plurality of people who come together honestly for this purpose. In other circumstances, partial indulgence is permitted. There are three miraculous icons of the Theotokos on Mount Athos , which are known by the title of "Akathist": This icon "Panagia of the Salutations the Myrrhgusher" is in a chapel of the Dionysiou Monastery where the Akathist is sung daily before it. The inscription on
748-459: 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 ,
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#1732780668460816-520: A short musical phrase, either about the last χαῖρε verse or about allelouia. When the word akathist is used alone, it most commonly refers to the original hymn by this name, the 6th century Akathist to the Theotokos . This hymn is often split into four parts and sung at the "Salutations to the Theotokos" service on the first four Friday evenings in Great Lent ; the entire Akathist is then sung on
884-460: 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
952-555: Is reflected within the synaxarion. When an akathist is chanted by itself, the Usual beginning , a series of prayers which include the Trisagion (thrice-holy) is often said as a prelude to the akathist hymn. The akathist may also be included as a part of another service, such as Matins or a Molieben . One of the exceptional features of this Akathist is its acrostic style; the Greek original consists of 24 oikoi, each one beginning with
1020-1000: 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 Triodion The Triodion ( Greek : Τριῴδιον , Triōdion ; Church Slavonic : Постнаѧ Трїωдь , Postnaya Triod ; Romanian : Triodul , Albanian : Triod/Triodi ), also called
1088-763: 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,
1156-632: 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
1224-488: Is venerated in the Monastery of Zographou . The feast day of the Icon of the Theotokos "Akathist-Zographou" is celebrated on October 10 (October 23). 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
1292-562: 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
1360-657: 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
1428-516: 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
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#17327806684601496-602: The Lenten Triodion ( Τριῴδιον κατανυκτικόν , Triodion katanyktikon ), is a liturgical book used by the Eastern Orthodox and Byzantine Catholic churches. The book contains the propers for the fasting period preceding Pascha (Easter) and for the weeks leading up to the fast. The canons for weekday Matins in the Triodion contain only three odes and so are known as "triodes", after which
1564-497: The Theotokos herself. The hymn itself forms an alphabetical acrostic—that is, each oikos begins with a letter of the Greek alphabet, in order—and it consists of twelve long and twelve short oikoi . Each of the long oikoi include a seven-line stanza followed by six couplets employing rhyme, assonance and alliteration, beginning with the greeting Chaíre and ending with the refrain, "Rejoice, Bride without bridegroom!" (also translated as "Rejoice, thou Bride unwedded!") In
1632-780: 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
1700-468: 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
1768-417: 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,
1836-566: 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
1904-433: The Akathist; the elegance, antithetic and balanced style, the vividness of the narrative, the flowers of poetic imagery being all very suggestive of his work. His position as sacristan would naturally suggest such a tribute to the Theotokos , as the hymn only gives more elaborately the sentiments condensed into two epigrams of Pisida found in her church at Blachernae . Quercius also argues that words, phrases, and sentences of
1972-544: 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
2040-549: 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
2108-593: 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
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2176-466: The Slavic traditions as a genre of its own as part of the general composition of an akolouthia , although not all compositions are widely known nor translated beyond the original language. Reader Isaac E. Lambertsen has done a large amount of translation work, including many different akathists. Most of the newer akathists are pastiche, that is, a generic form imitating the original 6th-century akathist to
2244-594: The Theotokos (used in the Byzantine tradition during Great Lent ). Apart from its usual dedication to the menaion and the early custom to celebrate kontakia during the Pannychis (festive night vigil celebrated at the Blachernae chapel ), the Akathist had also the political function to celebrate military victories or to ask during wars for divine protection intermediated by prayers of the Theotokos. This function
2312-450: The Theotokos into which a particular saint's name is inserted. In the Greek, Arabic, and Russian Old Rite traditions, the only akathist permitted in formal liturgical use is the original akathist. The Enchiridion Indulgentiarum of 2004 confirmed the plenary indulgence on condition that it is recited piously in a church or oratory (even alone), in a family, religious community , an association of Christ's faithful or, more generally, in
2380-773: The Triodion takes its name. The period which the book covers extends from the Sunday of the Publican and Pharisee (the tenth week before Pascha: twenty-two days before the beginning of Great Lent), and concludes with the Midnight Office of Holy Saturday . The Triodion contains the propers for: In the edition of the Lenten Triodion used by the Old Believers and those who follow the Ruthenian recension,
2448-404: 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),
2516-479: 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
2584-544: The back of the icon states it was a gift to Saint Dionysius by Emperor Alexios III Komnenos , upon his visit to Trebizond in Asia Minor. According to tradition, this is the icon that Patriarch Sergius carried in procession around the walls of Constantinople in 626 A.D. when the city was attacked by the Persians and Avars. The icon of the Theotokos "Of the Akathist" is on the iconostasis of Hilandar Monastery. In 1837
2652-432: The basis of theological content. Cunningham concurs with Peltomaa's analysis of the hymn's Christology but postulates, from its "highly developed poetic form" and elaborate invocations of Mary, a somewhat later provenance of the latter 5th/early 6th century. In contrast, Shoemaker reasons that "Peltomaa's [arguments] for dating the Akathist hymn to the period before Chalcedon would seem to apply equally if not even more so" for
2720-590: The classical repertoire of 80 kontakia sung during the cathedral rite of the Hagia Sophia , though recent scholarship rejects this authorship like in cases of many other kontakia of the core repertoire. According to the synaxary the origin of the feast is assigned by the Synaxarion to the year 626, when Constantinople , in the reign of Heraclius , was attacked by the Persians and Avars but saved through
2788-796: 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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2856-441: 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
2924-528: 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
2992-471: The exclamation: Alleluia, which is repeated by a choir in full settings or chanted by the reader in simple settings. Within the latter part of the oikos comes an anaphoric entreaty, such as Come or Rejoice. For example, the Akathist to the Theotokos: The thirteenth kontakion (which, unlike the preceding twelve, does not have a corresponding oikos ) is usually followed by the repetition of
3060-412: 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
3128-599: The feast may have originated, the Synaxarion commemorates two other victories, under Leo III the Isaurian , and Constantine Pogonatus , similarly ascribed to the intervention of the Theotokos. No certain ascription of its authorship can be made. It has been attributed to Patriarch Sergius I of Constantinople , whose pious activities the Synaxarion commemorates in great detail. J.M. Quercius (1777) assigns it to George Pisida , deacon, archivist, and sacristan of Hagia Sophia whose poems find an echo both in style and in theme in
3196-594: The fifth Friday evening. Traditionally it is included in the Orthros (Matins) of the Fifth Saturday of Great Lent, which for this reason is known as the "Saturday of the Akathist". In monasteries of Athonite tradition, the whole Akathist is usually inserted nightly at Compline . The four sections into which the Akathist is divided correspond to the themes of the Annunciation , Nativity , Christ , and
3264-489: The first oikos and kontakion . After the thirteen kontakia and oikoi , additional prayers are added, such as a troparion and another kontakion . The final kontakion is the famous " Tē i Hypermáchō i Stratēgō i " ("Unto the Defender General"), a hymn addressing Mary as the savior of Constantinople in the 626 siege: Another characteristic feature of the Akathist is the extraordinary length of
3332-402: The hymn are to be found in the poetry of Pisida. Leclercq finds nothing absolutely demonstrative in such a comparison and offers a suggestion which may possibly help to a solution of the problem. Before the turn of the 21st century the Akathist was usually assigned to the 6th or 7th century but more recent scholarship, driven by the work of Leena Peltomaa, has argued for a 5th century origin on
3400-659: The intervention of the Most Holy Theotokos . "From that time, therefore, the Church , in memory of so great and so divine a miracle, desired this day to be a feast in honour of the Mother of God ... and called it Acathistus" (Synaxarion). This origin is disputed by Sophocles on the grounds that the hymn could not have been composed in one day, and its twenty-four oikoi contain no allusion to such an event and therefore could not have been composed to commemorate it. However
3468-449: 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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#17327806684603536-467: 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
3604-538: The making of prostrations are set by an intricate set of rules, as well as individual discretion. Only during readings of the Gospel and the singing of Akathists is standing considered mandatory for all. The akathist par excellence is the one written for the feast of Annunciation of the Theotokos (25 March). This kontakion was traditionally attributed to Romanos the Melodist since kontakia of Romanos dominated
3672-452: 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
3740-465: 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
3808-582: The next letter of the alphabet. Due to the excessive length the kontakion became truncated like the others, but even the earliest chant books with musical notation (the Tipografsky Ustav , for instance) have the complete text of all 24 oikoi written out, but the last 23 oikoi without musical notation. The hymn itself is divided into thirteen parts, each of which is composed of a kontakion and an oikos (Greek: οίκος, house, possibly derived from Syriac terminology). The kontakion usually ends with
3876-731: The persons of the Holy Trinity . The name derives from the fact that during the chanting of the hymn, or sometimes the whole service, the congregation is expected to remain standing in reverence, without sitting down (ἀ-, a- , "without, not" and κάθισις, káthisis , "sitting"), except for the aged or infirm. The Akathist is also known by the first three words of its prooimion (preamble), Têi hypermáchōi strategôi (Τῇ ὑπερμάχῳ στρατηγῷ, "To you, invincible champion") addressed to Holy Mary (Panagia Theotokos, "The all-holy birth-giver of God"). During Byzantine Catholic and Orthodox Christian religious services in general, sitting, standing, bowing and
3944-537: The refrain or ephymnion which consists of a great number of verses beginning with χαῖρε (“Rejoice”) which are called in Greek Chairetismoi (Χαιρετισμοί, "Rejoicings") or in Arabic Madayeh , respectively; in the Slavic tradition these are known as Khayretizmy (Хайретизмы). The chairetismoi are only repeated in every second oikos, and from a musical point of view the ephymnion consists just of
4012-643: 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
4080-468: The short oikoi, the seven-line stanza is followed by the refrain, Alleluia . The Salutations to the Theotokos service, often known by its Greek name, the Χαιρετισμοί/Chairetismoí (from the Χαίρε/Chaíre! so often used in the hymn), consists of Compline with the Akathist hymn inserted. It is known in Arabic as the Madayeh . The writing of akathists (occasionally spelled acathist ) developed within
4148-437: 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
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#17327806684604216-574: 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
4284-557: 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
4352-556: 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
4420-430: 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
4488-453: 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
4556-637: 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
4624-450: 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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