102-459: Manolada ( Greek : Μανολάδα ) is a village and a community in the municipal unit of Vouprasia , Elis , Greece . It is situated in a vast, rural plain near the Ionian Sea , 2 km northwest of Varda , 3 km west of Nea Manolada and 40 km southwest of Patras . The community includes the small villages of Brinia, Karvounaiika, Loutra Yrminis, Mega Pefko and Samaraiika. The area
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,
306-567: A collection of heroic sagas from the 12th century that was later collated in a verse epic , was the first literary work completely written in the vernacular. The Greek vernacular verse epic appeared in the 12th century, around the time of the French romance novel, almost as a backlash to the Attic renaissance during the dynasty of the Komnenoi in works like Psellos 's Chronography (in the middle of
408-558: 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
510-560: 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
612-540: 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
714-488: A major imperial residence like other cities such as Trier , Milan and Sirmium , was not officially a capital until 359. Nonetheless, the imperial court resided there and the city was the political centre of the eastern parts of the Roman Empire where Greek was the dominant language. At first, Latin remained the language of both the court and the army. It was used for official documents, but its influence waned. From
816-470: A rule of Medieval Greek phonotactics that would persist into Early Modern Greek . When dialects started deleting unstressed /i/ and /u/ between two consonants (such as when Myzithras became Mystras ), new clusters were formed and similarly assimilated by sandhi; on the other hand it is arguable that the dissimilation of voiceless obstruents occurred before the loss of close vowels, as the clusters resulting from this development do not necessarily undergo
918-515: A slate pencil. This cursive script already showed descenders and ascenders, as well as combinations of letters. In the third century, the Greek uncial developed under the influence of the Latin script because of the need to write on papyrus with a reed pen. In the Middle Ages, uncial became the main script for the Greek language. A common feature of the medieval majuscule script like the uncial
1020-527: Is synizesis ("merging" of vowels). In many words with the combinations [ˈea] , [ˈeo] , [ˈia] and [ˈio] , the stress shifted to the second vowel, and the first became a glide [j] . Thus: Ῥωμαῖος [ro'meos] → Ῥωμιός [ro'mɲos] ('Roman'), ἐννέα [e'nea] → ἐννιά [e'ɲa] ('nine'), ποῖος ['pios] → ποιός ['pços] ('which'), τα παιδία [ta pe'ðia] → τα παιδιά [ta pe'ðʝa] ('the children'). This accentual shift
1122-504: Is a striking reduction of inflectional categories inherited from Indo-European , especially in the verbal system, and a complementary tendency of developing new analytical formations and periphrastic constructions. In morphology , the inflectional paradigms of declension , conjugation and comparison were regularised through analogy. Thus, in nouns, the Ancient Greek third declension, which showed an unequal number of syllables in
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#17327728701521224-480: Is already reflected in the metre of the 6th century hymns of Romanos the Melodist . In many cases, the vowel o disappeared in the endings -ιον [-ion] and -ιος [-ios] ( σακκίον [sa'cion] → σακκίν [sa'cin] , χαρτίον [xar'tion] → χαρτίν [xar'tin] , κύριος ['cyrios] → κύρις ['cyris] ). This phenomenon
1326-804: 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
1428-773: 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
1530-479: 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
1632-545: Is an abundance of abbreviations (e.g. ΧϹ for "Christos") and ligatures. Several letters of the uncial ( ϵ for Ε , Ϲ for Σ , Ѡ for Ω ) were also used as majuscules especially in a sacral context. The lunate sigma was adopted in this form as " С " in the Cyrillic script. The Greek uncial used the interpunct in order to separate sentences for the first time, but there were still no spaces between words. The Greek minuscule script, which probably emerged from
1734-487: Is assumed that most of the developments leading to the phonology of Modern Greek had either already taken place in Medieval Greek and its Hellenistic period predecessor Koine Greek , or were continuing to develop during this period. Above all, these developments included the establishment of dynamic stress , which had already replaced the tonal system of Ancient Greek during the Hellenistic period. In addition,
1836-956: Is attested to have begun earlier, in the Hellenistic Koine Greek papyri. The shift in the consonant system from voiced plosives /b/ ( β ), /d/ ( δ ), /ɡ/ ( γ ) and aspirated voiceless plosives /pʰ/ ( φ ), /tʰ/ ( θ ), /kʰ/ ( χ ) to corresponding fricatives ( /v, ð, ɣ/ and /f, θ, x/ , respectively) was already completed during Late Antiquity . However, the original voiced plosives remained as such after nasal consonants, with [mb] ( μβ ), [nd] ( νδ ), [ŋɡ] ( γγ ). The velar sounds /k, x, ɣ, ŋk, ŋɡ/ ( κ , χ , γ , γκ , γγ ) were realised as palatal allophones ( [c, ç, ʝ, ɲc, ɲɟ] ) before front vowels. The fricative /h/ , which had been present in Classical Greek, had been lost early on, although it continued to be reflected in spelling through
1938-412: Is grouped together with ε /e̞/ ; ει and η together with ι /i/ ; ο with ω /o̞/ , and οι with υ /y/ . At least in educated speech, the vowel /y/ , which had also merged with υι , likely did not lose lip-rounding and become /i/ until the 10th/11th centuries. Up to this point, transliterations into Georgian continue using a different letter for υ/οι than for ι/ει/η , and in
2040-574: Is more an assumption of political, as opposed to cultural and linguistic, developments. Indeed, by this time the spoken language, particularly pronunciation, had already shifted towards modern forms. The conquests of Alexander the Great , and the ensuing Hellenistic period , had caused Greek to spread to peoples throughout Anatolia and the Eastern Mediterranean, altering the spoken language's pronunciation and structure. Medieval Greek
2142-519: 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
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#17327728701522244-403: Is reduced to the forms λαμβ- [lamb-] ( imperfective or present system) and λαβ- [lav-] ( perfective or aorist system). One of the numerous forms that disappeared was the dative . It was replaced in the 10th century by the genitive and the prepositional construction of εἰς [is] ('in, to') + accusative . In addition, nearly all the participles and
2346-516: Is some dispute as to when exactly this development took place but apparently it began during the Byzantine period. The graphemes μπ , ντ and γκ for /b/ , /d/ and /ɡ/ can already be found in transcriptions from neighboring languages in Byzantine sources, like in ντερβίσης [der'visis] , from Turkish : derviş (' dervish '). On the other hand, some scholars contend that post-nasal voicing of voiceless plosives began already in
2448-915: 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 Medieval Greek Medieval Greek (also known as Middle Greek , Byzantine Greek , or Romaic )
2550-526: 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
2652-763: 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,
2754-429: Is strictly differentiated from ἔρως [ˈeros] , ('physical love'). In everyday usage, some old Greek stems were replaced, for example, the expression for "wine" where the word κρασίον [kraˈsion] ('mixture') replaced the old Greek οἶνος [oînos] . The word ὄψον [ˈopson] (meaning 'something you eat with bread') combined with the suffix -αριον [-arion] , which
2856-650: 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
2958-488: Is the almost complete loss of the infinitive , which has been replaced by subordinate clauses with the particle να. Possibly transmitted through Greek, this phenomenon can also be found in the adjacent languages and dialects of the Balkans. Bulgarian and Romanian , for example, are in many respects typologically similar to medieval and present day Greek, although genealogically they are not closely related. Besides
3060-695: Is the link between this vernacular , known as Koine Greek , and Modern Greek . Though Byzantine Greek literature was still strongly influenced by Attic Greek , it was also influenced by vernacular Koine Greek, which is the language of the New Testament and the liturgical language of the Greek Orthodox Church . Constantine (the Great) moved the capital of the Roman Empire to Byzantium (renamed Constantinople) in 330. The city, though
3162-583: Is the stage of the Greek language between the end of classical antiquity in the 5th–6th centuries and the end of the Middle Ages , conventionally dated to the Ottoman conquest of Constantinople in 1453. From the 7th century onwards, Greek was the only language of administration and government in the Byzantine Empire . This stage of language is thus described as Byzantine Greek. The study of
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3264-512: The Attic literary language and the constantly developing vernacular Koine . By late antiquity, the gap had become impossible to ignore. In the Byzantine era, written Greek manifested itself in a whole spectrum of divergent registers , all of which were consciously archaic in comparison with the contemporary spoken vernacular, but in different degrees. They ranged from a moderately archaic style employed for most every-day writing and based mostly on
3366-495: 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
3468-516: 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
3570-456: The comparative of adjectives ending in -ων , -ιον , [-oːn, -ion] which was partly irregular, was gradually replaced by the formation using the more regular suffix -τερος , -τέρα (-τερη) , -τερο(ν) , [-teros, -tera (-teri), -tero(n)] : µείζων [méːzdoːn] → µειζότερος [mi'zoteros] ('the bigger'). The enclitic genitive forms of the first and second person personal pronoun , as well as
3672-441: The contracted verbs ending in -άω [-aoː] , -έω [-eoː] etc., which earlier showed a complex set of vowel alternations, readopted the endings of the regular forms: ἀγαπᾷ [aɡapâːi] → ἀγαπάει [aɣaˈpai] ('he loves'). The use of the past tense prefix, known as augment , was gradually limited to regular forms in which the augment was required to carry word stress. Reduplication in
3774-492: 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
3876-418: The particles να and θενά , the negation particle δέν [ðen] ('not') was derived from Ancient Greek : oὐδέν [uːdén] ('nothing'). Lexicographic changes in Medieval Greek influenced by Christianity can be found for instance in words like ἄγγελος [ˈaɲɟelos] ('messenger') → heavenly messenger → angel) or ἀγάπη [aˈɣapi] 'love' → 'altruistic love', which
3978-412: The rough breathing , a diacritic mark added to vowels. Changes in the phonological system mainly affect consonant clusters that show sandhi processes. In clusters of two different plosives or two different fricatives , there is a tendency for dissimilation such that the first consonant becomes a fricative and/or the second becomes a plosive ultimately favoring a fricative-plosive cluster. But if
4080-652: The 11th century) or the Alexiad , the biography of Emperor Alexios I Komnenos written by his daughter Anna Komnena about a century later. In fifteen-syllable blank verse (versus politicus), the Digenes Akritas deals with both ancient and medieval heroic sagas, but also with stories of animals and plants. The Chronicle of the Morea , a verse chronicle from the 14th century, is unique. It has also been preserved in French, Italian and Aragonese versions, and covers
4182-410: The 13th century, examples of texts written in vernacular Greek are very rare. They are restricted to isolated passages of popular acclamations , sayings, and particularly common or untranslatable formulations which occasionally made their way into Greek literature. Since the end of the 11th century, vernacular Greek poems from the literary realm of Constantinople are documented. The Digenes Akritas ,
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4284-470: 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
4386-559: The Arabs in the course of the Muslim conquests a few years later. Alexandria , a centre of Greek culture and language, fell to the Arabs in 642. During the seventh and eighth centuries, Greek was gradually replaced by Arabic as an official language in conquered territories such as Egypt, as more people learned Arabic. Thus, the use of Greek declined early on in Syria and Egypt. The invasion of
4488-688: The Black Sea coast of Asia Minor, and Cappadocian , spoken in central Asia Minor, began to diverge. In Griko , a language spoken in the southern Italian exclaves , and in Tsakonian , which is spoken on the Peloponnese, dialects of older origin continue to be used today. Cypriot Greek was already in a literary form in the late Middle Ages, being used in the Assizes of Cyprus and the chronicles of Leontios Makhairas and Georgios Boustronios . It
4590-659: The Byzantine emperors were active writers themselves and wrote chronicles or works on the running of the Byzantine state and strategic or philological works. Furthermore, letters, legal texts, and numerous registers and lists in Medieval Greek exist. Concessions to spoken Greek can be found, for example, in John Malalas's Chronography from the 6th century, the Chronicle of Theophanes the Confessor (9th century) and
4692-486: 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
4794-425: 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
4896-495: 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
4998-614: The Greek language, for example ὁσπίτιον [oˈspition] ( Latin : hospitium , 'hostel', therefore "house", σπίτι [ˈspiti] in Modern Greek ), σέλλα [ˈsela] ('saddle'), ταβέρνα [taˈverna] ('tavern'), κανδήλιον [kanˈdilion] ( Latin : candela , 'candle'), φούρνος [ˈfurnos] ( Latin : furnus , 'oven') and φλάσκα [ˈflaska] ( Latin : flasco , 'wine bottle'). Other influences on Medieval Greek arose from contact with neighboring languages and
5100-629: 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
5202-685: 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
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#17327728701525304-531: The Koine , as interchanges with β , δ , and γ in this position are found in the papyri. The prenasalized voiced spirants μβ , νδ and γγ were still plosives by this time, causing a merger between μβ/μπ , νδ/ντ and γγ/γκ , which would remain except within educated varieties, where spelling pronunciations did make for segments such as [ɱv, n̪ð, ŋɣ] Many decisive changes between Ancient and Modern Greek were completed by c. 1100 AD. There
5406-488: The Medieval Greek language and literature is a branch of Byzantine studies , the study of the history and culture of the Byzantine Empire. The beginning of Medieval Greek is occasionally dated back to as early as the 4th century, either to 330 AD, when the political centre of the Roman Empire was moved to Constantinople , or to 395 AD, the division of the empire. However, this approach is rather arbitrary as it
5508-478: The Modern Greek future particle θα Medieval Greek : [θa] , which replaced the old future forms. Ancient formations like the genitive absolute , the accusative and infinitive and nearly all common participle constructions were gradually substituted by the constructions of subordinate clauses and the newly emerged gerund . The most noticeable grammatical change in comparison to ancient Greek
5610-579: The Peloponnese in 1459 or 1460, the Empire of Trebizond in 1461, Athens in 1465, and two centuries later the Duchy of Candia in 1669, the Greek language lost its status as a national language until the emergence of modern Greece in the year 1821. Language varieties after 1453 are referred to as Modern Greek. As early as in the Hellenistic period , there was a tendency towards a state of diglossia between
5712-662: The Slavs into the Balkan Peninsula reduced the area where Greek and Latin was spoken (roughly north of a line from Montenegro to Varna on the Black Sea in Bulgaria ). Sicily and parts of Magna Graecia , Cyprus, Asia Minor and more generally Anatolia, parts of the Crimean Peninsula remained Greek-speaking. The southern Balkans which would henceforth be contested between Byzantium and various Slavic kingdoms or empires. The Greek language spoken by one-third of
5814-404: 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),
5916-402: 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
6018-558: The beginning of the 6th century, amendments to the law were mostly written in Greek. Furthermore, parts of the Roman Corpus Iuris Civilis were gradually translated into Greek. Under the rule of Emperor Heraclius (610–641 AD), who also assumed the Greek title Basileus ( Greek : βασιλεύς , 'monarch') in 610, Greek became the official language of the Eastern Roman Empire . This was in spite of
6120-812: The change to [fricative + stop], e.g. κ(ου)τί as [kti] not [xti] . The resulting clusters were: For plosives: For fricatives where the second was not /s/ : For fricatives where the second was /s/ : The disappearance of /n/ in word-final position, which had begun sporadically in Late Antiquity, became more widespread, excluding certain dialects such as South Italian and Cypriot. The nasals /m/ and /n/ also disappeared before voiceless fricatives, for example νύμφη ['nyɱfi] → νύφη ['nifi] , ἄνθος ['an̪θos] → ἄθος ['aθos] . A new set of voiced plosives [(m)b] , [(n)d] and [(ŋ)ɡ] developed through voicing of voiceless plosives after nasals . There
6222-558: The cursive writing in Syria , appears more and more frequently from the 9th century onwards. It is the first script that regularly uses accents and spiritus, which had already been developed in the 3rd century BC. This very fluent script, with ascenders and descenders and many possible combinations of letters, is the first to use gaps between words. The last forms which developed in the 12th century were Iota subscript and word-final sigma ( ς ). The type for Greek majuscules and minuscules that
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#17327728701526324-407: The different cases, was adjusted to the regular first and second declension by forming a new nominative form out of the oblique case forms: Ancient Greek ὁ πατήρ [ho patɛ́ːr] → Modern Greek ὁ πατέρας [o pa'teras] , in analogy to the accusative form τὸν πατέρα [tom ba'tera] . Feminine nouns ending in -ις [-is] and -ας [-as] formed
6426-404: 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
6528-483: The east, had become extinct and replaced by Greek by the 5th century. In any case, all cities of the Eastern Roman Empire were strongly influenced by the Greek language. In the period between 603 and 619, the southern and eastern parts of the empire ( Syria , Egypt , North Africa ) were occupied by Persian Sassanids and, after being recaptured by Heraclius in the years 622 to 628, were conquered by
6630-618: 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
6732-399: The fact that the inhabitants of the empire still considered themselves Rhomaioi ('Romans') until its end in 1453, as they saw their State as the perpetuation of Roman rule. Latin continued to be used on the coinage until the ninth century and in certain court ceremonies for even longer. Despite the absence of reliable demographic figures, it has been estimated that less than one third of
6834-431: The first consonant was a fricative and the second consonant was /s/ , the first consonant instead became a plosive, favoring a plosive- /s/ cluster. Medieval Greek also had cluster voicing harmony favoring the voice of the final plosive or fricative; when the resulting clusters became voiceless, the aforementioned sandhi would further apply. This process of assimilation and sandhi was highly regular and predictable, forming
6936-452: 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
7038-403: The genitive forms of the third person demonstrative pronoun , developed into unstressed enclitic possessive pronouns that were attached to nouns: µου [mu] , σου [su] , του [tu] , της [tis] , µας [mas] , σας [sas] , των [ton] . Irregularities in verb inflection were also reduced through analogy. Thus,
7140-748: The history of Frankish feudalism on the Peloponnese during the Latinokratia of the Principality of Achaea , a crusader state set up after the Fourth Crusade and the 13th century fall of Constantinople . The earliest evidence of prose vernacular Greek exists in some documents from southern Italy written in the tenth century. Later prose literature consists of statute books, chronicles and fragments of religious, historical and medical works. The dualism of literary language and vernacular
7242-513: The imperative forms of the 3rd person were lost. The subjunctive was replaced by the construction of subordinate clauses with the conjunctions ὅτι [ˈoti] ('that') and ἵνα [ˈina] ('so that'). ἵνα first became ἱνά [iˈna] and was later shortened to να [na] . By the end of the Byzantine era, the construction θέλω να [ˈθelo na] ('I want that…') + subordinate clause developed into θενά [θeˈna] . Eventually, θενά became
7344-426: The imperial court's life like Αὔγουστος [ˈavɣustos] ('Augustus'), πρίγκιψ [ˈpriɲɟips] ( Latin : princeps , 'Prince'), μάγιστρος [ˈmaʝistros] ( Latin : magister , 'Master'), κοιαίστωρ [cyˈestor] ( Latin : quaestor , 'Quaestor'), ὀφφικιάλος [ofiˈcalos] ( Latin : officialis , 'official'). In addition, Latin words from everyday life entered
7446-439: 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
7548-510: The inhabitants of the Eastern Roman Empire, around eight million people, were native speakers of Greek. The number of those who were able to communicate in Greek may have been far higher. The native Greek speakers consisted of many of the inhabitants of the southern Balkan Peninsula , south of the Jireček Line , and all of the inhabitants of Asia Minor , where the native tongues ( Phrygian , Lycian , Lydian , Carian etc.), except Armenian in
7650-461: The languages of Venetian, Frankish and Arab conquerors. Some of the loanwords from these languages have been permanently retained in Greek or in its dialects: Middle Greek used the 24 letters of the Greek alphabet which, until the end of antiquity, were predominantly used as lapidary and majuscule letters and without a space between words and with diacritics. The first Greek script, a cursive script, developed from quick carving into wax tablets with
7752-467: 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
7854-640: 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
7956-441: 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
8058-561: The nominative according to the accusative -ιδα [-iða] -αδα [-aða] , as in ἐλπίς [elpís] → ἐλπίδα [elˈpiða] ('hope'), πατρίς [patrís] → πατρίδα [paˈtriða] ('homeland'), and in Ἑλλάς [hellás] → Ἑλλάδα [eˈlaða] ('Greece'). Only a few nouns remained unaffected by this simplification, such as τὸ φῶς [to fos] (both nominative and accusative ), τοῦ φωτός [tu fo'tos] ( genitive ). The Ancient Greek formation of
8160-399: 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
8262-470: 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
8364-706: 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
8466-619: The overseers. The Greek courts later acquitted the 3 overseers and the owner Nikos Vangelatos from all charges without explanation. The migrants were undocumented workers from Bangladesh and the perpetrators were ethnically Greek. The case is cited as an example of the hostile racism faced by minorities in the EU and Greece and the deception of migrant workers by Europeans. Greek language Greek ( Modern Greek : Ελληνικά , romanized : Elliniká , [eliniˈka] ; Ancient Greek : Ἑλληνική , romanized : Hellēnikḗ )
8568-459: The population of Sicily at the time of the Norman conquest 1060–1090 remained vibrant for more than a century, but slowly died out (as did Arabic) to a deliberate policy of Latinization in language and religion from the mid-1160s. From the late 11th century onwards, the interior of Anatolia was invaded by Seljuq Turks, who advanced westwards. With the Ottoman conquests of Constantinople in 1453,
8670-579: The same class, adopted a new set of endings modelled on the passive of regular verbs, as in the following examples: In most cases, the numerous stem variants that appeared in the Ancient Greek system of aspect inflection were reduced to only two basic stem forms, sometimes only one. Thus, in Ancient Greek the stem of the verb λαμβάνειν [lambáneːn] ('to take') appears in the variants λαμβ- [lamb-] , λαβ- [lab-] , ληψ- [lɛːps-] , ληφ- [lɛːpʰ-] and λημ- [lɛːm-] . In Medieval Greek, it
8772-641: The same original phoneme had merged with /i/ in mainstream varieties at roughly the same time (the same documents also transcribe υ/οι with ი /i/ very sporadically). In the original closing diphthongs αυ , ευ and ηυ , the offglide [u] had developed into a consonantal [v] or [f] early on (possibly through an intermediate stage of [β] and [ɸ] ). Before [n] , υ turned to [m] ( εὔνοστος ['evnostos] → ἔμνοστος ['emnostos] , χαύνος ['xavnos] → χάμνος ['xamnos] , ἐλαύνω [e'lavno] → λάμνω ['lamno] ), and before [m] it
8874-437: 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
8976-450: The turn of the first millennium AD. Written literature reflecting this Demotic Greek begins to appear around 1100. Among the preserved literature in the Attic literary language, various forms of historiography take a prominent place. They comprise chronicles as well as classicist, contemporary works of historiography , theological documents, and saints' lives . Poetry can be found in the form of hymns and ecclesiastical poetry. Many of
9078-419: The verb stem, which was a feature of the old perfect forms, was gradually abandoned and only retained in antiquated forms. The small ancient Greek class of irregular verbs in -μι [-mi] disappeared in favour of regular forms ending in -ω [-oː] ; χώννυμι [kʰóːnnymi] → χώνω ['xono] ('push'). The auxiliary εἰμί [eːmí] ('be'), originally part of
9180-494: The vowel system was gradually reduced to five phonemes without any differentiation in vowel length, a process also well begun during the Hellenistic period. Furthermore, Ancient Greek diphthongs became monophthongs . The Suda , an encyclopedia from the late 10th century, gives some indication of the vowel inventory. Following the antistoichic system, it lists terms alphabetically but arranges similarly pronounced letters side by side. In this way, for indicating homophony , αι
9282-495: The works of Emperor Constantine VII Porphyrogenitus (mid-10th century). These are influenced by the vernacular language of their time in choice of words and idiom , but largely follow the models of written Koine in their morphology and syntax . The spoken form of Greek was called γλῶσσα δημώδης ( glōssa dēmōdēs 'vernacular language'), ἁπλοελληνική ( haploellēnikē 'basic Greek'), καθωμιλημένη ( kathōmilēmenē 'spoken') or Ῥωμαιϊκή ( Rhōmaiïkē 'Roman language'). Before
9384-530: The written Koine of the Bible and early Christian literature, to a highly artificial learned style, employed by authors with higher literary ambitions and closely imitating the model of classical Attic, in continuation of the movement of Atticism in late antiquity. At the same time, the spoken vernacular language developed on the basis of earlier spoken Koine, and reached a stage that in many ways resembles present-day Modern Greek in terms of grammar and phonology by
9486-482: The year 1030, Michael the Grammarian could still make fun of the bishop of Philomelion for confusing ι for υ . In the 10th century, Georgian transliterations begin using the letter representing /u/ ( უ ) for υ/οι , in line with the alternative development in certain dialects like Tsakonian , Megaran and South Italian Greek where /y/ reverted to /u/ . This phenomenon perhaps indirectly indicates that
9588-574: 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
9690-568: 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
9792-442: 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
9894-563: Was borrowed from the Latin -arium , became 'fish' ( ὀψάριον [oˈpsarion] ), which after apheresis, synizesis and the loss of final ν [n] became the new Greek ψάρι [ˈpsari] and eliminated the Old Greek ἰχθύς [ikʰtʰýs] , which became an acrostic for Jesus Christ and a symbol for Christianity. Especially at the beginning of the Byzantine Empire , Medieval Greek borrowed numerous words from Latin , among them mainly titles and other terms of
9996-456: Was dropped ( θαῦμα ['θavma] → θάμα ['θama] ). Before [s] , it occasionally turned to [p] ( ἀνάπαυση [a'napafsi] → ἀνάπαψη [a'napapsi] ). Words with initial vowels were often affected by apheresis : ἡ ἡμέρα [i i'mera] → ἡ μέρα [i 'mera] ('the day'), ἐρωτῶ [ero'to] → ρωτῶ [ro'to] ('(I) ask'). A regular phenomenon in most dialects
10098-665: Was the site of the Battle of Manolada in 1316, a battle between the Franks and the Catalans over the hegemony over the Principality of Achaea . Manolada's economy is based on farming and is home to many strawberry fields. Many migrants work on these farms as Greeks are unwilling or unable to do this work. In 2013, after enduring years of unpaid wages and poor living conditions, an incident broke out on Nikos Vangelatos's farm where migrants protesting their conditions were shot and killed by
10200-549: Was to persist until well into the 20th century, when the Greek language question was decided in favor of the vernacular in 1976. The persistence until the Middle Ages of a single Greek speaking state, the Byzantine Empire, meant that, unlike Vulgar Latin , Greek did not split into separate languages. However, with the fracturing of the Byzantine state after the turn of the first millennium, newly isolated dialects such as Mariupol Greek , spoken in Crimea, Pontic Greek , spoken along
10302-580: 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
10404-673: 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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