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67-616: Mount Athos ( / ˈ æ θ ɒ s / ; Greek : Ἄθως [ˈa.θos] ) is a mountain on the Athos peninsula in northeastern Greece directly on the Aegean Sea. It is an important center of Eastern Orthodox monasticism . The mountain and most of the Athos peninsula are governed as an autonomous region in Greece by the monastic community of Mount Athos , which is ecclesiastically under

134-763: A Mediterranean climate , and is in the Mediterranean forests, woodlands, and scrub biome . The predominant plant communities are maquis , low shrublands, and pine forests. Maquis is woody shrubland characterized by low trees, shrubs, and herbaceous plants. Maquis species include strawberry tree ( Arbutus unedo ), Arbutus andrachne , sweet bay ( Laurus nobilis ), olive ( Olea europaea ), carob ( Ceratonia siliqua ), Erica arborea , Balanites aegyptiaca , Phoenix canariensis , Vachellia tortilis , Cupressus sempervirens , Salix alba , Populus nigra , Pinus nigra , and Spartium junceum . Maquis includes many aromatic plants, particularly species in

201-577: 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,

268-558: 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

335-560: 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

402-487: 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

469-527: A paradise and a haven of salvation for those seeking to be saved"). From that moment the mountain was consecrated as the garden of the Mother of God and was out of bounds to all other women. Historical documents on ancient Mount Athos history are very few. Monks have certainly been there since the fourth century, and possibly since the third. During Constantine I 's reign (324–337) both Christians and followers of traditional Greek religion were living there. During

536-804: 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

603-773: 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

670-479: 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

737-519: Is covered with mixed broadleaf deciduous and evergreen forests. Black pine ( Pinus nigra ) forests are found at higher elevations. Sclerophyllous scrub vegetation is also found throughout Mount Athos. Typical forest trees are sweet chestnut ( Castanea sativa ), holm oak ( Quercus ilex ), kermes oak ( Quercus coccifera ), Hungarian oak ( Quercus frainetto ), oriental plane ( Platanus orientalis ), black pine ( Pinus nigra ), and cedar ( Calocedrus decurrens ). Other common plant species include

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804-587: Is more commonly found in the northern part of the peninsula. Broadleaf maquis is found further south. Deciduous broadleaf forest dominated by sweet chestnut lies above the broadleaf maquis zone. There are also mixed forests consisting of deciduous oak trees, as well as limes , aspen , hop hornbeam , and maple . Black pine and stinking juniper can be found at higher elevations. Some herbaceous plants with tubers and bulbs include crocus , anemone , cyclamen , and fritillary species. At least 35 plant species are endemic to Mount Athos, most of which are found in

871-519: 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

938-867: 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 Aegean and Western Turkey sclerophyllous and mixed forests The ecoregion has

1005-526: 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

1072-763: 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,

1139-650: 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

1206-701: Is the name of one of the Gigantes that challenged the Greek gods during the Gigantomachia . Athos threw a massive rock at Poseidon which fell in the Aegean Sea and became Mount Athos. According to another version of the story, Poseidon used the mountain to bury the defeated giant. Homer mentions the mountain Athos in the Iliad . Herodotus writes that during the Persian invasion of Thrace in 492 BC,

1273-489: The Aegean Sea at a width of between 7 and 12 km (4.3 and 7.5 mi) and covers an area of 335.6 km (130 sq mi). The actual Mount Athos has steep, densely forested slopes reaching up to 2,033 m (6,670 ft). The Athos peninsula, unlike Sithonia and Kassandra , is a geological continuation of the Rhodope Mountains of northern Greece and Bulgaria. The surrounding seas, especially at

1340-575: The Byzantine era . Because of its long history of religious importance, the well-preserved agrarian architecture within the monasteries, and the preservation of the flora and fauna around the mountain, the monastic community of Mount Athos was added to the UNESCO World Heritage List in 1988. In the classical era , Mount Athos was called Athos and the peninsula Acté or Akté ( Koinē Greek : Ἀκτή ). In modern Greek,

1407-495: 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

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1474-516: 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

1541-576: The Peloponnese and Stone pine ( Pinus pinea ) grows on stabilized coastal dunes on the Peloponnese . The oriental sweetgum ( Liquidambar orientalis ) is endemic to a limited area of southwestern Turkey and the island of Rhodes . The largest remaining stands are near Köyceğiz . Bozpırnal oak ( Quercus aucheri ) is another endemic tree, native to the islands of Rhodes and Kos and adjacent southwestern coastal Turkey. It has sweet, edible acorns which are collected locally for coffee. Mammals in

1608-492: 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

1675-470: 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

1742-583: The Eastern Orthodox world use this name: in the East Slavic languages ( Russian , Ukrainian , and Belarusian ) it is simply called Афон ( Afon , meaning "Athos"), while in Romanian it is called "Mount Athos" ( Muntele Athos or Muntele Atos ). The peninsula, the easternmost "leg" of the larger Chalkidiki peninsula in central Macedonia , protrudes 50 km (31 mi) into

1809-486: 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

1876-425: 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

1943-495: 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

2010-629: 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

2077-685: 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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2144-404: 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),

2211-402: 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

2278-687: The area of the main summit in the south. Isatis tinctoria ssp. athoa , a woad subspecies, and Viola athois are named after Mount Athos. Mount Athos is also home to 350 species of mushrooms. Mammals include the grey wolf ( Canis lupus ), wild boar ( Sus scrofa ), red fox ( Vulpes vulpes ), jackal ( Canis aureus ), European badger ( Meles meles ), beech marten ( Martes foina ), stoat ( Mustela erminea ), weasel ( Mustela nivalis vulgaris ), European hedgehog ( Erinaceus concolor ), shrews ( Crocidura spp.), and Mediterranean monk seal ( Monachus monachus ). Other mammal species include roe deer , hares , and red squirrels . Birds include

2345-433: The black stork ( Ciconia nigra ), short-toed snake-eagle ( Circaetus gallicus ), golden eagle ( Aquila chrysaetos ), lesser kestrel ( Falco naumanni ), capercaillie ( Tetrao urogallus ), eagle owl ( Bubo bubo ), yelkouan shearwater ( Puffinus yelkouan ), and Audouin's gull ( Larus audouinii ). Other bird species include swifts , swallows , martins , nightingales , and hoopoes . In Greek mythology , Athos

2412-523: The cities of Dion (Dium) and Akrothoon. Eretria also established colonies on Akte. At least one other city was established in the Classical period: Akanthos (Acanthus). Some of these cities minted their own coins. The peninsula was on the invasion route of Xerxes I , who spent three years excavating the Xerxes Canal across the isthmus to allow the passage of his invasion fleet in 483 BC. After

2479-550: The death of Alexander the Great , the architect Dinocrates (Deinokrates) proposed carving the entire mountain into a statue of Alexander. Pliny the Elder stated in 77 AD that the inhabitants of Mount Athos could "live to their four hundredth year" due to the fact that they eat the skin of vipers. The lack of historical accounts shrouds the history of the peninsula during the later ages. Archaeologists have not been able to determine

2546-575: The direct jurisdiction of the Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople . The remainder of the peninsula forms part of the Aristotelis municipality. Women are prohibited from entering the area governed by the monastic community by Greek law and by religious tradition. Mount Athos has been inhabited since ancient times and is known for its long Christian presence and historical monastic traditions, which date back to at least 800 AD during

2613-404: 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

2680-569: The ecoregion and neighboring ones. Other birds of the pine forests include common European forest species like the Eurasian wren ( Troglodytes troglodytes ), common blackbird ( Turdus merula ), common chiffchaff ( Phylloscopus collybita ), coal tit ( Periparus ater ), Eurasian blue tit ( Cyanistes caeruleus ), great tit ( Parus major) , short-toed treecreeper ( Certhia brachydactyla ), Eurasian jay ( Garrulus glandarius ), and common chaffinch ( Fringilla coelebs ). Birds associated with

2747-577: The ecoregion include wild boar ( Sus scrofa ), red fox ( Vulpes vulpes ), golden jackal ( Canis aureus ), wolf ( C. lupus ), European badger ( Meles meles ), European hare ( Lepus europaeus ), northern white-breasted hedgehog ( Erinaceus roumanicus ), southern white-breasted hedgehog ( Erinaceus concolor ), Eurasian red squirrel ( Sciurus vulgaris ), Caucasian squirrel ( Sciurus anomalus ), and pine marten ( Martes martes ). The Eurasian lynx ( Lynx lynx ), European wildcat ( Felis sylvestris ), and brown bear ( Ursus arctos ) are now rare in

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2814-404: The ecoregion. The ecoregion is important habitat for several limited-range bird species, including the eastern olivaceous warbler ( Hippolais pallida ), olive-tree warbler ( Hippolais olivetorum ), Rüppell's warbler ( Curruca rueppelli ), masked shrike ( Lanius nubicus ), cinereous bunting ( Emberiza cineracea ), and Cretzschmar's bunting ( Emberiza caesia ). Characteristic birds of

2881-544: The end of the peninsula, can be dangerous. In ancient Greek history, two fleet disasters in the area are recorded: Herodotus claimed that in 492 BC, Darius , the king of Persia , lost 300 ships under general Mardonius . In 411 BC the Spartans lost a fleet of 50 ships under the admiral Epicleas. Mount Athos has an extensive network of footpaths , many of which date back to the Byzantine period . Many are typically not accessible to motor vehicle traffic. Much of Mount Athos

2948-618: 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

3015-603: The exact location of the cities reported by Strabo. It is believed that they must have been deserted when Athos's new inhabitants, the monks, started arriving sometime before the ninth century AD. According to the Athonite tradition, the Blessed Virgin Mary was sailing accompanied by St John the Evangelist from Joppa to Cyprus to visit Lazarus . When the ship was blown off course to then-pagan Athos, it

3082-447: The fleet of the Persian commander Mardonius was wrecked with losses of 300 ships and 20,000 men, by a strong North wind while attempting to round the coast near Mount Athos. Herodotus also states that Pelasgians from the island of Lemnos populated the peninsula, then called Akte, and names five cities thereon, Sane , Kleonai (Cleonae), Thyssos (Thyssus), Olophyxos (Olophyxus), and Akrothoon (Acrothoum). Strabo also mentions

3149-452: 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

3216-439: 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

3283-467: 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

3350-420: The maquis include the red-legged partridge ( Alectoris rufa ), rock partridge ( A. graeca ), chukar partridge ( A. chukar ), eastern subalpine warbler ( Sylvia cantillans ), Rüppell's warbler ( Curruca ruppeli ), cirl bunting ( Emberiza cirlus ), rock bunting ( E. cia ), and black-headed bunting ( E. melanocephala ). Krüper's nuthatch ( Sitta krueperi ) is associated with Turkish pine forests in

3417-640: 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

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3484-701: The mint family ( Lamiaceae ). Low shrublands, known in Greek as phrygana , are characterized by low aromatic shrubs and herbs, including Euphorbia acanthothamnos , Thymus capitatus , and species of Ballota , Cistus , Helichrysum , Phlomis , and Salvia . Phrygana is common on limestone (calcareous) soils, and in areas subject to frequent fires and heavy grazing. Kermes oak ( Quercus coccifera ) and holm oak ( Quercus ilex ) are found in maquis, and also form oak woodlands. Forests of Turkish pine ( Pinus brutia ) occur in Anatolia, forests of Aleppo pine ( Pinus halepensis ) are found in central Greece and

3551-441: 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

3618-479: The mountain is Oros Athos ( Greek : Όρος Άθως ) and the peninsula Hersonisos tou Atho ( Greek : Χερσόνησος του Άθω ), while the designation Agio Oros ( Greek : Άγιο Όρος ) translating to 'Holy Mountain' is also used. Some languages of Orthodox tradition use names that translate to 'Holy Mountain', including Bulgarian , Macedonian and Serbian ( Света Гора , Sveta Gora ), and Georgian ( მთაწმინდა , mtats’minda ). However, not all languages spoken in

3685-399: 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

3752-474: 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

3819-706: 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

3886-478: The reign of Julian (361–363), the churches of Mount Athos were destroyed, and Christians hid in the woods and inaccessible places. Later, during Theodosius I 's reign (379–395), the temples of the traditional Greek religion were destroyed. The lexicographer Hesychius of Alexandria states that in the fifth century, there was still a temple and a statue of " Zeus Athonite". After the Islamic conquest of Egypt in

3953-560: The seventh century, many Orthodox monks from the Egyptian desert tried to find another calm place; some of them came to the Athos peninsula. An ancient document states that monks "built huts of wood with roofs of straw ... and by collecting fruit from the wild trees were providing themselves improvised meals." Greek language Greek ( Modern Greek : Ελληνικά , romanized :  Elliniká , [eliniˈka] ; Ancient Greek : Ἑλληνική , romanized :  Hellēnikḗ )

4020-432: The strawberry tree ( Arbutus unedo and Arbutus andrachne ), cypress ( Cupressus sempervirens ), laurel ( Laurus nobilis ), lentisk ( Pistacia lentiscus ), phillyrea ( Phillyrea latifolia ), wild olive ( Olea europea ), and heather ( Erica spp.). Deciduous trees that are primarily found alongside streams include white willow , laurel , Oriental plane , and alder trees. Aleppo pine ( Pinus halepensis )

4087-437: 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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4154-574: 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

4221-568: 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

4288-557: 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

4355-453: Was forced to anchor near the port of Klement, close to the present monastery of Iviron. The Virgin walked ashore and, overwhelmed by the mountain's wonderful and wild natural beauty, she blessed it and asked her Son for it to be her garden. A voice was heard saying, " Ἔστω ὁ τόπος οὗτος κλῆρος σὸς καὶ περιβόλαιον σὸν καὶ παράδεισος, ἔτι δὲ καὶ λιμὴν σωτήριος τῶν θελόντων σωθῆναι" (Translation: "Let this place be your inheritance and your garden,

4422-580: 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

4489-673: 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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