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118-677: In German-speaking Europe during the Middle Ages , the term "Wends" was interpreted as synonymous with "Slavs" and sporadically used in literature to refer to West Slavs and South Slavs living within the Holy Roman Empire . The name has possibly survived in Finnic languages ( Finnish : Venäjä [ˈʋe̞.næ.jæ] , Estonian : Vene [ˈve.ne] , Karelian : Veneä ), denoting modern Russia . According to one theory, Germanic peoples first applied this name to

236-577: 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

354-471: A West Central German variety of German known as Pennsylvania German or Pennsylvania Dutch), Kansas (Mennonites and Volga Germans ), North Dakota (Hutterite Germans, Mennonites, Russian Germans , Volga Germans, and Baltic Germans ), South Dakota , Montana , Texas ( Texas German ), Wisconsin , Indiana , Oregon , Oklahoma , and Ohio (72,570). A significant group of German Pietists in Iowa formed

472-695: A 2012 survey, ca. 47 million people within the EU (i.e., up to two thirds of the 75–100 million worldwide) claimed to have sufficient German skills to have a conversation. Within the EU, and not counting countries where it is a (co-)official language, German as a foreign language is most widely taught in Central and Northern Europe , namely Croatia , the Czech Republic , Denmark , the Netherlands , Poland , Slovakia , Slovenia , and Sweden . German as

590-577: 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,

708-602: A duke, but remained independent. Their leaders met in the temple of Rethra . In 983, many Wend tribes participated in a great uprising against the Holy Roman Empire , which had previously established Christian missions, German colonies and German administrative institutions ( Marken such as Nordmark and Billungermark ) in pagan Wendish territories. The uprising was successful and the Wends delayed Germanisation for about two centuries. Wends and Danes had early and continuous contact including settlement, first and mainly through

826-508: A far greater proportion of city dwellers (86% and 84% respectively); in contrast, Brazil and Paraguay are 82% and 47% urbanized , respectively. Most of the German immigrants that arrived in Brazil and Mexico went on to live in small inland communities. The original 58 German communities of the early 19th century Brazil, grew today to over 250 towns where Germans are a majority, and German-speaking

944-508: 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

1062-505: A fluency in the German language in their respective neighborhoods and sections. In the first half of the 20th century, over a million German-Canadians made the language Canada's third most spoken after French and English . In the United States, the states of North Dakota and South Dakota are the only states where German is the most common language spoken at home after English. German geographical names can be found throughout

1180-742: A foreign language is promoted by the Goethe Institute , which works to promote German language and culture worldwide. In association with the Goethe Institute, the German foreign broadcasting service, Deutsche Welle , offers a range of online German courses and worldwide television as well as radio broadcasts produced with non-native German speakers in mind. Namibia was a colony of the German Empire from 1884 to 1915. Mostly originating from Germans who settled there during this time, 25,000 to 30,000 people still speak German as

1298-491: A home language is in heavy decline (The German language is far from disappearing in Chile because there are more than 100 German-language schools throughout the country) German is taught from preschool to middle school; where if German-Chileans can still speak German, most of them speak German only as a second or third language. Colombia has a population of about 51 million people. Of them, only 5,000 people of German descent speak

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1416-590: 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

1534-400: 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

1652-459: 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 ,

1770-701: A native tongue today. German, along with English and Afrikaans used to be a co-official language of Namibia from 1984 until its independence from South Africa in 1990. At this point, the Namibian government perceived Afrikaans and German as symbols for Apartheid and colonialism, and decided for English to be the sole official language, claiming that it was a "neutral" language as virtually no English native speakers existed in Namibia at that time. German, Afrikaans and several indigenous languages became "national languages" by law, identifying them as cultural heritages of

1888-458: A new dialect of German concentrated in the German colonies in the southern province of Rio Grande do Sul . Although Riograndenser Hunsrückisch has long been the most widely spoken German dialect in southern Brazil, like all other minority languages in the region, it is experiencing very strong decline – especially in the last three or four decades. The vast majority of German-descended Brazilians speak Portuguese as their mother tongue today. German

2006-518: A number of countries and territories in Europe , where it is used both as an official language and as a minority language in various countries. To cover this language area, they are often referred to as the German-speaking countries, the German-speaking area ( Deutscher Sprachraum ), or equivalently German-speaking Europe (non-European German-speaking communities are not commonly included in

2124-574: A population of over 120 million) has an estimated 200,000 speakers of standard German either as a first or second language, not counting foreign learned German speakers or the Low-German dialects. Documented immigration of Germans to Mexico began in 1856, though historical research suggest as many as 1.2 million German speaking immigrants arrived in Mexico during the colonial period likely as agricultural laborers. Due to pro-nationalistic propagation by

2242-460: 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

2360-550: A strong admixture with Germans and continued to use West Slavic languages were still termed Wends . With the gradual decline of the use of these local Slavic tongues, the term Wends slowly disappeared, too. Some sources claim that in the 13th century there were actual historic people called Wends or Vends living as far as northern Latvia (east of the Baltic Sea) around the city of Wenden . Henry of Livonia (Henricus de Lettis) in his 13th-century Latin chronicle described

2478-649: A total of 443 German-speaking immigrant families, most of them were farmers and artisans who emigrated with their families: the majority came from Prussia and many among them were Protestants. The second wave was during Porfirio Díaz's open settlement policy in the Yucatán Peninsula that favored and attracted many Europeans. Most German-speaking or self identifying German-Mexicans today are descended from these two events as well as around 20,000 ethnic Germans from Russia and around 100,000 Mennonites from Canada. Specific reasons for language change from German to

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2596-663: A tribe called the Vindi . Today, only one group of Wends still exists: the Lusatian Sorbs in present-day Eastern Germany, with international diaspora. The term "Wends" derived from the Roman-era people called in Latin : Venetī , Venethī [ˈwe.ne.t̪ʰiː] or Venedī [ˈwe.ne.d̪iː] ; in ‹See Tfd› Greek : Οὐενέδαι , translit.   Ouenédai [u.eˈne.ðe] . This people

2714-660: Is a dialect spoken in the areas of Texas settled by the Adelsverein , such as New Braunfels and Fredericksburg. In the Amana Colonies in the state of Iowa, Amana German is spoken. Plautdietsch is a large minority language spoken in Northern Mexico by the Mennonite communities, and is spoken by more than 200,000 people in Mexico. Pennsylvania German is a West Central German dialect spoken by most of

2832-631: Is a recognised minority language in Czechia , Hungary , Italy ( Trentino-Alto Adige/Südtirol ), Poland , Romania , Russia , and Slovakia . Today German, together with French , is a common second foreign language in the western world, with English well established as a first foreign language. German ranks second (after English) among the best known foreign languages in the EU (on a par with French) as well as in Russia . In terms of student numbers across all levels of education, German ranks third in

2950-610: Is also one of the three biggest newspapers in Namibia and the only German-language daily in Africa. Mostly originating from different waves of immigration during the 19th and 20th centuries, an estimated 12,000 people speak German or a German variety as a first language in South Africa . Germans settled quite extensively in South Africa, with many Calvinists immigrating from Northern Europe. Later on, more Germans settled in

3068-526: Is an acronym used to represent the dominant states of the German language Sprachraum . It is based on the international vehicle registration codes for: "Dach" is also the German word for "roof", and is used in linguistics in the term Dachsprache , which standard German arguably is in relation to some outlying dialects of German, especially in Switzerland, France, Luxembourg, and Austria. The term

3186-549: Is encouraged. There are about 500,000 German speakers and around 320,000 Volga-Germans alone, of which 200,000 hold German citizenship. This makes Argentina one of the countries with the largest number of German speakers and is second only in Latin America to Brazil. In the 1930s there were about 700,000 people of German descent. Regional concentrations can be found in the provinces of Entre Ríos and Buenos Aires (with around 500,000 to 600,000) as well as Misiones and in

3304-406: Is estimated that approximately 90–95 million people speak German as a first language , 10–25 million as a second language , and 75–100 million as a foreign language . This would imply approximately 175–220 million German speakers worldwide. Approximate distribution of native German speakers (assuming a rounded total of 95 million) worldwide: The German language is spoken in

3422-463: Is home to over 3,000 German language schools, second only to Brazil. The Colegio Humboldt campuses in Mexico are the biggest German language K-12 schools in the Americas, with each of the 3 branches graduating over 2,000 students per year. In Canada , there are 622,650 speakers of German according to the most recent census in 2006, with people of German ancestry ( German Canadians ) found throughout

3540-411: Is known only as a second or third language, if at all, to the point of initiatives to preserve the language being started recently in areas with strong German-descended presence, with government-sponsored Gemeindeschulen. This is especially true for younger German-Brazilians. Another place where the German language continues alive is in some of the more of 4,000 Brazilian Lutheran churches, in which some of

3658-673: Is mentioned by Pliny the Elder and Ptolemy as inhabiting the Baltic coast. In the 1st millennium AD, during the Slavic migrations which split the Slavs into Southern, Eastern and Western groups, some West Slavs moved into the areas between the Rivers Elbe and Oder - moving from east to west and from south to north. There they assimilated the remaining Germanic population that had not left

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3776-683: 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

3894-489: Is one of the reasons for future military campaigns against them by the Carolingians, especially Charles Martel and Charlemagne. While the Wends were arriving in so-called Germania Slavica as large homogeneous groups, they soon divided into a variety of small tribes, with large strips of woodland separating one tribal settlement area from another. Their tribal names were derived from local place names, sometimes adopting

4012-590: Is sometimes extended to D-A-CH-Li, DACHL, or DACH+ to include Liechtenstein . Another version is DACHS (with Dachs meaning " Badger " in German) with the inclusion of the German-speaking region of South Tyrol in Italy . DACH is also the name of an Interreg IIIA project, which focuses on crossborder cooperation in planning. In the early modern period , German varieties were a lingua franca of Central, Eastern, and Northern Europe ( Hanseatic League ). German

4130-472: Is spoken. In addition to the Germanosphere ( German : Deutscher Sprachraum ) in Europe , German-speaking minorities are present in many other countries and on all six inhabited continents . Mostly depending on the inclusion or exclusion of certain varieties with a disputed status as separate languages or which were later acknowledged as separate languages (e.g., Low German/Plautdietsch ), it

4248-763: 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,

4366-632: 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

4484-544: Is today north-eastern Germany. This did not, however, affect the Wendish people in today's Saxony , where a relatively stable co-existence of German and Slavic inhabitants as well as close dynastic and diplomatic cooperation of Wendish and German nobility had been achieved. (See: Wiprecht of Groitzsch). In 1168, during the Northern Crusades , Denmark mounted a crusade led by Bishop Absalon and King Valdemar

4602-528: The Ben Nevis seeking greater liberty, in order to settle an area of central Texas, primarily Serbin . The Wends succeeded, expanding into Warda , Giddings , Austin, Houston, Fedor, Swiss Alp, Port Arthur, Mannheim, Copperas Cove, Vernon, Walburg, The Grove, Bishop, and the Rio Grande Valley. A strong emphasis on tradition, principles, and education is evident today in families descendant from

4720-475: The Amana Colonies and continue to practice speaking their heritage language. Early twentieth century immigration was often to St. Louis , Chicago , New York City , Milwaukee , Pittsburgh , and Cincinnati . The dialects of German which are or were primarily spoken in colonies or communities founded by German-speaking people resemble the dialects of the regions the founders came from. For example, Hutterite German resembles dialects of Carinthia . Texas German

4838-472: The Amish population of Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Indiana, and resembles Palatinate German dialects. 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 the Indo-European language family. It

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4956-562: 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

5074-697: The Dominican Republic , Ecuador , Guatemala , Mexico , Nicaragua , Paraguay , Peru , Uruguay , and Venezuela . Initially, in the eighteenth century, only isolated or small groups of German emigrants left for Latin America; however, at the start of the nineteenth, this pattern was reversed as a tidal wave of German emigration totaling some 200,000 people began. These included groups such as land-hungry peasants, political refugees known as Forty-Eighters , and religious minorities such as Russian Mennonites fleeing religious persecution at home. During

5192-606: 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

5310-516: 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

5428-587: The KwaZulu-Natal region and elsewhere. Here, one of the largest communities are the speakers of "Nataler Deutsch", a variety of Low German , who are concentrated in and around Wartburg and to a lesser extent around Winterton . German is slowly disappearing elsewhere, but a number of communities still have a large number of speakers and some even have German language schools, such as the Hermannsburg German School . Furthermore, German

5546-587: The Nazi period which lasted from 1933 to 1945, some 100,000 Jews from Central Europe, the vast majority of which were German-speaking, moved to South America, with 90% of these moving to the Cono Sur or Southern Cone. This ended when the ban on emigration came into effect in 1941, which was roughly also the beginning of the holocaust . From the start of the 20th century until 1946, 80% of Jews lived in Europe ; but by

5664-779: The Saxons , a Wend ( Wende ) was a Slav living in the area west of the River Oder , an area later entitled Germania Slavica , settled by the Polabian Slav tribes (mentioned above) in the north and by others, such as the Sorbs and the Milceni , further south (see Sorbian March ). The Germans in the south used the term Winde instead of Wende and applied it, just as the Germans in the north, to Slavs they had contact with; e.g.,

5782-531: The Southern Cone countries is relatively low (Brazil has 17 inhabitants/km , Chile has 15/km , Argentina and Paraguay both have 10/km , data from 1993), but there are major differences in the areas settled by Germans: Buenos Aires Province , which was settled by Germans , has a far higher population density than that of the Chaco in northern Paraguay (with 1 inhabitant/km ). While Argentina and Chile have

5900-652: 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

6018-515: The ancient Veneti . For the medieval Scandinavians , the term Wends ( Vender ) meant Slavs living near the southern shore of the Baltic Sea ( Vendland ), and the term was therefore used to refer to Polabian Slavs like the Obotrites , Rugian Slavs , Veleti / Lutici , and Pomeranian tribes . For people living in the medieval Northern Holy Roman Empire and its precursors, especially for

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6136-468: 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

6254-417: 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,

6372-760: The "D-A-CH" countries, an acronym for Deutschland (Germany), Austria, and Confoederatio Helvetica (the Swiss Confederation ). Since 2004, there has been an annual informal meeting of the heads of state of German-speaking countries including the Presidents of Germany, Austria, and Switzerland and the Hereditary Prince of Liechtenstein. Since 2014, the King of Belgium and the Grand Duke of Luxembourg have taken part. D-A-CH or DACH

6490-410: The 1880s, during the wave of mass emigration, this figure was reached annually. The Handbuch des Deutschtums im Ausland ( The Germans Abroad Handbook ) from 1906 puts a figure of 11 million people in North and South America with a knowledge of the German language, of which 9 million were in the US. Although the US was the focal point for emigration in the 19th century, emigration to Latin America

6608-566: 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

6726-418: The Baltic shores (and, in turn, the Wends often raided the raiders). The Holy Roman Empire and its margraves tried to restore their marches. In 1068/69, a German expedition took and destroyed Rethra , one of the major pagan Wend temples. The Wendish religious centre shifted to Arkona thereafter. In 1124 and 1128, the Pomeranians and some Lutici were baptised. In 1147, the Wend crusade took place in what

6844-549: The Bavaria, Pilsen, and Club Soda Klausen factories in Cali, Barranquilla, Pereira, Medellin, and other cities. Nowadays, Germans born in Colombia celebrate Oktoberfest in Cali, along with other traditions. There are currently German schools in various major cities around the country. Costa Rica has a population of 4.9 million, and a German-speaking population of 8,000 people. Many of these people are immigrants or native German speakers from Germany or Switzerland and descendants of 18th, 19th and 20th-century mass immigration. But also in

6962-489: The EU (after English and French) as well as in the United States (after Spanish and French). In 2015, approximately 15.4 million people were in the process of learning German across all levels of education worldwide. This number has remained relatively stable since 2005 (± 1 million) and roughly 75–100 million people able to communicate in German as a foreign language can be inferred, assuming an average course duration of three years and other estimated parameters. According to

7080-427: The French region of Alsace which was part of France since the end of WWI, as well as that from Bavaria and High German regions of Germany. . As of 2012, about 20,000 Germans nationals resided in Mexico. The number has risen to almost 40,000 in 2020. Despite groggy heritage claims to the language, German is slightly ahead of French as the second most studied foreign language in Mexico, behind only English. Mexico

7198-410: The German-Roman Empire) explicitly recognised in its Art. 31 that the German-Roman Empire was a multi-national entity with "diverse nations distinct in customs, manner of life, and in language". For that it stipulated "the sons, or heirs and successors of the illustrious prince electors, ... since they are expected in all likelihood to have naturally acquired the German language, ... shall be instructed in

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7316-608: The Germanic tradition (e.g. Heveller from Havel , Rujanes from Rugians ). Settlements were secured by round burghs made of wood and clay, where either people could retreat in case of a raid from the neighbouring tribe or used as military strongholds or outposts. Some tribes unified into larger, duchy-like units. For example, the Obotrites evolved from the unification of the Holstein and Western Mecklenburg tribes led by mighty dukes known for their raids into German Saxony . The Lutici were an alliance of tribes living between Obotrites and Pomeranians. They did not unify under

7434-416: The Great against the Wends of Rugia in order to convert them to Christianity. The crusaders captured and destroyed Arkona , the Wendish temple-fortress, and tore down the statue of the Wendish god Svantevit . With the capitulation of the Rugian Wends, the last independent pagan Wends were defeated by the surrounding Christian feudal powers. From the 12th to the 14th centuries, Germanic settlers moved into

7552-486: 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

7670-442: 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

7788-409: The Middle Ages, the kings of Denmark and of Denmark–Norway used the titles King of the Wends (from 1362) and Goths (from the 12th century). The use of both titles was discontinued in 1973. The Wendish people co-existed with the German settlers for centuries and became gradually assimilated into the German-speaking culture. The Golden Bull of 1356 (one of the constitutional foundations of

7906-503: The Midwest region of the country, such as New Ulm and many other towns in Minnesota ; Bismarck (North Dakota's state capital), Munich , Karlsruhe , and Strasburg (named after a town near Odesa in Ukraine) in North Dakota; New Braunfels , Fredericksburg , Weimar, and Muenster in Texas; Corn (formerly Korn), Kiefer and Berlin in Oklahoma; and Kiel , Schleswig , Berlin , and Germantown in Wisconsin. Between 1843 and 1910, more than 5 million Germans emigrated overseas, mostly to

8024-516: The Polabians from Bavaria Slavica or the Slovenes (the names Windic March , Windisch Feistritz , Windischgraz , or Windisch Bleiberg near Ferlach still bear testimony to this historical denomination). The same term was sometimes applied to the neighboring region of Slavonia , which appears as Windischland in some documents prior to the 18th century. Following the 8th century, the Frankish kings and their successors organised nearly all Wendish land into marches . This process later turned into

8142-581: The United States. German remained an important language in churches, schools, newspapers, and even the administration of the United States Brewers' Association through the early 20th century, but was severely repressed during World War I . Over the course of the 20th century, many of the descendants of 18th century and 19th century immigrants ceased speaking German at home, but small populations of speakers are still found in Pennsylvania (approximately 115,000 speakers; Amish , Hutterites , Dunkards and some Mennonites historically spoke Hutterite German and

8260-445: The Wendish lands in large numbers, transforming the area's culture from a Slavic to a Germanic one. Local dukes and monasteries invited settlers to repopulate farmlands devastated in the wars, as well as to cultivate new farmlands from the expansive woodlands and heavy soils, with the use of iron-based agricultural tools that had developed in Western Europe. Concurrently, a large number of new towns were created under German town law with

8378-420: The Wendish pioneers. Today, thousands of Texans and other Americans (many unaware of their background), can lay claim to the heritage of the Wends. Historically, the term "Wends" has also occurred in the following contexts: German-speaking Europe This article details the geographical distribution of speakers of the German language , regardless of the legislative status within the countries where it

8496-404: 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),

8614-728: The area in the Migration period . Their German neighbours adapted the term they had been using for peoples east of the River Elbe before to the Slavs, calling them Wends as they called the Venedi before and probably the Vandals as well. In his late sixth century work History of Armenia , Movses Khorenatsi mentions their raids into the lands named Vanand after them. The Wends are mentioned in Fredegar IV.74-75. The lived east of

8732-479: 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

8850-650: The breaking point in the development of their language. In some South American countries the war period and immediately afterwards was a time of massive assimilation to the local culture (for example during the Getúlio Vargas period in Brazil ). Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Mexico, and Paraguay show some clear demographic differences that affect the minority situation of the German language: Brazil, Mexico, and Argentina are massive countries and offer large amounts of land for immigrants to settle. The population density of

8968-533: The closest South Danish islands of Møn , Lolland and Falster , all having place-names of Wendish origin. There were also trading and settlement outposts by Danish towns as important as Roskilde, when it was the capital: 'Vindeboder' (Wends' booths) is the name of a city neighbourhood there. Danes and Wends also fought wars due to piracy and crusading. After their successes in 983 the Wends came under increasing pressure from Germans, Danes and Poles . The Poles invaded Pomerania several times. The Danes often raided

9086-489: The concept). German is the main language of approximately 95 to 100 million people in Europe, or 13.3% of all Europeans. This makes it the second most spoken native language in Europe, behind only Russian (with 144 million speakers), and ahead of French (with 66.5 million) and English (with 64.2 million). The European countries with German-speaking majorities are Germany (95%, 78.3 million), Austria (89%, 8.9 million), and Switzerland (65%, 4.6 million), also known as

9204-559: The country between 1860 and 1960. The first wave of Germans immigrated from northern Prussia under the reign of Princess Carlota during the 2nd French Mexican empire. Of special interest is the settlement Villa Carlota : that was the name under which two German farming settlements, in the villages of Santa Elena and Pustunich in Yucatán, were founded during the Second Mexican Empire (1864–1867). Villa Carlota attracted

9322-475: The country. German-speaking communities are particularly found in British Columbia (118,035) and Ontario (230,330). There is a large and vibrant community in the city of Kitchener, Ontario , which was at one point named Berlin. German immigrants were instrumental in the country's three largest urban areas: Montreal , Toronto , and Vancouver . Post- Second World War immigrants managed to preserve

9440-796: 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 ,

9558-441: 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

9676-528: 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

9794-589: The end of World War II this was reduced to 25%. However, after the war over 50% of Jews lived in the Americas . This change was aided by Jewish emigration groups such as the Hilfsverein deutschsprechender Juden (later to become Asociación Filantrópica Israelita ) which was based in Buenos Aires , Argentina . The majority of German minorities in Latin America – as well as elsewhere around

9912-412: 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

10030-438: The federal government which encouraged mixed-race identification, many Mexicans do not know their ancestral origins and demographic numbers of German Mexicans are sourced on recent and limited data. Regardless, Mexico stands as the 3rd country with the largest German community in Latin America, behind Brazil and Argentina . Included in the ethnic German immigration to Mexico is the immigration from Austria , Switzerland , and

10148-441: The first German and Swiss immigrants to Brazil, German immigration continued a constant flow with an average of 25 to 30 thousand immigrants per decade entering the country since 1818. It peaked in the years following World War I, to around 90 thousand, and again in the 1940s to around 50,000. In the 1880s and 1890s, German emigration to Latin America grew and in some years was the destination of up to 30% of German emigrants. During

10266-494: The first flux of German immigration (between 1846 and 1875) German colonies were primarily set up in the "Frontera" region. The second wave of immigration occurred between 1882 and 1914 and consisted mainly of industrial and agricultural workers, mainly from eastern Germany; the third wave (after 1918) settled mainly in the cities. As in Argentina and Brazil, these populations are today overwhelmingly Spanish speaking, and German as

10384-619: The general area of the Chaco and the Pampas . However, most German-descended Argentinians do not speak German with native fluency (that role has been taken by Spanish). The 300,000 German speakers are estimated to be immigrants and not actually born in Argentina, and because of this they still speak their home language while their descendants who were born in Argentina speak primarily Spanish. According to Deutsche Welle , there are some twelve million people of German ancestry in Brazil. Nevertheless,

10502-555: The grammar of the Italian and Slavic (i.e. Wendish) tongues, beginning with the seventh Year of their age." Many geographical names in Central Germany and northern Germany can be traced back to a Slavic origin. Typical Slavic endings include -itz, -itzsch and -ow. They can be found in city names such as Delitzsch and Rochlitz . Even names of major cities like Leipzig and Berlin are most likely of Wendish origin. Today,

10620-457: The introduction of legally enforced markets, contracts and property rights. These developments over two centuries were collectively known as the Ostsiedlung (German eastward expansion). A minority of Germanic settlers moved beyond the Wendish territory into Hungary, Bohemia and Poland, where they were generally welcomed for their skills in farming and craftsmanship. The Polabian language

10738-399: The invariable pull of societal assimilation which confronts all immigrant groups. German migration to colonial Mexico is less accounted for due to the geopolitical isolation following independence from Spain, as well as the deterrents of Mexico's ensuing civil wars. Despite these obstacles and lack of documentation, however, over 200,000 Prussian/German nationals have been registered entering

10856-768: The kings of Sweden were officially called kings of the Swedes , the Goths and the Wends (in Latin translation: kings of Suiones , Goths and Vandals ) ( Swedish : Svears, Götes och Wendes Konung ). After the Danish monarch Queen Margrethe II chose not to use these titles in 1972 the current Swedish monarch, Carl XVI Gustaf also chose only to use the title King of Sweden" ( Sveriges Konung ), thereby changing an age-old tradition. From

10974-449: 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

11092-656: The language. Many of these people settled in Antioquia and el Eje Cafetero. Most of the immigration occurred during World War I until the end of the Cold War. Many of these ethnic Germans now speak primarily Spanish at home. Germans came to South America in World War I and II, settling first in Colombia because of its wealth in natural resources as well as weather conditions conducive to agriculture. German immigrants built

11210-467: 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

11328-452: 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

11446-465: 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

11564-847: The nation and ensuring the state to acknowledge and support their presence in the country. Today, German is used in myriad spheres, especially business and tourism, as well as churches (most notably the German-speaking Evangelical Lutheran Church in Namibia (GELK) ), schools (e.g., the Deutsche Höhere Privatschule Windhoek ), literature (German-Namibian authors include Giselher W. Hoffmann  [ de ] ), radio (the Namibian Broadcasting Corporation produces radio programs in German), and music (e.g., artist EES ). The Allgemeine Zeitung

11682-674: The national language usually derive from the desire of many Germans to belong to their new communities after the end of World War II. This is a common feature among the German minorities in Latin America and those in Central and Eastern Europe : the majority of countries where German minorities lived had fought against the Germans during the war. With this change in situation, the members of the German minorities, previously communities of status and prestige, were turned into undesirable minorities (though there were widespread elements of sympathy for Germany in many South American countries as well). For many German minorities, World War II thus represented

11800-607: The northern area of the country, there are 2,200 German Mennonites in communities in Sarapiquí and San Carlos that spoke Plautdietsch and other Low German dialects. This German-Costa Rican community is one of the most important and biggest collectivities of German speakers in Central America and the Caribbean, and has a lot of cultural and social institutions, churches, farms, business companies and schools. Mexico (with

11918-458: The number of people speaking any sort of German (Standard German, Hunsrückisch or East Pomeranian ) is on the decrease, with 3 million speaking German as a first language today. The main variety of German in Brazil is Riograndenser Hunsrückisch which is found in the southern states. This version of German there has changed over 180 years of contact with Portuguese as well as the languages of other immigrant communities . Such contact has led to

12036-475: The only remaining minority people of Wendish origin, the Sorbs , maintain their traditional language and culture and enjoy cultural self-determination exercised through the Domowina . The third minister president of Saxony Stanislaw Tillich (2008–2017) is of Sorbian origin, being the first head of a German federal state with an ethnic minority background. In 1854, the Wends of Texas departed Lusatia on

12154-643: 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

12272-619: The river Elbe and were neighbours of the Saxons. The Saxons paid tribute to the Merovingian Kingdom since Chlothar I (511-561). They had to pay 500 cows yearly and had the obligation to guard the sector of the Frankish border against the Wends. However, the Saxons broke their oath under Dagobert I which resulted in frequent raids of Wends into Frankish territory and spreading out over Thuringia and other territory. The Saxon duplicity

12390-614: The series of Crusades . By the 12th century, all Wendish lands had become part of the Holy Roman Empire. In the course of the Ostsiedlung , which reached its peak in the 12th to 14th centuries, this land was settled by Germans and reorganised. Due to the process of assimilation following German settlement , many Slavs west of the Oder adopted the German culture and language . Only some rural communities which did not have

12508-592: The services continue to be in German. The German language is co-official in the municipality of Pomerode , besides being cultural patrimony of the State of Espírito Santo . In Rio Grande do Sul, the Riograndenser Hunsrückisch German is an integral part of the State's historical and cultural heritage. Chile (with a population of 19 million) has an estimated 40,000 German-speakers. About 30,000 ethnic Germans arrived in Chile. During

12626-437: 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

12744-462: The world – experienced a decline in the use of the German language, with the exception of Brazil, where the dialect Riograndenser Hunsrückisch is being taught in schools and in some media, totaling over 200 thousand speakers spread over the Brazilian southern states. The main cause of this decrease is the integration of communities, often originally sheltered, into the dominant society, and as well as

12862-574: 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

12980-407: Was also significant for differing economic and political reasons. The majority of German emigrants to Latin America went especially to Brazil, but also to Argentina, Mexico, Uruguay, Chile, Paraguay, Guatemala, and Costa Rica. The three countries with the biggest ethnic German populations in Latin America to this day are Brazil, Argentina, and Mexico. Starting in 1818, when King D. João VI brought

13098-505: 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

13216-556: 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

13334-876: Was often a language taught as a foreign language in White South African schools during the Apartheid years (1948–1994). Today, the South African constitution identifies German as a "commonly used" language and the Pan South African Language Board is obligated to promote and ensure respect for it. Nowadays, at least one million German speakers live in Latin America . There are German-speaking minorities in almost every Latin American country, including Argentina , Belize , Bolivia , Brazil , Chile , Colombia , Costa Rica ,

13452-597: 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

13570-557: Was spoken in the central area of Lower Saxony and in Brandenburg until around the 17th or 18th century. The German population assimilated most of the Wends, meaning that they disappeared as an ethnic minority - except for the Sorbs . Yet many place names and some family names in eastern Germany still show Wendish origins today. Also, the Dukes of Mecklenburg , of Rügen and of Pomerania had Wendish ancestors. Between 1540 and 1973,

13688-580: 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

13806-637: 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

13924-673: 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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