Autocephaly recognized by some autocephalous Churches de jure :
94-470: The book Octoechos (from the Greek : ἡ [βίβλος] Ὀκτώηχος Greek pronunciation: [okˈtoixos] ; from ὀκτώ 'eight' and ἦχος 'sound, mode' called echos ; Church Slavonic : Осмѡгласникъ , Osmoglasnik from о́смь 'eight' and гласъ 'voice, sound') is a liturgical book containing a repertoire of hymns ordered in eight parts according to eight echoi ( tones or modes ). Originally created in
188-577: 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,
282-656: A cycle of stichera anastasima . Probably for this reason John of Damascus is regarded as the creator the Hagiopolitan Octoechos and the Hagiopolites treatise itself claims his authorship right at the beginning. It has only survived completely in a 14th-century copy, but its origin likely dates back to the time between the Council of Nicaea and the time of Joseph the Hymnographer (~816-886), when
376-558: 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
470-560: 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
564-519: A feast observed on the eighth Sunday before Christmas ( Yaldo ). The 1st mode is sung on this day. The following Sunday makes use of the 2nd mode, and so on, repeating the cycle until it starts again the next year. The cycle is interrupted only by feasts which have their own tones assigned to them. Similar to the Byzantine usage, each day of Easter Week has its own mode, except the Syriacs do not skip
658-540: 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
752-516: A hexaechos, since it used a tone system based on triphonia with three modes organised in fourth equivalence. Often the Parakletike was divided in two volumes as Pettoglasniks. Another popular book, also characteristic for the Obihod reception, was the so-called Sbornik ("Anthologion" or better "Synekdemos")—a chant book which contained all the chant of the divine liturgy, including proper chant of
846-608: A hymn is " Ἡ Παρθένος σήμερον ", the prooimion of the Christmas kontakion composed by Romanos the Melodist , set to a melody in the third mode of the Octoechos . This hymn has served as the metrical basis for many other Kontakia. In the current tradition the kontakion exists as well as a model to recite many other kontakia prosomoia which was also translated into Old Church Slavonic. In the particular genre kontakion this model
940-804: 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
1034-479: 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
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#17327733296561128-452: Is composed in one of these eight modes. Some modes have variants ( shuhlophe ) similar to the "special melodies" mentioned above. Only skilled chanters can master these variants. The modal cycle consists of eight weeks. Each Sunday or Feast day is assigned one of the eight modes. During the weekday offices, known in Syriac by the name Shhimo , the 1st and 5th modes are paired together, so are
1222-480: Is for September which commences the Byzantine liturgical year . The Festal Menaion is an abridged version containing texts for those great feasts falling on the fixed cycle, some editions also containing feasts of the major saints. The General Menaion contains services for each type of celebration ( apostles , martyrs , etc.) with blank spaces for the name of the saint (s) commemorated. Originating before
1316-415: 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 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 ,
1410-516: Is never sung, its irmos is nonetheless specified so as to indicate the melody. A volume called an " Irmolog " contains the irmosi of all the canons of all eight tones as well as a few sundry other pieces of music. Abridged versions of the Octoechos printed with musical notation were frequently published. As simple Octoechos they provided the hymns for the evening (večernaja molitva) and morning service (utrenna) between Saturday and Sunday. In Russia
1504-519: 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
1598-1070: 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 Menaion Autocephaly and canonicity recognized by Constantinople and 3 other autocephalous Churches: Spiritual independence recognized by Georgian Orthodox Church: Semi-Autonomous: The Menaion ( Greek : Μηναῖον ; Slavonic : Минїѧ, Miniya , "of
1692-454: Is still regarded as an idiomelon due to the complexity of the poetic form. Usually the arrangement of the syllables with their metric accentuation are composed as a well-known hymn tune or sticheron avtomelon within the melos of a certain echos. These melodic stichera are called automela , because they can easily be adapted to other texts, even if the number of syllables of verse varies—the so-called prosomoia . The prooimion which precedes
1786-763: 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,
1880-686: Is the Slavonic term for echos ), the Slavic book did rather correspond to the unnotated Tropologion, and often it included the hymns of the Irmolog as well. The Slavic reception, although it can be regarded as faithful translation of the Byzantine books, is mainly based on early Theta notation, which was used by Slavic reformers in order to develop own forms of notation in Moscow and Novgorod ( znamenny chant ). The translation activities between 1062 and 1074 at
1974-670: Is the Voskresnik with the repertoire of the simple Osmoglasnik. Within the Russian Orthodox church a chant book Octoechos with notated with kryuki developed during the late 15th century. The first print edition Oktoikh notnago peniya, sirech' Osmoglasnik was published with Kievan staff notation in 1772. It included hymns in Znamenny Chant as well as the melodic models (avtomela) for different types of hymns for each Glas. Northern Slavs in modern times often do not use
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#17327733296562068-674: 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 was recorded in writing systems such as Linear B and the Cypriot syllabary . The alphabet arose from
2162-624: 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 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
2256-627: 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 was by far the most widely spoken lingua franca in the Mediterranean world . It eventually became the official language of
2350-495: 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
2444-516: 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
2538-575: The Monastery of Stoudios during the 9th century as a hymnal complete with musical notation, it is still used in many rites of Eastern Christianity . The book with similar function in the Western Church is the tonary , and both contain the melodic models of an octoechos system ; however, while the tonary serves simply for a modal classification, the octoechos is organized as a cycle of eight weeks of services. The word itself can also refer to
2632-577: The Paschal cycle (moveable cycle) of the church year, the so-called Pentecostarion starting with the second Sunday of (the eighth day of) Easter . The first usually changes the echos each day, while the third week started the eight-week cycle with the second echos, each week in just one echos. The same cycle started in the triodion with the Lenten period until Easter, with the Lenten Friday preceding
2726-657: 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 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
2820-492: 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
2914-562: The oot tzayn . 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 is native to Greece , Cyprus , Italy (in Calabria and Salento ), southern Albania , and other regions of
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3008-532: The "Plagal" modes are called "Side" ( Koghm ), and are utilized in the following order: This order is important, because it is the order in which the modes are used liturgically and different from the order of the Greek traditions. Instead of using one tone per week, the Armenians use one tone per day. Easter Sunday is always the First Voice, the next day is First Side, and so on throughout the year. However,
3102-752: The 17th century different collections of the Octoechos had been separated as their own books about certain Hesperinos psalms like the Anoixantarion an octoechos collection for Psalm 103, the Kekragarion for Psalm 140, and the Pasapnoarion for the Psalm verse 150:6. The Octoechos also included other stichera dedicated to particular saints according to the provenance of a certain monastery, which also allows conclusions concerning place, where
3196-632: The 2nd and 6th, the 3rd and 7th, and the 4th and 8th. If a particular Sunday makes use of the 1st mode, the following Monday is sung with the 5th mode, Tuesday with the 1st mode, etc., with the pair alternating every day of the week (see the table provided in Guide to the Eight Modes in the External Links below). The ecclesiastical year starts with Qudosh `Idto (The Consecration of the Church),
3290-670: The 7th mode. Thus, the Sunday after Easter, called New Sunday ( Hadto ) is in the 8th mode rather than the 1st. In one type of hymn used by the Syriac Church, the Qole Shahroye (Vigils), each of the modes is dedicated to a theme: The 1st and 2nd modes are dedicated to the Virgin Mary , the 3rd and 4th to the saints , the 5th and 6th to penitence , and the 7th and 8th to the departed . The primary collection of hymns in
3384-482: The 9th century. Cyril and Methodius and their followers within the Ohrid -School were famous for the translation of Greek hymnody between 863 and 893, but it is also a period of a reformative synthesis of liturgical forms, the creation of new hymnographical genres and their organisation in annual cycles. Though the name of the book "Oktoich" derived from the Greek name Octoechos (Old Slavonic "Osmoglasnik," because "glas"
3478-486: 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
3572-495: 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
3666-629: 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
3760-685: 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
3854-570: The Kievan Pechersk Lavra had been realised without the help of South Slavic translators. The earliest known Slavonic manuscripts with neumes date from the late 11th or 12th century (mainly Stichirar, Kondakar and Irmolog). Concerning the earlier translations of the hymns and later translations in Russia, we can observe two different approaches to translation, one which favours the musical and metrical structure and another which favours
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3948-405: The Octoechos' kontakion for Sunday Orthros in echos tritos has the indication, that it should be sung to the melody of the above Christmas kontakion. Both kontakia have nearly the same number of syllables and accents within its verses, so the exact melody of the former is slightly adapted to the latter, its accents have to be sung with the given accentuation patterns. The printed book Octoechos with
4042-513: The Octoechos. The less hymns are sung from the Octoechos the more have to be sung from the other books. On major feast days, hymns from the Menaion entirely displace those from the Octoechos except on Sundays, when only a few Great Feasts of the Lord eclipse the Octoechos. Note that the Octoechos contains sufficient texts, so that none of these other books needs to be used—a holdover from before
4136-729: The Oktoich was the very first book printed ( incunabulum ) in Cyrillic typeface, which was published in Poland ( Kraków ) in 1491—by Schweipolt Fiol , a German native of Franconia . Only seven copies of this first publication are known to remain and the only complete one is in the collection of the Russian National Library . In 1905 the Zograf Monastery published a set of Slavonic chant books whose first volume
4230-564: The Pentecostarion, this cycle was often written within the Octoechos section. Nevertheless, a temporal eight-week-order was always the essential part of the Octoechos, at least as a liturgical concept. The temporal organisation of the mobile feast cycle and its lessons was result of the Studite reform since Theodore the Studite; their books had already been translated by Slavic monks during the 9th century. The eight tones can be found as
4324-764: The Saints of the Kyiv Pechersk Lavra , or for newly canonized saints or icons which have their own locally observed feasts. Since 1921, there have been two calendars in use within the Orthodox Church: the Julian Calendar and the Revised Julian Calendar . As of the 21st century there is a thirteen-day difference between the two calendars, so where the former is used, any given fixed date occurs thirteen days later than where
4418-415: The Southern Slavic reception did not change the system of prosomoia , it corresponded to the Hagiopolitan Octoechos . Glas ("voice") 1–4 are the authentic modes or kyrioi echoi , and the remaining 5–8 are the plagal modes or plagioi echoi , the latter term coming from the Medieval Greek plagios , "oblique" (from plagos , "side"). Unlike the Western octoechos, glas 5–8 (the plagioi echoi ) used
4512-409: The Sticherarion books (Miney, the Triods, and the Oktoich). Today heirmological melodies used primarily for canons have their own octoechos mele and their tempo, which employ a slightly modified scale for each tone; in canons, each troparion in an ode uses the meter and melody of the ode's irmos (analogous to prosomoia for sticheraric modes of a tone) and, therefore, even when a canon's irmos
4606-412: The Studite for the evening service during Lenten period which belong to the Triodion book. Since the 14th century, sticheraria also had notated collections of the prosomoia sung within Paschal tide (tesserakostes). They were made over idiomela of the menaion and notated with the new verses, while most of the prosomoia relied entirely on an oral tradition. Although these prosomoia were part of
4700-421: The Sunday cycles is often without any musical notation and the determination of a hymn's melody is indicated by the echos or glas according to the section within the book and its avtomelon, a melodic model defined by the melos of its mode. Since this book collects the repertoire of melodies sung every week, educated chanters knew all these melodies by heart, and they learnt how to adapt the accentuation patterns to
4794-404: 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),
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#17327733296564888-402: 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
4982-428: The books Octoechos and Heirmologion had been collected earlier in a book called Troparologion or Tropologion . It already existed during the 6th century in the Patriarchate of Antiochia , before it became a main genre of the centers of an Octoechos hymn reform in the monasteries of Saint Catherine on Mount Sinai and Mar Saba in Palestine , where St. John Damascene (c. 676–749) and Cosmas of Maiuma created
5076-399: The chant book was used. The Sticherarion did not only include the book Octoechos , but also the books Menaion , Triodion and Pentecostarion . Certain stichera of the other books, stichera prosomoia which rather belonged to an oral tradition, because they were later composed by using the avtomela written in the book Parakletike . The early prosomoia composed by Theodore
5170-459: The church history of Armenia and Georgia preceded the Byzantine imperial age about 50 years and both traditions were more oriented to the Patriarchates of Antioch and Jerusalem. This section describes Oriental and Caucasian hymnals as they have been used by Armenians until the genocide by the end of the Ottoman Empire, and as they are still used among Orthodox Christians in Syria, Persia, Armenia and Georgia. The Tropologion developed also in Syria and
5264-445: The cycle does not actually begin on Easter day, but counts backwards from Easter Sunday to the First Sunday in Lent, which is always Forth Side, regardless of what mode the previous day was. Each mode of the oot tzayn has one or more tartzwadzk‘ (auxiliary) modes. The Šaraknoc' is the book which contains the Šarakan , or Šaragan ( Canons ), hymns which constitute the substance of the musical system of Armenian liturgical chant in
5358-440: The development of hymnography and the cathedral rite of Jerusalem. Other hymn books developed between the 7th and the 11th centuries starting from the Hagiopolitan hymn reform of 692. They contain stichera, kontakia all kinds of troparia and canons without being necessarily dependent on the tradition of Byzantine chant and later developments of the Stoudios Monastery since the 9th century. The reason of this independence is, that
5452-412: The eight modes is the Beth Gazo d-ne`motho , or "Treasury of Chants." In the Armenian Apostolic Church , the system of eight modes is referred to as oot tzayn (eight voices). Although there is no structural relation between the Greek and Armenian modes, the division into "authentic" and "plagal" modes is parallel. In Armenian terminology, the "Authentic" modes are referred to as "Voice" ( Tzayn ) and
5546-439: The eight modes. Originally, these were Psalms and Biblical Canticles that were chanted during the services. A Sharagan was composed of verses which were interspersed between the scriptural verses. Eventually, the Šarakan replaced the biblical text entirely. In addition, the eight modes are applied to the psalms of the Night office, called Kanonaklookh (Canon head). the Armenian Church also makes use of other modes outside of
5640-417: The eight-tone music system—although they always do use the book Octoechos —rather singing all hymns in the same scale but with different melodies for each tone for each of several types of classifications of hymns. Although the Georgian Iadgari is not the oldest manuscript among the complete tropologia which could be preserved until the present day, the Iadgari offers the most complete insight into
5734-400: The emperors Leo VI and Constantine VII (10th century) as well as numerous anonymous authors. This reduced version was simply called Octoechos and it was often the last part of the sticherarion , the new notated chant book of the reformers. Until the 14th century the book Octoechos, as far as it belonged to the Sticherarion , was ordered according to hymn genre of the repertoire. Later
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#17327733296565828-439: 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
5922-596: The invention of printing and the completion and wide distribution of the rather large 12-volume Menaion—, but portions of the Octoechos (e.g., the last three stichera following "Lord, I have cried," the Hesperinos psalm 140) are seldom used nowadays and they are often completely omitted in the currently printed volumes. Even before a direct exchange between Slavic monks and monks of the Stoudios Monastery, papyrus fragments offer evidence of earlier translations of Greek hymns. The early fragments show that hymns and their melodies developed independently in an early phase until
6016-409: The invention of printing when the enormous volume of the complete Menaion could not be copied for every church, this is still used for saints that do not have complete services, e.g. , for the patron feast of a church named after a minor saint; it is also used by missions and parishes unable to afford a complete Menaion. Supplementary volumes to the Menaion exist for local saints, e.g. , one for all
6110-674: The kontakion for Christmas is recited today with a simple melody in a rather sophisticated heirmologoc melos of echos tritos; its most important part is the conclusion called "ephymnion" (in italic characters) which uses one and the same melody for all kontakia of the same echos (at the end of the prooimion as well as at the end of each following oikos): Ἡ Παρθένος σήμερον τὸν ὑπερούσιον τίκτει καὶ ἡ γῆ τὸ σπήλαιον τῷ ἀπροσίτῳ προσάγει, Ἄγγελοι μετά ποιμένων δοξολογούσι, Μάγοι δὲ μετά ἀστέρος ὁδοιπορούσιν, δι’ ἡμάς γὰρ ἐγεννήθη παιδίον νέον, ὁ πρὸ αἰώνων Θεός. A hymn may more or less imitate an automelon melodically and metrically—depending, if
6204-414: 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
6298-412: The latter is used, e.g. , Christmas is fixed on December 25, but where the Julian calendar is used, that date falls on what is commonly known as January 7. The date of Pascha , however, is everywhere reckoned using the Julian Calendar, resulting in differing interactions between the Paschal cycle and the fixed cycle, e.g. the Annunciation may fall as late as Bright Wednesday where the Julian Calendar
6392-425: The literal translation of the hymns. The school represented by Kliment of Ohrid , Naum , or Constantine of Preslav endeavoured to match the Greek text in the number of syllables in the hymns and to preserve the verse structure indicated by the corresponding neumes, but the resulting meaning of the hymns could change so considerably that, in certain cases, the only aspect the original and the translation had in common
6486-458: 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
6580-441: 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
6674-409: The month") is the liturgical book used by the Eastern Orthodox Church containing the propers for fixed dates of the calendar year, i.e. entities not dependent on the date of Easter . The Menaion is the largest volume of the propers for the Byzantine Rite and is used at nearly all the daily services . The complete Menaion is published in twelve volumes, one for each month; the first volume
6768-426: The needs of Christian hymnography. Then John of Damascus started a new, third period in the history of Church singing. He introduced what is known as the osmoglasie — a system of singing in eight tones, or melodies —, and compiled a liturgical singing book bearing the title "Ochtoechos," which literally signifies "the book of the eight tones." The earliest version of a Tropologion dedicated to the repertoire of Octoechos
6862-399: 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
6956-706: 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
7050-541: 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 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
7144-497: The printed texts of the hymns while singing out of other text books like the menaion . The Great Octoechos ( ὀκτώηχος ἡ μεγάλη ), or Parakletike , contains proper office hymns for each weekday. The earliest state of a Great Octoechos collection are Mss. gr. 1593 and 776 of the Library at Saint Catherine's Monastery which had been identified as belonging to one manuscript ( ET-MSsc Ms. Gr. 776 & 1593 about 800). The hymns of
7238-468: The repertoire of hymns sung during the celebrations of the Sunday Office . Many hymns in the Octoechos, such as Kathismata , Odes, and Kontakia are set in a strict meter —a fixed number of syllables with particular stress patterns, consistent throughout multiple verses. Complex poems are written with syllabic patterns matching the meter of a familiar hymn written prior. One example of such
7332-520: The same octave species like glas 1–4, but their final notes were a fifth lower on the bottom of the pentachord with respect to the finales of the kyrioi on the top of each pentachord, the melodic range composed in the plagioi was usually smaller. There was an alternative tonal system based on the obihodniy zvukoryad which was used in the Northern Slavic reception in Novgorod. It was based on
7426-437: 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
7520-485: The subsequent Palm Sunday . Each day of the week has a distinct theme for which hymns in each tone are found in the texts of the Octoechos. During this period, the Octoechos is not sung on weekdays and it is furthermore not sung on Sundays from Palm Sunday through the Sunday of All Saints. After Pentecost, the singing of the Great Octoechos on weekdays continued until Saturday of Meatfare Week, on Sundays there
7614-456: The text has exactly the same number of syllables with the same accents as those of verses in the corresponding automelon. Such a hymn was usually called sticheron prosomoion or in the case of kontakion, kontakion prosomoion , the echos and opening words of the model (a sticheron avtomelon or in this particular case the prooimion of the Nativity kontakion) were usually indicated. For example,
7708-522: The thematic structure of the stichera anastasima which had to be sung during Hesperinos on Saturday and during Orthros on Sunday, were emphasised and ordered according to the eight echoi, each of the eight parts structured according to the order, as they had to be sung during the evening and morning service. They became a well structured book for the daily use of chanters like the later book Anastasimatarion or in Slavonic Voskresnik . Since
7802-637: The treatise could still have introduced the book Tropologion . The earliest papyrus sources of the Tropologion can be dated to the 6th century: Choral singing saw its most brilliant development in the temple of Holy Wisdom in Constantinople during the reign of Emperor Justinian the Great. National Greek musical harmonies, or modes — the Dorian, Phrygian, Lydian, and Mixolydian modes — were adapted to
7896-447: 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 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
7990-529: 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 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
8084-574: 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
8178-568: 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
8272-557: 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
8366-594: Was another cycle organised by the eleven heothina with their exaposteilaria and their theotokia . In the daily practice the prosomeia of the Octoechos are combined with idiomela from the other books: On the fixed cycle, i.e. , dates of the calendar year, the Menaion and on the movable cycle, according to season, the Lenten Triodion (in combination from the previous year's Paschal cycle). The texts from these volumes displace some of those from
8460-601: Was called in Syriac Tropligin . A Syriac translation of the "Octoechos of Antioch", tropologion created by Severus of Antioch, Paul of Edessa and John Psaltes (early sixth century), was copied in 675, but still during the 9th century Tropligins were organised in a similar way like the Georgian Iadgari . The Syriac Orthodox Church today still makes use of a system of eight modes (usually classified as makam ). Each hymn ( Syriac : qolo , plural: qole )
8554-548: Was created by Severus of Antioch , Paul of Edessa and John Psaltes between 512 and 518. The Tropologion was expanded upon by St. Cosmas of Maiuma († 773), Theodore the Studite († 826) and his brother Joseph of Thessalonica († 832), Theophanes the Branded (c. 775–845), the hegoumenai and hymnographers Kassia (810-865) and Theodosia , Thekla the Nun , Metrophanes of Smyrna († after 880), Paul, Metropolit of Amorium , and by
8648-413: Was the prescribed music, i.e. , the indicated melos and echos. On the other hand, the later translations during the missions in Russia had their emphasis on a literal translation of the texts, but this resulted in altering the metrical structure given by the avtomela and the heirmoi so much that the music had to be recomposed. Another difference between the two Slavic receptions was the tonal system. Since
8742-580: 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
8836-673: 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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