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75-423: There is a common misconception that the word Xmas stems from a secularizing tendency to de-emphasize the religious tradition of Christmas, by taking the 'Christ' out of "Christmas". Nevertheless, the term's usage dates back to the 16th century, and corresponds to Roman Catholic , Eastern Orthodox , Church of England , and Episcopalian liturgical use of various forms of chi-rho monogram . In English, "X"

150-427: A 1986 BBC poll were asked to submit "the three points of grammatical usage they most disliked". Participants stated that their noted points "'made their blood boil', 'gave a pain to their ear', 'made them shudder', and 'appalled' them". Mignon Fogarty writes that "nearly all grammarians agree that it's fine to end sentences with prepositions, at least in some cases." Fowler's Modern English Usage says, "One of

225-577: 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,

300-457: A direct connection with any other sentence, just stop there and go on to a new paragraph. There's no rule against it. A paragraph can be a single sentence, whether long, short, or middling. According to the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill's Writing Center's website, "Many students define paragraphs in terms of length: a paragraph is a group of at least five sentences, a paragraph

375-558: 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

450-560: 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

525-540: 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

600-557: A press release saying that he wanted journalists to keep the "Christ" in Christmas, and not call it Xmas—which he called a " pagan " spelling of 'Christmas'. The abbreviation of Christmas as Xmas is a source of disagreement among Christians who observe the holiday. The December 1957 News and Views published by the Church League of America , a conservative organization co-founded in 1937 by George Washington Robnett, attacked

675-460: A sentence seems to be unshakeable. Yet it has no foundation." It is a misconception that the passive voice is always incorrect in English. Some "writing tutors" believe that the passive voice is to be avoided in all cases, but "there are legitimate uses for the passive voice", says Paul Brians. Mignon Fogarty also points out that "passive sentences aren't incorrect" and "If you don't know who

750-418: A third option other than a statement or its negation. For example, an author may write "I'm not unconvinced by his argument" to imply they find an argument persuasive, but not definitive. Some writers suggest avoiding nested negatives as a rule of thumb for clear and concise writing. Overuse of nested negatives can result in sentences that are difficult to parse, as in the sentence "I am not sure whether it

825-479: A war against the name of Jesus Christ. Roland Martin likewise relates the use of Xmas to his growing concerns of increasing commercialization and secularization of one of Christianity's highest holy days. Bratcher posits that those who dislike abbreviating the word are unfamiliar with a long history of Christians using X in place of "Christ" for various purposes. The word Christ and its compounds, including Christmas , have been abbreviated in English for at least

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900-400: Is a gross canard that beginning a sentence with but is stylistically slipshod. In fact, doing so is highly desirable in any number of contexts, as many style books have said (many correctly pointing out that but is more effective than however at the beginning of a sentence)". Fowler's echoes this sentiment: "The widespread public belief that But should not be used at the beginning of

975-585: Is a symbol often used to represent Christ in Catholic , Protestant , and Orthodox Christian Churches. The Oxford English Dictionary ( OED ) and the OED Supplement have cited usages of X- or Xp- for 'Christ-' as early as 1485. The terms Xtian and less commonly Xpian have also been used for 'Christian'. The OED further cites usage of Xtianity for 'Christianity' from 1634. According to Merriam-Webster's Dictionary of English Usage , most of

1050-406: Is a widespread belief—one with no historical or grammatical foundation—that it is an error to begin a sentence with a conjunction such as "and", "but", or "so". In fact, a substantial percentage (often as many as 10 percent) of the sentences in first-rate writing begin with conjunctions. It has been so for centuries, and even the most conservative grammarians have followed this practice. Regarding

1125-804: 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

1200-773: Is an Indo-European language, constituting an independent Hellenic branch within the Indo-European language family. It is native to Greece , Cyprus , Italy (in Calabria and Salento ), southern Albania , and other regions of the Balkans , Caucasus , the Black Sea coast, Asia Minor , and the Eastern Mediterranean . It has the longest documented history of any Indo-European language, spanning at least 3,400 years of written records. Its writing system

1275-479: 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

1350-458: Is half a page long, etc." The website explains, "Length and appearance do not determine whether a section in a paper is a paragraph. For instance, in some styles of writing, particularly journalistic styles, a paragraph can be just one sentence long." Writers such as Shakespeare , Samuel Johnson , and others since Anglo-Saxon days have been "shrinking English". Some opinion makers in the 17th and 18th century eschewed contractions, but beginning in

1425-528: Is not true to say that the Milton who once seemed not unlike a seventeenth-century Shelley had not become[...]" Richard Nordquist writes, "no rule exists regarding the number of sentences that make up a paragraph", noting that professional writers use "paragraphs as short as a single word". According to the Oxford Guide to Plain English : If you can say what you want to say in a single sentence that lacks

1500-519: 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

1575-437: Is responsible for an action, passive voice can be the best choice". When the active or passive voice can be used without much awkwardness, there are differing opinions about which is preferable. Bryan A. Garner notes, "Many writers talk about passive voice without knowing exactly what it is. In fact, many think that any BE-VERB signals passive voice." Some style guides use the term double negative to refer exclusively to

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1650-404: Is sometimes claimed that "nauseous" means "causing nausea" (nauseating), not suffering from it (nauseated). This prescription is contradicted by vast evidence from English usage, and Merriam-Webster finds no source for the rule before a published letter by a physician, Deborah Leary, in 1949. It is true that the adjective "healthful" has been pushed out in favor of "healthy" in recent times. But

1725-526: Is spoken by at least 13.5 million people today in Greece, Cyprus, Italy, Albania, Turkey , and the many other countries of the Greek diaspora . Greek roots have been widely used for centuries and continue to be widely used to coin new words in other languages; Greek and Latin are the predominant sources of international scientific vocabulary . Greek has been spoken in the Balkan peninsula since around

1800-708: 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,

1875-650: Is the Greek alphabet , which has been used for approximately 2,800 years; previously, Greek was recorded in writing systems such as Linear B and the Cypriot syllabary . The alphabet arose from the Phoenician script and was in turn the basis of the Latin , Cyrillic , Coptic , Gothic , and many other writing systems. The Greek language holds a very important place in the history of the Western world. Beginning with

1950-495: 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

2025-516: 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

2100-492: 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

2175-405: The nonstandard use of reinforcing negations (negative concord), e.g., using "I don't know nothing" to mean "I know nothing". But the term "double negative" can sometimes refer to the standard English constructions called litotes or nested negatives, e.g., using "He is not unhealthy" to mean "He is healthy". In some cases, nested negation is used to convey nuance, uncertainty, or the possibility of

2250-671: The 1920s, usage guides have mostly allowed them. Most writing handbooks now recommend using contractions to create more readable writing, but many schools continue to teach that contractions are prohibited in academic and formal writing, contributing to this misconception. Common examples of words described as "not real" include "funnest", "impactful", and "mentee", all of which are in common use, appear in numerous dictionaries as English words, and follow standard rules for constructing English words from morphemes . The word "inflammable" can be derived by two different constructions, both following standard rules of English grammar: appending

2325-470: The 3rd millennium BC, or possibly earlier. The earliest written evidence is a Linear B clay tablet found in Messenia that dates to between 1450 and 1350 BC, making Greek the world's oldest recorded living language . Among the Indo-European languages, its date of earliest written attestation is matched only by the now-extinct Anatolian languages . The Greek language is conventionally divided into

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2400-486: 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

2475-425: The Greek language are often emphasized. Although Greek has undergone morphological and phonological changes comparable to those seen in other languages, never since classical antiquity has its cultural, literary, and orthographic tradition been interrupted to the extent that one can speak of a new language emerging. Greek speakers today still tend to regard literary works of ancient Greek as part of their own rather than

2550-495: 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

2625-629: 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

2700-685: 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

2775-515: The United Nations, at the behest of "world Jewry", had "outlawed the name of Christ". There is, however, a well documented history of use of Χ (actually the Greek letter chi ) as an abbreviation for "Christ" (Χριστός) and possibly also a symbol of the cross. The abbreviation appears on many Orthodox Christian religious icons. Dennis Bratcher, writing for Christian website The Voice , states "there are always those who loudly decry

2850-404: 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),

2925-402: 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

3000-550: The authors imagine to be, as a rule , true. But statements of this kind are extremely difficult to formulate both simply and accurately. They are rarely altogether true; often only partially true; sometimes contradicted by usage itself. Sometimes the contrary to them is also true. Many usage forms are commonly perceived as nonstandard or errors despite being widely accepted or endorsed by authoritative descriptions. Perceived violations of correct English usage elicit visceral reactions in many people. For example, respondents to

3075-460: The awkwardness that can result from prohibiting sentence-ending prepositions. "There is no such rule" against splitting an infinitive, according to The Oxford Guide to Plain English , and it has "never been wrong to 'split' an infinitive". In some cases it may be preferable to split an infinitive. In his grammar book A Plea for the Queen's English (1864), Henry Alford claimed that because "to"

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3150-434: The beginning of the 21st century. But "every major grammarian for more than a century has tried to debunk" this idea; "it's perfectly natural to put a preposition at the end of a sentence, and it has been since Anglo-Saxon times." Many examples of terminal prepositions occur in classic works of literature, including the plays of Shakespeare. The saying "This is the sort of nonsense up with which I will not put" satirizes

3225-474: The distinction between the words dates only to the 19th century. Before that, the words were used interchangeably; some examples date to the 16th century. The use of "healthful" in place of "healthy" is now regarded as unusual enough that it may be considered hypercorrected . Greek language Greek ( Modern Greek : Ελληνικά , romanized :  Elliniká , [eliniˈka] ; Ancient Greek : Ἑλληνική , romanized :  Hellēnikḗ )

3300-404: The early 19th century that was used for literary and official purposes in the newly formed Greek state. In 1976, Dimotiki was declared the official language of Greece, after having incorporated features of Katharevousa and thus giving birth to Standard Modern Greek , used today for all official purposes and in education . The historical unity and continuing identity between the various stages of

3375-577: The entry: "Xmas. Christmas." Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. used the term in a letter dated 1923. Since at least the late 19th century, Xmas has been in use in various other English-language nations. Quotations with the word can be found in texts first written in Canada, and the word has been used in Australia, and in the Caribbean. Merriam-Webster's Dictionary of English Usage stated that modern use of

3450-618: The epics of Homer , ancient Greek literature includes many works of lasting importance in the European canon . Greek is also the language in which many of the foundational texts in science and philosophy were originally composed. The New Testament of the Christian Bible was also originally written in Greek. Together with the Latin texts and traditions of the Roman world , the Greek texts and Greek societies of antiquity constitute

3525-460: The evidence for these words comes from "educated Englishmen who knew their Greek". In ancient Christian art, χ and χρ are abbreviations for Christ's name. In many manuscripts of the New Testament and icons , 'Χ' is an abbreviation for Χριστος , as is XC (the first and last letters in Greek, using the lunate sigma ); compare IC for Jesus in Greek. Other proper names containing

3600-452: The following periods: In the modern era, the Greek language entered a state of diglossia : the coexistence of vernacular and archaizing written forms of the language. What came to be known as the Greek language question was a polarization between two competing varieties of Modern Greek: Dimotiki , the vernacular form of Modern Greek proper, and Katharevousa , meaning 'purified', a compromise between Dimotiki and Ancient Greek developed in

3675-439: 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

3750-467: 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

3825-672: The letter χ ), and chrysanthemum comes from Greek words meaning 'golden flower', while Christ comes from a Greek word meaning 'anointed'. Common English usage misconceptions This list comprises widespread modern beliefs about English language usage that are documented by a reliable source to be misconceptions. With no authoritative language academy , guidance on English language usage can come from many sources. This can create problems, as described by Reginald Close: Teachers and textbook writers often invent rules which their students and readers repeat and perpetuate. These rules are usually statements about English usage which

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3900-640: The membership of Greece and Cyprus in the European Union, Greek is one of the organization's 24 official languages . Greek is recognized as a minority language in Albania, and used co-officially in some of its municipalities, in the districts of Gjirokastër and Sarandë . It is also an official minority language in the regions of Apulia and Calabria in Italy. In the framework of the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages , Greek

3975-441: 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

4050-407: The most persistent myths about prepositions in English is that they properly belong before the word or words they govern and should not be placed at the end of a clause or sentence." Preposition stranding was in use long before any English speakers considered it incorrect . This idea probably began in the 17th century, owing to an essay by the poet John Dryden , and it is still taught in schools at

4125-414: The name "Xtina". Similarly, Exene Cervenka has been a noted American singer-songwriter since 1977. This usage of 'X' to spell the syllable kris (rather than the sounds ks ) has extended to xtal for ' crystal ', and on florists ' signs to xant for ' chrysanthemum ', even though these words are not etymologically related to Christ : crystal comes from a Greek word meaning 'ice' (and not even using

4200-414: The name 'Christ' besides those mentioned above are sometimes abbreviated similarly, either as X or Xt , both of which have been used historically, e.g., Xtopher or Xopher for 'Christopher', or Xtina or Xina for the name 'Christina'. In the 17th and 18th centuries, Xene and Exene were common spellings for the given name 'Christine'. The American singer Christina Aguilera has sometimes gone by

4275-399: 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

4350-536: The objects of study of the discipline of Classics . During antiquity , Greek was by far the most widely spoken lingua franca in the Mediterranean world . It eventually became the official language of the Byzantine Empire and developed into Medieval Greek . In its modern form , Greek is the official language of Greece and Cyprus and one of the 24 official languages of the European Union . It

4425-706: 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

4500-554: The past 1,000 years, long before the modern Xmas was commonly used. Christ was often written as 'Xρ' or 'Xt'; there are references in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle as far back as 1021. This 'X' and 'P' arose as the uppercase forms of the Greek letters χ (Ch) and ρ (R) used in ancient abbreviations for Χριστος (Greek for "Christ"). The Chi-Rho , an amalgamation of the two Greek letters rendered as '☧' ( Unicode character U+2627 ☧ CHI RHO )

4575-510: The spelling should be considered informal and restricted to contexts where concision is valued, such as headlines and greeting cards. The Christian Writer's Manual of Style , while acknowledging the ancient and respectful use of Xmas in the past, states that the spelling should never be used in formal writing . Early use of Xmas includes Bernard Ward's History of St. Edmund's college, Old Hall (originally published c.  1755 ). An earlier version, X'temmas , dates to 1551. Around 1100

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4650-437: 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

4725-413: The suffix -able to the word inflame creates a word meaning "able to be inflamed", while adding the prefix in- to the word flammable creates a word meaning "not flammable". Thus "inflammable" is an auto-antonym , a word that can be its own antonym, depending on context. Because of the risk of confusion, style guides sometimes recommend using the unambiguous terms "flammable" and "not flammable". It

4800-561: The term is largely limited to advertisements, headlines and banners, where its conciseness is valued. The association with commerce "has done nothing for its reputation", according to the dictionary. In the United Kingdom, the former Church of England Bishop of Blackburn , Alan Chesters , recommended to his clergy that they avoid the spelling. In the United States, in 1977 New Hampshire Governor Meldrim Thomson sent out

4875-577: The term was written as Xp̄es mæsse in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle . Xmas is found in a letter from George Woodward in 1753. Lord Byron used the term in 1811, as did Samuel Coleridge (1801) and Lewis Carroll (1864). In the United States, the fifth American edition of William Perry's Royal Standard English Dictionary , published in Boston in 1800, included in its list of "Explanations of Common Abbreviations, or Contraction of Words"

4950-518: The use of Xmas in an article titled "X=The Unknown Quantity". The claims were picked up later by Gerald L. K. Smith , who in December 1966 claimed that Xmas was a "blasphemous omission of the name of Christ" and that "'X' is referred to as being symbolical of the unknown quantity". Smith further argued that the Jewish people had introduced Santa Claus to suppress New Testament accounts of Jesus, and that

5025-510: The use of the abbreviation 'Xmas' as some kind of blasphemy against Christ and Christianity". Among them are evangelist Franklin Graham and former CNN contributor Roland S. Martin . Graham stated in an interview: [F]or us as Christians, this is one of the most holy of the holidays, the birth of our savior Jesus Christ. And for people to take Christ out of Christmas. They're happy to say merry Xmas. Let's just take Jesus out. And really, I think,

5100-451: The word "and", Fowler's Modern English Usage states, "There is a persistent belief that it is improper to begin a sentence with And , but this prohibition has been cheerfully ignored by standard authors from Anglo-Saxon times onwards." Garner's Modern American Usage adds, "It is rank superstition that this coordinating conjunction cannot properly begin a sentence." The word "but" suffers from similar misconceptions. Garner says, "It

5175-574: 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

5250-568: 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

5325-557: 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

5400-551: Was first used as a scribal abbreviation for "Christ" in 1100; "X'temmas" is attested in 1551, and "Xmas" in 1721. The term Xmas is deprecated by some modern style guides , including those at The New York Times , The New York Times Manual of Style and Usage , The Times , The Guardian , and the BBC . Millicent Fenwick , in the 1948 Vogue's Book of Etiquette , states that "'Xmas' should never be used" in greeting cards. The Cambridge Guide to Australian English Usage states that

5475-550: Was part of the infinitive, the parts were inseparable. This was in line with a 19th-century movement among grammarians to transfer Latin rules to the English language. In Latin, infinitives are single words (e.g., " amare, cantare, audire "), making split infinitives impossible. Those who impose this rule on themselves are following a modern English "rule" that was not used historically. Jeremy Butterfield described this perceived prohibition as one of "the folk commandments of English usage". The Chicago Manual of Style says: There

5550-580: 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

5625-673: 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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