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Greek
Ελληνικά Ellīniká
Pronunciation	[eliniˈka]
Spoken in	Greece, Cyprus, Greek diaspora, Spain.
Total speakers	c. 13 million1
Ranking	682
Language family	Indo-European Hellenic Greek
Writing system	Greek alphabet
Official status
Official emphasis in	Greece3  Cyprus4  European Union5 Recognised boyhood emphasis in:  Albania6  Armenia78  Italy6  Romania7  Ukraine7
Regulated by	No official regulation
Language codes
ISO 639-1	el
ISO 639-2	gre (B)	ell (T)
ISO 639-3	variously: grc – Ancient Greek ell – Modern Greek pnt – Pontic Greek gmy – Mycenaean Greek gkm – Medieval Greek cpg – Cappadocian Greek tsd – Tsakonian Greek
Note: This page may accommodate IPA phonetic symbols in Unicode.

Greek (ελληνικά, IPA: [eliniˈka] or ελληνική γλώσσα, IPA: [eliniˈci ˈɣlosa]), an absolute annex of the Indo-European ancestors of languages, is the emphasis of the Greeks. Built-in to the southern Balkans, it has the longest accurate history of any Indo-European language, spanning 34 centuries of accounting records.⁹ In its age-old form, it is the emphasis of classical ancient Greek literature and the New Testament of the Christian Bible. In its avant-garde form, it is the official emphasis of Greece and Cyprus and one of the 23 official languages of the European Union. Announced by about 13 actor people,¹ including minority and alien communities in abundant locations of the world, its accounting anatomy uses the Greek alphabet.

History

Greek has been announced in the Balkan Peninsula back about the backward 3rd millennium BC. The age-old accounting affirmation is begin in the Linear B clay tablets in the "Room of the Chariot Tablets", an LMIII A-context (c. 1400 BC) arena of Knossos, in Crete, authoritative Greek one of the world's oldest recorded living languages. Among the Indo-European languages, its date of age-old accession is akin abandoned by the Anatolian languages.

The afterwards Greek alphabet (unrelated to Linear B) is acquired from the Phoenician alphabet (Abjad); with accessory modifications, it is still acclimated today. The Greek emphasis is commonly disconnected into the afterward periods:

• Proto-Greek: the affected endure antecedent of all accepted varieties of Greek which is not recorded. Proto-Greek speakers possibly entered the Greek peninsula in the aboriginal 2nd millennium BC. Back then, Greek has been announced uninterruptedly in Greece.
• Mycenaean Greek: the emphasis of the Mycenaean civilization. It is recorded in the Linear B Software on tablets dating from the 15th or 14th aeon BC onwards.
• Ancient Greek: in its assorted dialects was the emphasis of the Archaic and Classical periods of the ancient Greek civilization. It was broadly accepted throughout the Roman Empire. Age-old Greek fell into decay in western Europe in the Middle Ages, but remained clearly in use in the Byzantine world, and was reintroduced to the blow of Europe with the Fall of Constantinople and Greek clearing to the areas of Italy.
• Koine Greek: The admixture of assorted age-old Greek dialects with Attic, the emphasis of Athens, resulted in the conception of the aboriginal accepted Greek dialect, which became a lingua franca beyond Eastern Mediterranean and Near East. Koine Greek can be initially traced aural the armies and baffled territories of Alexander the Great, but afterwards the Hellenistic colonization of the accepted world, it was announced from Egypt to the bound of India. Afterwards the Roman acquisition of Greece, an actionable diglossy of Greek and Latin was accustomed in the city-limits of Rome and Koine Greek became a aboriginal or added emphasis in the Roman Empire. The agent of Christianity can aswell be traced through Koine Greek, as the Apostles acclimated it to deliver in Greece and the Greek-speaking world. It is aswell accepted as the Alexandrian dialect, Post-Classical Greek or even New Testament Greek, as it was the aboriginal emphasis the New Testament was accounting in.
• Medieval Greek, aswell accepted as Byzantine Greek: the assiduity of Koine Greek during Byzantine Greece, up to the annihilation of the Byzantine Empire in the 15th century. Medieval Greek is a awning appellation for a accomplished continuum of altered emphasis and autograph styles, alignment from colloquial continuations of announced Koine that were already abutting Modern Greek in abounding respects, to awful abstruse forms assuming classical Attic. Abundant of the accounting Greek that was acclimated as the official emphasis of the Byzantine Empire was an all-embracing middle-ground array based on the attitude of accounting Koine.
• Modern Greek: Stemming from Medieval Greek, Avant-garde Greek usages can be traced in the Byzantine period, as aboriginal as 11th century. It is the emphasis acclimated by avant-garde Greeks and afar from Accepted Avant-garde Greek, there are several dialects of it.

The attitude of diglossia, the accompanying actuality of colloquial and archaizing accounting forms of Greek, was renewed in the avant-garde era in the anatomy of a animosity amid two aggressive varieties: Dimotiki, the colloquial anatomy of Avant-garde Greek proper, and Katharevousa, acceptation 'purified', an apery of classical Greek, which was developed in the aboriginal 19th aeon and acclimated for literary, juridic, authoritative and accurate purposes in the anew formed avant-garde Greek state. The diglossia problem was brought to an end in 1976 (Law 306/1976), if Dimotikí was declared the official emphasis of Greece and it is still in use for all official purposes and in education, accepting congenital appearance of Katharevousa and giving bearing to Accepted Greek.

Historical accord and continuing character amid the assorted stages of the Greek emphasis is generally emphasised. Although Greek has undergone morphological and phonological changes commensurable to those apparent in added languages, there has been no time in its history back classical antique breadth its cultural, literary, and orthographic attitude was disconnected to such an admeasurement that one can calmly allege of a new emphasis emerging. Greek speakers today still tend to attention arcane works of age-old Greek as allotment of their own rather than a adopted language.¹⁰ It is aswell generally estimated that the actual changes accept been about slight compared with some added languages. According to one estimation, "Homeric Greek is apparently afterpiece to chatty than twelfth-century Average English is to avant-garde announced English."¹¹ Age-old Greek texts, abnormally from Biblical Koine onwards, are appropriately about simple to accept for accomplished avant-garde speakers. The acumen of actual accord is aswell adequate by the actuality that Greek has not breach up into a accumulation of abstracted civic babe languages, as happened with Latin.

Greek words accept been broadly adopted into the European languages, including English: mathematics, astronomy, democracy, philosophy, thespian, athletics, theater, rhetoric etc. Moreover, Greek words and word elements abide to be advantageous as a base for coinages: anthropology, photography, isomer, biomechanics, cinema, physics etc. and form, with Latin words, the foundation of all-embracing accurate and abstruse vocabulary, e.g. all words catastrophe with "-logy" ("discourse"). An estimated 12% of the English cant has Greek origin, while abundant Greek words accept English derivatives.¹²

Geographic distribution

Greek is announced by about 13.1 actor people,¹ mainly in Greece and Cyprus, but aswell common by the ample Greek diaspora. There are acceptable Greek-speaking settlements in the neighbouring countries of Albania, the Republic of Macedonia, Bulgaria and Turkey, as able-bodied as in several countries in the Black Sea breadth such as Ukraine, Russia, Romania, Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan, and about the Mediterranean Sea, Southern Italy, Israel, Egypt, Lebanon and age-old littoral towns forth the Levant. The emphasis is aswell announced by Greek alien communities in abounding countries in Western Europe, abnormally the United Kingdom and Germany, in Canada and the United States, Australia, as able-bodied as in Argentina, Brazil and others.^{citation needed}

Official status

Greek is the official language of Greece, breadth it is announced by about the absolute population.¹³ It is also, nominally alongside Turkish, the official emphasis of Cyprus, admitting Turkish has apparent bound official use by the Republic of Cyprus back the Turkish invasion of 1974.⁴ Because of the associates of Greece and Cyprus in the European Union, Greek is one of the organization's 23 official languages.⁵ Furthermore, Greek is clearly accustomed as a minority language in locations of Italy and Albania,⁶ as able-bodied as in Armenia and Ukraine.⁷

Characteristics of the emphasis beyond its history

The phonology, morphology, syntax, and vocabulary of the emphasis appearance both bourgeois and avant-garde tendencies beyond the absolute accession of the emphasis from the age-old to the avant-garde period. The analysis into accepted periods is, as with all such periodisations, about arbitrary, abnormally back at all periods, Age-old Greek has enjoyed top prestige, and the community adopted heavily from it.

Across its history, the syllabic anatomy of Greek has assorted little: Greek shows a alloyed affricate structure, allowing circuitous syllabic onsets, but actual belted codas. It has abandoned articulate vowels, and a adequately abiding set of consonantal contrasts. The basic phonological changes occurred during the Hellenistic and Roman aeon (see Koine Greek phonology for details), and included:

• replacement of the pitch accent with a stress accent
• simplification of the arrangement of vowels and diphthongs (loss of beat breadth distinction, monophthongization of a lot of diphthongs, and some cogent accomplish of iotacism)
• development of the voiceless aspirated stop consonants /pʰ/ and /tʰ/ to the blurred fricatives /f/ and /θ/, respectively; the agnate development of /kʰ/ to /x/ may accept taken abode afterwards (these phonological changes are not reflected in the orthography: both the beforehand and afterwards phonemes are accounting with φ, θ, and χ)
• possibly development of the voiced stop consonants /b/, /d/, /ɡ/ to their accurate affricate counterparts /β/ (later /v/), /ð/, /ɣ/

In all its stages, the analysis of Greek shows an all-encompassing set of advantageous acquired affixes, a bound but advantageous arrangement of compounding¹⁴, as able-bodied a affluent inflectional system. While its morphological categories accept been adequately abiding over time, morphological changes are present throughout, decidedly in the nominal and exact systems. The above change in nominal analysis was the accident of the dative case (its functions getting abundantly taken over by the genitive); in the verb, the above change was the accident of the infinitive, with a accessory acceleration in new aberrant forms.

Pronouns appearance distinctions in person (1st, 2nd, and 3rd), number (singular, dual, and plural in the age-old language; atypical and plural abandoned in afterwards stages), and gender (masculine, feminine, and neuter), and abatement for case (from six cases in the age-old forms accurate to four in the avant-garde language).¹⁵ Nouns, articles, and adjectives appearance all these distinctions but person. Both attributive and predicative adjectives accede with the noun.

The inflectional categories of the Greek verb accept additionally remained abundantly the aforementioned over the advance of the language's history, admitting with cogent changes in the amount of distinctions aural anniversary class and their morphological expression. Greek verbs accept synthetic inflectional forms for:

• mood — Age-old Greek: indicative, subjunctive, imperative, and optative; Avant-garde Greek: indicative, subjunctive¹⁶, and astute (other modal functions are bidding by aberrant constructions)
• number — singular, plural (archaic Greek aswell had a bifold number, although it was of attenuate use)
• voice — Age-old Greek: active, middle, and passive; Avant-garde Greek: alive and medio-passive
• tense — Age-old Greek: present, past, future; Avant-garde Greek: accomplished and non-past (future is bidding by a aberrant construction)
• person — first, second, third, added getting academic form
• aspect — Age-old Greek: imperfective, perfective (traditionally alleged aorist), perfect (sometimes aswell alleged perfective, see note about terminology); Avant-garde Greek: perfective and imperfective

Many aspects of the syntax of Greek accept remained constant: verbs accede with their accountable only, the use of the actual cases is abundantly complete (nominative for capacity and predicates, accusative for altar of a lot of verbs and abounding prepositions, animal for possessors), online autograph announce nouns, adpositions are abundantly prepositional, about clauses chase the noun they modify, about pronouns are clause-initial. But the morphological changes aswell accept their counterparts in the syntax, and there are aswell cogent differences amid the syntax of the age-old and that of the modern anatomy of the language. Age-old Greek fabricated abundant use of participial constructions and of constructions involving the infinitive, while the avant-garde array lacks the infinitive absolutely (instead accepting a bulk of new aberrant constructions) and uses participles added restrictedly. The accident of the dative led to a acceleration of prepositional aberrant altar (and the use of the animal to anon mark these as well). Age-old Greek tended to be verb-final, while aloof chat adjustment in the avant-garde emphasis is VSO or SVO.

Greek is a emphasis acclaimed by an all-encompassing vocabulary. The majority of the cant of age-old Greek was inherited, but it does cover a amount of borrowings from the languages of the populations that inhabited Greece afore the accession of Proto-Greeks. Words of non-Indo-European agent can be traced into Greek from as aboriginal as Mycenaean times; they cover a ample amount of Greek toponyms. The all-inclusive majority of Avant-garde Greek cant is anon affiliated from age-old Greek, although in assertive cases words accept afflicted meanings. Words of adopted origin accept entered the emphasis mainly from Latin, Venetian and Turkish. During earlier periods of the Greek language, accommodation words into Greek acquired Greek inflections, abrogation appropriately abandoned a adopted basis word. Avant-garde borrowings (from the 20th aeon on), abnormally from French and English, are about not inflected.

Classification

Greek is an absolute annex of the Indo-European language family. The age-old languages which were apparently a lot of carefully accompanying to it, ancient Macedonian (which some linguistic advisers advance is a dialect of Greek itself) and Phrygian, are not able-bodied abundant accurate to admittance abundant comparison. Among active languages Greek seems to be a lot of carefully accompanying to Armenian (see aswell Graeco-Armenian) or the Indo-Iranian languages (see Graeco-Aryan).

Writing system

Greek alphabet
Αα	Alpha	Νν	Nu
Ββ	Beta	Ξξ	Xi
Γγ	Gamma	Οο	Omicron
Δδ	Delta	Ππ	Pi
Εε	Epsilon	Ρρ	Rho
Ζζ	Zeta	Σσς	Sigma
Ηη	Eta	Ττ	Tau
Θθ	Theta	Υυ	Upsilon
Ιι	Iota	Φφ	Phi
Κκ	Kappa	Χχ	Chi
Λλ	Lambda	Ψψ	Psi
Μμ	Mu	Ωω	Omega
Obsolete letters
	Digamma		Qoppa
	San		Sampi
Other characters
	Stigma		Sho
	Heta
Greek diacritics

Linear B was the aboriginal Software acclimated to address Mycenaean Greek, the age-old anatomy of Greek attested. It is basically a sylabary, that was assuredly deciphered by Michael Ventris and John Chadwick. Another agnate arrangement acclimated to address the Greek emphasis was the Cypriot syllabary.

Greek has been accounting in the Greek alphabet back about the 9th aeon BC. In classical Greek, as in classical Latin, abandoned upper-case belletrist existed. The lower-case Greek belletrist were developed abundant afterwards by medieval scribes to admittance a faster, added acceptable cursive autograph appearance with the use of ink and quill. The alternative of the alphabet in use today is about the backward Ionic variant, alien for autograph classical Attic in 403 BC.

The avant-garde Greek alphabet consists of 24 letters, anniversary with a basic (majuscule) and lowercase (minuscule) form. The letter sigma has an added lowercase anatomy (ς) acclimated in final position.

In accession to the letters, the Greek alphabet appearance a amount of diacritical signs: three altered emphasis marks (acute, grave and circumflex), originally cogent altered shapes of pitch accent on the fatigued vowel; the alleged breath marks (rough and smooth breathing), originally acclimated to arresting attendance or absence of word-initial /h/; and the diaeresis, acclimated to mark abounding syllabic amount of a beat that would contrarily be apprehend as allotment of a diphthong. These marks were alien during the advance of the Hellenistic period. Actual acceptance of the grave in handwriting had apparent a accelerated abatement in favor of compatible acceptance of the astute during the backward 20th century, and it had abandoned been retained in typography.

In the autograph ameliorate of 1982, the use of a lot of of them was abolished from official use in Greece^{citation needed}. Back then, Avant-garde Greek has been accounting mostly in the simplified monotonic orthography (or monotonic system), which employs abandoned the astute emphasis and the diaeresis. The acceptable system, now alleged the polytonic orthography (or polytonic system), is still acclimated internationally for the autograph of Age-old Greek.

Greek has occasionally be accounting in the Latin alphabet in the past, abnormally in areas beneath Venetian rule or by Greek Catholics (and alleged Fragolevantinika or Fragochiotika)^{citation needed}, and added afresh is generally accounting in the Latin alphabet in online communications (called Greeklish).¹⁷

See also

• Ancient Greek
• Ancient Greek dialects
• Center for the Greek language
• English accentuation of Greek letters
• Greek emphasis question
• Greek substrate language
• Greeklish
• Hellenic Foundation for Culture
• List of Greek words with English derivatives
• That's Greek to me (expression)
• Varieties of Avant-garde Greek

References

Sources

• W. Sidney Allen, Vox Graeca - a adviser to the accentuation of classical Greek. Cambridge University Press, 1968-74. ISBN 0-521-20626-X
• Robert Browning, Medieval and Avant-garde Greek, Cambridge University Press, 2nd copy 1983, ISBN 0-521-29978-0. An accomplished and abridged actual annual of the development of avant-garde Greek from the age-old language.
• Crosby and Schaeffer, An Introduction to Greek, Allyn and Bacon, Inc. 1928. A academy grammar of age-old Greek
• Dionysius of Thrace, "Art of Grammar", "Τέχνη γραμματική", c.100 BC
• David Holton, Peter Mackridge, and Irene Philippaki-Warburton, Greek: A Comprehensive Grammar of the Avant-garde Language, Routledge, 1997, ISBN 0-415-10002-X. A advertence grammar of modern Greek.
• Geoffrey Horrocks, Greek: A History of the Emphasis and Its Speakers (Longman Linguistics Library). Addison Wesley Publishing Company, 1997. ISBN 0-582-30709-0. From Mycenean to modern.
• Brian Newton, The Generative Interpretation of Dialect: A Abstraction of Avant-garde Greek Phonology, Cambridge University Press, 1972, ISBN 0-521-08497-0.
• Andrew Sihler, "A New Comparative Grammar of Greek and Latin", Oxford University Press, 1996. An actual grammar of age-old Greek from its Indo-European origins. Some eccentricities and no bibliography but a advantageous handbook to the age-old stages of Greek's development.
• Herbert Weir Smyth, Greek Grammar, Harvard University Press, 1956 (revised edition), ISBN 0-674-36250-0. The accepted grammar of classical Greek. Focuses primarily on the Attic dialect, with analogously anemic analysis of the added dialects and the Homeric Kunstsprache.

External links

General background

Standard Greek edition of Wikipedia, the chargeless encyclopedia

Pontic Greek edition of Wikipedia, the chargeless encyclopedia

Ancient Greek test of Wikipedia at Wikimedia Incubator

Wikimedia Commons has media accompanying to: Greek language

• Greek Language, Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia.
• The Greek Emphasis and Linguistics Gateway, advantageous advice on the history of the Greek language, appliance of avant-garde Linguistics to the abstraction of Greek, and accoutrement for acquirements Greek.
• The Greek Emphasis Portal, a aperture for Greek emphasis and linguistic education.
• The Perseus Project has abounding advantageous pages for the abstraction of classical languages and literatures, including dictionaries.

Language learning

Wikibooks has added on the affair of Greek language

Wikiquote has a accumulating of quotations accompanying to: Greek language

• Hellenistic Greek Lessons Greek-Language.com provides a chargeless online grammar of Hellenistic Greek.
• Greek dictionary, tutorial and hangman affairs with texteditor, this shareware affairs is aimed at acquirements New Testament Greek.
• Greek spell checker
• (Greek) komvos.edu.gr, a website for the abutment of humans who are getting accomplished the Greek language.
• New Testament Greek Three accelerating courses advised to advice acceptance apprentice to apprehend the Greek New Testament
• a keyboard for accounting greek characters for firefox
• Books on Greek emphasis that are accomplished at schools in Greece (page in Greek)

Dictionaries

Greek emphasis edition of Wiktionary, the chargeless dictionary/thesaurus

• Greek-English/English-Greek dictionary, (Greek)
• Translatum - The Greek adaptation Vortal (Dictionaries and analogue forum)
• Greek Lexical Aids, descriptions of both online lexicons (with adapted links) and Greek Lexicons in Print.
• Online Greek-English and English-Greek dictionary (Modern Greek)
• Online Greek <-> English Dictionary with gender and blazon of words
• The Greek Emphasis Portal, dictionaries of all forms of Greek (Ancient, Hellenistic, Medieval, Modern).
• Woodhouse English-Greek dictionary, scanned images from S.C. Woodhouse's 1910 dictionary.
• English to Greek Dictionary, English to Greek Dictionary.

Literature

• Books in Greek, an continued account of searchable bibliographic information.
• (Greek) Center for Neo-Hellenic Studies, a non-profit alignment set in adjustment to advance Avant-garde Greek Literature and Culture.
• Research lab of avant-garde Greek philosophy, a ample e-library of avant-garde Greek texts/books.
• The Treasure of the Greek Language, a ample accumulating of e-books from all stages of Greek language.

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