Balanos Vasilopoulos ( Greek : Μπαλάνος Βασιλόπουλος ; 1694–1760) was a Greek Orthodox cleric, author, mathematician, physicist, and philosopher. He is known for attempting to solve doubling the cube . He was one of the most influential Greek mathematicians of the 18th century. His teacher was the notable scientist Methodios Anthrakites . He made a significant contribution to the Modern Greek Enlightenment during the Ottoman occupation of the Greek world.
59-603: Konitsa ( Greek : Κόνιτσα , see also names in other languages ) is a town of Ioannina in Epirus , Greece . It is located north of the capital Ioannina and near the Albanian border . Konitsa lies northeast of a group of villages known as the Zagorochoria . The town was built amphitheatrically-shaped on a mountain slope of the Pindos mountain range from where it overlooks the valley where
118-570: 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,
177-552: 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
236-556: 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
295-531: 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
354-766: 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
413-742: 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
472-474: 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
531-628: Is known in Bulgarian as Коница (Konitsa) , Albanian as Konicë , in Aromanian as Cunitsã , and in Turkish as Koniçe . There are two main theories regarding the etymology of the name. The first states that the city takes its name from an ancient Epirote city named Knossos , which was located near modern-day Konitsa. According to this theory, the name is a corruption: Knossos -> Konissos -> Konissa -> Konitsa . The other theory states that
590-510: 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
649-785: 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 Balanos Vasilopoulos Balanos
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#1732851779181708-518: 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
767-758: 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,
826-630: 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
885-486: 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
944-510: 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
1003-580: The Sanjak of Ioannina . The town was the administrative centre of a kaza (Ottoman district) which according to the Ottoman General Census of 1881/82 had a total population of 16.570, consisting of 15.838 Orthodox Greeks , 1.429 Muslims and 3 Jews . During the Ottoman period some local Greek landowners converted to Islam to preserve their holdings. These converts formed a powerful and influential group in
1062-830: The Vikos–Aoös National Park , which includes the Vikos Gorge , the Aoos Gorge and the Tymfi mountains, where the Vikos spring water brand is collected, the Dragonlakes of Tymfi and Smolikas and the sulfur baths of Kavasila, contributed to the increase of tourism in the region. The town itself is known in Greek as Kónitsa (Κόνιτσα), the villages surrounding it are often known as the Konitsochoria, meaning "the villages of Konitsa". The town
1121-492: 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
1180-465: 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
1239-486: 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
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#17328517791811298-630: The Greek army. During the 1950s the Muslim population numbered around 70 families and they further decreased over time to a few families due to conversions to Christianity or migration to their Muslim correligionists in Greek Thrace, in both cases for marriage. The present municipality Konitsa was formed at the 2011 local government reform by the merger of the following 5 former municipalities, that became municipal units (constituent communities in brackets): The Konitsa municipality has an area of 951.184 km,
1357-425: 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
1416-491: 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
1475-629: 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
1534-661: 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
1593-611: The Konitsa municipal unit has an area of 542.516 km, and the Konitsa community has an area of 54.506 km. The province of Konitsa ( Greek : Επαρχία Κόνιτσας ) was one of the provinces of the Ioannina Prefecture. It had the same territory as the present municipality. It was abolished in 2006. Greek language Greek ( Modern Greek : Ελληνικά , romanized : Elliniká , [eliniˈka] ; Ancient Greek : Ἑλληνική , romanized : Hellēnikḗ )
1652-404: 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),
1711-402: 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
1770-621: The area, living in the upper part of Konitsa alongside the Christians. The upper part of Konitsa is the oldest and most populated part of the Konitsa region, while the lower part is the newest and least populated. While Christians were a majority in the upper part of Konitsa, the lower part of Konitsa had a Muslim majority, consisting mostly of Muslim Albanian refugees from nearby settlements and regions like Leskovik , Kolonjë and Frashër (today located in Albania) who became agricultural laborers. Some of
1829-610: The conservative party and teaching classical Greek in education. Eugenios Voulgaris accused Balanos of not supporting the progressive Demotic . In ca. 1760 his son Kosmas Balanos succeeded him as schoolmaster of the Gouma School. Because he experienced the Methodios Affair first hand he was a strict teacher of Korydalism . On the other hand, he expanded and reprinted the work of his teacher Methodios Anthrakites The Way of Mathematics ( Greek : Οδός Μαθηματική , 1749). This
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1888-404: 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
1947-602: 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
2006-581: The following Greek Civil War (1946–1949) the surrounding region became a major battleground, while in December 1947 communist guerrilla units unsuccessfully tried to capture the town. Almost all buildings inhabited by Muslim Albanians in Konitsa were destroyed during World War II warfare. The communists guerrillas had the opportunity to withdraw and regroup to the People's Republic of Albania and then launch repeated attacks against Konitsa, but were decisively defeated by
2065-452: 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
2124-439: 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
2183-463: 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
2242-439: The local Greek elites had been Islamised there in order to preserve their social status. The native Muslim and Christian population exclusively spoke Greek in the two neighborhoods of the town. A Greek school was operating already from the end of the 18th century under Georgios Mostras, student of Balanos Vasilopoulos . Greek education was flourishing and in 1906 the kaza of Konitsa had 31 schools and 1,036 pupils. The functioning of
2301-621: 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
2360-441: 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
2419-522: The name is Slavic , from Koni (horse) and Tza (land), meaning horseland. According to a third theory, the name comes from a local lord named Konis who allegedly built a castle in the city. During the Middle Bronze Age (2100–1900 BC) the region of Konitsa was inhabited by Proto-Greek populations. Latter in classical antiquity, the area was part of the territory of the Molossians . At the time of
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2478-399: 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
2537-521: 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
2596-706: 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
2655-490: The reign of Pyrrhus of Epirus (297–272 BC) a number of forts existed in strategically important positions. The town of Konitsa is recorded for the first time under its modern name in the Chronicle of Ioannina of 1380. The chronicle mentioned that the defences of the castle of Konitsa were strengthened by the local Despot of Epirus , due to an imminent attack. In 15th century Konitsa came under Ottoman rule and became part of
2714-462: The river Aoos meets the river Voidomatis . Konitsa acts as a regional hub for several small villages of Pindos, and features many shops, schools and a general hospital. Primary aspects of the economy are agriculture and tourism; it is a popular starting point for tourists and hikers who want to explore the Pindos mountains, or who want to go rafting in the river Aoos or parapenting . Due to Konitsa's closeness to places of particular interest, such as
2773-506: The school was interrupted during the turbulent times of Ali Pasha 's rule, however soon after it reopened following the initiative of Kosmas Thesprotos , a student of Athanasios Psalidas . During the Greek War of Independence (1821–1830) a Greek national identity was evident among local Muslims too. During the 19th century until the early 20th century (late Ottoman period), the tekke of Konitsa, similarly to other Albanian Bektashi tekkes,
2832-437: 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
2891-472: The town witnessed a first short-term occupation by units from Fascist Italy. The occupation units that entered Konitsa consisted of approximately 150 Muslim Albanians and 12 Italian soldiers, under the guidance of an Italian officer. They perpetrated lootings and broke into shops. In November 14, with the withdrawal of the Italians from the area, they proceeded to arrests and kidnappings of the local population. In
2950-507: Was a covert center of culture, learning and tolerance, but also Albanian national activism against the Ottoman Empire . In that period some Konitsa residents developed a national consciousness resulting in individuals such as Faik Konitza and Mehmet Konica becoming important figures in the Albanian national movement . Apart from a small number of Albanian families, the local Muslim community had Greek as its mother tongue. Albanian speech
3009-568: 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
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#17328517791813068-445: Was a small town that consisted of a total of 800 dwellings, 200 of which were considered Albanian or Turkish . As a result of the population exchange agreement of 1923 between Greece and Turkey, roughly two-thirds of Konitsa's Muslims, were considered "Turks by origin" and left for Turkey in 1925. Another part moved to Albania. They were replaced with around 1,000 Greeks from Cappadocia . In early November 1940, during World War II,
3127-549: 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
3186-546: 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
3245-620: Was born in Ioannina , a major center of the Greek Enlightenment movement during that time. He was a student of Methodios Anthrakites director of the local Gouma (later Balaneios) school. As a teacher, he initially became director of the school Epifaneios Igoumenos (1719–1734) and then the Gouma. Both schools were the most prestigious in Ioannina. Regarding the Greek language question , he supported
3304-501: Was limited to the local Ottoman officials. On the other hand, the local Greek population displayed tolerance towards actions by the Albanians that did not reveal chauvinist inclinations. In c. 1856 the town had a Muslim majority population of 62% and was mainly Greek-speaking, while the kaza had a Christian majority. During the late 19th century Konitsa had a population of 7,000 of whom 4,000 were Christians and 3,000 Muslims. In 1924 Konitsa
3363-512: Was the first handbook in the field of mathematics published in Greek during the Ottoman occupation . He also wrote the following, and various other books of less significance: Balanos claimed to have solved the problem of doubling the cube , i.e. finding the cube root of 2 using ruler and compasses. He published this in Venice in 1756, and attempted to gain international recognition for his solution from
3422-566: 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
3481-603: 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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