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97-487: Manos Hatzidakis (also spelled Hadjidakis ; Greek : Μάνος Χατζιδάκις ; 23 October 1925 – 15 June 1994) was a Greek composer and theorist of Greek music, widely regarded as one of the greatest Greek composers of all time. He was one of the main proponents of the " Éntekhno " form of music, along with Mikis Theodorakis , and he is credited as the founder of the Orchestra of Colours , an ensemble performing lesser-known works and

194-524: A Little White Seashell" ("Για μια Μικρή Λευκή Αχιβάδα"), came out in 1947, and in 1948 he set a collection of Gatsos poetry to music: Blood Wedding . In 1949, Hatzidakis shook the musical establishment by delivering an influential lecture on rembetika , the urban folk songs that flourished in Greek cities, mainly Piraeus , after the Asia Minor refugee influx in 1922. Hatzidakis focused on the economy of expression,

291-570: 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,

388-709: A compilation including her most popular songs in English, reached number 3 in the UK album charts in 1976 and won for her a gold disc. In August 1974, while in Australia, Mouskouri was presented with a plaque representing the sale of twenty Gold Records. As her fame began spreading outside her fan base in Europe, the United States, and the Commonwealth, Mouskouri was asked to record songs for

485-552: 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

582-508: A faster, more convenient cursive writing style with the use of ink and quill . The Greek alphabet consists of 24 letters, each with an uppercase ( majuscule ) and lowercase ( minuscule ) form. The letter sigma has an additional lowercase form (ς) used in the final position of a word: In addition to the letters, the Greek alphabet features a number of diacritical signs : three different accent marks ( acute , grave , and circumflex ), originally denoting different shapes of pitch accent on

679-634: A five-month Forever Young Tour through parts of Europe and North America. In 2015, she was awarded with the Echo Music Prize for Outstanding achievements by the German music association Deutsche Phono-Akademie. Despite her 'farewell tour' and 'final concert', she continues to make occasional appearances on TV shows, especially in Germany, though increasingly using 'le playback' (miming), which, unlike many other singers, she rarely used through most of her career;

776-446: A folk melody. It became a success, selling over a million copies in Germany. The song was later translated into several languages and it went on to become one of Mouskouri's signature tunes. Mouskouri has been married twice: first at age 25, to Yorgos (George) Petsilas, a guitarist in her backing band (the trio "The Athenians") They had two children (Nicolas Petsilas in 1968 and Hélène (Lénou) Petsilas in 1970) but divorced when Mouskouri

873-531: 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

970-478: A guest appearance at that year's Eurovision Song Contest which was held, for the first time ever, in her native Greece. In the same year, she announced her plans to retire. From 2005 until 2008, she conducted a farewell concert tour of Europe , Australia, New Zealand, Asia , South America , the United States , and Canada . On July 23 and 24, 2008, Mouskouri gave her two final 'Farewell Concert' performances at

1067-620: A husky, dark alto , which she later dropped, to a ringing coloratura mezzo ), as opposed to her breathy, raspy speaking voice. Mouskouri's early childhood was marked by the German Nazi occupation of Greece . Her father became part of the anti-Nazi resistance movement in Athens. Mouskouri began singing lessons at age 12. As a child, she listened to radio broadcasts of singers including Frank Sinatra , Ella Fitzgerald , Judy Garland , Charles Trenet , Billie Holiday , and Édith Piaf . In 1950, she

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1164-600: A large audience at the Odeon of Herodes Atticus ; her first performance in her homeland since 1962. In 1985, Mouskouri recorded "Only Love", the theme song to the American TV series Mistral's Daughter  – based upon the novel by Judith Krantz  – which reached number 2 in the UK charts. The song was also a hit in its other versions: L'Amour en héritage (French), Come un'eredità (Italian), La dicha del amor (Spanish), and Aber die Liebe bleibt (German). The German version

1261-451: A modest stage presence and her bespectacled appearance, made her a very distinctive star, as Yvonne Littlewood later explained: Mouskouri's international appeal encouraged the BBC to sell her programmes to television stations across the world, a fact which she acknowledged in a BBC interview in 2014: Mouskouri also hosted her own shows for French and West German broadcasters during this period. At

1358-633: A regular contributor to British TV for more than 20 years. In 1969, Mouskouri released her first British LP, Over and over , which reached number 10 and spent a total of 102 weeks in the UK album charts. This began a series of albums for the UK market which, boosted by her TV appearances, sold extremely well during the early 1970s, including The exquisite Nana Mouskouri (1969), Turn on the sun (1970), A place in my heart (1971) and Presenting Nana Mouskouri - Songs from her TV series (1973), while concerts from two of her British tours were also recorded and released as LPs: British Concert (1972) and Live at

1455-520: A slow and quiet voice. He introduced a song with a long translation into English of all the events supposedly mentioned in the song... and then sang just a single line of "Greek". Andrea Martin played Mouskouri in a sketch, 'The Nana Mouskouri Story', during the 1981–1982 season of SCTV (later included in a DVD compilation). In 1976, Ronnie Barker performed a song in drag as a parody of Mouskouri in The Two Ronnies as Nana Moussaka. Mouskouri

1552-463: A spokesperson for UNICEF in 1993 and was elected to the European Parliament as a Greek deputy from 1994 to 1999. In 2006 she was a special guest on Eurovision Song Contest 2006 's final, presented as the best selling artist of all time. In 2015, she was awarded the Echo Music Prize for Outstanding achievements by the German music association Deutsche Phono-Akademie. Nana Mouskouri

1649-429: A time when TV programmes could attract huge audiences, her popularity as a multilingual television personality turned her into a truly international star. Although music series such as hers started to become less common on British TV as the 1970s wore on, the BBC continued to engage Mouskouri regularly for one-off television specials and guest appearances on other programmes until the mid-1980s, by which time she had been

1746-711: 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

1843-742: 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

1940-474: 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

2037-699: Is perhaps her biggest hit to date, performed in at least five languages – French, English as "Song for Liberty", German as "Lied der Freiheit", Spanish as "Libertad" and Portuguese as "Liberdade". " Only Love ", a song recorded in 1984 as the theme song of TV series Mistral's Daughter , gained worldwide popularity along with its other versions in French (as "L'Amour en Héritage"), Italian (as "Come un'eredità"), Spanish (as "La dicha del amor"), and German (as "Aber die Liebe bleibt"). It became her only UK hit single when it reached number two in February 1986. Mouskouri became

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2134-510: 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

2231-817: 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 Nana Mouskouri Mouskouri became well known throughout Europe for

2328-518: 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

2425-708: 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,

2522-630: 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

2619-478: The BBC invited Mouskouri and her backing group, The Athenians, to start hosting a TV series called Presenting Nana Mouskouri from 1968 onwards. A typical episode of her series contained contemporary British, American and French pop and folk music, popular classical pieces, and the Greek songs which had originally made her famous. The shows also featured European and world music stars of the time as guests, making it one of

2716-486: 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

2813-510: 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

2910-586: The Mediterranean Song Festival , held in Barcelona that year. The song won first prize, and she went on to sign a recording contract with Paris -based Philips-Fontana . In 1961, Mouskouri performed the soundtrack of a German documentary about Greece. This resulted in the German-language single Weiße Rosen aus Athen ("White Roses from Athens"). The song was originally adapted by Hadjidakis from

3007-767: The New York Rock & Roll Ensemble . Hatzidakis returned to Greece in 1972 and recorded Magnus Eroticus with opera-trained alto Fleury Dantonaki and singer Dimitris Psarianos. Following the Greek junta's overthrow in 1974 , he became active in public life and assumed a number of leadership positions in the Athens State Orchestra (KOA), the Greek National Opera (ELS/GNO), and the Hellenic Broadcasting Corporation (ERT). In 1985 he launched his own record company "Seirios", named after Sirius,

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3104-548: The United Kingdom with the song "My Colouring Book" (later included in her 1973 album Songs from her TV series ). In 1965, she recorded her second English-language album to be released in the United States, entitled Nana Sings . American singer Harry Belafonte heard and liked the album. Belafonte brought Mouskouri on tour with him through 1966. They teamed up for a duo album entitled An Evening With Belafonte/Mouskouri . During this tour, Belafonte suggested that Mouskouri remove her signature black-rimmed glasses when on stage. She

3201-492: 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

3298-676: The 1990s touring the globe. Among her early 1990s albums were spiritual music, Gospel (1990), the Spanish-language Nuestras Canciones , the multilingual, Mediterranean-themed Côté Sud, Côté Coeur (1992), Dix Mille Ans Encore , Falling in Love Again: Great Songs From the Movies . Falling in Love featured two duets with Harry Belafonte. In 1993, Mouskouri recorded the album Hollywood . Produced by Michel Legrand it

3395-465: 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

3492-620: The Academy Award ceremony in 1961, and refused to collect his award. He said that the film Never on Sunday with a prostitute as its protagonist reflected negatively on Athens. In 1962, Hatzidakis founded a music competition to encourage Greek composers, with the first award going to Iannis Xenakis in 1963. Also in 1962, Hatzidakis produced the musical Street of Dreams ( Οδός Ονείρων ) and completed his score for Aristophanes ' Birds ( Όρνιθες ), another Art Theater production which caused an uproar over Koun's revolutionary direction. The score

3589-556: The Albert Hall (1974). During the 1970s, Mouskouri - always a prolific recording artist - recorded several hit records in German, such as Sieben schwarze Rosen (1975) and Lieder, die die Liebe schreibt (1978), and she continued to release a series of top-selling records in France, including Comme un soleil (1971), Une voix qui vient du cœur (1972), Vieilles chansons de France (1973), and Quand tu chantes (1976). Meanwhile, Passport,

3686-692: The Conservatoire and began performing at the Tzaki club in Athens. She began singing jazz in nightclubs with a bias towards Ella Fitzgerald's repertoire. In 1957, she recorded her first song, "Fascination", in both Greek and English for Odeon/EMI Greece. By 1958 while still performing at the Tzaki, she met Greek composer Manos Hadjidakis . Hadjidakis was impressed by Nana's voice and offered to write songs for her. In 1959 Mouskouri performed Hadjidakis' "Κάπου υπάρχει η αγάπη μου" ( Kápou ipárchi i agápi mou , "Somewhere my love exists"; co-written with poet Nikos Gatsos ) at

3783-514: The French pop classic " Le Temps des cerises ". Mouskouri made her first appearance at Paris' legendary Olympia concert theatre the same year, singing French pop, Greek folk, and Hadjidakis numbers. These successes across Europe and elsewhere impressed Yvonne Littlewood , the BBC producer who had first met Mouskouri at the 1963 Eurovision Song Contest in London. Following several successful guest appearances on British TV after her Eurovision performance,

3880-635: The French pop classics, Hommages . In 1997, she staged a high-profile Concert for Peace at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine in New York. This concert was later released as an album, and aired as a TV special on PBS in the United States. On 30 May 2013, Mouskouri was awarded an honorary degree by McGill University , Canada. Mouskouri was appointed a UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador in October 1993. She took over from

3977-486: 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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4074-425: 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

4171-491: 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

4268-629: 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

4365-661: 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

4462-700: The Japanese and Taiwanese markets. In 1976, a renowned Taiwanese author, Echo, heard her music and introduced it to one of her female radio DJ friends. Mouskouri's records then became popular in Taiwan, especially among high school and college students, with one of her British albums, Nana's book of songs (1974) becoming particularly popular. In 1979, Mouskouri released another English-language album named Roses and Sunshine . This album consisted largely of folk and country material, and included work from sources including Neil Young , Dolly Parton , Bob Dylan and John Denver . It

4559-477: The UK ITV channel in the autumn of 2011, Mouskouri told the actress Joanna Lumley how she had been scheduled to sing at the amphitheatre at Epidauros with other students of the Conservatoire, when upon arrival at the amphitheatre word came through from the Conservatoire in Athens that she had just been barred from participating in the performance there owing to her involvement in light music. Mouskouri subsequently left

4656-404: 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),

4753-714: The ancient Herodes Atticus Theatre , in Athens, Greece, before a packed stadium, including Greece's Prime Minister and the mayor of Athens, plus the mayors of Berlin, Paris and Luxembourg, along with fans from around the world and thousands of her Athenian admirers. In 2010, in response to the financial crisis in Greece, Mouskouri announced that she would forgo her pension to contribute to the country's recovery. She commented: "Everywhere I see stories about my country going bankrupt. And people are aggressive about it. It's frightening. And it's painful for me. Nobody wants their country to be treated badly. It's frustrating and very sad." In late 2011, Mouskouri released two newly recorded CDs,

4850-402: 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

4947-683: The award because he felt that Athens was misrepresented in the film. Hadzidakis was born on 23 October 1925 in Xanthi , Greece, to lawyer Georgios Hatzidakis, who came from the village of Myrthios, Agios Vasileios , in the Rethymno prefecture in Crete ; and Aliki Arvanitidou, who came from Adrianoupolis . The family prospered from sales of tobacco grown locally, but the boy's father died in 1931 and his mother took him to live in Athens in comparative poverty. Hatzidakis studied music theory with Menelaos Pallandios, in

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5044-462: The choreographer Rallou Manou . At this point he began writing immensely popular songs and movie soundtracks alongside more serious works, such as 1954's The C.N.S. Cycle ( O Kyklos tou C.N.S. ), a song cycle for piano and voice. In 1955 he wrote the score for Michael Cacoyannis ' film Stella , with actress Melina Mercouri singing the movie's trademark song "Love that became a double-edged knife" ("Αγάπη που 'γινες δίκοπο μαχαίρι"). He composed

5141-527: The composer Michel Legrand led to the recording by Mouskouri of the theme song of the Oscar-nominated film The Umbrellas of Cherbourg . From 1968 to 1976, she hosted her own TV show produced by BBC , Presenting Nana Mouskouri . Her popularity as a multilingual television personality and distinctive image, owing to the then unusual signature black-rimmed glasses, turned Mouskouri into an international star. " Je chante avec toi Liberté ", recorded in 1981,

5238-480: The deep traditional roots and the genuineness of emotion displayed in rembetika, and exalted the likes of composers like Markos Vamvakaris and Vassilis Tsitsanis . Putting theory to practice, he adapted classic rembetika in his 1951 piano work, Six Popular Pictures ( Έξι Λαϊκές Ζωγραφιές ), which was later also presented as a folk ballet. Also in 1949 he co-founded the Greek Dance Theatre Company with

5335-482: The double LP The Classical Nana (a.k.a. Nana Classique ), which featured adaptations of classical songs and excerpts from opera. By the end of 1987, she had performed a series of concerts in Asia, including South Korea , Taiwan , Singapore , Hong Kong , Malaysia and Thailand . Mouskouri's 1991 English album, Only Love: The Best of Nana Mouskouri , became her best-selling release in the United States. She spent much of

5432-404: 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

5529-602: 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

5626-580: The first BBC TV series to do so regularly. Despite the fact that stars from mainland Europe singing in languages other than English have tended to find it difficult to break into the British market, the series proved very popular with viewers of the new BBC-2 channel, and it ran until 1976. As well as performing songs known to British viewers, Mouskouri welcomed the television audience, chatted to her guest stars and gave spoken introductions to her French and Greek songs in fluent English. These introductions, along with

5723-550: The first featuring songs of the Greek Islands, recorded with other Greek singers, and the second featuring duets with French contemporaries. In late November 2011, Mouskouri sang again at a single concert, with guests, in Berlin, commemorating the 50th anniversary of her hit single "The White Rose of Athens". She then did a concert tour in Germany in 2012. At age 80, she embarked on a three-year Happy Birthday Tour; in 2018 she had booked

5820-452: 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

5917-552: The hunting dog of mythical Orion . In 1989 Hatzidakis founded and directed the Orchestra of Colours, an ensemble performing lesser-known works and the music of Greek composers. Although he said Greece must enter the European Economic Community (EEC, later the European Union ) for economic reasons, he believed that Greece would be culturally assimilated. In the later years of his life, Hatzidakis explained that his work

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6014-422: The inaugural Greek Song Festival . The song won first prize, and Mouskouri began to be noticed. At the 1960 Greek Song Festival, she performed two more Hadjidakis compositions, "Τιμωρία" ( Timōría , "Punishment") and "Κυπαρισσάκι" ( Kyparissáki , "Little cypress"). Both these songs tied for first prize. Mouskouri performed Kostas Yannidis ' composition, "Ξύπνα αγάπη μου" ( Xýpna agápi mou , "Wake up, my love"), at

6111-439: 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

6208-463: 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

6305-621: 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

6402-441: 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

6499-435: The more gifted sibling. Financially unable to support both girls' studies, the parents asked their tutor which one should continue. The tutor conceded that Jenny had the better voice, but Nana was the one with the true inner need to sing. Mouskouri has said that a medical examination revealed she has only one functioning vocal cord and this could well account for her remarkable singing voice (in her younger years ranging from

6596-468: The most recent at time of writing was the 2023-12-2 German (ARD1) 'Das Adventsfest der 100 000 Lichter' (advent celebration of 100,000 lights - coincidentally the show's title partially reflecting one of her early [1965] German hits ), in which she duetted one song and participated in the finale. The British comedian Benny Hill impersonated Mouskouri on The Benny Hill Show . Wearing a long dress, large glasses and long black hair, he talked and sang with

6693-402: The music of Greek composers, and influenced a broad swathe of Greek culture through his writings and radio broadcasts. With his theoretical and compositional work, he is considered to be the first to connect post-war the worded music with traditional music. In 1960, Hatzidakis won an Academy Award for Best Original Song for " Never on Sunday " from the film Never on Sunday , but he refused

6790-399: 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

6887-408: 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

6984-706: 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

7081-526: The period 1940–1943. At the same time, he studied philosophy at the University of Athens . However, he never completed this course. He met and connected with other musicians, writers, and intellectuals including George Seferis , Odysseas Elytis , Angelos Sikelianos , Yannis Tsarouchis and especially the poet Nikos Gatsos who became a close friend. During the last stages of the Axis occupation of Greece , Hatzidakis

7178-587: The previous ambassador, the recently deceased actress Audrey Hepburn . Mouskouri's first U.N. mission took her to Bosnia to draw attention to the plight of children affected by the Bosnian war. She went on to give a series of fund-raising concerts in Sweden and Belgium . She was a Member of the European Parliament for Greece through the centre-right New Democracy party from 1994 until 1999, when she resigned from her position as an MEP. Several reasons have been given for

7275-472: The resignation, one being her pacifism, and another being that she felt ill-equipped for the day-to-day work of a politician. Mouskouri lives in Switzerland with Chapelle, and, until her final performance in 2008, performed hundreds of concerts every year throughout her career. In 2004, her French record company released a 34- CD box set of more than 600 of Mouskouri's mostly French songs. In 2006, she made

7372-422: The score for the 1955 film Laterna, ftoxia kai filotimo "Λατέρνα, φτώχεια και φιλότιμο" In 1958, Hatzidakis met Nana Mouskouri , his first "ideal interpreter". It was 1960 that brought him international success, as his song " Never on Sunday " ("Τα παιδιά του Πειραιά"), from Jules Dassin 's film Never on Sunday (Ποτέ την Κυριακή), won him an Academy Award and became a worldwide hit. Hatzidakis did not attend

7469-477: The song "The White Rose of Athens", recorded first in German as "Weiße Rosen aus Athen" as an adaptation of her Greek song " Σαν σφυρίξεις τρείς φορές " ( San sfyríxeis tris forés , "When you whistle three times"). It became her first record to sell over one million copies. Later in 1963, she represented Luxembourg at the Eurovision Song Contest with the song " À force de prier ". Her friendship with

7566-669: The song achieved only eighth place in the contest, it achieved commercial success, and helped win her the prestigious Grand Prix du Disque in France. Mouskouri soon attracted the attention of French composer Michel Legrand , who composed two songs which became major French hits for her: " Les Parapluies de Cherbourg " (1964) and an arrangement of Katherine K. Davis 's "Carol of the Drum", "L'Enfant au Tambour" (1965). In 1962, she met Quincy Jones , who persuaded her to travel to New York City to record an album of American jazz titled The Girl from Greece Sings . Following that she scored another hit in

7663-471: The song cycle, Magnus Eroticus ( Megalos Erotikos ), in which he used ancient ( Sappho , Euripides ), medieval (stanzas from folk songs and George Hortatzis ' romance Erophile ) and modern ( Dionysios Solomos , Constantine Cavafy , Odysseus Elytis , Nikos Gatsos ) Greek poems, as well as an excerpt from the Old Testament book "Song of Songs". He released the album Reflections , a collaboration with

7760-437: 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

7857-519: Was 39. Not long after that, she started a relationship with her record producer André Chapelle , but they did not marry then because she "didn't want to bring another man into the family" and divorce was against her conservative upbringing. They eventually married on January 13, 2003, and live primarily in Switzerland. In 1960, Mouskouri moved to Paris. She performed Luxembourg's entry in the Eurovision Song Contest 1963 , " À force de prier ". Although

7954-591: Was a collection of famous songs from films, and served not only as a tribute to the world of cinema, but also as a personal reference to childhood memories of sitting with her father in his projection room in Crete. She recorded several more albums in 1996 and 1997, including the Spanish Nana Latina (which featured duets with Julio Iglesias and Mercedes Sosa ), the English-language Return to Love , and

8051-568: 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

8148-556: Was accepted at the Conservatoire. She studied classical music with an emphasis on singing opera . After eight years at the Conservatoire, Mouskouri was encouraged by her friends to experiment with jazz music. She began singing with her friends' jazz group at night. However, when Mouskouri's Conservatory professor found out about Mouskouri's involvement with a genre of music that was not in keeping with her classical studies, he prevented her from sitting for her end-of-year exams. During an episode of Joanna Lumley's Greek Odyssey , shown on

8245-561: Was also parodied in the first episode of the 1970s New Zealand political satire A Week Of It . In 1991, British comedian Victoria Wood mentioned Mouskouri in her original song, "The Reincarnation Song." The song was included in Wood's television special of that year, Victoria Wood: Sold Out . In the Ed, Edd n Eddy episode O-Ed-Eleven , Eddy's brother is shown to have a Nana Mouskouri poster in his old bedroom. Karl Pilkington included Mouskouri as

8342-554: Was also recorded with an alternate set of lyrics under the title Der wilde Wein ; it was withdrawn in favour of Aber die Liebe bleibt . That same year, Mouskouri made a play for the Spanish-language market with the hit single Con Toda el Alma . The song was a major success in Spain , Argentina and Chile . She released five albums in different languages in 1987, and the following year returned to her classical conservatory roots with

8439-549: 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

8536-546: 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

8633-403: Was also used later by Maurice Béjart 's Ballet of the 20th Century . He also wrote the music for a song which Arthur Altman added English lyrics to and gave to Brenda Lee . The song was " All Alone Am I ". In 1964, he released the album 15 Vespers ( Δεκαπέντε Εσπερινοί ) with the famous song "Mr Antonis ("Ο Κυρ Αντώνης"). In 1965, his LP Gioconda's Smile ( Το Χαμόγελο της Τζιοκόντας )

8730-634: Was an active participant in the Greek Resistance through membership of the United Panhellenic Organization of Youth (EPON), the youth branch of the major resistance organisation EAM , where he met Mikis Theodorakis with whom he soon developed a strong friendship. Hatzidakis's first composition was the tune for the song "Paper Moon" ("Χάρτινο το Φεγγαράκι"), from Tennessee Williams ' A Streetcar Named Desire staged by Karolos Koun 's Art Theatre of Athens. His first piano piece, "For

8827-562: Was born on 13 October 1934 in Chania, Crete , where her father, Constantinos, worked as a film projectionist in a local cinema; her mother, Aliki, worked in the same cinema as an usher . When Mouskouri was three, her family moved to Athens . Mouskouri's family sent her and her older sister Eugenía (Jenny) to the Athens Conservatoire . Although Mouskouri had displayed exceptional musical talent from age six, Jenny initially appeared to be

8924-575: Was meant not to entertain but to reveal. Further, he disclaimed part of his work, written for the Greek cinema and theater, as unrepresentative. Hatzidakis died from a heart attack on 15 June 1994 in Athens at the age of 68. In 1999 the city of Athens dedicated the museum Technopolis in his memory. He was buried in Paiania . Greek language Greek ( Modern Greek : Ελληνικά , romanized :  Elliniká , [eliniˈka] ; Ancient Greek : Ἑλληνική , romanized :  Hellēnikḗ )

9021-607: Was released on Minos-EMI. The album was re-released in 2004, digitally remastered as an audiophile LP and a CD in the EMI Classics collection. In 1966, Hatzidakis travelled to New York City for the premiere of Illya Darling , a Broadway musical based on Never on Sunday , which starred Mercouri. Hatzidakis lived in the United States from 1966 to 1972, during which he completed several more major compositions, including Rhythmology ( Rythmologia ) for solo piano, his compilation, Gioconda's Smile (produced by Quincy Jones ), and

9118-741: Was so unhappy with the request that she wanted to quit the show after only two days. Finally, Belafonte relented and respected her wish to perform while wearing glasses. On September 15, 1965, Mouskouri appeared for the first time on American television with Harry Belafonte on the Danny Kaye Show . While on the show Mouskouri performed "Telalima" followed by "Σήκω χόρεψε κουκλί μου" ( Siko horepse koukli mou ) accompanied by Harry Belafonte and Danny Kaye . Mouskouri's 1967 French album Le jour où la colombe raised her to super-stardom in France. This album featured many of her French songs, "Au cœur de septembre", "Adieu Angélina", "Robe bleue, robe blanche" and

9215-566: 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

9312-601: Was well received in Canada, and one of the album's tracks, "Even Now" (not the same song as the 1978 Barry Manilow hit), became a staple on beautiful music radio stations in the United States. She scored a worldwide hit in 1981 with " Je chante avec toi Liberté ", which was translated into several languages after its success in France. The momentum from this album also helped boost her following German album, Meine Lieder sind mein Leben . In 1984, Mouskouri returned to Greece and performed to

9409-653: 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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