80-409: Maria Amalia " Melina " Mercouri ( Greek : Μαρία Αμαλία "Μελίνα" Μερκούρη , 18 October 1920 – 6 March 1994) was a Greek actress, singer, activist, and politician. She came from a political family that was prominent over multiple generations. She received an Academy Award nomination and won a Cannes Film Festival Best Actress Award for her performance in the film Never on Sunday (1960). Mercouri
160-588: A state funeral with Prime Minister 's honors. She was buried at the First Cemetery of Athens four days later. The Melina Mercouri Foundation was founded by her widower. After her death, UNESCO established the Melina Mercouri International Prize for the Safeguarding and Management of Cultural Landscapes (UNESCO-Greece) which rewards outstanding examples of action to safeguard and enhance
240-725: A Leading Role . After this, she starred in Phaedra (1962), for which she was nominated again for Best Actress in the BAFTA and Golden Globe nominations. Her role in Topkapi (1964) garnered her a nomination for the Golden Globe Award for Best Actress in Motion Picture Musical or Comedy . The directors with whom Mercouri worked included Joseph Losey , Vittorio De Sica , Ronald Neame , Carl Foreman , and Norman Jewison . She starred in
320-570: 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,
400-562: A cultural park in the Aegean Sea in order to protect and enhance the environment and civilization of the Aegean Islands , and to link culture with education at all education levels , introducing a system of post-training of teachers. Mercouri died on 6 March 1994 at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center , New York City , from lung cancer . Her sole immediate survivor was her husband, Jules Dassin. The couple had no children. She received
480-552: 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
560-556: 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
640-531: 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
720-834: A series of exhibitions of Greek cultural heritage and modern Greek art worldwide, supported the restoration of buildings of special architectural interest and the completion of the Athens Concert Hall , and backed the establishment of the Museum of Byzantine culture in Thessaloniki . In June 1986, Melina Mercouri spoke at the Oxford Union , the debating society, on the matter of the Parthenon Marbles and whether they should remain in London or be returned to Greece. She argued passionately for
800-518: A televised debate with the then director of the British Museum, David M. Wilson , which was interpreted by many as a public relations disaster for the British Museum. In anticipation of the return of the marbles, she held an international competition for the construction of the New Acropolis Museum , designated to display them and finally established in 2009. One of her greatest achievements
880-766: 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
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#1732855594832960-742: 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
1040-474: 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
1120-510: 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
1200-824: 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 Alki Zei Alki Zei ( Greek : Άλκη Ζέη ; 15 December 1923 – 27 February 2020)
1280-518: 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
1360-758: 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,
1440-630: 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
1520-486: 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
1600-510: 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
1680-761: The Marika Kotopouli Prize. Mercouri returned to Greece in 1955. At the Kotopouli-Rex Theatre, Mercouri starred in Macbeth by William Shakespeare and L'Alouette by Jean Anouilh . Mercouri's first film was the Greek language film Stella (1955), directed by Michael Cacoyannis , later known for Zorba the Greek (1964). The motion picture received special praise at the 1956 Cannes Film Festival , where she met expatriate American film director Jules Dassin , with whom she would share not only her career but also her life. Their first professional pairing
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#17328555948321760-569: The Resistance during the Occupation. Lycurgos Kallergis, a member of EAM and the Left during the Occupation, said: "Although I was and am a left-winger, the issue of the opulence in which she lived did not bother me. After all, Melina was hosting people, feeding people, helping friends.[...] " The great Greek writer Alkis Zei also agrees with this view, stating that during the period of occupation, Melina
1840-557: The Spanish language film The Uninhibited (1965) by Juan Antonio Bardem . On June 11, 1967, Mercouri appeared on one of the final episodes of What's My Line (the venerable panel show would leave the air that fall, after eighteen years). After the panel were blindfolded, a strange man appeared onstage and proclaimed himself "the second mystery guest". Host John Daly quickly called for "the relieving unit" and said "schedule two" (a code word used on live broadcasts in case of an emergency:
1920-553: The junta seized power in 1967. That time she stayed in Paris, returning only after the dictatorship fell. Zei took up writing very young. During her early years at junior high school she started writing plays for puppet theatre . Her first novel, The Tiger in the Shop Window (a.k.a. Wildcat Under Glass ), (1963) was inspired by her childhood spent in Samos and is semi-autobiographical. This
2000-492: 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
2080-465: 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
2160-456: The British, she visited her friends and colleagues who had been arrested for their political beliefs. Years later, Aleka Paizi gratefully recounted Melina's visit to the prison where she was being held, to support her. In the late 1940s, Melina met Pyrros Spyromilios , whom she was with for seven years. He was alleged to be the great love of her life before she met Jules Dassin . Pyrros Spyromilios
2240-486: 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
2320-425: 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
2400-491: 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
2480-629: 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
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2560-661: 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
2640-489: The Marbles' reunification. She said the Marbles are more to Greece than just works of art: they are an essential element of Greek heritage, which ties directly into cultural identity. She said: "You must understand what the Parthenon Marbles mean to us. They are our pride. They are our sacrifices. They are our noblest symbol of excellence. They are a tribute to the democratic philosophy. They are our aspirations and our name. They are
2720-558: The Ministers for Culture of the other nine member states of the European Union at Zappeion , in order to increase the people's cultural awareness, since there was not any reference to cultural questions in the Treaty of Rome , which led to the establishment of formal sessions between the Ministers of Culture of the European Union. During the second presidency of Greece in 1988, she supported
2800-404: 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),
2880-402: 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
2960-427: The cameras are turned to a neutral position and the sound is cut off). The man talked a bit about a dating service he apparently owned before being hustled off the stage by announcer Johnny Olson and executive producer Gil Fates . Daly merely apologized to the panel, and the program continued. Mercouri continued her stage career in the Greek production of Tennessee Williams 's Sweet Bird of Youth (1960), under
3040-608: The colonels. After the fall of the Junta and during the metapolitefsi in 1974, Mercouri settled in Greece and was one of the founding members of the Panhellenic Socialist Movement (PASOK), a centre-left political party . She was a member of the party's Central Committee and a rapporteur for the Culture Section, while being involved in the women's movement as well. In the Greek legislative elections of 1974 , she
3120-538: The cooperation between Eastern Europe and the European Union, which was finally implemented one year later with the celebration of the Month of Culture in Eastern countries. Mercouri commissioned a study for the integration of all the archaeological sites of Athens to create a traffic-free archaeological park to promote the Greek culture . She introduced free access to museums and archaeological sites for Greek citizens, organized
3200-556: The direction of Karolos Koun . In 1967, she played the leading role in Illya Darling (from 11 April 1967 to 13 January 1968) on Broadway , for which she was nominated for the Tony Award for Best Performance by a Leading Actress in a Musical . Mercouri's performance in Promise at Dawn (1970) earned her another Golden Globe Award nomination. Mercouri concentrated on her stage career in
3280-404: 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
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3360-669: The elections and New Democracy formed a cabinet. As Minister for Culture, Mercouri took advantage of her earlier career to promote Greece to other European leaders. She strongly advocated the return to Athens of the Parthenon Marbles that were removed from Parthenon and other buildings on the Acropolis of Athens by Thomas Bruce, 7th Earl of Elgin , and are now part of the British Museum collection in London . In 1983, she engaged in
3440-709: The end of her life. After her graduation, Mercouri joined the National Theatre of Greece and played the role of Electra in Eugene O'Neill 's play Mourning Becomes Electra in 1945. In 1949, she had her first major success in the theatre playing Blanche DuBois in A Streetcar Named Desire , staged by Karolos Koun 's Art Theatre. After 1950 she moved to Paris , where she appeared in boulevard plays by Jacques Deval and Marcel Achard , and met French playwrights and novelists such as Jean Cocteau , Jean-Paul Sartre , Colette and Françoise Sagan . In 1953, Mercouri received
3520-602: 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
3600-575: The essence of Greekness." In the legislative elections of November 1989 , PASOK lost and Mercouri was elected a member of the Hellenic Parliament and remained a member of the party's Executive Bureau. In 1990, she was a candidate for Mayor of Athens but she was defeated by Antonis Tritsis . After PASOK's win in the election of 1993 , she was reappointed to the Ministry for Culture. Her major goals in this brief second term in office were: to create
3680-452: 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
3760-474: The following years, playing in the Greek productions of The Threepenny Opera and, for a second time, Sweet Bird of Youth , in addition to the ancient Greek tragedies Medea and Oresteia . She retired from film acting after making her last film, A Dream of Passion (1978), directed by her husband, Jules Dassin . In 1987 the jury of the Europe Theatre Prize awarded her a special prize of
3840-439: 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
3920-400: The isolation and fall of the colonels. As a result, the dictatorial regime revoked her Greek citizenship and confiscated her property. When her Greek citizenship was revoked, she said: "I was born a Greek and I will die a Greek. Those bastards were born fascists and they will die fascists". In London, she worked with Amalia Fleming and Helen Vlachos of Kathimerini against the junta of
4000-463: 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
4080-564: 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
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#17328555948324160-441: 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
4240-399: 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
4320-521: 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
4400-564: The occupation became close friends of hers, including writer Iakovos Kambanellis (who wrote ' Stella with the Red Gloves' especially for her), actress Olympia Papadouka, actor Manos Katrakis , actor and secretary of the EAM theatre Dimitris Myrat, writer Alkis Zei, director Nikos Koundouros , and Manolis Glezos . During the civil war, although Melina Mercouri lived in Kolonaki , which was controlled by
4480-447: The occupation, despite her then husband's objections, Melina's house, on her own instruction, was always open and welcoming to many people in need, providing them with food and shelter. Despite occasional criticisms, her dislike of the Nazi occupiers is demonstrated by an incident during the occupation where she disobeyed SS men while at a bar, despite the threat of being shot. A number of people with strong resistance activities during
4560-706: 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
4640-444: The presidency with the motivation: "For the devotion and the commitment of an artist who joins her own theatrical experience with the political belief and the ideal of European culture." Mercouri's last performance on stage was in the opera Pylades at the Athens Concert Hall in 1992, portraying Clytemnestra . One of her first songs was by Manos Hadjidakis and Nikos Gatsos . It was titled "Hartino to Fengaraki" ("Papermoon") and
4720-463: The return of the Parthenon Marbles . One of her greatest achievements was the establishment of the European Capitals of Culture , with Athens chosen as the first capital in 1985. The Mercouri family were an Arvanite family from Argolida who settled in Athens . Its members had fought in the Greek war of independence of 1821. Melina's grandfather, Spyridon Mercouris , had served for many years as mayor of Athens . Her father, Stamatis Mercouris ,
4800-437: 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
4880-406: The world's major cultural landscapes. The song "Melina" by Camilo Sesto (from the 1975 album Amor libre ) is dedicated to Melína Merkoúri. On 18 October 2015, Google Doodle commemorated her 95th birthday. Greek language Greek ( Modern Greek : Ελληνικά , romanized : Elliniká , [eliniˈka] ; Ancient Greek : Ἑλληνική , romanized : Hellēnikḗ )
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#17328555948324960-431: Was He Who Must Die (1957). Other films by Dassin and featuring Mercouri followed, such as The Law (1959). She garnered international acclaim when she starred in Never on Sunday (1960), of which Dassin was the director and co-star. For this film, she earned the Best Actress Award at the 1960 Cannes Film Festival and was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actress and the BAFTA Award for Best Actress in
5040-421: Was a Greek novelist and children's writer. Alki Zei was born in Athens on 15 December 1923. She studied in the philosophy school of Athens University , the Drama School of the Athens Odeion, and in the screenwriting department of the Moscow Cinema Institute. From 1954 to 1964 she lived in the Soviet Union as a political refugee. In 1964 she and her family returned to Greece, but they all left again when
5120-473: Was a PASOK candidate in the Piraeus B constituency , but the 7,500 votes were not enough to secure a seat for her in the Hellenic Parliament (she needed 33 more votes), but she was successful in the elections of 1977 , after conducting a grass-roots campaign. When PASOK won the elections of 1981, Mercouri was appointed Minister for Culture of Greece , being the first woman in the post. She would serve in that position for two terms until 1989, when PASOK lost
5200-515: 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
5280-406: Was a naval officer and a hero of the Albanian front. He died in March 1961 due to heart hypertrophy , which devastated Melina, even though five years had passed since their separation. In 1955 she starred in her first feature film, Stella . The film competed at the Cannes Film Festival and during its screening, she met and fell in love with Julius "Jules" Dassin . She was married to him until
5360-496: Was a part of the Greek production of A Streetcar Named Desire in 1949, in which she starred as Blanche DuBois . The first official recording of this song was made by Nana Mouskouri in 1960, although the company Sirius, created by Hadjidakis, issued a recording Mercouri made for French television during the 1960s in 2004. Her recordings of "Athenes, ma Ville", a collaboration with Vangelis , and "Melinaki", were popular in France. Her recording of "Feggari mou, Agapi mou" (Phaedra)
5440-483: Was accepted at the Drama School of the National Theatre with fellow students including Despo Diamantidou and Alexis Damianos . In the winter of 1939 she married the much older wealthy landowner Panagis Harokopos. She travelled as Melina Harokopou or Melina Charocopou. During the occupation, Melina became romantically involved with businessman Phidias Yadikiaroglou while still married to Harokopos although their marital relationship had effectively ended. Mercouri
5520-604: Was also nominated for one Tony Award , three Golden Globes and two BAFTA Awards in her acting career. In 1987 she was awarded a special prize in the first edition of the Europe Theatre Prize . Mercouri was a member of the Hellenic Parliament , elected as a representative of PASOK . In October 1981, she became the first female Minister of Culture and Sports . She has the longest tenure of any of Greece's Ministers of Culture, having served from 1981 to 1989, and then from 1993 until her death in 1994, during PASOK governments. Mercouri's political activism included her long campaign for
5600-423: 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
5680-442: 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
5760-552: Was an officer of the cavalry and served as a member of parliament and minister (People's Party, National Radical Party ), and for many years he participated in the administration of the Panathinaikos team. During the Axis occupation of Greece , Stamatis Mercouris founded the resistance organisation Rizospastiki Organosis ("Radical Organisation") in January 1942. Melina's mother, Irene Lappa,
5840-541: Was followed by a series of books for children, and in 1987 by her first novel for adults, Achilles Fiancee . Her books have been translated into numerous languages. Her teenage novel Constantina and her spiders (a.k.a. Tina's Web ) won the Greek IBBY prize for the best book for older children, and Alki Zei was nominated as a candidate for the 2004 Hans Christian Andersen Award for Writing and Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award for Literature. The Mildred L. Batchelder Award
5920-504: Was hiding left-wingers and giving them money. At the same time, her brother, Spyros Mercouris, had joined the Resistance as a member of the EPON . Many times, according to testimonies, Melina would secretly take Yadikiaroglou's money and give it to her brother for the Resistance, hiding both him and his comrades in the organization while helping her impoverished colleagues. It was known that during
6000-454: Was later covered by Marinella in 1965. At the time of the coup d'état in Greece by a group of colonels of the Greek military on 21 April 1967, she was in the United States , playing in Illya Darling on Broadway. She immediately joined the struggle against the Greek military junta and started an international campaign, travelling all over the world to inform the public and contribute to
6080-484: Was later criticized for living in comfort in a 400 sq. m. apartment at avenue Akademias 4, much of which had been commandeered by the Germans at a time when the Greek people were starving, and of not contributing to the national resistance. Melina had commented on this period of her life, both in her autobiography, "I was born a Greek," and on television as Minister of Culture , taking responsibility for her non-participation in
6160-658: Was the establishment of the institution of the European Capital of Culture within the framework of cultural policy of the European Union . She had conceived and proposed the idea in 1983, with Athens being the first title-holder in 1985. She was also a devoted supporter of the Athens bid to host the Centennial Olympic Games . In 1983, during the first Greek presidency of the Council of the European Union , Mercouri invited
6240-842: Was the sister of Admiral Pyrros Lappas , who served as Chief of the Naval Staff, Secretary General of the Olympic Games Committee and Chief of the Military House of King Paul . Melina's uncle, George S. Mercouris , held extreme right-wing political views. He was a founder of the Greek National Socialist Party and a governor of the National Bank during the occupation. This so angered the Mercouri family that they refused to attend his funeral in 1943. In September 1938, she
6320-566: 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
6400-653: 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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