Greek diaspora
76-468: Sapes ( Greek : Σάπες or Turkish : Şapçı ) is a town and a former municipality in the Rhodope regional unit , East Macedonia and Thrace , Greece . Since the 2011 local government reform it is part of the municipality Maroneia-Sapes , of which it is the seat and a municipal unit. The municipal unit has an area of 354.596 km. The population is 6,738 (2021). The province of Sapes ( Greek : Επαρχία Σαπών )
152-480: A Greek citizen through naturalization if they can prove that a parent or grandparent was a Greek national. The Greek ancestor's birth and marriage certificates and the applicant's birth certificate are required, along with birth certificates for all intervening generations between the applicant and the person with Greek citizenship. Greek citizenship is acquired by birth by all persons born in Greece who do not acquire
228-570: 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,
304-552: 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
380-556: 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
456-670: A foreign citizenship and all persons born to at least one parent who is a registered Greek citizen. People born out of wedlock to a father who is a Greek citizen and a mother who is a non-Greek automatically gain Greek citizenship if the father recognizes them as his child before they turn 18. Centers of the Greek diaspora are New York City , Boston , Chicago , Los Angeles , Munich , London , Melbourne , Wellington , Sydney , Auckland , Montreal , Toronto , Vancouver , Johannesburg , Rio de Janeiro , São Paulo , Culiacán , Mexico City , and Buenos Aires . The SAE – World Council of Hellenes Abroad has compiled several studies on
532-482: 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
608-577: A higher level of church attendance than Greeks in Greece. There are minorities of Catholics , Jehovah's Witnesses and Pentecostals . Currently, there are 152 Greek Orthodox churches in Australia, most under jurisdiction of the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of Australia . In addition, there are 8 monasteries as well as schools, theological colleges and aged care centres. About 50,000 Greeks immigrated to Brazil from Greece and Cyprus, with 20,000 in
684-672: A membership of 90,000 in Latin America, the majority of whom live in Brazil. About 250 Non-Jewish Greeks immigrated to Ottoman Palestine and Mandatory Palestine for the service of the Greek-Orthodox church in the country between 1850 and 1920, mostly residing in Jerusalem and Nazareth City . About 1,500-2,500 Ethnic Greeks Today, few were able to obtain Greek Citizenship largely due to
760-766: 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
836-742: 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
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#1733084994768912-474: 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
988-595: Is one of the oldest diasporas in the world, with an attested presence from Homeric times to the present. Examples of its influence range from the role played by Greek expatriates in the emergence of the Renaissance , through liberation and nationalist movements involved in the fall of the Ottoman Empire , to commercial developments such as the commissioning of the world's first supertankers by shipping magnates Aristotle Onassis and Stavros Niarchos . In Archaic Greece ,
1064-510: 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
1140-969: 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 Greek diaspora Constantinople and Asia Minor : Africa : Other regions : Other groups : Other languages The Greek diaspora , also known as Omogenia ( Greek : Ομογένεια , romanized : Omogéneia ), are
1216-518: 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
1292-758: 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,
1368-630: 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
1444-843: Is why some members of the Aromanian diaspora that settled in places such as Vienna in Austria have been considered as Greeks and part of a Greek diaspora as well. During and after the Greek War of Independence , Greeks of the diaspora established the fledgling state, raised funds and awareness abroad and served as senior officers in Russian armies which fought the Ottomans to help liberate Greeks under Ottoman subjugation in Macedonia , Epirus , and Thrace . Greek merchant families had contacts in other countries; during
1520-567: The Black Sea region, particularly from the Trebizond region, the Pontic Alps , eastern Anatolia, Georgia, and the former Russian south-Caucasus Kars Oblast . After 1919–23, most of these Pontic Greek and Caucasus Greek communities resettled in Greek Macedonia or joined other Greek communities in southern Russia and Ukraine . Anyone who is ethnically Greek and born outside Greece may become
1596-815: The Byzantine–Arab Wars . The Greek populations generally remained in these areas of the Caliphate and helped translate ancient Greek works into Arabic, thus contributing to early Islamic philosophy and science (which, in turn, contributed to Byzantine science ). After the Byzantine–Ottoman Wars , which resulted in the fall of Constantinople in 1453 and the Ottoman conquest of Greek lands, many Greeks fled Constantinople (now Istanbul ) and found refuge in Italy. They brought ancient Greek writings that had been lost in
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#17330849947681672-486: 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
1748-724: The Greek Civil War (1946–49) and the Turkish Invasion of Cyprus in 1974. After World War I , most Pontian and Anatolian Greeks living in Asia Minor (modern-day Turkey) were victims of Muslim Turkish intolerance for Christians in the Ottoman Empire. More than 3.5 million Greeks, Armenians, and Assyrians were killed in the regimes of the Young Turks and Mustafa Kemal, from 1914 to 1923. Greeks in Asia Minor fled to modern Greece, and
1824-510: 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
1900-752: The Russian Empire (later the USSR ) was also a major destination. After the Greek Civil War , many communist Greeks and their families fled to neighboring Yugoslavia, the USSR and the Soviet-dominated states of Eastern Europe (especially Czechoslovakia). Hungary founded a village ( Beloiannisz ) for Greek refugees, and many Greeks were resettled in the former Sudeten German region of northern Czechoslovakia around Krnov (Jägerndorf). Sweden also admitted large numbers of Greeks, and over 17,000 Greek-Swedish descendants live in
1976-510: The largest cities in the world during Hellenistic and Roman times. Greeks spread across the Roman Empire , and in the eastern territories the Greek language (rather than Latin ) became the lingua franca . The Roman Empire was Christianized in the fourth century AD, and during the late Byzantine period the Greek Orthodox form of Christianity became a hallmark of Greek identity. In
2052-492: 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
2128-536: The 16th century from the island of Crete . Cretan Greeks settled in the Antofagasta Region in the mid-16th century and spread to other locations, such as the Greek colony in Santiago and the cities of San Diego, Valparaíso, Talcahuano, Puerto Montt, and Punta Arenas. Australia has one of the world's largest Greek communities. Greek immigration to Australia began during the 19th century, increasing significantly in
2204-500: The 1950s and 1960s. According to the 2016 census, there were 397,431 Greeks and Greek Cypriots (by ancestry) living in Australia and 93,740 Greeks born in Greece or Cyprus. According to Greeks around the Globe , Greek Australians number about 700,000. The majority of Greeks in Australia (over 90 percent) are Greek Orthodox and many attend church weekly. According to the SBS , Greeks in Australia have
2280-508: The 19th century) outside of the traditional areas; such as in Australia , Canada , United States , United Kingdom , Germany , Argentina , Brazil , New Zealand , United Arab Emirates , Singapore , Norway , and others. The Greek diaspora population is estimated at 5 million, which when added to the population of Greece (approximately 10 million), it gives a total worldwide Greek population of approximately 15 million. The Greek diaspora
2356-465: 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
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2432-777: The Great 's conquest of the Achaemenid Empire marked the beginning of the Hellenistic period , which was characterized by a new wave of Greek colonization in Asia and Africa; the Greek ruling classes established their presence in Egypt , West Asia , and Northwest India . Many Greeks migrated to the new Hellenistic cities founded in Alexander's wake, as geographically dispersed as Uzbekistan and Kuwait . Seleucia , Antioch and Alexandria were among
2508-486: 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
2584-609: The Greek diaspora. The total number of Greeks living outside Greece and Cyprus is uncertain. Available census figures indicate about three million Greeks outside Greece and Cyprus, but the SAE estimates about seven million worldwide. The Greek diaspora defends Greek interests, particularly in the US. Assimilation and loss of the Greek language influence the definition of the Greek diaspora. To learn more about how factors such as intermarriage and assimilation influence self-identification among young Greeks in
2660-425: 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
2736-491: 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
2812-629: 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
2888-661: 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
2964-543: The Greek-speaking Christian Orthodox population; this often forced the inhabitants of rural districts, particularly in the more vulnerable lowland areas, to abandon their homes. A larger-scale movement of Greek-speaking peoples in the Ottoman period was Pontic Greeks from northeastern Anatolia to Georgia and parts of southern Russia, particularly the province of Kars Oblast in the southern Caucasus after
3040-590: The Ottomans and the creation of a Greater Greece . The terrible devastation of the island of Chios in the 1822 massacre caused a great dispersion of the islanders, leading to the creation of a specific Chian diaspora . After the Treaty of Constantinople , the political situation stabilised; some displaced families returned to the newly independent country to become key figures in cultural, educational and political life, especially in Athens. Financial assistance from overseas
3116-570: The Russian province of Kars in the South Caucasus . Many Pontic Greeks fled their homelands in Pontus and northeastern Anatolia and settled in these areas to avoid Ottoman reprisals after supporting the Russian invasions of eastern Anatolia in the Russo-Turkish Wars from the late 18th to the early 20th century. Others resettled in search of new opportunities in trade, mining, farming, the church,
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3192-543: The West, contributing to the Renaissance . Most of these Greeks settled in Venice , Florence , and Rome . Between the fall of the Empire of Trebizond to the Ottomans in 1461 and the second Russo-Turkish War in 1828–29, thousands of Pontic Greeks migrated (or fled) from the Pontic Alps and eastern Anatolia to Georgia and other southern regions of the Russian Empire , and (later)
3268-727: The World Council of Churches, the Ecumenical Patriarchate has a membership of 600,000 in the US and Canada who are still Greek Orthodox; however, many Greeks in both countries have adopted other religions or become secular. The 2010 census recorded about 130,000 Greek Americans, although members of the community dispute its accuracy. Most Greek Canadians live in Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver. The 2016 census reported that 271,405 Canadians were Greek by ancestry and 16,715 people were born in Greece. Greek immigration to Chile began during
3344-404: 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),
3420-402: 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
3496-433: The city of São Paulo . Brazil has a sizable community of Antiochean Greeks (known as Melkites), Orthodox, Catholics, and Jews. According to the Catholic Church, the Eparchy of Nossa Senhora do Paraíso em São Paulo (Melkite Greek), the Eparchia Dominae Nostrae Paradisis S. Pauli Graecorum Melkitarum had a 2016 membership of 46,600. The World Council of Churches estimates that the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate of Antioch has
3572-453: The communities of Greeks living outside of Greece and Cyprus . Such places historically (dating to the ancient period) include, Albania , North Macedonia , southern Russia , Ukraine , Asia Minor and Pontus (in today's Turkey), Georgia , Egypt , Sudan , southern Italy (the so-called " Magna Graecia "), Sicily , Cargèse and Marseille in France. The term also refers to communities established by Greek migration (mostly since
3648-433: The country. Although many immigrants later returned to Greece, these countries still have a number of first- and second-generation Greeks who maintain their traditions. With the fall of Communism in eastern Europe and the USSR, Greeks of the diaspora immigrated to modern Greece's main urban centers of Athens, Thessaloniki, and Cyprus; many came from Georgia . Pontic Greeks are Greek-speaking communities originating in
3724-421: The diaspora, and to help clarify the estimates of Greeks in the diaspora, the Next Generation Initiative began an academically supervised research study in 2008. The United States has the largest ethnically-Greek population outside Greece. According to the US Department of State, the Greek-American community numbers about three million and the vast majority are third- or fourth-generation immigrants. According to
3800-495: The disturbances, many set up home bases around the Mediterranean (notably Marseilles in France, Livorno , Calabria and Bari in Italy and Alexandria in Egypt), Russia ( Odesa and St. Petersburg ), and Britain (London and Liverpool ) from where they traded (typically textiles and grain). Businesses frequently included the extended family, and they brought schools teaching Greek and the Greek Orthodox Church . As markets changed, some families became shippers (financed through
3876-404: 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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#17330849947683952-448: 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
4028-452: 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
4104-439: 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
4180-414: 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
4256-430: The local Greek community, with the aid of the Ralli or Vagliano Brothers ). The diaspora expanded across the Levant , North Africa , India and the US. Many leaders of the Greek struggle for liberation from Ottoman Macedonia and other parts of the southern Balkans with large Greek populations still under Ottoman rule had links to the Greek trading and business families who funded the Greek liberation struggle against
4332-458: 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
4408-504: The military, and the bureaucracy of the Russian Empire . Greeks spread through many provinces of the Ottoman Empire and took major roles in its economic life, particularly the Phanariots (wealthy Greek merchants who claimed noble Byzantine descent during the second half of the 16th century). The Phanariots helped administer the Ottoman Empire's Balkan domains in the 18th century; some settled in present-day Romania , influencing its political and cultural life. Other Greeks settled outside
4484-441: 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
4560-399: 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
4636-408: 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
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#17330849947684712-706: 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
4788-618: The refusal of recognition from Greece. Greeks started to immigrate to Mexico in the late 1800s from mainland and especially the Greek islands and Cyprus. While there was an individual immigration to Mexico, the Mexican government looked to start olive production in the Pacific Coast so thousands were taken to the state of Sinaloa where the Greeks found fortunes in the tomato production instead. Today there are tens of thousands of Greek-Mexicans living primarily in Culiacán , Veracruz , and Mexico City as well as surrounding areas and other cities. 35,747 (2005, Greek citizens) Notable people of
4864-419: The seventh century, Emperor Heraclius adopted Medieval Greek as the official language of the Byzantine Empire . Greeks continued to live around the Levant , Mediterranean and Black Sea, maintaining their identity among local populations as traders, officials, and settlers. Soon afterwards, the Arab-Islamic Caliphate seized the Levant , Egypt , North Africa and Sicily from the Byzantine Greeks during
4940-498: The short-lived Russian occupation of Erzerum and the surrounding region during the 1828–29 Russo-Turkish War . An estimated one-fifth of Pontic Greeks left their homeland in the mountains of northeastern Anatolia in 1829 as refugees, following the Tsarist army as it withdrew back into Russian territory (since many had collaborated with—or fought in—the Russian army against the Muslim Ottomans to regain territory for Christian Orthodoxy). The Pontic Greek refugees who settled in Georgia and
5016-516: The southern Balkans, moving north in service to the Orthodox Church or as a result of population transfers and massacres by Ottoman authorities after Greek rebellions against Ottoman rule or suspected Greek collaboration with Russia in the Russo-Turkish wars fought between 1774 and 1878. Greek Macedonia was most affected by the population upheavals, where the large, indigenous Ottoman Muslim population (often including those of Greek-convert descent ) could form local militias to harass and exact revenge on
5092-450: The southern Caucasus assimilated with preexisting Caucasus Greek communities. Those who settled in Ukraine and southern Russia became a sizable proportion of cities such as Mariupol , but generally assimilated with Christian Orthodox Russians and continued to serve in the Tsarist army. In 1788, Ali Pasha of Ioannina destroyed Moscopole . This predominantly ethnic Aromanian settlement historically had an important Greek influence. This
5168-437: 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
5244-422: The trading and colonizing activities of Greeks from the Balkans and Asia Minor propagated Greek culture, religion and language around the Mediterranean and Black Sea basins. Greek city-states were established in Southern Italy (the so-called " Magna Graecia "), northern Libya , eastern Spain, the south of France, and the Black Sea coast, and the Greeks founded over 400 colonies in these areas. Alexander
5320-515: 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
5396-423: 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
5472-546: 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
5548-667: Was channeled through these family ties, providing for institutions such as the National Library and sending relief after natural disasters. During the 20th century, many Greeks left the traditional homelands for economic and political reasons; this resulted in large migrations from Greece and Cyprus to the United States , Australia , Canada , Brazil , The United Kingdom , New Zealand , Argentina , The United Arab Emirates , Singapore , Germany , Norway , Belgium , Georgia , Italy , Armenia , Russia , Chile , Mexico and South Africa , especially after World War II (1939–45),
5624-584: Was one of the provinces of the Rhodope Prefecture. Its territory corresponded with that of the current municipal unit Sapes and the municipality Arriana , except the municipal unit Organi . It was abolished in 2006. This Eastern Macedonia and Thrace location article is a stub . You can help Misplaced Pages by expanding it . Greek language Greek ( Modern Greek : Ελληνικά , romanized : Elliniká , [eliniˈka] ; Ancient Greek : Ἑλληνική , romanized : Hellēnikḗ )
5700-566: 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
5776-653: 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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