Greek language

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

For the Greek language used during particular eras, see Ancient Greek, Koine Gre
ek, Medieval Greek, and Modern Greek.
Greek
e???????
Pronunciation [elini'ka]
Native to
mostly in Greece but also Albania, Cyprus, Egypt, France, Italy,
Romania, Turkey, and Ukraine [1]
Region Eastern Mediterranean
Native speakers
12 million (2007)[2]
13 million (L1 plus L2 speakers) (2012)[3]
Language family
Indo-European
Hellenic
Greek
Dialects
Ancient dialects
Modern dialects
Writing system
Greek alphabet
Greek Braille
Official status
Official language in
Greece
Cyprus
European Union
Recognised minority
language in
Albania[4][5]
Armenia[6]
Hungary[7]
Italy[8]
Romania[6]
Turkey[9]
Ukraine[6]
Language codes
ISO 639-1
el
ISO 639-3
Variously:
Ancient Greek
grc
cpg Cappadocian Greek
ell Modern Greek
gmy Mycenaean Greek
pnt Pontic
tsd Tsakonian
yej Yevanic
Glottolog
gree1276[10]

Linguasphere
56-AAA-a
56-AAA-aa to -am (varieties)
{{{mapalt}}}
The Greek-speaking world:
regions where Greek is the language of the majority
regions where Greek is the language of a significant minority
This article contains IPA phonetic symbols. Without proper rendering support, yo
u may see question marks, boxes, or other symbols instead of Unicode characters.
Greek (Modern Greek: e??????? [elini'ka] "Greek", e??????? ???ssa [elini'ci '?lo
sa] ( listen) "Greek language") is an independent branch of the Indo-European fa
mily of languages, native to the southern Balkans, the Aegean Islands, western A
sia Minor, southern Italy and Cyprus. It has the longest documented history of a
ny Indo-European language, spanning 34 centuries of written records.[11] Its wri
ting system has been the Greek alphabet for the majority of its history; other s
ystems, such as Linear B and the Cypriot syllabary, were used previously. The al
phabet arose from the Phoenician script and was in turn the basis of the Latin,
Cyrillic, Coptic, and many other writing systems.
The Greek language holds an important place in the histories of Europe, the more
loosely defined Western world, and Christianity; the canon of ancient Greek lit
erature includes works of monumental importance and influence for the future Wes
tern canon such as the epic poems Iliad and Odyssey. Greek was also the language
in which many of the foundational texts of Western philosophy, such as the Plat
onic dialogues and the works of Aristotle, were composed; the New Testament of t
he Christian Bible was written in Koin Greek. Together with the Latin texts and t
raditions of the Roman world, the study of the Greek texts and society of antiqu
ity constitutes the discipline of Classics.
During classical antiquity, Greek was a widely spoken lingua franca in the Medit
erranean world and beyond and would eventually become the official parlance of t
he Byzantine Empire and develop into Medieval Greek. In its modern form, the Gre
ek language, today is the official language in two countries; Greece and Cyprus,
recognized minority language in seven other countries, and is one of the 24 off
icial languages of the European Union. The language is spoken by at least 13 mil
lion people today in Greece, Cyprus, Italy, large parts of Albania, the Balkans,
and the Greek diaspora.
Greek roots are often used to coin new words for other languages; Greek and Lati
n are the predominant sources of international scientific vocabulary.
Idealized portrayal of Homer
Contents
1 History
1.1 Periods
1.2 Diglossia
1.3 Historical unity
2 Geographic distribution
2.1 Official status
3 Characteristics
3.1 Phonology
3.2 Morphology
3.2.1 Nouns and adjectives
3.2.2 Verbs
3.3 Syntax
3.4 Vocabulary

3.5 Greek loanwords in other languages

4 Classification
5 Writing system
5.1 Linear B
5.2 Cypriot syllabary
5.3 Greek alphabet
5.3.1 Diacritics
5.4 Latin alphabet
6 See also
7 References
8 Sources
9 External links
9.1 General background
9.2 Language learning
9.3 Dictionaries
9.4 Literature
History
Main article: History of Greek
Greek has been spoken in the Balkan Peninsula since around the late 3rd millenni
um BC. The earliest written evidence is a Linear B clay tablet found in Messenia
that dates to between 1450 and 1350 BC,[12] making Greek the world's oldest rec
orded living language. Among the Indo-European languages, its date of earliest w
ritten attestation is matched only by the now extinct Anatolian languages.
Periods
Proto-Greek area according to linguist Vladimir I. Georgiev
The Greek language is conventionally divided into the following periods:
Proto-Greek: the unrecorded but assumed last ancestor of all known varieties
of Greek. Proto-Greek speakers possibly entered the Greek peninsula in the late
3rd millennium BC. Since then, Greek has been spoken uninterruptedly in Greece.
Mycenaean Greek: the language of the Mycenaean civilization. It is recorded
in the Linear B script on tablets dating from the 15th century BC onwards.
Ancient Greek: in its various dialects, the language of the Archaic and Clas
sical periods of the ancient Greek civilization. It was widely known throughout
the Roman Empire. Ancient Greek fell into disuse in western Europe in the Middle
Ages, but remained officially in use in the Byzantine world and was reintroduce
d to the rest of Europe with the Fall of Constantinople and Greek migration to w
estern Europe.
Koine Greek: The fusion of Ionian with Attic, the dialect of Athens, began t
he process that resulted in the creation of the first common Greek dialect, whic
h became a lingua franca across the Eastern Mediterranean and Near East. Koine G
reek can be initially traced within the armies and conquered territories of Alex
ander the Great, but after the Hellenistic colonization of the known world, it w
as spoken from Egypt to the fringes of India. After the Roman conquest of Greece
, an unofficial bilingualism of Greek and Latin was established in the city of R
ome and Koine Greek became a first or second language in the Roman Empire. The o
rigin of Christianity can also be traced through Koine Greek, because the Apostl
es used this form of the language to preach in Greece and the rest of the Greekspeaking world. It is also known as Hellenistic Greek, New Testament Greek, and
sometimes Biblical Greek because it was the original language of the New Testame
nt and the Old Testament was translated into the same language via the Septuagin
t.
Distribution of Greek dialect in Anatolia, 1910. Demotic in yellow. Pontic in or
ange. Cappadocian Greek in green, with green dots indicating individual Cappadoc
ian Greek villages.[13]

Medieval Greek, also known as Byzantine Greek: the continuation of Koine Gre
ek during Byzantine Greece, up to the demise of the Byzantine Empire in the 15th
century. Medieval Greek is a cover phrase for a whole continuum of different sp
eech and writing styles, ranging from vernacular continuations of spoken Koine t
hat were already approaching Modern Greek in many respects, to highly learned fo
rms imitating classical Attic. Much of the written Greek that was used as the of
ficial language of the Byzantine Empire was an eclectic middle-ground variety ba
sed on the tradition of written Koine.
Modern Greek: Stemming from Medieval Greek, Modern Greek usages can be trace
d in the Byzantine period, as early as the 11th century. It is the language used
by the modern Greeks, and, apart from Standard Modern Greek, there are several
dialects of it.
Diglossia
Main article: Greek language question
In the modern era, the Greek language entered a state of diglossia: the coexiste
nce 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 va
rieties of Modern Greek: Dimotiki, the vernacular form of Modern Greek proper, a
nd Katharevousa, meaning 'purified', a compromise between Dimotiki and Ancient G
reek, which was developed in the early 19th century and was used for literary an
d official purposes in the newly formed Greek state. In 1976, Dimotiki was decla
red the official language of Greece, having incorporated features of Katharevous
a and giving birth to Standard Modern Greek, which is used today for all officia
l purposes and in education.
Historical unity
The distribution of major modern Greek dialect areas.
The historical unity and continuing identity between the various stages of the G
reek language is often emphasised. Although Greek has undergone morphological an
d 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 s
peakers today still tend to regard literary works of ancient Greek as part of th
eir own rather than a foreign language.[14] It is also often stated that the his
torical changes have been relatively slight compared with some other languages.
According to one estimation, "Homeric Greek is probably closer to demotic than t
welfth-century Middle English is to modern spoken English."[15]
Geographic distribution
Further information: Greeks and Greek diaspora
Greek language road sign, A27 Motorway, Greece
Spread of Greek in the United States
Greek is spoken by about 13 million people, mainly in Greece, Albania and Cyprus
, but also worldwide by the large Greek diaspora. There are traditional Greek-sp
eaking settlements and regions in the neighbouring countries of Albania, Bulgari
a, and Turkey, as well as in several countries in the Black Sea area, such as Uk
raine, Russia, Romania, Georgia, Armenia, and Azerbaijan, and around the Mediter
ranean Sea, Southern Italy, Syria, Israel, Egypt, Lebanon, and ancient coastal t
owns along the Levant. The language is also spoken by Greek emigrant communities
in many countries in Western Europe, especially the United Kingdom and Germany,
Canada, the United States, Australia, Argentina, Brazil, Chile, and others.[cit
ation needed]
Official status
Greek is the official language of Greece, where it is spoken by almost the entir
e population.[16] It is also the official language of Cyprus (nominally alongsid
e Turkish).[17] Because of the membership of Greece and Cyprus in the European U
nion, Greek is one of the organization's 24 official languages.[18] Furthermore,

Greek is officially recognized as a minority language in parts of Italy and all

over Albania,[4] as well as in Syria, Armenia, Romania, and Ukraine as a region
al or minority language in the framework of the European Charter for Regional or
Minority Languages.[6] Greeks are also a recognized ethnic minority in Hungary.
Characteristics
See also: Ancient Greek grammar, Koine Greek grammar and Modern Greek grammar
The phonology, morphology, syntax, and vocabulary of the language show both cons
ervative and innovative tendencies across the entire attestation of the language
from the ancient to the modern period. The division into conventional periods i
s, as with all such periodisations, relatively arbitrary, especially because at
all periods, Ancient Greek has enjoyed high prestige, and the literate borrowed
heavily from it.
Phonology
Across its history, the syllabic structure of Greek has varied little: Greek sho
ws a mixed syllable structure, permitting complex syllabic onsets but very restr
icted codas. It has only oral vowels and a fairly stable set of consonantal cont
rasts. The main phonological changes occurred during the Hellenistic and Roman p
eriod (see Koine Greek phonology for details) and included:
replacement of the pitch accent with a stress accent.
simplification of the system of vowels and diphthongs: loss of vowel length
distinction, monophthongization of most diphthongs, and several steps in a chain
shift of vowels towards /i/ (iotacism).
development of the voiceless aspirated plosives /p?/ and /t?/ to the voicele
ss fricatives /f/ and /?/, respectively; the similar development of /k?/ to /x/
may have taken place later (these phonological changes are not reflected in the
orthography: both the earlier and later phonemes are written with f, ?, and ?).
development of the voiced plosives /b/, /d/, and /g/ to their voiced fricati
ve counterparts // (later /v/), //, and /?/.
Morphology
In all its stages, the morphology of Greek shows an extensive set of productive
derivational affixes, a limited but productive system of compounding,[19] and a
rich inflectional system. Although its morphological categories have been fairly
stable over time, morphological changes are present throughout, particularly in
the nominal and verbal systems. The major change in the nominal morphology sinc
e the classical stage was the disuse of the dative case (its functions being lar
gely taken over by the genitive). The verbal system has lost the infinitive, the
synthetically formed future and perfect tenses as well as the optative mood. Ma
ny of these have been replaced by periphrastic (analytical) forms.
Nouns and adjectives
Pronouns show distinctions in person (1st, 2nd, and 3rd), number (singular, dual
, and plural in the ancient language; singular and plural alone in later stages)
, and gender (masculine, feminine, and neuter) and decline for case (from six ca
ses in the earliest forms attested to four in the modern language).[20] Nouns, a
rticles, and adjectives show all these distinctions but person. Both attributive
and predicative adjectives agree with the noun.
Verbs
The inflectional categories of the Greek verb have likewise remained largely the
same over the course of the language's history, though with significant changes
in the number of distinctions within each category and their morphological expr
ession. Greek verbs have synthetic inflectional forms for:
Ancient Greek Modern Greek
person first, second, and third
also second person formal
number singular, dual, and plural
singular and plural

tense present, past, and future

past and non-past (future is expressed b
y a periphrastic construction)
aspect imperfective, perfective (traditionally called aorist), and perfect (som
etimes also called perfective; see note about terminology)
imperfective and
perfective/aorist (perfect is expressed by a periphrastic construction)
mood
indicative, subjunctive, imperative, and optative
indicative, subj
unctive,[21] and imperative (other modal functions are expressed by periphrastic
constructions)
voice active, middle, and passive
active and medio-passive
Syntax
Many aspects of the syntax of Greek have remained constant: verbs agree with the
ir subject only, the use of the surviving cases is largely intact (nominative fo
r subjects and predicates, accusative for objects of most verbs and many preposi
tions, genitive for possessors), articles precede nouns, adpositions are largely
prepositional, relative clauses follow the noun they modify, and relative prono
uns are clause-initial. However, the morphological changes also have their count
erparts in the syntax, and there are also significant differences between the sy
ntax of the ancient and that of the modern form of the language. Ancient Greek m
ade great use of participial constructions and of constructions involving the in
finitive, whereas the modern variety lacks the infinitive entirely (instead havi
ng a raft of new periphrastic constructions) and uses participles more restricte
dly. 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 t
o be verb-final, whereas neutral word order in the modern language is VSO or SVO
.
Vocabulary
Greek is a language distinguished by an extensive vocabulary. The majority of th
e vocabulary of ancient Greek was inherited, but it does include a number of bor
rowings from the languages of the populations that inhabited Greece before the a
rrival of Proto-Greeks. Words of non-Indo-European origin can be traced into Gre
ek from as early as Mycenaean times; they include a large number of Greek topony
ms. The vast majority of Modern Greek vocabulary is directly inherited from anci
ent Greek, although in some cases words have changed meanings. Words of foreign
origin have entered the language mainly from Latin, Venetian and Turkish. During
older periods of the Greek language, loanwords into Greek acquired Greek inflec
tions, thus leaving only a foreign root word. Modern borrowings (from the 20th c
entury on), especially from French and English, are typically not inflected.
Greek loanwords in other languages
Greek words have been widely borrowed into other languages, including English: m
athematics, physics, astronomy, democracy, philosophy, athletics, theatre, rheto
ric, baptism, evangelist, etc. Moreover, Greek words and word elements continue
to be productive as a basis for coinages: anthropology, photography, telephony,
isomer, biomechanics, cinematography, etc. and form, with Latin words, the found
ation of international scientific and technical vocabulary, e.g. all words endin
g with logy ("discourse"). There are many English words of Greek origin, as well
as Greek words that have English derivatives.
Classification
Greek is an independent branch of the Indo-European language family. The ancient
language most closely related to it may be ancient Macedonian,[22] which many s
cholars suggest may have been a dialect of Greek itself, though it is so poorly
attested that it is difficult to conclude anything about it.[23][24] Independent
ly of the Macedonian question, some scholars have grouped Greek into Graeco-Phry
gian, as Greek and extinct Phrygian share features not found in other Indo-Europ
ean languages.[25] Among living languages, some Indo-Europeanists suggest that G
reek may be most closely related to Armenian (see Graeco-Armenian) or the Indo-I
ranian languages (see Graeco-Aryan), but little definitive evidence has been fou

nd for grouping the living branches of the family.[26][27][28]

Writing system
Greek alphabet alpha-omega.svg
Greek alphabet
?a
Alpha ??
Nu
?
Beta
??
Xi
G?
Gamma ??
Omicron
?d
Delta ?p
Pi
?e
Epsilon
??
Rho
??
Zeta
Ss?
Sigma
??
Eta
?t
Tau
T?
Theta ??
Upsilon
??
Iota
Ff
Phi
??
Kappa ??
Chi
??
Lambda ??
Psi
?
Mu
O?
Omega
History
Archaic local variants
Digamma
Heta
San
Koppa
Sampi
Tsan
Diacritics
Ligatures
Numerals
? (6)
? (90)
? (900)
Use in other languages
Bactrian
Coptic
Albanian
Related topics
Use as scientific symbols
Wikipedia book Book
Category Category
Commons page Commons
v
t
e
See also: Greek Braille
Linear B
Main article: Linear B
Linear B, attested as early as the late 15th BC, was the first script used to w
rite 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 d
eciphered to this day). The language of the Linear B texts, Mycenaean Greek, is
the earliest known form of Greek.
Cypriot syllabary
Main article: Cypriot syllabary
Another similar system used to write the Greek language was the Cypriot syllabar
y (also a descendant of Linear A via the intermediate Cypro-Minoan syllabary), w
hich is closely related to Linear B but uses somewhat different syllabic convent
ions to represent phoneme sequences. The Cypriot syllabary is attested in Cyprus
from the 11th century BC until its gradual abandonment in the late Classical pe
riod, in favor of the standard Greek alphabet.
Greek alphabet
Main articles: Greek alphabet and Greek orthography
Ancient epichoric variants of the Greek alphabet from Euboea, Ionia, Athens, and
Corinth comparing to modern Greek.
Greek has been written in 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 i
n use today is essentially the late Ionic variant, introduced for writing classi
cal 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 medie
val scribes to permit a faster, more convenient cursive writing style with the u
se of ink and quill.
The modern Greek alphabet consists of 24 letters, each
) and lowercase (minuscule) form. The letter sigma has
orm (?) used in the final position:
capital
?
?
G
?
?
?
?
?
?
?
?
?
?
?
F
?
?
O
lower case
a

?
d
e
?
?
?

?
?
?
p
?
?
t
?
f
?
?
?
Diacritics
Main article: Greek diacritics

with a capital (majuscule

an additional lowercase f
T
S

?
?

?
?

?
s/

In addition to the letters, the Greek alphabet features a number of diacritical

signs: three different accent marks (acute, grave, and circumflex), originally d
enoting different shapes of pitch accent on the stressed vowel; the so-called br
eathing marks (rough and smooth breathing), originally used to signal presence o
r absence of word-initial /h/; and the diaeresis, used to mark full syllabic val
ue of a vowel that would otherwise be read as part of a diphthong. These marks w
ere 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 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
, Modern 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),
is still used internationally for the writing of Ancient Greek.
Latin alphabet
Greek has occasionally been written in the Latin script, especially in areas und
er Venetian rule or by Greek Catholics. The term Frankolevantinika / F?a????ea?t?
???a applies when the Latin script is used to write Greek in the cultural ambit

of Catholicism (because Frankos / F?????? is an older Greek term for Roman Catho
lic). Frankochiotika / F?a??????t??a (meaning "Catholic Chiot") alludes to the s
ignificant presence of Catholic missionaries based on the island of Chios. Addit
ionally the term Greeklish is often used when the Greek language is written in a
Latin script in online communications.[29]
See also