Greek language
Greek | |
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Ελληνικά | |
Pronunciation | [eliniˈka] |
Region | Greece, eastern Mediterranean |
Native speakers
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13 million (2012)[1] |
Indo-European
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Dialects | |
Official status | |
Official language in
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Recognised minority
language in |
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Language codes | |
ISO 639-1 | el |
ISO 639-3 | Variously: grc – Ancient Greek cpg – Cappadocian Greek ell – Modern Greek gmy – Mycenaean Greek pnt – Pontic tsd – Tsakonian yej – Yevanic |
Glottolog | gree1276 [9] |
Linguasphere |
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The Greek-speaking world:
regions where Greek is the official language
regions where Greek is the language of a significant minority
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Greek (Modern Greek: ελληνικά [eliniˈka], elliniká, "Greek", ελληνική γλώσσα [eliniˈci ˈɣlosa] ( listen), ellinikí glóssa, "Greek language") is the only surviving member of the Hellenic languages branch of the Indo-European family of languages, native to Greece, western and northeastern Asia Minor, southern Italy, Albania and Cyprus. It has the longest documented history of any living language, spanning 34 centuries of written records.[10] Its writing system has been the Greek alphabet for the major part of its history; other systems, such as Linear B and the Cypriot syllabary, were used previously. The alphabet arose from the Phoenician script and was in turn the basis of the Latin, Cyrillic, Armenian, Coptic, Gothic and many other writing systems.
The Greek language holds an important place in the history of the Western world and Christianity; the canon of ancient Greek literature includes works of monumental importance and influence for the Western canon such as the epic poems Iliad and Odyssey. Greek is also the language in which many of the foundational texts in science, especially astronomy, mathematics and logic, and Western philosophy, such as the Platonic dialogues and the works of Aristotle, are composed; the New Testament of the Holy Bible was written in Koiné Greek. Together with the Latin texts and traditions of the Roman world, the study of the Greek texts and society of antiquity constitutes the discipline of Classics.
During antiquity, Greek was a widely spoken lingua franca in the Mediterranean world and beyond. It would eventually become the official parlance of the Byzantine Empire and develop into Medieval Greek. In its modern form, the Greek language is the official language in two countries, Greece and Cyprus, a recognised minority language in seven other countries, and is one of the 24 official languages of the European Union. The language is spoken by at least 13 million people today in Greece, Cyprus, Italy, Albania, Turkey, and the Greek diaspora.
Greek roots are often used to coin new words for other languages; Greek and Latin are the predominant sources of international scientific vocabulary.
![](http://web.archive.org./web/20170127044636im_/https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/1/1c/Homer_British_Museum.jpg/180px-Homer_British_Museum.jpg)
Contents
History[edit]
Greek has been spoken in the Balkan peninsula since around the 3rd millennium BC,[11] or possibly earlier.[12] The earliest written evidence is a Linear B clay tablet found in Messenia that dates to between 1450 and 1350 BC,[13] 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.
Periods[edit]
The Greek language is conventionally divided into the following periods:
- Proto-Greek: the unrecorded but assumed last ancestor of all known varieties of Greek. The unity of Proto-Greek would have ended as Hellenic migrants entered the Greek peninsula sometime in the Neolithic era or the Bronze Age.[14]
- Mycenaean Greek: the language of the Mycenaean civilisation. 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 Classical periods of the ancient Greek civilisation. 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 reintroduced to the rest of Europe with the Fall of Constantinople and Greek migration to western Europe.
- Koine Greek: The fusion of Ionian with Attic, the dialect of Athens, began the process that resulted in the creation of the first common Greek dialect, which became a lingua franca across the Eastern Mediterranean and Near East. Koine Greek can be initially traced within the armies and conquered territories of Alexander the Great and after the Hellenistic colonisation of the known world, it was 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 Rome and Koine Greek became a first or second language in the Roman Empire. The origin of Christianity can also be traced through Koine Greek, because the Apostles used this form of the language to spread Christianity. It is also known as Hellenistic Greek, New Testament Greek, and sometimes Biblical Greek because it was the original language of the New Testament and the Old Testament was translated into the same language via the Septuagint.
![](http://web.archive.org./web/20170127044636im_/https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/9/96/Anatolian_Greek_dialects.png/220px-Anatolian_Greek_dialects.png)
- Medieval Greek, also known as Byzantine Greek: the continuation of Koine Greek in 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 speech and writing styles, ranging from vernacular continuations of spoken Koine that were already approaching Modern Greek in many respects, to highly learned forms imitating classical Attic. Much of the written Greek that was used as the official language of the Byzantine Empire was an eclectic middle-ground variety based on the tradition of written Koine.
- Modern Greek (Neo-Hellenic):[16] Stemming from Medieval Greek, Modern Greek usages can be traced 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[edit]
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, which was developed in the early 19th century and was used for literary and official purposes in the newly formed Greek state. In 1976, Dimotiki was declared the official language of Greece, having incorporated features of Katharevousa and giving birth to Standard Modern Greek, which is used today for all official purposes and in education.
Historical unity[edit]
The historical unity and continuing identity between the various stages of the Greek language is often emphasised. 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 a foreign language.[17] 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."[18]
Geographic distribution[edit]
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-speaking settlements and regions in the neighbouring countries of Albania, Bulgaria, and Turkey, as well as in several countries in the Black Sea area, such as Ukraine, Russia, Romania, Georgia, Armenia, and Azerbaijan, and around the Mediterranean Sea, Southern Italy, Syria, Israel, Egypt, Lebanon, Libya and ancient coastal towns 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, South Africa and others.
Official status[edit]
Greek is the official language of Greece, where it is spoken by almost the entire population.[19] It is also the official language of Cyprus (nominally alongside Turkish).[20] Because of the membership of Greece and Cyprus in the European Union, Greek is one of the organization's 24 official languages.[21] Furthermore, Greek is officially recognised as a minority language in parts of Italy and official in Dropull and Himara (Albania) and as a minority language all over Albania,[2] as well as in Lebanon, Syria, Armenia, Romania, and Ukraine as a regional or minority language in the framework of the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages.[4] Greeks are also a recognised ethnic minority in Hungary.
Characteristics[edit]
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 the modern period. The division into conventional periods is, 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[edit]
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 a fairly stable set of consonantal contrasts. The main phonological changes occurred during the Hellenistic and Roman period (see Koine Greek phonology for details):
- replacement of the pitch accent with a stress accent.
- simplification of the system of vowels and diphthongs: loss of vowel length distinction, monophthongisation of most diphthongs and several steps in a chain shift of vowels towards /i/ (iotacism).
- development of the voiceless aspirated plosives /pʰ/ and /tʰ/ to the voiceless fricatives /f/ and /θ/, respectively; the similar development of /kʰ/ to /x/ may have taken place later (the phonological changes are not reflected in the orthography, and both earlier and later phonemes are written with φ, θ, and χ).
- development of the voiced plosives /b/, /d/, and /ɡ/ to their voiced fricative counterparts /β/ (later /v/), /ð/, and /ɣ/.
Morphology[edit]
In all its stages, the morphology of Greek shows an extensive set of productive derivational affixes, a limited but productive system of compounding[22] 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 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.
Nouns and adjectives[edit]
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 cases in the earliest forms attested to four in the modern language).[23] Nouns, articles and adjectives show all the distinctions except for person. Both attributive and predicative adjectives agree with the noun.
Verbs[edit]
The inflectional categories of 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:
Ancient Greek | Modern Greek | |
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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 by a periphrastic construction) |
aspect | imperfective, perfective (traditionally called aorist) and perfect (sometimes 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, subjunctive,[24] and imperative (other modal functions are expressed by periphrastic constructions) |
Voice | active, middle, and passive | active and medio-passive |
Syntax[edit]
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 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 the infinitive entirely (instead having a raft of new periphrastic constructions) 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.
Vocabulary[edit]
Greek is a language distinguished by an extensive vocabulary. Most of the vocabulary of Ancient Greek was inherited, but it includes a number of borrowings from the languages of the populations that inhabited Greece before the arrival of Proto-Greeks.[25] Words of non-Indo-European origin can be traced into Greek from as early as Mycenaean times; they include a large number of Greek toponyms. The vast majority of Modern Greek vocabulary is directly inherited from Ancient Greek, but in some cases, words have changed meanings. Loanwords (words of foreign origin) have entered the language mainly from Latin, Venetian and Turkish. During 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.
Greek loanwords in other languages[edit]
Greek words have been widely borrowed into other languages, including English: mathematics, physics, astronomy, democracy, philosophy, athletics, theatre, rhetoric, 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 foundation of international scientific and technical vocabulary like all words ending with –logy ("discourse"). There are many English words of Greek origin.[26]
Classification[edit]
Greek is an independent branch of the Indo-European language family. The ancient language most closely related to it may be ancient Macedonian,[27] which many scholars suggest may have been a dialect of Greek itself, but it is so poorly attested that it is difficult to conclude anything about it.[28] Independently of the Macedonian question, some scholars have grouped Greek into Graeco-Phrygian, as Greek and the extinct Phrygian share features that are not found in other Indo-European languages.[29] Among living languages, some Indo-Europeanists suggest that Greek may be most closely related to Armenian (see Graeco-Armenian) or the Indo-Iranian languages (see Graeco-Aryan), but little definitive evidence has been found for grouping the living branches of the family.[30] In addition, Albanian has also been considered somewhat related to Greek and Armenian by some linguists. If proven and recognised, the three languages would form a new Balkan sub-branch with other dead European languages.[31]
Writing system[edit]
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Linear B[edit]
Linear B, attested as early as 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 to this day). The language of the Linear B texts, Mycenaean Greek, is the earliest known form of Greek.
Cypriot syllabary[edit]
Another similar system used to write 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 alphabet[edit]
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 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 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:
upper case | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Α | Β | Γ | Δ | Ε | Ζ | Η | Θ | Ι | Κ | Λ | Μ | Ν | Ξ | Ο | Π | Ρ | Σ | Τ | Υ | Φ | Χ | Ψ | Ω | |||||||||
lower case | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
α | β | γ | δ | ε | ζ | η | θ | ι | κ | λ | μ | ν | ξ | ο | π | ρ | σ ς |
τ | υ | φ | χ | ψ | ω |
Diacritics[edit]
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 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 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 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), is still used internationally for the writing of Ancient Greek.
Punctuation[edit]
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").[32]
Latin alphabet[edit]
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 Roman Catholic). 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.[33]
See also[edit]
- Modern Greek
- Varieties of Modern Greek
- Medieval Greek
- Ancient Greek
- Hellenic languages
- List of Greek and Latin roots in English
- List of medical roots, suffixes and prefixes
References[edit]
- ^ Ancient Greek at Ethnologue (18th ed., 2015)
Cappadocian Greek at Ethnologue (18th ed., 2015)
Modern Greek at Ethnologue (18th ed., 2015)
Mycenaean Greek at Ethnologue (18th ed., 2015)
Pontic at Ethnologue (18th ed., 2015)
Tsakonian at Ethnologue (18th ed., 2015)
(Additional references under 'Language codes' in the information box) - ^ a b "Greek". Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights. Archived from the original on 18 November 2008. Retrieved 8 December 2008.
- ^ Jeffries 2002, p. 69: "It is difficult to know how many ethnic Greeks there are in Albania. The Greek government, it is typically claimed, says there are around 300,000 ethnic Greeks in Albania, but most Western estimates are around the 200,000 mark ..."
- ^ a b c d "List of Declarations Made with Respect to Treaty No. 148". Council of Europe. Retrieved 8 December 2008.
- ^ "Greek in Hungary". Database for the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. Public Foundation for European Comparative Minority Research. Retrieved 31 May 2013.
- ^ "Italy: Cultural Relations and Greek Community". Hellenic Republic: Ministry of Foreign Affairs. 9 July 2013.
The Greek Italian community numbers some 30,000 and is concentrated mainly in central Italy. The age-old presence in Italy of Italians of Greek descent – dating back to Byzantine and Classical times – is attested to by the Griko dialect, which is still spoken in the Magna Graecia region. This historically Greek-speaking villages are Condofuri, Galliciano, Roccaforte del Greco, Roghudi, Bova and Bova Marina, which are in the Calabria region (the capital of which is Reggio). The Grecanic region, including Reggio, has a population of some 200,000, while speakers of the Griko dialect number fewer that 1,000 persons.
- ^ Tsitselikis 2013, pp. 294–295.
- ^ "Language Use in the United States: 2011" (PDF). United States Census. Retrieved 17 October 2015.
- ^ Hammarström, Harald; Forkel, Robert; Haspelmath, Martin; Bank, Sebastian, eds. (2016). "Greek". Glottolog 2.7. Jena: Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History.
- ^ "Greek language". Encyclopædia Britannica. Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc. Retrieved 29 April 2014.
- ^ Renfrew 2003, p. 35; Georgiev 1981, p. 192.
- ^ Gray & Atkinson 2003, pp. 437–438; Atkinson & Gray 2006, p. 102.
- ^ "Ancient Tablet Found: Oldest Readable Writing in Europe". National Geographic Society. 30 March 2011. Retrieved 22 November 2013.
- ^ A comprehensive overview in J.T. Hooker's Mycenaean Greece (Hooker 1976, Chapter 2: "Before the Mycenaean Age", pp. 11–33 and passim); for a different hypothesis excluding massive migrations and favoring an autochthonous scenario, see Colin Renfrew's "Problems in the General Correlation of Archaeological and Linguistic Strata in Prehistoric Greece: The Model of Autochthonous Origin" (Renfrew 1973, pp. 263–276, especially p. 267) in Bronze Age Migrations by R.A. Crossland and A. Birchall, eds. (1973).
- ^ Dawkins & Halliday 1916.
- ^ Ethnologue
- ^ Browning 1983.
- ^ Alexiou 1982, pp. 156–192.
- ^ "Greece". The World Factbook. Central Intelligence Agency. Retrieved 23 January 2010.
- ^ "The Constitution of Cyprus, App. D., Part 1, Art. 3". Archived from the original on 7 April 2012. states that The official languages of the Republic are Greek and Turkish. However, the official status of Turkish is only nominal in the Greek-dominated Republic of Cyprus; in practice, outside Turkish-dominated Northern Cyprus, Turkish is little used; see A. Arvaniti (2006): Erasure as a Means of Maintaining Diglossia in Cyprus, San Diego Linguistics Papers 2: pp. 25–38, page 27.
- ^ "The EU at a Glance – Languages in the EU". Europa. European Union. Retrieved 30 July 2010.
- ^ Ralli 2001, pp. 164–203.
- ^ The four cases that are found in all stages of Greek are the nominative, genitive, accusative and vocative. The dative/locative of Ancient Greek disappeared in the late Hellenistic period, and the instrumental case of Mycenaean Greek disappeared in the Archaic period.
- ^ There is no particular morphological form that can be identified as 'subjunctive' in the modern language, but the term is sometimes encountered in descriptions even if the most complete modern grammar (Holton et al. 1997) does not use it and calls certain traditionally-'subjunctive' forms 'dependent'. Most Greek linguists advocate abandoning the traditional terminology (Anna Roussou and Tasos Tsangalidis 2009, in Meletes gia tin Elliniki Glossa, Thessaloniki, Anastasia Giannakidou 2009 "Temporal semantics and polarity: The dependency of the subjunctive revisited", Lingua); see Modern Greek grammar for explanation.
- ^ Beekes 2009.
- ^ Scheler 1977.
- ^ Hamp 2013, pp. 8–10, 13.
- ^ Babiniotis 1992, pp. 29–40; Dosuna 2012, pp. 65–78.
- ^ Hammarström, Harald; Forkel, Robert; Haspelmath, Martin; Bank, Sebastian, eds. (2016). "Graeco-Phrygian". Glottolog 2.7. Jena: Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History.
- ^ Renfrew 1990; Gamkrelidze & Ivanov 1990, pp. 110–116; Renfrew 2003, pp. 17–48; Gray & Atkinson 2003, pp. 435–439.
- ^ Holm 2008, pp. 628–636.
- ^ Nicolas, Nick (2005). "Greek Unicode Issues: Punctuation". Retrieved 7 October 2014.
- ^ Androutsopoulos 2009, pp. 221–249.
Sources[edit]
- Alexiou, Margaret (1982). "Diglossia in Greece". In Haas, William. Standard Languages: Spoken and Written. Manchester: Manchester University Press. pp. 156–192. ISBN 978-0-389-20291-2.
- Androutsopoulos, Jannis (2009). "'Greeklish': Transliteration Practice and Discourse in a Setting of Computer-Mediated Digraphia". In Georgakopoulou, Alexandra; Silk, Michael. Standard Languages and Language Standards: Greek, Past and Present (PDF). Aldershot: Ashgate Publishing Limited. pp. 221–249.
- Atkinson, Quentin D.; Gray, Russel D. (2006). "Chapter 8: How Old is the Indo-European Language Family? Illumination or More Moths to the Flame?". In Forster, Peter; Renfrew, Colin. Phylogenetic Methods and the Prehistory of Languages. Cambridge: McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research. pp. 91–109. ISBN 978-1-902937-33-5.
- Babiniotis, George (1992). "The Question of Mediae in Ancient Macedonian Greek Reconsidered". In Brogyanyi, Bela; Lipp, Reiner. Historical Philology: Greek, Latin and Romance. Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing Company. pp. 29–40.
- Beekes, Robert Stephen Paul (2009). Etymological Dictionary of Greek. Leiden and Boston: Brill. ISBN 978-90-04-17418-4.
- Browning, Robert (1983) [1969]. Medieval and Modern Greek. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-23488-3.
- Dawkins, Richard McGillivray; Halliday, William Reginald (1916). Modern Greek in Asia Minor: A Study of Dialect of Silly, Cappadocia and Pharasa with Grammar, Texts, Translations and Glossary. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
- Dosuna, Julián Víctor Méndez (2012). "Ancient Macedonian as a Greek Dialect: A Critical Survey on Recent Work". In Giannakis, Georgios K. Ancient Macedonia: Language, History and Culture (in Greek). Thessaloniki: Centre for the Greek Language. pp. 65–78.
- Gamkrelidze, Tamaz V.; Ivanov, Vyacheslav (March 1990). "The Early History of Indo-European Languages". Scientific American: 110–116.
- Georgiev, Vladimir Ivanov (1981). Introduction to the History of the Indo-European Languages. Sofia: Bulgarian Academy of Sciences.
- Gray, Russel D.; Atkinson, Quentin D. (2003). "Language-tree Divergence Times Support the Anatolian Theory of Indo-European Origin". Nature. 426 (6965): 435–439. doi:10.1038/nature02029. PMID 14647380.
- Hamp, Eric P. (August 2013). "The Expansion of the Indo-European Languages: An Indo-Europeanist's Evolving View" (PDF). Sino-Platonic Papers. 239.
- Holm, Hans J. (2008). "The Distribution of Data in Word Lists and its Impact on the Subgrouping of Languages". In Preisach, Christine; Burkhardt, Hans; Schmidt-Thieme, Lars; Decker, Reinhold. Data Analysis, Machine Learning, and Applications. Proceedings of the 31st Annual Conference of the Gesellschaft für Klassifikation e.V., Albert-Ludwigs-Universität Freiburg, March 7–9, 2007. Berlin-Heidelberg: Springer-Verlag. pp. 628–636. ISBN 978-3-540-78246-9.
- Hooker, J.T. (1976). Mycenaean Greece. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.
- Jeffries, Ian (2002). Eastern Europe at the Turn of the Twenty-First Century: A Guide to the Economies in Transition. London and New York: Routledge (Taylor & Francis). ISBN 978-0-415-23671-3.
- Ralli, Angeliki (2001). Μορφολογία [Morphology] (in Greek). Athens: Ekdoseis Pataki.
- Renfrew, Colin (1973). "Problems in the General Correlation of Archaeological and Linguistic Strata in Prehistoric Greece: The Model of Autochthonous Origin". In Crossland, R. A.; Birchall, Ann. Bronze Age Migrations in the Aegean; Archaeological and Linguistic Problems in Greek Prehistory: Proceedings of the first International Colloquium on Aegean Prehistory, Sheffield. London: Gerald Duckworth and Company Limited. pp. 263–276. ISBN 0-7156-0580-1.
- Renfrew, Colin (2003). "Time Depth, Convergence Theory, and Innovation in Proto-Indo-European: 'Old Europe' as a PIE Linguistic Area". In Bammesberger, Alfred; Vennemann, Theo. Languages in Prehistoric Europe. Heidelberg: Universitätsverlag Winter GmBH. pp. 17–48. ISBN 978-3-8253-1449-1.
- Renfrew, Colin (1990) [1987]. Archaeology and Language: The Puzzle of Indo-European Origins. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0-521-38675-3.
- Scheler, Manfred (1977). Der englische Wortschatz [English Vocabulary] (in German). Berlin: E. Schmidt. ISBN 978-3-503-01250-3.
- Tsitselikis, Konstantinos (2013). "A Surviving Treaty: The Lausanne Minority Protection in Greece and Turkey". In Henrard, Kristin. The Interrelation between the Right to Identity of Minorities and their Socio-economic Participation. Leiden and Boston: Martinus Nijhoff Publishers. pp. 287–315.
Further reading[edit]
- Allen, W. Sidney (1968). Vox Graeca – A Guide to the Pronunciation of Classical Greek. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-20626-X.
- Crosby, Henry Lamar; Schaeffer, John Nevin (1928). An Introduction to Greek. Boston and New York: Allyn and Bacon, Inc.
- Dionysius of Thrace. Τέχνη Γραμματική [Art of Grammar] (in Greek). c. 100 BC
- Holton, David; Mackridge, Peter; Philippaki-Warburton, Irene (1997). Greek: A Comprehensive Grammar of the Modern Language. London and New York: Routledge. ISBN 0-415-10002-X.
- Horrocks, Geoffrey (1997). Greek: A History of the Language and Its Speakers. London and New York: Longman Linguistics Library (Addison Wesley Longman Limited). ISBN 0-582-30709-0.
- Krill, Richard M. (1990). Greek and Latin in English Today. Wauconda, IL: Bolchazy-Carducci Publishers. ISBN 0-86516-241-7.
- Mallory, James P. (1997). "Greek Language". In Mallory, James P.; Adams, Douglas Q. Encyclopedia of Indo-European Culture. Chicago, IL: Fitzroy Dearborn Publishers. pp. 240–246.
- Newton, Brian (1972). The Generative Interpretation of Dialect: A Study of Modern Greek Phonology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-08497-0.
- Sihler, Andrew L. (1995). New Comparative Grammar of Greek and Latin. New York: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-508345-8.
- Smyth, Herbert Weir; Messing, Gordon (1956) [1920]. Greek Grammar. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. ISBN 0-674-36250-0.
External links[edit]
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Standard Greek edition of Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia |
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Pontic Greek edition of Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia |
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Wikibooks has more on the topic of: Greek language |
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For a list of words relating to Greek language, see the Greek language category of words in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. |
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Ancient Greek test of Wikipedia at Wikimedia Incubator |
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Wikimedia Commons has media related to Greek language. |
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Wikivoyage has a phrasebook for Greek. |
General background[edit]
- Greek Language, Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia.
- The Greek Language and Linguistics Gateway, useful information on the history of the Greek language, application of modern Linguistics to the study of Greek, and tools for learning Greek.
- Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, The Greek Language Portal, a portal for Greek language and linguistic education.
- The Perseus Project has many useful pages for the study of classical languages and literatures, including dictionaries.
- Ancient Greek Tutorials, Berkeley Language Center of the University of California, Berkeley
Language learning[edit]
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Wikiquote has quotations related to: Greek language |
- Hellenistic Greek Lessons Greek-Language.com provides a free online grammar of Hellenistic Greek.
- Greek dictionary, tutorial and hangman program with texteditor, this shareware program is aimed at learning New Testament Greek.
- Greek spell checker
- (Greek) komvos.edu.gr, a website for the support of people who are being taught the Greek language.
- New Testament Greek Three graduated courses designed to help students learn to read the Greek New Testament
- Books on Greek language that are taught at schools in Greece (page in Greek)
- Greek Swadesh list of basic vocabulary words (from Wiktionary's Swadesh list appendix)
- USA Foreign Service Institute Modern Greek basic course
- Ask any question about the Greek language and a qualified Greek teacher answers you
Dictionaries[edit]
- Greek Lexical Aids, descriptions of both online lexicons (with appropriate links) and Greek Lexicons in Print.
- The Greek Language Portal, dictionaries of all forms of Greek (Ancient, Hellenistic, Medieval, Modern)
- scanned images from S. C. Woodhouse's English–Greek dictionary, 1910
Literature[edit]
- Books in Greek, an extended list of searchable bibliographic information
- (Greek) Center for Neo-Hellenic Studies, a non-profit organization that promotes modern Greek literature and culture
- Research lab of modern Greek philosophy, a large e-library of modern Greek texts/books
- The Treasure of the Greek Language, a large collection of e-books from all stages of Greek language