Greek language

Greek or Hellenic (Modern Greek: ελληνικά [eliniˈka], elliniká, "Greek", ελληνική γλώσσα [eliniˈci ˈɣlosa], ellinikí glóssa, "Greek language") is an independent branch of the Indo-European family of languages, native to the southern Balkans, the Aegean Islands, western Asia Minor, parts of northern and Eastern Anatolia and the South Caucasus, southern Italy, Albania and Cyprus. It has the longest documented history of any Indo-European language, spanning 34 centuries of written records. Its writing system has been the Greek alphabet for the majority 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 histories of Europe, the more loosely defined Western world, and Christianity; the canon of ancient Greek literature includes works of monumental importance and influence for the future Western 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 Platonic dialogues and the works of Aristotle, were composed; the New Testament of the Christian 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.

Greek

Greek may refer to:

Greece

Anything of, from, or related to Greece, a country in Southern Europe:

Greek alphabet

The Greek alphabet has been used to write the Greek language since the 8th century BC. It was derived from the earlier Phoenician alphabet, and was the first alphabetic script to have distinct letters for vowels as well as consonants. It is the ancestor of the Latin and Cyrillic scripts. Apart from its use in writing the Greek language, in both its ancient and its modern forms, the Greek alphabet today also serves as a source of technical symbols and labels in many domains of mathematics, science and other fields.

In its classical and modern forms, the alphabet has 24 letters, ordered from alpha to omega. Like Latin and Cyrillic, Greek originally had only a single form of each letter; it developed the letter case distinction between upper-case and lower-case forms in parallel with Latin during the modern era.

Sound values and conventional transcriptions for some of the letters differ between Ancient Greek and Modern Greek usage, because the pronunciation of Greek has changed significantly between the 5th century BC and today. Modern and Ancient Greek use different diacritics. Polytonic orthography, which is used for Ancient Greek and sometimes for Modern Greek, has many diacritics, such as accent marks for pitch accent, the breathing marks for the presence and absence of the /h/ sound, and the iota subscript for the historical /i/ sound. In standard Modern Greek spelling, orthography has been simplified to the monotonic system, which uses only two diacritics: the acute accent and diaeresis.

Lesson 1 (E-girls album)

Lesson 1 is the debut studio album of the Japanese super girl group E-girls. It was released on April 17, 2013 in two different editions.

Background

The album was announced on February 26, via the group and LDH official websites. It was revealed the album prices and some details about the editions, being released in two editions: limited with a DVD and a regular CD only. In March 18, jacket covers and tracklist were revealed, the CD including fourteen tracks and DVD including all music videos released up to date and a bonus live video from EXILE's "EXILE Live Tour 2011 Tower of Wish ~Negai no Tou~". The album was also put in pre-order in Japan's iTunes Store, including an acoustic version of the song "Love Letter" as a special pre-order track only. The first press of the CD+DVD edition includes a 64-page photobook. First presses of both editions feature a special packaging and include a card with a serial code which give access to a free wallpaper download though their official website. If codes of the album and their previous release, "Candy Smile", are entered, the page also offers the download for an unreleased song.