greek word for city

GreekΕλληνικάEllinikáSpoken in:Greece (official), Cyprus (official), Albania, Macedonia, Turkey, Bulgaria, Romania, Italy, Spain, Armenia, Georgia, Egypt, Jordan, United Kingdom,United States of America, Ukraine, Russia, South Africa, Kazakhstan, France, and the rest of the Greek diaspora.Total speakers:17-25 million Ranking:52Language family:Indo-European Proto-Greek Greek Writing system:Greek alphabet Official statusOfficial language in: Greece Cyprus European Unionrecognised as minority language in parts of: Albania Italy TurkeyRegulated by:no official regulationLanguage codesISO 639-1:elISO 639-2:gre (B) ell (T)ISO 639-3:either:grc — Ancient Greekell — Modern GreekNote: This page may contain IPA phonetic symbols in Unicode.Greek (ελληνική γλώσσα IPA: [eliniˈkʲi ˈɣlosa] or simply ελληνικά IPA: [eliniˈka] — “Hellenic”) has a documented history of 3,400 years, the longest of any single natural language in the Indo-European language family. It is also one of the earliest attested Indo-European languages, with fragmentary records in Mycenaean dating back to the 15th or 14th century BC, making it one of the world’s oldest recorded living languages. Today, it is spoken by approximately 17–25 million people in Greece (official), Cyprus (official), Albania, Bulgaria, the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia (FYROM), Italy, Turkey, Armenia, Georgia, Ukraine, Moldova, Romania, Russia, Egypt, Jordan and emigrant communities around the world, including Australia, United States, Canada, Germany and elsewhere.Greek has been written in the Greek alphabet (the oldest continuously used alphabet, and the first to introduce vowels) since the 9th century BC in Greece (before that in Linear B), and the 4th century BC in Cyprus (before that in Cypriot syllabary). Greek literature has a continuous history of nearly three thousand years.Contents1 History2 Characteristics3 Evolution from Ancient to Modern Greek4 Classification5 Writing system6 Geographic distribution7 Official status8 See also9 References10 External links10.1 General background10.2 Language learning10.2.1 General10.2.2 Modern Greek10.3 Dictionaries10.4 Literature10.5 Typography10.6 Books10.7 Spell checkers
HistoryHistory of theGreek language(see also: Greek alphabet)Proto-Greek (c. 2000 BC)Mycenaean (c. 1600–1100 BC)Ancient Greek (c. 800–300 BC)Dialects:Aeolic, Arcadocypriot, Attic-Ionic,Doric, Pamphylian; Homeric Greek.Macedonian.Koine Greek (from c. 300 BC)Medieval Greek (c. 330–1453)Modern Greek (from 1453)Dialects:Cappadocian, Cretan, Cypriot,Demotic, Griko, Katharevousa,Pontic, Tsakonian, YevanicMain article: History of the Greek languageThis article does not cover the reconstructed history of Greek prior to the use of writing. For more information, see main article on Proto-Greek language.Greek has been spoken in the Balkan Peninsula since the 2nd millennium BC. The earliest evidence of this is found in the Linear B tablets in the “Room of the Chariot Tablets”, a LMII-context (c. 1500 BC) region of Knossos, in Crete, making Greek one of the very few living languages (together with the Chinese and West Semitic languages) directly descended from a language recorded in the Bronze Age. Among its fellow Indo-European languages, Greek’s date of earliest attestation is matched only by the extinct Anatolian languages and Vedic Sanskrit. The later Greek alphabet is unrelated to Linear B, and is derived from the Phoenician alphabet (abjad); with minor modifications, it is still used today. Greek is conventionally divided into the following periods:Mycenaean Greek: the language of the Mycenaean civilization. It is recorded in the Linear B script on tablets dating from the 15th or 14th century BC onwards.Classical Greek (also known as Ancient Greek): In its various dialects was the language of the Archaic and Classical periods of Greek civilization. It was widely known throughout the Roman empire. Classical 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 Italy.Hellenistic Greek (also known as Koine Greek): The fusion of various ancient Greek dialects with Attic (the dialect of Athens) resulted in the creation of the first common Greek dialect, which became a lingua franca across the Mediterranean region. Koine Greek can be initially traced within the armies and conquered territories of Alexander the Great, but after the Hellenistic colonization of the known world, it was spoken from Egypt to the fringes of India. After the Roman conquest of Greece, an unofficial diglossy of Greek and Latin was established in the city of Rome and Koine Greek became a first or second language in the Roman Empire. Through Koine Greek is also traced the origin of Christianity, as the Apostles used it to preach in Greece and the Greek-speaking world. It is also known as the Alexandrian dialect, Post-Classical Greek or even New Testament Greek (after its most famous work of literature).Medieval Greek: The continuation of Hellenistic Greek during medieval Greek history as the official and vernacular language of the Byzantine Empire, and continued to be used until, and after the fall of that Empire in the 15th century. Also known as Byzantine Greek.Modern Greek: Stemming independently from Koine Greek, Modern Greek usages can be traced in the late Byzantine period (as early as 11th century).Two main forms of the language have been in use since the end of the medieval Greek period: Dhimotikí (Δημοτική), the Demotic (vernacular) language, and Katharévusa (Καθαρεύουσα, meaning “purified”), an imitation of classical Greek, which was used for literary, juridic, administrative and scientific purposes during the 19th and early 20th centuries. This diglossia problem was brought to an end in 1976 (act — νόμος — 306/1976), when Dhimotikí was declared the official language of Greece.In the meantime, both forms of Greek had naturally converged and Standard Modern Greek (Κοινή Νεοελληνική — Common Modern Greek), the form of Greek used for all official purposes and in education in Greece today, emerged.It has been claimed that an “educated” speaker of the modern language can understand an ancient text, but this is surely as much a function of education as of the similarity of the languages. Still, Koinē, the version of Greek used to write the New Testament and the Septuagint, is relatively easy to understand for modern speakers.Greek words have been widely borrowed into the European languages: astronomy, democracy, philosophy, thespian, etc. Moreover, Greek words and word elements continue to be productive as a basis for coinages: anthropology, photography, isomer, biomechanics etc. and form, with Latin words, the foundation of international scientific and technical vocabulary. See English words of Greek origin, and List of Greek words with English derivatives.
CharacteristicsIndo-European topicsIndo-European languagesAlbanian · Armenian · BalticCeltic · Germanic · GreekIndo-Iranian (Indo-Aryan, Iranian)Italic · Slavic extinct: Anatolian · Paleo-Balkans (Dacian,Phrygian, Thracian) · TocharianIndo-European peoplesAlbanians · ArmeniansBalts · Celts · Germanic peoplesGreeks · Indo-AryansIranians · Latins · Slavshistorical: Anatolians (Hittites, Luwians)Celts (Galatians, Gauls) · Germanic tribesIllyrians · Indo-Iranians (Rigvedic tribes, Iranian tribes)Italic peoples · Thracians · Tocharians Proto-Indo-EuropeansLanguage · Society · Religion Urheimat hypothesesKurgan hypothesis · AnatoliaArmenia · India · PCT Indo-European studiesLike most Indo-European languages, Greek is highly inflected. Greek grammar has come down through the ages fairly intact, though with some simplifications. For example, Modern Greek features two numbers: singular and plural. The dual number of Ancient times was abandoned at a very early stage. The instrumental case of Mycenaean Greek disappeared in the Archaic period, and the dative-locative of Ancient Greek disappeared in the late Hellenistic. Four cases, nominative, genitive, accusative and vocative, remain in Modern Greek. The three ancient gender noun categories (masculine, feminine and neuter) never fell out of use, while adjectives agree in gender, number, and case with their respective nouns, as do their articles. Greek verbs have synthetic inflectional forms for:mood — Ancient Greek: indicative, subjunctive, imperative, and optative; Modern Greek: indicative and imperative (other modal functions are expressed by periphrastic constructions)number — singular, plural (archaic Greek also had a dual)voice — Ancient Greek: active, middle, and passive; Modern Greek: active and medio-passivetense — Ancient Greek: present, past, future; Modern Greek: past and non-past (future is expressed by a periphrastic construction)person — first, second, thirdaspect — Ancient Greek: imperfective, perfective (traditionally called aorist), perfect (sometimes also called perfective, see note about terminology); Modern Greek: perfective and imperfectiveAncient had several infinitives; in Modern, the infinitive of verbs has been replaced by a periphrastic subjunctive. Ancient had a complex participial system; Modern has a simpler one.A great syntactical reformation took place during Hellenistic times, with the result that late Koine is already much like Modern Greek. However, since Greek syntactical relations are expressed by means of case endings, Greek word order has always been relatively free. In Attic Greek the availability of the definite article and the infinitive and participial clauses permits the construction of very long, complex yet clear sentences. This technique of Attic prose (known as periodic style) is unmatched in other languages. Since Hellenistic times Greek has tended to be more periphrastic, but much of the syntactical and expressive power of the language has been preserved.Greek is a language distinguished by an extraordinarily rich vocabulary. In respect to the roots of words, ancient Greek vocabulary was essentially of Indo-European origin, but with a significant number of borrowings from the idioms of the populations that inhabited Greece before the arrival of Proto-Greeks. 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, although in certain cases words have changed meanings. Words of foreign origin have entered the language mainly from Latin, Italian and Ottoman Turkish. During older periods of the Greek language, loan words into Greek acquired Greek inflections, leaving thus only a foreign root word. Modern borrowings (from the 20th century on), especially from French and English, are typically not inflected.Yet the most distinctive characteristic of the Greek language is its powerful compound-constructing ability. The speaker is able to combine basic or derived terms in order to construct new, yet perfectly understandable compounds that express in one word what other languages would express in an entire clause, or even an entire sentence. This linguistic mobility is largely absent from Latin and its offspring languages. In the Homeric language, Thetis — the mother of Achilles, is described as “δυσαριστοτόκεια”, dysaristotokeia, meaning “she, who to her own bad fortune, gave birth to the best”, in pure Modern Greek — “πικρολεβεντομάνα”, pikroleventomana. Some languages are able to express such a complex meaning naturally in one word, others have different mechanisms (but see polysynthetic languages for extreme examples). Compound constructional capability, as is found in Greek, is frequently imitated by modern languages such as French and English in order to produce monolectic compounds; this is often done by actually using Greek roots (e.g. biology < biologie < bios + logos, Micromégas < mikros + megas ) or by applying imported Greek rules to foreign words. For that reason Greek-derived words predominate in the language of sciences, particularly of the natural sciences, e.g. physics, chemistry, biology, geography, medicine etc. It has been speculated by scholars that due to this specific flexibility, Greek and German have been the languages of philosophy, and that Plato’s ideas had pre-existed in Greek, in the same way that Meister Eckhart’s thoughts had in German.
Evolution from Ancient to Modern GreekThis section does not cite any references or sources.Please improve this section by adding citations to reliable sources. Unverifiable material may be challenged and removed. (October 2007)The development from Ancient Greek to Modern Greek has affected phonology, morphology, and vocabulary. The division into conventional periods is, as with all such periodisations, relatively arbitrary, especially since at all periods, Ancient Greek has enjoyed high prestige, and the literate borrowed heavily from it.The main phonological changes occurred during the Hellenistic and Roman period (see Koine Greek Phonology for details), and included:replacement of the pitch accent with a stress accentsimplification of the system of vowels and diphthongs (loss of vowel length distinction, monophthongization of most diphthongs, and some significant steps of iotacism)development of the voiceless aspirated stop consonants phi and theta to voiceless fricatives (the similar development of chi may have taken place later)possibly development of the voiced stop consonants — delta, beta and gamma — to voiced fricatives (the date is discussed among scholars)The morphological changes affected both nouns and verbs. Some of the changes to the verbs are parallel to those that affected the Romance languages as they developed from Vulgar Latin — for instance the loss of certain historic tense forms and their replacement by new constructions — but unlike Romance, Greek continues to inflect nouns for case.
ClassificationGreek is an independent branch of the Indo-European language family. The ancient languages which were probably most closely related to it, ancient Macedonian (a dialect of Greek) and Phrygian, are not well enough documented to permit detailed comparison. Among living languages Greek seems to be most closely related to Armenian (see also Graeco-Armenian) and the Indo-Iranian languages.
Greek word
greek city
annapolis
greek for city
city in greek
greek word city