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Modern Greek (Νέα Ελληνικά or Νεοελληνική, lit. 'Neo-Hellenic', historically also known as Ρωμαίικα, lit. 'Romaic') refers to the varieties of Greek spoken in the modern era. Greek is spoken today by approximately 15 million people, mainly in Greece and Cyprus but also by minority and immigrant communities in many other countries. Under an historical perspective, the term "Modern Greek" is usually understood to comprise all varieties of Greek in the time period from the fall of the Byzantine Empire (1453) until the present. During much of this time, the language existed in a situation of diglossia, with regional spoken dialects existing side by side with learned, archaic written forms. Most notably, during much of the 19th and 20th centuries, it was known in the competing varieties of popular Demotic and learned Katharevousa. Today, Standard Modern Greek, based mainly on Demotic, is the official language of both Greece and Cyprus.
Classification Greek forms an independent branch of the Indo-European languages. Within Greek, all surviving forms of Modern Greek, except the Tsakonian dialect, are descendants of the common supra-regional (Koiné) as it was spoken in late antiquity. As such, they can ultimately be classified as descendants of Attic, the dialect spoken in and around Athens in the classical era. Tsakonian, an isolated dialect spoken today by a dwindling community in the Peloponese, is a descendant of the ancient Doric dialect. Some other dialects have preserved elements of various ancient non-Attic dialects, but Attic Koine is nevertheless regarded by most scholars as the principal source of all of them. Geographic distribution Modern Greek is spoken by about 15 million people mainly in Greece and Cyprus. There are also Greek-speaking populations in Georgia, Ukraine, Russia, Egypt, Turkey, Albania, the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia and Southern Italy. The language is spoken also in many other countries where Greeks have settled, including Armenia, Australia, Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Brazil, Canada, Denmark, France, Germany, Netherlands, South Africa, Sweden, United Kingdom, and the United States. Official status Greek is the official language of Greece where it is spoken by about 99.5% of the population. It is also, alongside Turkish, the official language of Cyprus. Because of the membership of Greece and Cyprus in the European Union, Greek is one of the 20 official languages of the European Union. Varieties The main dialects of Modern Greek are: Examples of Northern dialects are Rumelian, Epirote, Thessalian, Macedonian, Thracian. The Southern category is divided into groups that include dialects from:
Demotic Greek has officially been written in monotonic Greek script since 1982. Demotic as Koine (Standard) Modern Greek Koine Modern Greek (Κοινή Νεοελληνική) refers to the idiom of Demotic that was chosen as the official language of the Hellenic Republic and Cyprus. In English it is usually referred to as Standard Modern Greek. In its pure form it is spoken mainly in the urban parts of Greece, while its various idioms are the vernacular language of most rural Greece and the Greek Diaspora throughout the world. Koine Modern Greek evolves from the Southern Demotic idioms, mainly the ones of Peloponnese. In short, Koine Modern Greek is the natural continuation of Koine Greek, an ancient Greek dialect (known also as the "Alexandrian language") which came into existence after the conquests of Alexander the Great and the Hellenization of the known world. Hellenistic Koine had assimilated many elements from various different Greek dialects (such as Ionic, Doric and Aeolic) but its nucleus had always been Attic (the dialect of Athens). Hellenistic Koine had been spoken in several different forms in the region of Greece and the Greek speaking world during the entire Hellenistic, Roman and Byzantine periods, until it took the shape of Demotic in the Middle Ages. After Greece gained independence from the Ottoman Empire, the same dual-language status of the late Byzantine Empire was readapted. The vernacular speech was Demotic (a term similar to "popular") and the official state dialect was Katharevousa ("purified"). Demotic was the language of daily use, and the latter was an archaic form (closer to Attic), used for official documents, literature, newscasting and other formal purposes. In 1976 Katharevousa was replaced by Demotic as the official language of the Greek state. During its long history the Greek language had assimilated some foreign vocabulary from various languages such as Latin, Italian, and Turkish, a great part of which was cleansed after its long-lasting co-existence with Katharevousa. Phonology A series of radical sound shifts, which the Greek language underwent mainly during the period of Koine, has led to a phonological system in Modern Greek that is significantly different from that of Ancient Greek. Instead of the rich vowel system of Ancient Greek, with its four vowel-height levels, length distinction, and multiple diphthongs, Modern Greek has a very simple system of five vowels. This came about through a series of mergers, especially towards /i/ (iotacism). In the consonants, Modern Greek has two series of fricatives in lieu of the Ancient Greek voiced and aspirated voiceless plosives. Modern Greek has not preserved length distinctions, either in the vowels or in the consonants. Orthography The Greek vowel letters with their pronunciation are: <α> , <ε> , <η> , <ι> , <ο> , <υ> , <ω> . There are also vowel digraphs which are phonetically monophthongal: <αι> , <ει> , <οι> , <ου> , <υι> . The three digraphs <αυ>, <ευ> and <ηυ> are pronounced , and except when followed by unvoiced consonants, in which case they are pronounced , and . When <υ> occurs before a vowel (and not immediately after another vowel), it is pronounced . Modern Greek has also four diphthongs: <αη> (or <άη>) , <αϊ> (or <άι>) , <οη> (or <όη>) and <οϊ> (or <όι>) (diphthongs can better be transcribed using the IPA non-syllabic diacritic under instead of the approximant ). The Greek letters <β> and <δ> are pronounced and respectively. The letter <γ> is generally pronounced , but before the mid or close front vowels, it is pronounced (or in some dialects, notably those of Crete and the Mani). The letters <θ>, <φ> and <χ> are pronounced , and . The letter <χ>, before mid or close front vowels, is pronounced (or in some dialects, notably those of Crete and the Mani). The letter <ξ> stands for and <ψ> stands for . The digraphs <γγ> and <γκ> are generally pronounced in everyday speech, but are pronounced before the front vowels and . When these digraphs are preceded by a vowel, they are pronounced in formal speech ( before the front vowels and . The digraph <γγ> may be pronounced in some words ( before the front vowels and . Grammar Modern Greek is still largely a synthetic language. It is one of the few Indo-European languages that has retained a synthetic passive. Noticeable changes in grammar (compared to classical Greek) include the loss of the dative case, the optative mood, the infinitive, the dual number, and the participles (except the past participle); the adoption of the gerund; the reduction in the number of noun declensions, and the number of distinct forms in each declension; the adoption of the modal particle (a contraction of > > > ) to denote future and conditional tenses; the introduction of auxiliary verb forms for certain tenses; the extension to the future tense of the aspectual distinction between present/imperfect and aorist; the loss of the third person imperative, and the simplification of the system of grammatical prefixes, such as augmentation and reduplication. Some of these features are shared with other languages spoken in the Balkan peninsula (see Balkan linguistic union). Because of the influence of Katharevousa, however, Demotic is not commonly used in its purest form, and archaisms are still widely used, especially in writing and in more formal speech, as well as in a few everyday expressions like the dative ('OK', literally 'in order') or the third person imperative ! ('long live!'). Writing system Modern Greek is written in the late Ionic variant of the Greek alphabet. It is regarded as the first alphabet in the narrow sense, giving full representation to vowels on a par with consonants, unlike its predecessor, the Phoenician alphabet (also called an "abjad"). Its oldest discovered inscriptions date to the 8th or 9th Century BC. It assumed its final form in Athens in 403 BC, and displaced other regional variants because of its use for the Attic Koine dialect during the Hellenistic era. The Greek alphabet consists of 24 letters, each with a capital and lowercase (small) form: Α α, Β β, Γ γ, Δ δ, Ε ε, Ζ ζ, Η η, Θ θ, Ι ι, Κ κ, Λ λ, Μ μ, Ν ν, Ξ ξ, Ο ο, Π π, Ρ ρ, Σ σ ς (word-final form), Τ τ, Υ υ, Φ φ, Χ χ, Ψ ψ, Ω ω. In addition to the letters of the alphabet, Greek has a number of diacritical signs, most of which were eliminated from official use in Greece in 1982 as no longer corresponding to the modern pronunciation of the language. See Monotonic orthography for the simplified modern set, and Polytonic orthography for the traditional set. Some common words and phrases | ||||||||
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