David William Holton (born Northampton 1946) is Emeritus Professor of Modern Greek at the University of Cambridge. He was educated at Northampton Grammar School and Hertford College, University of Oxford, where he studied Classics and Medieval and Modern Greek. He completed his DPhil thesis at Oxford in 1971. From 1973 until 1975 he was a Research Fellow at the University of Birmingham, where he also worked as a university administrator (1975-1981). In 1981 he was appointed Lewis-Gibson Lecturer in Modern Greek at the University of Cambridge; in 1982 he became a Fellow of Selwyn College. He was promoted to Reader in 2000 and Professor of Modern Greek in 2006, and retired in 2013.
He specialises in medieval and modern Greek language and literature, with special reference to the romance genre, early printing, Crete and Cyprus under Venetian rule, and the history and present structure of Greek. He directed the AHRC research project which produced the four-volume Cambridge Grammar of Medieval and Early Modern Greek, co-authored with Geoffrey Horrocks, (Emeritus Professor of Comparative Philology and a Fellow of St John's College, Cambridge), Marjolijne Janssen, Tina Lendari, Io Manolessou and Panagiotis Toufexis, published in 2019 by Cambridge University Press. This monumental work is the world's first grammar of the vernacular Greek of the Middle Ages and the Early Modern period (up to c. 1700). [1]
Nikos Xylouris, Cretan nickname: Psaronikos (Ψαρονίκος), was a Greek singer, Cretan Lyra player and composer. Xylouris' music encompassed both rural traditional and urban orchestral music, and he has been referred to by the honorific moniker Archangel of Crete.
Cappadocian Greek, also known as Cappadocian is a dialect of modern Greek, originally spoken in Cappadocia by the descendants of the Byzantine Greeks of Anatolia. The language originally diverged from Medieval Greek after the late medieval migrations of the Turks from Central Asia into what is now Turkey began cutting the Cappadocians off from the rest of the Greek-speaking Byzantine Empire. As a result of the population exchange between Greece and Turkey in 1923, all remaining speakers were forced to emigrate to Greece where they were resettled in various locations, primarily in Central and Northern Greece. The Cappadocians were encouraged to shift to Standard Modern Greek as part of their integration into Greece, and their language was thought to be extinct since the 1960s. In June 2005, Mark Janse and Dimitris Papazachariou discovered Cappadocians in Central and Northern Greece who could still speak their ancestral language fluently. Many are middle-aged, third-generation speakers who take a very positive attitude towards the language, as opposed to their parents and grandparents. The latter are much less inclined to speak Cappadocian and more often than not switch to Standard Modern Greek.
M. Karagatsis was the pen name of the important modern Greek novelist, journalist, critic and playwright Dimitrios Rodopoulos. The pen name M. Karagatsis is the name the novelist is known with. The letter "M." comes from Mitya, which is the Russian diminutive of Dimitris. The word "Karagatsis" comes from the tree karagatsi under the shadow of which he used to write as a young writer.
The Tsamikos or Kleftikos is a popular traditional folk dance of Greece, done to music of 3/4 meter.
Erotokritos is a romance composed by Vikentios Kornaros in early 17th century Crete. It consists of 10,012 fifteen-syllable rhymed verses, the last twelve of which refer to the poet himself. It is written in the Cretan dialect of the Greek language. Its central theme is love between Erotokritos and Aretousa. Around this theme, revolve other themes such as honour, friendship, bravery and courage. Erotokritos and Erophile by Georgios Hortatzis constitute classic examples of Greek Renaissance literature and are considered to be the most important works of Cretan literature. It remains a popular work to this day, largely due to the music that accompanies it when it is publicly recited. A particular type of rhyming used in the traditional mantinades was also the one used in Erotokritos.
The grammar of Modern Greek, as spoken in present-day Greece and Cyprus, is essentially that of Demotic Greek, but it has also assimilated certain elements of Katharevousa, the archaic, learned variety of Greek imitating Classical Greek forms, which used to be the official language of Greece through much of the 19th and 20th centuries. Modern Greek grammar has preserved many features of Ancient Greek, but has also undergone changes in a similar direction as many other modern Indo-European languages, from more synthetic to more analytic structures.
This article deals with the phonology and phonetics of Standard Modern Greek. For phonological characteristics of other varieties, see varieties of Modern Greek, and for Cypriot, specifically, see Cypriot Greek § Phonology.
Emmanuel G. Kriaras was a Greek lexicographer, philologist, professor and linguist. He was Professor Emeritus of the School of Philosophy at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki. He was a student of Jean Psychari and the practice and ideology of demotic Greek.
Theophilos Corydalleus was a Greek Neo-Aristotelian philosopher who initiated the philosophical movement known as Korydalism or Corydalism. He was also an Eastern Orthodox cleric, physician, physicist, astronomer, mathematician, author, educator and geographer. His philosophical thought kept influencing Greek education for two hundred years after its inception.
The Cretan League or Koinon of the Cretans was a federal league of ancient Greek city-states on the island of Crete. It was established in the 3rd century BC to preserve its members' independence against the hegemonic aspirations of Macedonia, and did not originally include all cities on the island, whence a distinction was made between the Kretaioi and the more generic Kretes (Cretans); the League did not acquire its final name until the entire island found itself under the rule of the Roman Empire in the late 1st century BC. In its original form, the League lacked common institutions apart from a federal council and a federal court, and leadership was disputed between the cities of Gortyn and Knossos. After the Roman conquest in 67 BC, the island became part of the province of Crete and Cyrenaica, and the League was re-established as a common union of all cities on the island. A League president and later a chief priest of the Roman Imperial cult were created. Delegated to celebrating festivals and representing local grievances to the Roman imperial authorities, the League survived until the late 4th century AD.
Panagiotis V. Faklaris is a Greek archaeologist, professor of classical archaeology and excavator of the acropolis and the walls of Vergina. Main fields of specialization: topography of ancient Macedonia, topography of ancient Kynouria, arms and armour, horse harnesses, ancient Greek daily life, metal finds, Greek mythology. Studied archaeology at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki and the University of Cambridge UK. Born in Arcadia, Greece, April 1947. Assistant (1978–1992) of the famous Greek archaeology professor Manolis Andronikos. Member of the Athens Archaeological Society since 1986. Member of the Greek Folklore Society since 1977. Founding member of the Association for the Study of Ancient Greek Technology (EMAET).EMAET Member of the Historical and Epigraphical Studies Society. Member of the Peloponnesian Studies Society. Εταιρεία Πελοποννησιακών Σπουδών Founding member of the Arcadian Academy.
Modern Greek theatre refers to the theatrical production and theatrical plays written in the Modern Greek language, from the post-Byzantine times until today.
Medieval works suggest that Modern Greek started shaping as early as the 10th century, with one of the first works being the epic poem of Digenis Acritas. However, the first literary activity which was important enough to be identified as "modern Greek literature" was done in the Cretan dialect during the 16th century in the Venetian Crete.
Anastasios Orlandos was a Greek architect and historian of architecture.
Konstantinos Smolenskis or Smolents was a Hellenic Army officer. Descendant of a family that had settled in the Habsburg monarchy and returned to Greece after the Greek War of Independence, early in his career he was distinguished as a well-educated and capable officer. He particularly distinguished himself in the Greco-Turkish War of 1897, where he led the Greek defenders at the Battle of Velestino. This rendered him a national hero and earned him widespread popularity; he was twice elected Member of the Hellenic Parliament, and served twice as Minister for Military Affairs.
Vasileios E. Vekiarellis (1887–1944) was a Greek journalist and writer.
Leonidas Smolents, Smolenits or Smolenskis was an Austrian army officer of Greek origin, who after 1830 settled in the newly independent Kingdom of Greece and became a general and Minister for Military Affairs.
Geoffrey Horrocks is a British philologist and Emeritus Professor of Comparative Philology at the University of Cambridge.
Konstantinos Koumas was a Greek 'Teacher of the Nation', a pioneer of the Modern Greek Enlightenment, a historian, philosopher and translator of literary works.
Simos Menardos was a Greek and Cypriot academic, writer, philologist, folklorist, poet, lector in Mediaeval and Modern Greek at the University of Oxford, professor of Ancient Greek Philology and later rector of the University of Athens and member of the Academy of Athens and Parnassos Literary Society.