Lonely Planet Greek Phrasebook & Dictionary

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More people must get involved, especially young people – I plead with them to get involved – to preserve this language,” Marneris urged. About Lonely Planet: Lonely Planet is a leading travel media company, providing both inspiring and trustworthy information for every kind of traveller since 1973. Over the past four decades, we've printed over 145 million guidebooks and phrasebooks for 120 languages, and grown a dedicated, passionate global community of travellers. You'll also find our content online, and in mobile apps, videos, 14 languages, armchair and lifestyle books, ebooks, and more, enabling you to explore every day. Our intuitive and user-friendly phrasebook offers high-quality audio pronunciations, allowing you to perfect your Greek accent by listening and repeating each sentence. With this powerful tool, you'll be communicating like a local in no time!

In the hearts of Tsakonians, their language will survive, but it will be a difficult battle. Modern, digital dictionaries may save the last words of the ancient Spartans, but only if, as Leonidas would say, Tsakonians “come and get them!Greek was a widely spoken lingua franca in the Mediterranean world and beyond during Classical Antiquity, and would eventually become the official parlance of the Byzantine Empire. In its modern form, it is the official language of Greece and Cyprus and one of the 23 official languages of the European Union. The language is spoken by approximately 13 million people today in Greece, Cyprus, and diaspora communities in numerous parts of the world. The Greek alphabet is a set of twenty-four letters that has been used to write the Greek language since the 8th century BC. It is still in use today. It is the first and oldest alphabet in the narrow sense that it notes each vowel and consonant with a separate symbol. The letters were also used to represent Greek numerals, beginning in the 2nd century BC. Greek (ελληνικά, IPA: [eliniˈka] or ελληνική γλώσσα, IPA: [eliniˈci ˈɣlosa]), an independent branch of the Indo-European family of languages, is the language of the Greeks. Native to the southern Balkans, 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 previously used. The alphabet arose from the Phoenician script, and was in turn the basis of the Latin, Cyrillic, Coptic, and many other writing systems. Many Greek words have been borrowed into other languages, so you will find a lot of these words familiar, such as τραυμα (trauma, "injury") and σοφία (sofia "wisdom, knowledge"). Originally they were borrowed into Latin, which became the Romance languages. The changes Greek words underwent in Latin are different from those they underwent in Greek. For instance, in a rare case of someone actually returning a word he borrowed, κινημα (kinema, motion) was borrowed into Latin as cinema, which in French acquired the meaning "movie", and was returned to Greek as σινεμα (sinema).

Petris Dimitris, mayor of Prastos, intends to create such a centre in an abandoned tavern in his nearly deserted village. Currently, only the Tsakonian Archives and a few other locations offer in-person Tsakonika classes.

Greek key phrases

What is not written fades away,” noted Tsakonika author Sotiris Steniotis, who has started compiling words for a new Tsakonika dictionary. “In this era of information with the internet, we should not lose a language. Every Tsakonian village should have a Tsakonika centre for its residents and Tsakonika classes should be offered in Sparta and Athens.” The building of roads and ports gave people a way out of villages,” Kounia said. “Many residents never returned.” Social - meeting people, interests, feelings, opinions, going out, romance, culture, activities, weather