Medieval Greek in the context of "Greek diacritics"

Greece, officially the Hellenic Republic, is a country in Southeast Europe. Located on the southern tip of the Balkan peninsula, it shares land borders with Albania to the northwest, North Macedonia and Bulgaria to the north, and Turkey to the east. The Aegean Sea lies to the east of the mainland, the Ionian Sea to the west, and the Sea of Crete and the Mediterranean Sea to the south. Greece has the longest coastline on the Mediterranean basin, spanning thousands of islands and nine traditional geographic regions. It has a population of over 10 million. Athens is the nation's capital and largest city, followed by Thessaloniki, Patras and Heraclion.

Greece is considered the cradle of Western civilisation and the birthplace of democracy, Western philosophy, Western literature, historiography, political science, major scientific and mathematical principles, theatre, and the Olympic Games. The Ancient Greeks were organised into independent city-states, or poleis (singular polis), that spanned the Mediterranean and Black seas. Philip II of Macedon united most of present-day Greece in the fourth century BC, with his son Alexander the Great conquering much of the known ancient world from the Near East to northwestern India. The subsequent Hellenistic period saw the height of Greek culture and influence in antiquity. Greece was annexed by Rome in the second century BC and became an integral part of the Roman Empire and its continuation, the Byzantine Empire, where Greek culture and language were dominant. The Greek Orthodox Church, which emerged in the first century AD, helped shape modern Greek identity and transmitted Greek traditions to the wider Orthodox world.

Modern Greek (endonym: Νέα Ελληνικά, Néa Elliniká [ˈne.a eliniˈka] or Κοινή Νεοελληνική Γλώσσα, Kiní Neoellinikí Glóssa), generally referred to by speakers simply as Greek (Ελληνικά, Elliniká), refers collectively to the dialects of the Greek language spoken in the modern era, including the official standardized form of the language sometimes referred to as Standard Modern Greek. The end of the Medieval Greek period and the beginning of Modern Greek is often symbolically assigned to the fall of the Byzantine Empire in 1453, even though that date marks no clear linguistic boundary and many characteristic features of the modern language arose centuries earlier, having begun around the fourth century AD.

During most of the Modern Greek period, the language existed in a situation of diglossia, with regional spoken dialects existing side by side with learned, more archaic written forms, as with the vernacular and learned varieties (Dimotiki and Katharevousa) that co-existed in Greece throughout much of the 19th and 20th centuries.

Old Great Bulgaria (Medieval Greek: Παλαιά Μεγάλη Βουλγαρία, Palaiá Megálē Voulgaría), also often known by the Latin names Magna Bulgaria and Patria Onoguria ("Onogur land"), was a 7th-century Turkic nomadic empire formed by the Onogur-Bulgars on the western Pontic–Caspian steppe (modern southern Ukraine and southwest Russia). Great Bulgaria was originally centered between the Dniester and lower Volga.

The original capital was Phanagoria on the Taman Peninsula between the Black and Azov seas. In the mid-7th century, Great Bulgaria expanded west to include Avar territory and was centered on Poltava. During the late 7th century, however, an Avar-Slavic alliance in the west, and Khazars in the east, defeated the Bulgars, and Great Bulgaria disintegrated. Successor states are the First Bulgarian Empire and Volga Bulgaria.

Koine Greek (ἡ κοινὴ διάλεκτος, hē koinḕ diálektos, lit. 'the common dialect'), also variously known as Hellenistic Greek, common Attic, the Alexandrian dialect, Biblical Greek, Septuagint Greek or New Testament Greek, was the common supra-regional form of Greek spoken and written during the Hellenistic period, the Roman Empire, and the early Byzantine Empire. It evolved from the spread of Greek following the conquests of Alexander the Great in the fourth century BC, and served as the lingua franca of much of the Mediterranean region and the Middle East during the following centuries. It was based mainly on Attic and related Ionic speech forms, with various admixtures brought about through dialect levelling with other varieties.

Koine Greek included styles ranging from conservative literary forms to the spoken vernaculars of the time. As the dominant language of the Byzantine Empire, it developed further into Medieval Greek, which then turned into Modern Greek.

The Griko people (Greek: Γκρίκο), also known as Grecanici in Calabria, are an ethnic Greek community of Southern Italy. They are found principally in the regions of Calabria and Apulia (peninsula of Salento). The Griko are believed to be remnants of the once large Ancient and Medieval Greek communities of Southern Italy (the ancient Magna Graecia region), although there is some dispute among scholars as to whether the Griko community is directly descended from Ancient Greeks, from more recent medieval migrations during the Byzantine period, or a combination of both.

A long-standing debate over the origin of the Griko dialect has produced two main theories about the origins of Griko. According to the first theory, developed by Giuseppe Morosi in 1870, Griko originated from the Hellenistic Koine when in the Byzantine era [...] waves of immigrants arrived from Greece to Salento. Some decades after Morosi, Gerhard Rohlfs, in the wake of Hatzidakis, claimed instead that Griko was a local variety evolved directly from the ancient Greek.

The Kometopuli dynasty (Bulgarian: Династия на комитопулите, Dinastiya na komitopulite; Byzantine Greek: Δυναστεία Κομητoπούλων, Dynasteía Kometopoulon) was the last royal dynasty in the First Bulgarian Empire, ruling from c. 976 until the fall of Bulgaria under Byzantine rule in 1018. The most notable member of the dynasty, Tsar Samuel, is famous for successfully resisting Byzantine conquest for more than 40 years. Sometimes the realm of the Cometopuli is called Western Bulgarian Kingdom or Western Bulgarian Empire.