Greek Phrases for Travellers

Greek phrases for travellers are short words and sayings from Modern Greek for hosted outings across Greece. Such trips run from Athens and Thessaloniki to Crete, Corfu, Mykonos and Santorini. Topics include kyrios and kyria, the friendly re, the toast eviva, xenia and philotimo. The Easter greeting Khristos anesti, eureka and gnothi seauton sit beside the Greek alphabet and road signs. Related pages cover Greek food, Greek Easter traditions and day trips from Athens. More ideas sit on the main page for Greece tours.

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What are Greek phrases for travellers?

Greek phrases for travellers are short greetings, polite titles, toasts and everyday sayings taken from Modern Greek. Speakers of the language simply call it Greek, or Elliniká. One endonym, meaning a name used from inside the language itself, is Néa Elliniká.

Modern Greek has a symbolic starting point in 1453, the year the Byzantine Empire fell. That year marks no clear dividing line inside the language. Features of the modern speech had begun to appear around the fourth century AD. Greek phrases for travellers belong to this modern stage of the Greek language.

Through much of the modern period, Greek lived in diglossia. Diglossia means two forms of one language used side by side for different purposes. Regional spoken dialects stood beside learned, more archaic written forms. Archaic means old-fashioned or out of date. In Greece, popular Dimotiki and learned Katharevousa co-existed for long stretches of the 19th and 20th centuries.

Katharevousa was promoted in the 19th century as a middle path between Classical Greek and Demotic. It remained the official language of modern Greece until 1976. Demotic Greek, the speech behind Greek phrases for travellers, has been taught in monotonic script since 1982. Monotonic script uses a single kind of accent mark.

• Two groups: Demotic varieties divide into two main groups, known as Northern and Southern.
• Northern sounds: In Northern speech, an unaccented o turns into u, and an unaccented e turns into i.
• Southern sounds: Southern varieties of Demotic do not show these sound shifts at all.

Demotic Greek contains loanwords, meaning words borrowed from other tongues, including Turkish, Italian, Latin and others. Katharevousa, the learned form, had those borrowed words largely stripped out. Greek phrases for travellers today come from everyday Demotic speech, borrowed words and all.

Which polite title does kyrios give Greek phrases for travellers?

Greek phrases for travellers include kyrios, a word still in Modern Greek use. It serves as sir, a polite way to address any man. Its female form, kyria, matches the English Mrs, the title placed before a married woman’s name.

Behind the kyrios of Greek phrases for travellers lies an older sense, translated as lord or master. A master, in this sense, is a person in charge of a thing or of people. In Classical Athens, the kyrios was the head of the household. He held responsibility for his wife, his children and any unmarried female relatives.

The kyrios arranged the marriages of his female relatives and supplied their dowries. A dowry is the property a bride brings with her into a marriage. He also stood for them in court whenever that was needed. Once an Athenian woman wed, the role passed to her husband, who became her new kyrios.

Whether kyrioi, the plural of kyrios, existed elsewhere in ancient Greece is debated. The scholar Cartledge argues that Sparta had them. The Septuagint, a Greek version of the Hebrew Bible, uses kyrios about 7,000 times. In the Gospel of John, kyrie, meaning sir, appears frequently. A vocative such as kyrie is the form for calling to someone.

• Mister: In Greek phrases for travellers, kyrios also stands for mister, the title for an adult man.
• Names: An English name such as Mr Smith turns into kyrios Smith in Greek.
• Aramaic: The Aramaic word Mari, a respectful form of address, was at times rendered as kyrios.

Kyrios, the title in Greek phrases for travellers, appears about 740 times in the Greek New Testament. The Gospel of Mark never applies it directly to Jesus. The Apostle Paul, by contrast, uses the term 163 times in his writing.

What does re mean among Greek phrases for travellers?

Greek phrases for travellers include re, a short word heard in colloquial Greek. Colloquial describes the relaxed language of ordinary, everyday talk. Re can catch a person’s attention, add emphasis, deliver an insult, or express surprise and astonishment.

More, re and bre are interjections, meaning short cries, or vocative particles, meaning words used to call someone. They appear in Albanian, Greek, Romanian, South Slavic, Turkish, Venetian and Ukrainian. South Slavic covers Bulgarian, Serbian, Bosnian, Montenegrin and Macedonian. The scholar Eric Hamp located their core more within the Greek world than in other places.

In Greek, the word grew from moré, the vocative of the adjective morós, meaning foolish or stupid. Morós is related to the Latin morus, meaning foolish or silly. That original insult of fool or idiot is now largely lost. Re now means friend, close to mate, pal, man or dude in English.

Among Greek phrases for travellers, re counts as familiar speech. With older people or strangers, it can give offence. Shouted, or added to commands, it sounds rude. Placed right before a name, as in re George, it turns milder and friendly. Re can open a phrase, or it can come at its close.

• Like hey: In Greek phrases for travellers, re works like hey, and it can also stand for wow.
• Cyprus: In Cyprus, a sister, female cousin or female friend is commonly called ra instead.
• Florida: Greek Americans in Tarpon Springs, Florida, say ray, with no rolled r sound.

Greeks raised in Greece but living abroad use re half in jest while speaking English. Greek rappers pair it with the English interjection man, as in the phrase re man. In Greek phrases for travellers, vre and moré count as variants of the same word.

How do Greek phrases for travellers raise a toast?

Greek phrases for travellers raise a toast with is iyían, stin iyia mas or the short yia. These words carry the sense for health. Behind such Greek phrases for travellers lies the toast. It is a ritual of taking a drink to show honour or goodwill.

Among Greek phrases for travellers, eviva is another toast, borrowed from the Italian evviva, meaning long life. The word toast can name the honoured person, the drink, or the spoken words. Even without Greek phrases for travellers, raising a glass towards someone counts as a toast. Clinking glasses with another person and then drinking counts too.

Doubtful stories say the touching of glasses began from fears of poisoning. Yet no real evidence backs up that account of the custom. Other accounts link the word toast to the 17th century, when spiced toast flavoured drinks. The word first named the lady in whose honour a drink was raised.

One reference work suggests that toasting is a secular trace of ancient sacrificial libations. Secular means not tied to religion. A libation is a liquid poured out as an offering to the gods. Blood or wine was given in exchange for a wish. That wish was summed up in two short phrases, long life or health.

• Standing: Unless a gathering is very small and informal, toasts are given while standing.
• Glass down: Setting a glass down before the toast ends is widely seen as impolite.
• The honoured: The person being honoured neither stands nor drinks while the toast is given.

Inverting the glass, or turning it upside down, is discouraged. Champagne is regarded as especially festive. The toast in these customs is rooted in Western culture. Outside that sphere, other cultures keep their own traditions that link a drink with celebration and honour.

Why does xenia matter to Greek phrases for travellers?

Greek phrases for travellers include xenia, an ancient Greek concept of hospitality. Historically, welcoming foreigners and guests was both a moral obligation and a political necessity. Such welcome honoured Zeus Xenios and Athene Xenia, the divine patrons of foreigners.

The xenia behind Greek phrases for travellers rested on two basic rules. Hosts owed guests a bath, a meal with drink, presents and safe passage to their next stop. Asking guests questions, even their names, before the meal ended was thought rude. The first rule set out the respect that hosts owed to their guests.

Guests carried duties too, under the second rule of xenia. They had to stay courteous and never become a threat or a burden. They were meant to share tales and fresh news from beyond the home. Above all, guests had to repay the welcome whenever their former hosts came to their door.

People believed that gods mingled among them. A poor host risked angering a god who had taken the form of that stranger. Such stories warned that any guest deserved the care due to a god in disguise. In Greek phrases for travellers, xenia sounds roughly like kse-nee-a, with the stress on the middle syllable.

• Gifts: The gifts themselves were called xénia, distinct from xenía, the word for the bond.
• Return gift: A return gift was offered straight after a gift was received, matching it in value.
• Homes: The Roman architect Vitruvius noted paintings of food in the guest rooms of Greek homes.

In Greek phrases for travellers, xenia names a bond that brought gifts, protection and shelter. Favours and certain rights came with the bond too. The New Testament Book of Hebrews gives a parallel warning, urging Christians to entertain strangers.

Where does philotimo come from in Greek phrases for travellers?

Greek phrases for travellers include philotimo, a Greek noun whose literal translation is love of honour. A noun is a naming word. The word resists an easy English version. It covers a complex set of virtues rather than one single quality.

Greek phrases for travellers spell the word in two ways, philotimo or filotimo. Early writings sometimes used it in a bad sense. Other writers used the verb philotimeomai to mean lavish upon. Later writers gave it nobler meanings. The form philotimon appears widely in Hellenistic period literature, from a later age of ancient Greek culture.

The word appears three times in letters written by the Apostle Paul. Paul was a fluent Greek speaker, and his letters were first written in Greek. Writing to the Romans, he uses it for his aim of preaching the gospel to new hearers. The gospel is the good news of the Christian message.

In his second letter to the Corinthians, it describes his labour, meaning his life’s work and strivings. In his first letter to the Thessalonians, it marks the ambition to live above reproach. Above reproach means beyond any fair criticism. In English Bibles, the philotimo of Greek phrases for travellers becomes ambition, aspire, endeavour earnestly or being zealous.

• Orthodox view: For Orthodox Christians, the word in Greek phrases for travellers carries a deep spiritual dimension.
• Saint Paisios: Saint Paisios of Mount Athos called it a reverent distillation, or purest essence, of goodness.
• Humble love: He also described it as love shown by humble people, free of every trace of self.

Its use in the Bible is thought to have cemented the word in modern Greek culture. Paisios said such people feel deep gratitude towards God and others. Out of that feeling, they try to repay even the slightest good done to them.

Which Easter greeting belongs in Greek phrases for travellers?

Greek phrases for travellers at Easter include Khristos anesti, the Greek form of the Paschal greeting. The set reply is Alithos anesti. In English, one person offers Christ is risen, and the other gives the response Indeed he is risen.

The Paschal greeting behind Greek phrases for travellers also goes by the Easter Acclamation or the Easter Greeting. An acclamation is a loud, shared cry of approval or praise. It is an Easter custom across Christian churches. These include Eastern Orthodox, Roman Catholic, Anglican, Lutheran, Methodist, Presbyterian and Congregational churches. Pascha is another name for Easter.

Credit for the greeting’s origin varies. The phrase Christ is risen is held to be a cut-down line from the Gospel of Matthew. There is no agreement on where the reply comes from. One view traces it to the Gospel of Luke. Either way, it now forms part of Christian tradition.

Among Greek phrases for travellers, the greeting marks belief in the resurrection on Easter morning. Resurrection here means the rising of Jesus from the dead. Members of certain churches use it when meeting one another during Eastertide, the Easter season. In Church Slavonic, the language in widest use for it, the greeting is Khristosu voskrese.

• Latin form: In the Latin Church, the greeting is Christus surrexit, answered by Surrexit vere, alleluia.
• Octave: The Latin form is used on Easter morning and throughout the Easter Octave, the week after Easter.
• Languages: A published list gives the Paschal greeting in 57 different languages.

The Latin phrase is similar to the Greek one found in Greek phrases for travellers. It echoes the angel’s greeting to Mary Magdalene and to Mary, the mother of James. The two women had come to the tomb to anoint, or oil, the body of Jesus.

What story does eureka bring to Greek phrases for travellers?

Greek phrases for travellers include eureka, an exclamation, or sudden cry, that celebrates a discovery or an invention. It comes from the Ancient Greek heureka, meaning that the speaker has found it. The word is linked to Archimedes, the ancient mathematician and inventor.

The heureka behind Greek phrases for travellers is a form of the verb heurisko, meaning to find. This form presents the finding as an action already complete. Eureka is closely related to heuristic, a word for learning and problem-solving based on experience. In modern Greek, the opening h sound of the old word is dropped.

The English word stresses its second syllable, following Latin rules of accent. In the Greek pronunciation, the first syllable carries a high pitch accent. Pitch accent means a rise in the tone of the voice. Finnish, Danish and German keep the starting h, which Greek phrases for travellers leave out.

Archimedes reportedly cried the word twice after stepping into a bath and seeing the water level rise. He understood that the displaced water matched the volume of the body part under water. Displaced means pushed aside. He is said to have run naked through the streets of Syracuse to share the news.

• Crown: His insight solved a problem set by Hiero of Syracuse about a golden crown.
• First record: The tale first reached writing in the books of Vitruvius, two centuries after the event supposedly happened.
• Plutarch: Plutarch told the story again a century after Vitruvius, in a shorter version.

Far beyond Greek phrases for travellers, eureka is also the state motto of California. The motto recalls the gold found near Sutter’s Mill in 1848. In 1796, the mathematician Gauss wrote the word in capital Greek letters in his diary.

Which Delphic maxim, gnothi seauton, sits among Greek phrases for travellers?

Greek phrases for travellers include gnothi seauton, meaning know thyself. This Delphic maxim was carved on the Temple of Apollo at Delphi. A maxim means a brief rule of conduct. This one is the best known of the Delphic set.

Tradition credited the gnothi seauton of Greek phrases for travellers to the Seven Sages, or to Apollo himself. The Seven Sages were a legendary group of thinkers and statesmen of the 6th century BC. Another theory held that the Delphic oracle first spoke the maxims. An oracle was a voice through which a god was believed to speak.

Among Greek phrases for travellers, this one is thought to have begun as a popular proverb. Ion of Chios gave the earliest clear reference to it, in a fragment from the 5th century BC. A fragment means a part of a lost text that still survives. In its first use, the phrase mainly meant knowing one’s limits.

Those limits covered the reach of one’s abilities, one’s standing in the world, or one’s own mortality. Mortality means being bound to die. In the play Prometheus Bound, Oceanus tells Prometheus to know himself and adopt new habits. In the 4th century BC, Plato reinterpreted the maxim sharply. For him, broadly speaking, it meant knowing one’s soul.

• Sages: Plato named the sages as Thales, Pittacus, Bias, Solon, Cleobulus, Myson and Chilon.
• German thinkers: Kant, Hegel and Goethe quoted the maxim in German philosophy and literature.
• Psychoanalysis: Psychoanalysis, a method of studying the mind, read it as a call to understand the unconscious.

Beyond Greek phrases for travellers, writers compared the maxim with the Hindu saying tat tvam asi. That saying means that thou art. A common later theme held that studying the universe brings knowledge of the self, and the reverse.

Which letters and sounds shape Greek phrases for travellers?

Greek phrases for travellers use letters whose names have changed in sound over time. The name of beta, for instance, is now pronounced vita, since the ancient b sound became v. A letter name is the word used to recite each letter.

Phoenician was an earlier alphabet used in the ancient world. In Phoenician, every letter name was a word that started with the sound of that letter. Modern Greek commonly spells lambda as lamda, which mirrors how the name sounds. An alphabet is a fixed set of letters, and each letter stands for a sound.

Sigma, the Greek letter for the s sound, has two forms. One form appears only at the ends of words, and the other appears elsewhere. In Greek phrases for travellers, each word ending in sigma takes that end-of-word form. Lower case pi marks a circle’s circumference, its outer length, divided by its diameter.

A letter pair is two letters written together for one sound. In Modern Greek, the pair mu-pi, written mp in Latin letters, stands for a b or mb sound. The pair nu-tau, written nt, stands for a d or nd sound. Greek phrases for travellers spell b and d sounds with these pairs.

• Omicron-upsilon: The pair written ou in Latin letters is pronounced as a plain u sound.
• Au and eu: These old diphthongs, or joined vowel sounds, are pronounced av and ev in Modern Greek.
• Gamma pairs: Double gamma and gamma-kappa sound like the ng in finger, not the ng in thing.

Greek phrases for travellers rely on a vowel system that has shrunk since ancient times. Post-classical Greek merged formerly separate vowel sounds into a much smaller number. A vowel is an open sound, such as a, e or i. Post-classical means coming after the classical age.

How do Greek numerals fit into Greek phrases for travellers?

Greek phrases for travellers include Greek numerals, which write numbers with the letters of the Greek alphabet. Each letter carries a number value as well as a sound. A numeral is a written sign that stands for a fixed number.

In modern Greece, these letter numerals still mark ordinal numbers. An ordinal number shows a place in a series, such as first or second. Their role matches the one Roman numerals play in the Western world. For ordinary counting numbers, called cardinal numbers, modern Greece uses Arabic numerals, the digits found in English texts.

The letter system used all 24 letters of the Greek alphabet. It also kept three letters that the Athenian alphabet had dropped: digamma, koppa and sampi. The units 1 to 9 belong to the first nine letters, running from alpha to theta. In Greek phrases for travellers, alpha can therefore stand for 1.

Greek phrases for travellers that use letter numerals combine letters to build larger numbers. For example, the number 241 was shown with the letters for 200, 40 and 1. The three values are added to give the whole number. Adding means joining amounts together to find their full sum.

• Keraia: This mark, whose name means hornlike projection, sits at the upper right of a number.
• Names: Philip II of Macedon appears in modern Greek as Filippos B, with a keraia.
• Thousands: A keraia at the lower left of a letter now marks the thousands.

Greek phrases for travellers draw on a letter system with an ancient birthplace. The system is thought to have developed around Miletus, a place in the region of Ionia. A birthplace is where something first began. Developed means grew step by step into a working form.

What older number signs lie behind Greek phrases for travellers?

Greek phrases for travellers deal with numbers, and the ancient Greeks once wrote them with Attic numerals. This system was a symbolic number notation. A notation is a set of written signs, and symbolic means each sign stands for a fixed value.

Greek phrases for travellers also meet a second name for this system: Herodianic numerals. Herodian first described them in a handwritten text of the 2nd century. A third name, acrophonic numerals, reflects how the signs were formed. Each sign came from the first letter of the Greek word for its number. Acrophonic means named after a starting sound.

The Attic numerals formed a decimal system, built on the number ten. Greek phrases for travellers touch on this base, which Roman numerals and Hindu-Arabic digits share. A decimal system groups amounts into ones, tens, hundreds and thousands. Hindu-Arabic digits are the everyday number signs found in English writing.

Capital eta stood for 100 in the Attic numerals. In that period, the word for a hundred, hekaton, began with an h sound. The Attic alphabet wrote that h sound with the letter eta. Unlike Roman numerals, Attic numerals used only additive notation. In additive notation, the values of the signs are simply added together.

• Two signs: Each power of ten used one sign for one and another sign for five.
• Etruscan link: Experts believe the Attic numerals served as a pattern for the Etruscan number signs.
• Later change: In other Greek regions, classic Greek numerals began replacing them around the 3rd century before the Common Era.

Greek phrases for travellers connect to number signs with a long history. Attic numerals are thought to have been in use by Solon’s time, in the 7th century BCE. BCE is the short form of before the Common Era.

How do Greek diacritics shape the sound of Greek phrases for travellers?

Greek phrases for travellers use a small accent mark called the tonos. It shows where the stress falls in a word. Stress is the extra force placed on one syllable. A syllable is a single beat of sound within a word.

Greek phrases for travellers follow the monotonic orthography, introduced in 1982. Orthography means the set of rules for spelling a language. This system needs only two diacritics and matches the sounds of present-day Greek. A diacritic is a small sign added to a letter. Monotonic means using a single accent mark.

The second modern mark is the diaeresis, a pair of dots over a vowel. In the usual case, it shows that two vowels in a row are said separately. In Greek phrases for travellers, the mark also tells two words apart. Paidakia with the diaeresis means lamb chops, while the unmarked spelling means little children.

Aristophanes of Byzantium introduced accents and breathings in the 3rd century BC. Breathings are marks that deal with the h sound at the start of a word. The rough breathing shows that an h sound comes before a letter. Rough here means breathy, spoken with a light puff of air.

• Polytonic: The older system of this name uses five diacritics and records the sounds of Ancient Greek.
• Placement: On a capital letter the marks sit at its upper left; on small letters, they sit above.
• Silent marks: In Modern Greek, polytonic marks are largely silent and mainly reveal ancient word origins.

Greek phrases for travellers leave the older marks behind, yet that system still has defenders. Critics of the change argue that polytonic spelling keeps a cultural link to the past. A cultural link is a tie to the shared customs of earlier generations.

Where does Greeklish come into Greek phrases for travellers?

Greek phrases for travellers look different in Greeklish, the Greek language written in the Latin script. The Latin script is the alphabet used for everyday English writing. A script is a full set of written letters for a spoken language.

Greeklish is a portmanteau, joining the words Greek and English in a single name. A portmanteau is a new word built by blending two older words together. Greeklish also refers to code-mixing, or code-switching, between Greek and English. Code-mixing means moving between two languages within one conversation or even one sentence.

Greeklish was once common on the internet, in e-mail, forums, chat rooms and instant messages. The main reason was that older operating systems lacked support for non-Latin scripts. An operating system is the basic software that runs a computer. A non-Latin script is any alphabet other than the letters used for English.

Greek phrases for travellers include plateia, the Greek word for a square. Plateia is an example of orthographic Greeklish. Orthographic here means copying the Greek spelling letter by letter. Phonetic Greeklish follows the sound instead, so the same word becomes platia. Phonetic means based on how a word sounds, not how it is spelled.

• Theta: In Greeklish, Greek phrases for travellers spell theta as th or as the number 8.
• Xi: The number 3 stands in for xi, as its shape resembles the letter in mirror form.
• Older roots: Frankolevantinika was an earlier practice of writing Greek in Latin letters within Catholic culture.

Greek phrases for travellers now appear mainly in Greek letters, as Greeklish has faded. Nowadays the bulk of content in the Greek language uses the Greek alphabet again. Content here means written material, such as news texts, posts and e-mail messages.

Which road sign words belong among Greek phrases for travellers?

Greek phrases for travellers appear on road signs, which in Greece are shown in two languages. Greek uses the Greek alphabet, while English uses the Latin alphabet. A road sign is a board beside a road that gives drivers useful information.

Hermai is the name of the first Greek road signs. They were marble columns bearing the head of Hermes, who protected wayfarers. A wayfarer is a person on a journey. Milestones also measured the length of streets in stadions. A stadion was a length measure of the ancient Greeks.

Greek phrases for travellers on road signs come in set shapes. A sign that warns of danger is a triangle with a red border. Signs that give orders are almost all round, and a mandatory instruction appears in white on blue. Mandatory means required by the rules of the road.

Greek phrases for travellers on signs have changed their written form. Signs once used Katharevousa, a form of Greek written with the full accent marks of the polytonic system. In 1976 and 1981, Demotic Greek in the monotonic system took its place. Demotic Greek is the form on signs today, and monotonic writing keeps one main accent.

• KOK: Signs follow the Greek Highway Code, Kodikas Odikis Kykloforias in Greek, shortened to KOK.
• People: Greek road signs show human figures as realistic silhouettes, or outline shapes, not stylised ones.
• Information: Signs that give information to road users take a rectangular shape.

Greek phrases for travellers along the road also sit within an international agreement. On 18 December 1986, Greece acceded to the Vienna Convention covering road signs and signals. Acceded means formally joined. A convention here is a formal written agreement between countries.

What story do loukoumades add to Greek phrases for travellers?

Greek phrases for travellers include loukoumades, a sweet with a central place in Greek cooking. The dish is a mainstay above all in the south of Greece. A mainstay is a dish that a kitchen relies on again and again.

To make loukoumades, cooks drop a batter into hot oil and fry it until golden brown. Batter is a thick, runny mix of flour and liquid. Among Greek phrases for travellers, loukoumades name a popular street food. They come with any mix of honey, cinnamon, walnuts and chocolate sauce. Street food is food sold for eating outdoors.

Greek phrases for travellers link loukoumades to an ancient sweet called enkrides. Evidence suggests that loukoumades grew out of enkrides, an oil-fried dough paired with honey in Ancient Greece. Athenaeus, an ancient writer, described enkrides as oil-boiled cakes with a honey seasoning. Seasoning means something added to give extra flavour.

Another ancient treat with a Greek name was charisios. Aristophanes and Eubulus called it a grace or joy cake. The name comes from chara, the Greek word for joy. People ate these cakes at night-time festivals called pannichis. A festival is a day or season of public celebration.

• Prizes: Charisioi were said to be handed out as prizes at ancient drinking games.
• Tsirichta: Pontic Greeks, from the Black Sea region, use the name tsirichta and offer them at weddings.
• Judge’s morsels: In the 13th century, al-Baghdadi described the dish under the name judge’s morsels.

Greek phrases for travellers name a sweet with a long written record. Enkrides, the ancient forerunner, appear in texts by Archestratus, Aeschylus, Aristophanes and other ancient Greek authors. A forerunner is an earlier thing that leads on to a later one.

How does horiatiki fit among Greek phrases for travellers?

Greek phrases for travellers include horiatiki, a Greek name for Greek salad. Outside Greece, the version made without lettuce goes by horiatiki, peasant salad or village salad. A peasant is a country person who farms a small plot of land.

Greek salad is pictured as the morning or midday meal of a farmer. Its ingredients match what a farmer keeps to hand. The tomatoes are cut into neat, even wedges. Cucumber, onion and green pepper go into thin slices. A wedge is a thick piece that narrows to an edge.

Greek phrases for travellers name a dish with its own serving custom. By convention, the salad stays unmixed until it is served. Diners then eat it from the same plate, or mix it first and share it out. Unmixed means the pieces lie apart rather than being tossed together.

Bread has a part to play after the vegetables are gone. At relaxed, everyday meals, people soak bread in the juice and olive oil that stay on the plate. The juice comes from the tomatoes and other vegetables. Olive oil comes from crushing and pressing olives. Soak here means dipping bread until it takes up the liquid.

• Additions: Cooks add lemon juice, green bell pepper or caper berries, the last especially on the Cyclades.
• Garnish: Mint or parsley decorates the salad, mainly in Northern Greece.
• Other salads: In Greek phrases for travellers, dips such as melitzanosalata, taramasalata and tzatziki count as salads.

Greek phrases for travellers spell the dish name in more than one way. In Latin letters, Greek salad appears as both choriatiki and horiatiki. Both spellings stand for the same Greek word. A spelling is the way letters are arranged to write a word.

What do travellers ask about Greek phrases for travellers, and what are the answers?

Greek phrases for travellers use punctuation that was largely brought into line with French after printing arrived. Punctuation means the marks that divide and shape written sentences. Printing is the making of texts by machine rather than by hand.

In Greek phrases for travellers, what does the Greek question mark look like?

The Greek question mark is the main difference from French-style punctuation. It has the shape of a Latin semicolon. The sign appeared around the 8th century, close to the time of the Latin question mark. The Greek semicolon is a separate sign, the ano teleia, which is a dot set at middle height.

How do Greek phrases for travellers write decimal numbers and quotations?

In Greek writing, a comma takes the place of the decimal point. The full stop separates groups of thousands. A decimal point divides whole numbers from parts of a number. Direct speech appears between guillemets, called isagoyika, or after long dashes, called pavla. Guillemets are angle-shaped quotation marks.

Why do Greek phrases for travellers spell the same place name in different ways?

Romanization turns Greek into the Latin alphabet, letter by letter or sound by sound. In Greek place names, Agios can appear as Ayios, Aghios, Hagios or Agios. English forms translate it as Holy or Saint. On Greek and Cypriot passports, names follow the Type 2 scheme of the ELOT 743 standard.

Which sign language sits alongside Greek phrases for travellers?

Greek Sign Language, or Elliniki noimatiki glossa, is the sign language of the Greek deaf community. It grew in the 1950s out of older local sign languages, together with French and American Sign Language. Its users in Greece are estimated at 40,600. A sign language uses hand shapes and movements.