Greece

Greece [ɡɹiːs] (help·info) (Greek: Ελλάδα, transliterated: Elláda [e̞ˈlaða] (info), historically Ἑλλάς, Hellás, IPA: [e̞ˈlas]), officially the Hellenic Republic (Ελληνική Δημοκρατία, Ellīnikī́ Dīmokratía, [e̞liniˈkʲi ðimo̞kɾaˈtia]),[4] is a country in southeastern Europe, situated on the southern end of the Balkan Peninsula. It has borders with Albania, Bulgaria and the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia (F.Y.R.O.M.) to the north, and Turkey to the east. The Aegean Sea lies to the east and south of mainland Greece, while the Ionian Sea lies to the west. Both parts of the Eastern Mediterranean basin feature a vast number of islands.
Greece lies at the juncture of Europe, Asia and Africa. It is heir to the heritages of ancient Greece, the Roman and Byzantine Empires,[5] and nearly four centuries of Ottoman rule.[6] Greece is the birthplace of democracy,[7] Western philosophy,[8] the Olympic Games, Western literature and historiography, political science, major scientific and mathematical principles, and Western drama,[9] including both tragedy and comedy.
Greece is a developed country, a member of the European Union since 1981,[10] a member of the Economic and Monetary Union of the European Union since 2001, NATO since 1952,[11] the OECD since 1961,[12] the WEU since 1995 and ESA since 2005.[13] Athens is the capital; Thessaloniki, Patras, Heraklion, Larissa, Volos, Ioannina, Kavala, Rhodes and Serres are some of the country's other major cities.
The culture of Greece has evolved over thousands of years, with its beginnings in the Mycenaean and Minoan Civilizations, continuing most notably into Classical Greece, the Hellenistic Period, through the influence of the Roman Empire and its Greek Eastern successor the Byzantine Empire. The Ottoman Empire too had a significant influence on Greek culture, but the Greek war of independence is credited with revitalizing Greece and giving birth to a single entity of its multi-faceted culture throughout the ages.
Greek cuisine is often cited as an example of the healthy Mediterranean diet. Greek cuisine incorporates fresh ingredients into a variety of local dishes such as moussaka, stifado, Greek Salad, spanakopita and the world famous Souvlaki. Throughout Greece people often enjoy eating from small dishes such as meze with various dips such as tzatziki, grilled octopus and small fish, feta cheese, dolmades (rice, currants and pine kernels wrapped in vine leaves), various pulses, olives and cheese. Olive oil is added to almost every dish. Sweet desserts such as galaktoboureko, and drinks such as ouzo, metaxa and a variety of wines including retsina. Greek cuisine differs widely from different parts of the mainland and from island to island.
Greece is today relatively homogeneous in linguistic terms, with a large majority of the native population using Greek as their first or only language. The Muslim minority in Thrace, which amounts to approximately 0.95% of the total population, consists of speakers of Turkish, Bulgarian (Pomak) and Romani. Romani is also spoken by Christian Roma in other parts of the country.
Further minority languages have traditionally been spoken by regional population groups in various parts of the country. Their use has decreased radically in the course of the 20th century through assimilation with the Greek-speaking majority. This goes for the Arvanites, an Albanian-speaking group mostly located in the rural areas around the capital Athens, and for the Aromanians and Moglenites, also known as Vlachs, whose language is closely related to Romanian and who used to live scattered across several areas of mountaneous central Greece. Members of these groups ethnically identfiy as Greeks[57] and are today all at least bilingual in Greek. In many areas their traditional languages are today only maintained by the older generations and are on the verge of extinction.
Near the northern Greek borders there are also some Slavic-speaking groups, whose members identify ethnically as Greeks in their majority. Their dialects can be linguistically classified as forms of either Macedonian (locally called Slavomacedonian or simply Slavic), or Bulgarian (distinguished as Pomak in the case of the Bulgarophone Muslims of Thrace.[58]
The Jewish community in Greece traditionally spoke Ladino (Judeo-Spanish), today maintained only by a small group of a few thousand speakers.
Among the Greek-speaking population, speakers of the distinctive Pontic dialect came to Greece from Asia Minor after the Pontic Greek Genocide and constitute a sizable group.