History
Like all other modern Greek dialects except Tsakonian and, to some extent, Griko, Cretan evolved from Koine. Its structure and vocabulary have preserved different features than standard Greek, due to the distance of Crete from the main Greek centers.
There are also influences from other languages. The conquest of Crete by the Andalusian Moors in 824 left mainly toponyms. However, Venetian influence proved to be stronger since the island remained under Venetian control for nearly five centuries. To this day, many toponyms, names and words stem from the Venetian language of early modern times, which came to reinforce the Latin influence from antiquity and the early Byzantine Empire. Following the Ottoman conquest of 1669, Turkish words entered the vocabulary of Cretans as well. Borrowings, as usual, are mainly lexical; Arabic, Turkish, and Venetian had little or no effect on grammar and syntax. With the beginning of the 20th century and the evolution of technology and tourism, English, French and German terms are widely used.
Read more about this topic: Cretan Greek
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“All objects, all phases of culture are alive. They have voices. They speak of their history and interrelatedness. And they are all talking at once!”
—Camille Paglia (b. 1947)
“The disadvantage of men not knowing the past is that they do not know the present. History is a hill or high point of vantage, from which alone men see the town in which they live or the age in which they are living.”
—Gilbert Keith Chesterton (1874–1936)
“What is most interesting and valuable in it, however, is not the materials for the history of Pontiac, or Braddock, or the Northwest, which it furnishes; not the annals of the country, but the natural facts, or perennials, which are ever without date. When out of history the truth shall be extracted, it will have shed its dates like withered leaves.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)