Religion in the Middle East compose almost 600,000. Syrian Orthodox number about 1 million in Syria, Iraq, Jordan and Lebanon, with the great majority being in Syria. The ethnic Greeks, who had once inhabited large parts of the western Middle East and Asia Minor, have declined since the Arab conquests and recently severely reduced in Turkey, as a result of the Asia Minor Catastrophe, which followed World War I. Today the biggest Middle Eastern Greek community resides in Cyprus numbering around 793,000 (2008). Cypriot Greeks constitute the only Christian majority state in the Middle East, although Lebanon was founded with a Christian majority in the
Ancient Greek phonology Latin, which was composed of basically one variety from the earliest Old Latin texts until Classical Latin. Latin only formed dialects once it was spread over Europe by the Roman Empire; these Vulgar Latin dialects became the Romance languages. The main dialect groups of Ancient Greek are Arcadocypriot, Aeolic, Doric, Ionic, and Attic. These form two main groups: East Greek, which includes Arcadocypriot, Aeolic, Ionic, and Attic, and West Greek, which consists of Doric along with Northwest Greek and Achaean. Of the main dialects, all but Arcadocypriot have literature in them. The Ancient Greek literary dialects do not necessarily represent