Greek language

The Greek language is an Indo-European language. It is the official language of Greece (Hellas) and Cyprus. It was first spoken in Greece and was also once spoken along the coast of Asia Minor (now a part of Turkey) and in southern Italy. It also used to be widely used in Western Asia and Northern Africa. In Greek, the language is called Ελληνικά (elliniká).

Greek
elliniká Eλληνικά
Pronunciation	[eliniˈka]
Region	Greece, southern Mediterranean
Native speakers	13 million  (2012)e18
Language family	Indo-European Hellenic Greek
Dialects	Ancient dialects Modern dialects
Writing system	Greek alphabet Greek Braille
Official status
Official language in	Greece Cyprus European Union
Recognised minority language in	Albania Armenia Hungary Germany Italy Romania Ukraine Portugal Turkey Croatia Serbia North Macedonia
Language codes
ISO 639-1	el
ISO 639-2	gre (B) ell (T)
ISO 639-3	Variously: ell – Modern Greek grc – Ancient Greek cpg – Cappadocian Greek gmy – Mycenaean Greek pnt – Pontic tsd – Tsakonian yej – Yevanic
Linguasphere	56-AAA-a 56-AAA-aa to -am (varieties)

Spoken Greek

Greeks write their language using the Greek alphabet. The Latin alphabet, which used to write English and many other languages, came indirectly from the Greek alphabet by the Etruscan alphabet. Many other alphabets around the world also came from the Greek alphabet.

Greek has an unbroken history of being a written language for over 3,000 years. Thats is longer than any other Indo-European language spoken today. Its history is often divided into three parts, Ancient Greek, Medieval Greek, and Modern Greek. Medieval Greek is also called Byzzantine Greek because it was spoken in the Byzantine Empire.

Over 13 million people in the world speak Greek as of 2021, mostly live in Greece (almost 11 million) and Cyprus (over 1 million). There are also people in other countries around the world who speak the language, largely because people left Greece and Cyprus and emigrated to other countries. The United States and Australia have a large Greek diaspora.

Greek Language Media

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  Idealised portrayal of the author Homer

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  Proto-Greek-speaking area according to linguist Vladimir I. Georgiev

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  Distribution of varieties of Greek in Anatolia, 1910. Demotic in yellow. Pontic in orange. Cappadocian Greek in green, with green dots indicating individual Cappadocian Greek villages.

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  The distribution of major modern Greek dialect areas

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  Geographic distribution of Greek language in the Russian Empire (1897 census)

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  Greek inscription in Cypriot syllabic script

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  Ancient epichoric variants of the Greek alphabet from Euboea, Ionia, Athens, and Corinth comparing to modern Greek

Related pages

• Greek numbers
• Ancient Greek language

Other websites

Wikibooks has more about this subject:

Modern Greek

• Greek Dictionary Archived 2012-02-23 at the Wayback Machine, from Webster's Dictionary Archived 2012-02-23 at the Wayback Machine.
• Ancient Greek Dictionaries Archived 2009-04-29 at the Wayback Machine, descriptions of both online dictionaries (with appropriate links) and Greek.