THE GREEK LANGUAGE

9th February, International Greek Language Day

> Greek is one of the official languages of the European Union. 
> It is the official language of Greece with approximately 12,000,000 speakers and one of the two official languages of Cyprus with approximately 700,000 speakers. It is also spoken around the world by a significant number of Greeks of the diaspora.
> It is an independent branch of the Indo-European language family.​
> It has a long and well-documented history spanning 34 centuries. ​

The Modern Greek Alphabet

In Archaic and early Classical times, the Greek alphabet existed in many local variants.

> The earliest written evidence is found in the Linear B clay tablets (c.1400 BC) in the region of Knossos, Crete, making Greek one of the world's oldest recorded living languages.
> Greek was a widely spoken lingua franca in the Mediterranean world and beyond during Classical Antiquity, and would eventually become the official parlance of the Byzantine Empire.
> It is broadly divided into the following periods:         
- Proto-Greek
- Mycenaean Greek
- Ancient Greek
- Koine Greek (also known as Hellenistic, Alexandrian or New Testament Greek)
- Byzantine Greek
- Modern Greek
> Modern Greek can be easily traced back to the ancient Greek language in the form of the letters, word roots, and structure. It has been calculated that Greeks today use in their everyday language 2,500 Homeric words.​

Τη γλώσσα μου έδωσαν ελληνική·
το σπίτι φτωχικό στις αμμουδιές του Ομήρου...
Μονάχη έγνοια η γλώσσα μου στις αμμουδιές του Ομήρου...
 
​Οδυσσέας Ελύτης (Έλληνας ποιητής)
Βραβείο Νόμπελ Λογοτεχνίας 1979

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​Greek the language they gave me;
poor the house on Homer's shores...
My only care my language on Homer's shores...
 
Odysseas Elytis (Greek poet)
Nobel Prize in Literature 1979

'The direct or indirect influence of its alphabet, lexicon, syntax and literature has been and is immense. [...]
Earlier, when the Romans had conquered the East, Greek continued to be spoken there. Indeed, from the second century BC it had a great influence on Latin and consequently, directly or through Latin, on practically every other language. This was a long process, as a result of which today many of our languages can be seen as a kind of semi-Greek or crypto-Greek (as I have noted on other occasions). Today, Greek is a living language in Greece, but it also has a second life: its alphabet, lexicon, syntax and literary genres can be traced in all languages. [...]
There is also the important theme of the unity of Greek, from its beginnings to the present day. Greek has no doubt evolved, but if we compare the different 'Greeks', from Mycenaean and Homeric to the 'common' Greek of today, there are not so many differences after all. [...] The fundamental categories and the essence of the lexicon remain the same.'

Adrados,Francisco Rodriguez. 
A History Of The Greek Language From Its Origins To The Present. Brill, 2005. (pp.xiii, xvii)

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