Language Centre Resources - Greek

Greek is an Indo-European language and the only member of the Hellenic branch; it has been spoken in the South-East Europe since early in the second millennium BC and has the longest recorded history of any Indo-European language. Ancient Greek, spanning from c. 1500 BC to 1600 AD, and Modern Greek (c.1700 to the present) are two major developmental stages in the long history of the language.

Modern Greek is spoken by some 14 million people mainly in the Republic of Greece, where it is the official language, and the Republic of Cyprus as one of the two official languages. It is also spoken by sizeable émigré communities in the USA, Australia, Western Europe and elsewhere. Since 1981 is has been one of the official languages of the European Union as well.

The language has a very rich verbal and nominal morphology. There is a large number of words borrowed from other languages, such as Italian, Turkish, French, or English. Dialectal differences are minor, except for Cypriot.

Both Ancient and Modern Greek are written in the Greek alphabet, derived from the Phoenician script, comprising 24 letters.

CLASSIFICATION = Indo-European family     SCRIPT = Greek