Greek
For more details on this topic, see Modern Greek.Standard Greek (Νεοελληνική γλώσσα) is the only official language of the Hellenic Republic, and is spoken by some 99.5% of the population by approximately 11,100,000 people. (though not necessarily as a first language). Modern Greek is the officially used standard, but there are several non-official dialects and distinct Hellenic languages spoken as well. With regional spoken dialects existing side by side with learned, archaic written forms. All surviving forms of modern Greek, except the Tsakonian dialect, are descendants of the common supra-regional (Koine) as it was spoken in late antiquity. As such, they can ultimately be classified as descendants of Attic Greek, the dialect spoken in and around Athens in the classical era. Tsakonian, an isolated dialect spoken today by a dwindling community in the Peloponnese, is a descendant of the ancient Doric dialect. Some other dialects have preserved elements of various ancient non-Attic dialects, but Attic Koine is nevertheless regarded by most scholars as the principal source of all of them.
Read more about this topic: Languages Of Greece
Famous quotes containing the word greek:
“I do not believe in the creed professed by the Jewish Church, by the Roman Church, by the Greek Church, by the Turkish Church, by the Protestant Church, nor by any church that I know of. My own mind is my own church.”
—Thomas Paine (1737–1809)
“The gothic is singular in this; one seems easily at home in the renaissance; one is not too strange in the Byzantine; as for the Roman, it is ourselves; and we could walk blindfolded through every chink and cranny of the Greek mind; all these styles seem modern when we come close to them; but the gothic gets away.”
—Henry Brooks Adams (1838–1918)
“That is a very good question. I don’t know the answer. But can you tell me the name of a classical Greek shoemaker?”
—Arthur Miller (b. 1915)