Greek is the official language of Greece, where it is
spoken by approximately 10 million people. It is also one of the official languages of
Cyprus, where there are an additional 600,000 speakers. Beyond that, some 3 million people
elsewhere in the world claim Greek as their first language, including numerous speakers in
Turkey, Albania, Canada, and the United States. Greek has been one of the official
languages of the European Union since 1981.
Greek is a member of the Indo-European family of languages.
Greek speakers, probably invaders from the Balkans, were established in the Greek
peninsula by the 16
th century B.C. Ancient Greek had many dialects including
Aeolic, Arcadian, Doric, Cyprian, and Ionic. As Athens became the dominant political and
cultural center of ancient Greece, the Ionic dialect spoken there-- Attic Greek-- formed
the basis for a common dialect, the Koine dialect which was understood throughout the
Greek-speaking world.
Modern Greek is derived from Koine. It became the official
language of the kingdom of Greece in the 19
th century. For a long while, there
were two different versions of Greek in use. Demotic was the language used for creative
literature and everyday speech. Katharevousa, on the other hand, was the official language
of the armed forces, law, medicine, schools, newspapers, and broadcast media. In 1976 the
Greek government adopted Demotic (Modern Greek) as the official language.
There are 24 letters in the Greek alphabet: 17 consonants
and 7 vowels. It was adapted from the Phoenician alphabet approximately 3,000 years ago.
Greek was the first alphabet to use letters for both consonants and vowel sounds: before
that, only the consonants were written. Greek is currently written from left to right,
just like English, although this wasn’t always the case. In the beginning, it could
be written from right to left, and even in alternating directions on each line!
Greek has been a major influence on hundreds of
languages. In English, approximately 12% of the words are derived from Greek. Did you know
that the prefixes poly, chrono, auto, and micro are all taken
from Greek? The suffixes phobia, meter, gram, and graph are also Greek in
origin. The fact of the matter is that Greek forms the basis for thousands of terms used
in mathematics, science, and technology.
But watch out for Greek words that sound like English. If
someone says, kaLO taXIdi, you will look foolish if you check your wallet for taxi
fare: what they are saying is, Have a nice trip. And aheeDEEah in Greek is
not an idea-- it is disgust!
The second person singular is used to address friends,
relatives and children. The second person plural is used when speaking to a group of
friends, relatives or children, but it is also used as the formal singular form to express
respect. To a stranger you would say, MiLAte GaleeKA? (Do you speak French?), but
when speaking to a friend, MiLAee GaleeKA?
There are some interesting differences between English
punctuation and Greek punctuation. For instance, a semicolon is used at the end of a
question in Greek. And where English uses a comma to divide large numbers, Greek uses a
period: the number 256,342,781 is written as 256.342.781. A period is also used to denote
clock times, instead of a colon between the hours and the minutes.
There are three genders in Greek: feminine, masculine and
neuter. The gender is determined by the ending of the noun. DROmos (street) and Andras
(man) are masculine; KARta (card) and teeMEE (price) are feminine; doMAtio
(room) and ksenodoHEEo (hotel) are neuter. Greek nouns decline (change form)
according to case (nominative, accusative, genitive, and vocative) and number (singular and
plural).
Greek is a phonetic language for the most part: the letters
are pronounced in a uniform way. This predictability is very helpful for the learner.
Moreover, words of more than one syllable usually have an accent mark over the vowel in
the syllable that receives the spoken stress-- another aid for a foreigner wondering how
to pronounce the words.
It has never been easier to learn Greek and to begin to speak Greek than with the language resources and Greek software programs available from Transparent Language.
We wish you all the best
with your study of modern Greek!
