Greek | |
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Ελληνικά Elliniká | |
Pronunciation | [eliniˈka] |
Native to |
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Ethnicity | Greeks |
Native speakers | 13.5 million (2012)[1] |
Indo-European
| |
Early form | |
Dialects | |
Greek alphabet | |
Official status | |
Official language in |
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Recognised minority language in | |
Language codes | |
ISO 639-1 | el |
ISO 639-2 | gre (B) ell (T) |
ISO 639-3 | Variously:ell – Modern Greekgrc – Ancient Greekcpg – Cappadocian Greekgmy – Mycenaean Greekpnt – Pontictsd – Tsakonianyej – Yevanic |
Glottolog | gree1276 |
Linguasphere |
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Areas where Modern Greek is spoken (Dark blue represents areas where it is the official language.)[note 1] | |
Greek (Modern Greek: Ελληνικά, romanized: Elliniká, pronounced [eliniˈka]; Ancient Greek: Ἑλληνική, romanized: Hellēnikḗ) is an independent branch of the Indo-European family of languages, native to Greece, Cyprus, Italy (in Calabria and Salento), southern Albania, and other regions of the Balkans, the Black Sea coast, Asia Minor, and the Eastern Mediterranean. It has the longest documented history of any Indo-European language, spanning at least 3,400 years of written records.[10] Its writing system is the Greek alphabet, which has been used for approximately 2,800 years;[11][12] previously, Greek was recorded in writing systems such as Linear B and the Cypriot syllabary.[13] The alphabet arose from the Phoenician script and was in turn the basis of the Latin, Cyrillic, Coptic, Gothic, and many other writing systems.
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.
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Most of the alphabets used today descended from the Phoenician one. The Greeks adopted it about 2,800 years ago, modifying the characters to suit sounds in their own language.
... the Greek alphabet has served the Greek language well for some 2,800 years since its introduction into Greece in the tenth or ninth century BC.
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