| Group | Greek |
| Geography | Officially spoken in Greece, Cyprus, also by Greek minorities around the world. |
| History | The Greek language is the most ancient living Indo-European tongue. Its most archaic inscriptions were written in the 14th century BC, and now it is still the official language of modern Greece. And though Greek has changed greatly, it has preserved the vocabulary, the general characteristics of phonetics and the grammar of Ancient Greek. Greek Koine was created on the basis of southern dialects in the 18-19 centuries and spread quickly in the cities. Besides from Koine, there are 4 dialectal groups linguists have found in new Greek: Pontic with some Ionic Greek features; Cappadocian, close to Pontic but with strong Turkish influence; Tsakonian - the only dialect which preserves some Doric Greek traits; and Lower Italian. The literature language of Greece exists in two main varieties: kathareuousa, which continues Attic literature norms, and dimotika - the popular language, which was allowed to use officially only in the previous century. |
| Phonetics | The language keeps 5 vowels, but there are no long or short ones already. The stress became dynamic, and difference between acute and gravis disappeared. New consonants appeared: labio-dental [v], dentals voiced and voiceless [th], labial [f]. |
| Morphology | In morphology, the dual number has fallen out of use, the case system has lost dative and vocative cases (the vocative form exists only for masculine nouns). Among verb tenses, new models of creating complex perfect, future and pluperfect tenses has emerged. The infinitive is no longer used. |
| Lexicon | The vocabulary, though its largest part is archaic Greek, has many loanwords from Slavic, Turkish, Romance languages. |
| Writing | Greek alphabet |
| Close Contacts | Greek is the member of the so-called "Balkan language unity", sharing certain features of grammar and morphology with the other languages of the Balkans: Albanian, Romanian, Bulgarian. |
| Sample | Στο μαθημα διαβαζουμε ελληνικα. Eγω
διαβαζω το κειμενο απο την αρχη.
On the lesson, we read Greek. I read the text from the beginning. (New Greek Manual.) |
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