Learn Greek

Greek is a language with a long and influential history which you may become part of if you choose to learn it. While Greek has had a long well-documented development it has developed into a modern language with 13 million speakers. Greek is an official language in Greece, Cyprus and for the E.U. and is additionally considered a minority language in areas of Italy, Albania, Armenia and Ukraine.


Greek is an exciting language to study simply for its vast history. We currently possess 34 centuries worth of written records showing the development of the Greek language. This is the most for any of the Indo-European languages. With the first writings dating back to 1400 BCE from Knossos, Greek has gone through many developments as a language although many aspects of it remain the same since antiquity. These first writings are found in a script called Linear B but this fell out of use. It was about the 8th century BCE when Greek began written with a script based on the Phoenician’s language. Always clever, the Greeks simply adapted some extra consonants of the Phoenicians into vowel to suit their language. With only minor modifications this is the script that is used for Greek today.


Study Greek Abroad!Greece’s most influential era was during antiquity with the city states of Ancient Greece which are often identified as the cradle of Western culture. The two great powers of Ancient Greece, Athens and Sparta, made their dialects of Greek influential through wealth, administration, literature and war. These two dialects united to be the preferred form of Greek called Attic(the Athenian dialect)-Ionic(the Spartan). This combination became the dialect used to communicate all across the Eastern Mediterranean. Much of the spread can be attributed to the armies of Alexander the Great and this Attic-Ionic Greek he spread into the administration of the near East and it developed into common or Koiné Greek. This became an enormously influential language with Koiné Greek being the original language of the New Testament.


Medieval Greek existed during the Byzantine era with the founding of Constantinople in 303 and until it was defeated in 1453 by the Turks. During this time Koine Greek was used in everyday speech but the great influence of Ancient literature gave rise to Atticism, a movement to have written Greek remain as it had in Athens. Greece was under Turkish rule until 1830 when a new kingdom was formed but the duality of spoken Greek and the Atticism of literature arose again. For this period an Attic inspired form of Greek called katharevusa (purified) Greek was developed. This issue has extended into Modern times until in 1976 it was decided to use the vernacular Dimotikí for all official purposes after adapting some aspects of Katharevusa. Nowadays, this language is known as Standard Greek and is studied worldwide.


Why Study Greek?

Even with all these historical stages, most Greeks consider their language as one gradual progression from the same used by Ancient Greeks. The Koine Greek is relatively readable to today’s educated Greeks much in the manner that Shakespeare is for English speakers. Greek is also the source of an enormous number of loan words to English particularly in the realms of science and mathematics. Along with Latin, Greek roots are often used in the coining of new English terms. It is estimated that approximately 12% of English words are Greek in origin. A fun fact about Greek words is that if they have more than one syllable will have an accent to indicate what part of the word to stress. This feature makes every word much more straightforward to say for students of the language.