Greek is an Indo-European language, constituting an independent Hellenic branch within the Indo-European language family. It has the longest documented history of any Indo-European language, spanning at least 3,400 years of written records, and is native to Greece, Cyprus and other regions of the Balkans and Eastern Mediterranean.
Facts
ISO 639-3 Code Speaker Count2015 estimate. StatusWikipedia article on Greek: a currently spoken living language with an active native-speaker population; checked 2026-09-27. Attested From (Year) RegionNative to Greece, Cyprus, Albania (Gjirokaster County and Vlore County), Italy (Calabria, Salento and Messina) and other regions of the Balkans, Caucasus, Black Sea coast, Asia Minor and Eastern Mediterranean 2 Browse and compare
Difficulty for an English Speaker Classification
Language Kind Official Status Greek
Filter Results1 entry
Connections
Associated With
Source Wikipedia: Eugene Nida
In Family
Source Wikipedia: Greek Language
Written In
Modern Greek is written in the Greek alphabet.
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Source Wikipedia: Dead Sea ScrollsLanguagestier 2Quote, Languages
Most of the manuscripts are written in Hebrew, with some written in Aramaic (for example the Son of God Text, in different regional dialects, including Nabataean) and a few in Greek.
Original Language Of
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Found In
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Source Wikipedia: Greek LanguageLead paragraph of the cited Wikipedia articletier 2Quote, Lead paragraph of the cited Wikipedia article
It is native to the territories that have had populations of Greeks since antiquity: Greece, Cyprus, Egypt, Turkey, Italy (in Calabria and Salento), southern Albania, and other regions of the Balkans, Caucasus, the Black Sea coast, and the Eastern Mediterranean.
Sources
1. Glottolog: Modern Greek (Glottolog languoid mode1248)
GlottologEndangerment, AES statusQuote, Endangerment, AES status
AES status: not endangered
2. Wikipedia: Greek Language
Wikimedia FoundationLead section
It has the longest documented history of any Indo-European language, spanning at least 3,400 years of written records.
Infobox, ISO 639-3
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Article text
It is spoken by at least 13.5 million people today in Greece, Cyprus, Italy, Albania, Turkey, and the many other countries of the Greek diaspora.
Lead section
It is native to the territories that have had populations of Greeks since antiquity: Greece, Cyprus, Egypt, Turkey, Italy (in Calabria and Salento), southern Albania, and other regions of the Balkans, Caucasus, the Black Sea coast, and the Eastern Mediterranean.
Infobox, Official language in
Greece
In Family: Hellenic, Infobox, Language family
Hellenic
View the Source 3. WALS Online: Datapoint Greek (Modern) / Order of Subject, Object and Verb
4. WALS Online: Datapoint Greek (Modern) / Tone
5. Effective Language Learning: Language Difficulty Ranking
Effective Language LearningForeign Service Institute categories listQuote, Foreign Service Institute categories list
Category IV: 44 weeks (1100 hours) Languages with significant linguistic and/or cultural differences from English Albanian Amharic Armenian Azerbaijani Bengali Bosnian Bulgarian Burmese Croatian Czech * Estonian * Finnish * Georgian Greek
6. Omniglot: Greek language, alphabet and pronunciation
OmniglotLanguage at a glanceQuote, Language at a glance
First written : 1500 BC
Wikipedia: Eugene Nida
Associated With: Eugene Nida, EducationQuote, Associated With: Eugene Nida, Education
In 1937, Nida undertook studies at the University of Southern California, where he obtained a master's degree in New Testament Greek in 1939.
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