Greek Through the Ages
Greek has a written tradition spanning 3400 years. With the exception of the Chinese, no other living language has been transmitted in writing over such a long time.
Greek is the only language in the European Union that does not use or is based on the Latin alphabet. That is why the Greek characters are printed in addition to the Latin lettering on the euro notes as well.
The significance of the Greek language should not be underestimated. Western culture was shaped substantially by the culture of ancient Greece. Some of the most important writings of universal history, like the works of Plato and Aristotle or the New Testament, were composed in Old Greek. A vast number of Classical Greek words have found their way as foreign words into every European language.
The pronunciation of the Greek language has changed several times in the course of the millennia, but the orthography has largely remained constant. More than 2000 years old, the accents and symbols for aspirates continued to be used up until not so long ago. The aspirate marks were done away with only recently and the accents replaced by a single mark (tonos), which indicates the stressed syllable. However, literary texts in particular are frequently printed with aspirate marks and accents yet to this day.
Today, Greek is spoken by approx. 12 million people as their native language; of them, 10.5 million live in Greece and 700,000 on Cyprus. Greek is one of the 23 official languages of the European Union.
