Language Fact File: Greek

Greek is an official language in: Greece, Greek Cyprus, Akrotiri and Dhekelia

Number of native speakers: 13.5 million

Learn some: Greet your Greek friends in the morning with ‘καλημέρα!’ (kalimera) and in the evening with ‘καλησπέρα!’ (kalispera).

Fast facts:
Ancient Greek was written from right to left, like Arabic. Modern Greek is written left to right, like English. However, between those two methods was a phase called the boustrophedon era, when it was written in rotation from right to left and then left to right! Sending translators of this era our sympathies.

It was the first written language to use vowels. Prior to this, all written alphabetic languages consisted of consonants only, much like modern Arabic.

In fact, the word ‘alphabet’ comes from the first two letters of the Greek alphabet: alpha and beta.

Word order in Greek is incredibly flexible and words can pretty much go anywhere. This is helped by the fact that it uses cases, which change the endings of words to show their grammatical function.