Greek

Greek (Ελληνικά, IPA — "Hellenic") is an Indo-European language with a documented history of 3,500 years. more...

Today, it is spoken by 15 million people in Greece, Cyprus, the former Yugoslavia, particularly the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, Bulgaria, Albania and Turkey. There are also many Greek emigrant communities around the world, such as those in Melbourne, Australia which has the third largest urban Greek population of any city in the world, after Athens and Thessaloniki.

Greek has been written in the Greek alphabet (the first to introduce vowels), since the 9th century B.C., and before that in Linear B and the Cypriot syllabaries. Greek literature has a continuous history of some 3000 years.

History

This article does not cover the reconstructed history of Greek prior to the use of writing. For more information, see main article on Proto-Greek language.

Greek has been spoken in the Balkan Peninsula since the 2nd millennium BC. The earliest evidence of this is found in the Linear B tablets dating from 1500 BC. The later Greek alphabet is unrelated to Linear B, and is believed to be derived from the Phoenician alphabet (abjad); with minor modifications, it is still used today. Greek is conventionally divided into the following periods:

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