Greek

About Greek

Greek is the official language of Greece and Cyprus, with about 13 million native speakers. It has been written for more than 3,000 years, longer than almost any other living language, and many English words in science and medicine come from it.

Greek is written in the Greek alphabet, and the guides also give the words in Latin letters. Every word of more than one syllable carries an accent mark that shows the stressed syllable, and moving the stress can change the meaning. Use the plural eseís as a polite "you" with strangers and older people, and esý with friends. Watch out for yes and no: nai means yes and óchi means no.

FamilyIndo-European, Hellenic
Native speakersabout 13 million (2019)
Official inGreece, Cyprus
ScriptGreek alphabet, 24 letters
Codesel (ISO 639-1), ell (ISO 639-3)

Speaker numbers: Ethnologue (2019), via Wikidata. Retrieved 26 September 2026.

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