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Greek Language
Greek is one of the oldest documented languages in the world and its importance was so strong that it has influenced many western languages. Nowadays, many technical and scientific words used in a number of languages derive directly from ancient Greek. It is spoken by 6 million people in Greece and by other 600 000 in Cyprus.Dialects and History
Koine was the variety of Greek which was spoken in Ancient Greece. Nowadays, educated people can read Koine, but the majority of its words sound obsolete to a speaker of Modern Greek. With time, the evolution of the language has passed through two main varieties: Katharevousa was used in institutions, as the army or in school, and in the media, while Demotic produced literary works and was used in everyday speech. This latest dialect has been the more successful one, as in 1976 it has became the official language of Greece and nowadays everyone speaks Demotic.Literature
Ancient Greece produced a body of literature so rich in quality and quantity that it has never been influenced or surpassed by any other literary form. Greece literature is one of the most ancient in the world and it has been translated to dozens of languages. Greek authors have produced masterpiece in almost every area of literature and they are actively studied in schools all over the world.The story of Achilles and Odysseus, two heroes of the Trojan war, narrated by Homer in the epics called the Iliad and the Odyssey, nowadays still fascinate millions of readers. Greece literature can also count with wonderful poems by Euripides and Sappho (the only woman who has written literary work of any relevance) together with tragedies in verse by Sophocles and Euripides. The facts of the Persian and of the Peloponnesian wars are narrated by Herodotus and Thucydides. But this is not all: the Greeks were also masters in philosophy (just think about Plato and Aristotle) and were the first to write legal and political speeches in 300 BC.