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The Greek Language
Given to the illustrious history of its country, Greek has acquired the status of the language of prestige and of the educated. It has influenced many Western languages and this is evident in the numerous technical and scientific words with Greek stem which form part of many modern languages. Greek is spoken by about 6 million people in Greece, plus other 600 000 in Cyprus.Dialects and History
Koine was the antique form of language which was spoken in ancient Greece. Nowadays, Koine is identified as the language of the educated, even if a speaker of modern Greek would find it archaic. There are two main dialects which have influenced the evolution of Koine. The first is the Katharevousa dialect, which was the language of school, the army and the media. The second dialect was Demotic, the language of everyday speech as well as that of literature.Of these two dialects, only Demotic is still spoken nowadays and in 1976 in was declared Greece's Official Language.
Literature
Greece literature is undoubtely one of the most famous around the world and it counts with masterpieces which are yet to be surpassed. Greek authors have written high-quality works in every field of literature and this results in Greek authors being included in educational programs all over the world.Among the most popular Greek authors, it's impossible not to mention Homer, which was lead to popularity by the Iliad and the Odysseus (the epics about Achilles and Odysseus, two heroes of the Trojan war). Nowadays, there are million of readers who are still fascinated by Homer's works. The same can be said for Euripides' poems and for those of Sappho, the only woman of success in literature.
Another two drama masters were Sophocles and Euripides, who wrote high-quality tragedies in verse. Herodutus and Thucydices narrated important episodes of the Persian and the Peloponnesian wars, while Plato and Aristotele wrote philosophy's essays. What is more, it was in the Greece of the 4th century BC where they were written the first legal and political speeches.