Greek Language Guide

Official language in
Greece, Cyprus
Script
Greek

Where it's spoken

The United Kingdom government's toponymic factfile on Greece gives Modern Greek as the official language of Greece, and says the Demotic form was made the sole official version. It explains that two forms of Greek existed in parallel: Demotic, the commonly spoken form, and Katharévousa, a deliberately archaised form. The Government of Greece decided to abandon Katharévousa for official use following the fall of the military dictatorship, and since then Katharévousa has been little used outside churches.

One reference grammar of Greek, as quoted by Giannakidou, says that the vast majority of Greek speakers now speak a common language with only relatively minor dialectal variations, the only exception being the Greek Cypriots, many of whom ordinarily speak a dialect which, although linguistically close to standard Greek, presents some significant differences.

The Constitution of Cyprus states that the official languages of the Republic are Greek and Turkish. According to Arvaniti, it was Standard Greek that was chosen as the official language of the state when Cyprus became independent. Arvaniti describes the Greek speech community of Cyprus as diglossic: Standard Greek is used in formal situations, particularly in writing, while the local variety, Cypriot, is used in all informal situations and all oral interactions. Arvaniti also states that the two varieties are sufficiently different to be mutually unintelligible without adequate previous exposure, but that the lack of intelligibility is not mutual: because of their greater exposure to Standard Greek, Cypriots are much less likely than Greeks to experience comprehension problems in communication between the varieties.

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Script & pronunciation

Modern Greek is written in the Greek alphabet, which, according to the United Kingdom government's toponymic factfile on Greece, has changed little in well over two thousand years. Greek letters come in uppercase and lowercase pairs, and Unicode gives the small final sigma, ς, as an example of a Greek letter form used in the final position of a word. The factfile also describes a spelling reform that reduced the diacritics marking stress from three to one. Unicode describes the monotonic style of writing Greek as using a single mark, called the tonos, and calls the tonos the basic Greek accent written in modern Greek. This app's card for "Please", Παρακαλώ, carries a single accent mark, over its final letter, ώ. Unicode also notes that accents may be omitted from an all-uppercase word. This app's card for an entrance sign, ΕΙΣΟΔΟΣ ("Entrance"), is written in capitals without any accent mark; the card's own note gives the normal spelling as είσοδος, which has an accent mark over the ί and ends in the small final sigma ς.

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Grammar essentials

In Greek the definite article is fully inflected for gender, case, and number. Greek has four cases (nominative, genitive, accusative, and vocative), and there is agreement within the noun phrase, so all its parts are typically marked for case, number, and gender. This app's card for "Water" notes that Greek nouns have gender, that το νερό is neuter and η τουαλέτα feminine, and that the article agrees.

Giannakidou describes Greek as having extensive word order freedom: in practice the subject dominantly occurs at the start of an affirmative declarative sentence, but the flexibility allows topicalization, focus, and the movement of question words.

Modern Greek has no infinitive, so complementation is always finite. The subjunctive is marked by the particle "να", which does not inflect and comes before the inflected verb. In embedded clauses, "να" is the typical subordinator after verbs of volition, permissives, and the like, and in main clauses it is used for requests, wishes, desires, orders, and invitations. This app's card for "I want to send this letter", Θέλω να στείλω αυτό το γράμμα, has this construction, and its note says that Modern Greek uses "να + subjunctive" instead of an infinitive. The note on the app's card for "Can I see the room first?", Μπορώ να δω το δωμάτιο πρώτα;, calls "μπορώ να" the standard ability/permission construction.

The negation word "δεν" is used to negate indicative clauses, and "μην" negates subjunctive clauses and gerunds. This app's card for "The car won't start", Το αυτοκίνητο δεν ξεκινά., has "δεν" in front of the verb, and its note says "δεν" is placed before the verb for negation. The app's card for "Don't cheat me / Stop ripping me off", Μην με κοροϊδεύεις!, has "μην", and its note says "μην" forms negative imperatives.

Greek is a null-subject language: the subject of a verb is marked in the verb ending, and overt subject pronouns commonly occur only when the speech contains more than a bare reference to somebody. This app's card for "I don't understand", Δεν καταλαβαίνω, has no separate word for "I".

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Politeness & etiquette

According to Pavlidou, Greek makes use of two forms of the second person, singular and plural, to address a single interlocutor, indexing differences in familiarity, distance, status, power, and so on. The so-called politeness plural is the use of the second-person plural for one addressee, and it applies to second-person pronouns, for example εσύ (singular) versus εσείς (plural) as a subject, and εσένα versus εσάς as an object.

This app's card for "Do you speak English?", Μιλάτε αγγλικά;, notes that "Μιλάτε" is the polite plural and "Μιλάς" is for people you know. The cards for asking someone's name follow the same pattern: the card for "What's your name?", Πώς σας λένε;, uses the polite "σας" and its note gives Πώς σε λένε; for friends, while the card for "What is your name?", Πώς σε λένε;, is called the casual way to ask and its note gives Πώς σας λένε; as the formal version.

Pavlidou also states that the choice between the two forms affects the noun phrases used in the vocative to address someone, such as first name versus family name and personal versus professional titles, and the choice of vocative particles.

Two of the app's cards mark politeness in how a request is phrased. The card for "I'd like to withdraw money.", Θα ήθελα να κάνω ανάληψη χρημάτων., has a note describing "Θα ήθελα" as a conditional form for polite requests, and the card for "Can you show it on the map?", Μπορείτε να το δείξετε στο χάρτη;, has a note calling "Μπορείτε να..." a polite request form.

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